MAIN IDEA
There is nothing more important for achieving personal or professional success than being able to share your ideas in public. Yet despite that, most people are terrified about public speaking. That's unfortunate and it doesn't have to be that way.
To give a great presentation, there are really just three rules you have to follow:
How to give an extraordinary presentation
Tell the truth
Tell it with a story
Tell it with pictures
So how and why does this work?
When you lead with the truth, your heart will always eventually follow.
When you tell engaging stories, you take the listener on an unforgettable journey
When you include pictures with your stories, you engage and captivate their minds.
"If I tell you the truth, I tell you with a story, and if I tell that story with pictures, I can keep you glued to your seat."
- Dan Roam
DAN ROAM is founder and president of Digital Roam, Inc., a management consulting firm which specializes in business-oriented visual thinking and illustration techniques. He has consulted with companies like Google, eBay, Boeing, General Electric, HBO, News Corp. and many others. He previously worked at Razorfish, Red Square, The Moscow Times and the San Francisco Bay Guardian. In addition to being an experienced keynote speaker, Dan Roam is also the author of several books including The Back of the Napkin and Unfolding the Napkin. Dan Roam is a graduate of the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Dan Roam's website is at www.DanRoam.com.
This is a summary and not a critique or a review of the book. It does not offer judgment or opinion on the content of the book. This summary may not be organized chapter-wise but is an overview of the main ideas, view points and arguments from the book as a whole. This means that the organization of this summary is not a representation of the book.
When you get down to bedrock principles, the simple fact is your presentation will be deemed to be extraordinary if it changes the listener for the better. The only thing which will make people change is the truth and there is no faster way to establish trust than to tell the truth. If you really plan on influencing people, forget the hype and stick to the truth.
To move people, you have to be telling them the truth. The fastest way to lose your audience is to try and give them nothing but hype or B.S. To get people to do something or to get them to change in some way, you've got to be giving them the unvarnished truth first and foremost.
That being said, truth comes in three different varieties:
Truth:
Intellectual
Emotional
Factual
Factual truth is based on data. "This partially filled glass of water is made up of air and H2O."
Emotional truth is something which you personally believe. "The glass is half full!"