So why then do so many audiences leave feeling like they've wasted their time? All too often, presentations don't resonate with the audience and move them to transformative action.Just as the author's first book helped presenters become visual communicators, Resonate helps you make a strong connection with your audience and lead them to purposeful action. The author's approach is simple: building a presentation today is a bit like writing a documentary. Using this approach, you'll convey your content with passion, persuasion, and impact.Author has a proven track record, including having created the slides in Al Gore's Oscar-winning An Inconvenient TruthFocuses on content development methodologies that are not only fundamental but will move people to action Upends the usual paradigm by making the audience the hero and the presenter the mentor Shows how to use story techniques of conflict and resolution Presentations don't have to be boring ordeals. You can make them fun, exciting, and full of meaning. Leave your audiences energized and ready to take action with Resonate.

    

    Over one hundred stories drawn from the front lines of business and government, as well as myths, fables, and parables from around the world, illustrate how story can be used to persuade, motivate, and inspire in ways that cold facts, bullet points, and directives can’t. These stories, combined with practical storytelling techniques show anyone how to become a more effective communicator. From “who I am” to “I-know-what-you’re thinking,” Simmons identifies the six stories you need to know how to tell and demonstrates how they can be applied. This revised edition offers a guide to using storytelling in specific business circumstances, including corporate reorganizations, layoffs, and diversity issues.

     The time-tested secrets this book discloses include Cicero’s three-step strategy for moving an audience to action—as well as Honest Abe’s Shameless Trick of lowering an audience’s expectations by pretending to be unpolished. But it’s also replete with contemporary techniques such as politicians’ use of “code” language to appeal to specific groups and an eye-opening assortment of popular-culture dodges—including The Yoda Technique, The Belushi Paradigm, and The Eddie Haskell Ploy. Whether you’re an inveterate lover of language books or just want to win a lot more anger-free arguments on the page, at the podium, or over a beer, Thank You for Arguing is for you. Written by one of today’s most popular language mavens, it’s warm, witty, erudite, and truly enlightening. It not only teaches you how to recognize a paralipsis and a chiasmus when you hear them, but also how to wield such handy and persuasive weapons the next time you really, really want to get your own way.

    Each of those moments requires you, in some way, to play a role, to heighten the impact of your words, and to manage your emotions and nerves. Every interaction is a performance, whether you’re speaking up in a meeting, pitching a client, or walking into a job interview.   In Steal the Show, New York Times best-selling author Michael Port draws on his experience as an actor and as a highly successful corporate speaker and trainer to teach readers how to make the most of every presentation and interaction. He demonstrates how the methods of successful actors can help you connect with, inspire, and persuade any audience. His key strategies for commanding an audience’s attention include developing a clear focus for every performance, making sure you engage with your listeners, and finding the best role for yourself in order to convey your message with maximum impact.  Michael Port is one of the most in-demand corporate speakers working today. His presentations are always powerful, engaging, and inspirational. And yes, audiences always give him a standing ovation.

    Richard C. Harris, Certified World Class Speaking Coach "An insightful read" ~Dennis Waller, Top 500 Reviewer "Superb communication advice" ~ Larry Nocella MASTER THE ONE THING ALL GREAT TED TALKS HAVE IN COMMON What is the secret to delivering a great TED talk? What is the magic ingredient that makes a TED talk captivating? And more importantly, how can you use those secrets to make your presentations more powerful, dynamic and engaging? To try to answer these questions, I studied over 200 of the best TED talks. I broke each TED talk down in terms of structure, message and delivery. Here’s what I discovered. After studying over 200 TED talks, the one commonality among all the great TED talks is that they contain stories. UTILIZE ADVANCED STORYTELLING TECHNIQUES TO INJECT LIFE INTO YOUR PRESENTATIONS Essentially, the best speakers on the TED stage were the ones who had mastered the art of storytelling. They had mastered how to craft and present their stories in a way that allowed them to share their message with the world without seeming like they were lecturing their audience. DISCOVER THE 23 STORYTELLING SECRETS OF THE BEST TED TALKS In this short but powerful guide, you’re going to learn how to use stories to make your presentations engaging and entertaining. Using case studies drawn from TED talks by Sir Ken Robinson, Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, Susan Cain, Leslie Morgan Steiner, Mike Rowe and Malcolm Gladwell, you’ll learn how to craft stories that keep your audience mesmerized. By the time you’ve finished reading this storytelling manifesto, you will have picked up twenty-three principles on how to create stories that keep your audiences mesmerized. Whether you are giving a TED talk or a corporate presentation, you will be able to apply the principles you pick up in this guide to make your next talk a roaring success! RAVE REVIEWS FROM READERS "No more boring speeches and presentations" ~ Douglas L. Coppock "A crisp and no fluff book" ~ Kam Syed "A great book on storytelling" ~ David Bishop "Excellent book for any speaker" ~ Dean Krosecz Ready? Then let’s get started...

    But what stories do you need to tell and how do you tell them?Stories That Stick provides a clear framework of ideals and a concise set of actions for you to take complete control of your own story, utilizing the principles behind the world’s most effective business storytelling strategies.Professional storyteller and nationally-known speaker Kindra Hall reveals the four unique stories you can use to differentiate, captivate, and elevate:the Value Story, to convince customers they need what you provide;the Founder Story, to persuade investors and customers your organization is worth the investment;the Purpose Story, to align and inspire your employees and internal customers; and the Customer Story, to allow those who use your product or service to share their authentic experiences with others.Telling these stories well is a simple, accessible skill anyone can develop. With case studies, company profiles, and anecdotes backed with original research, Hall presents storytelling as the underutilized talent that separates the good from the best in business.Stories That Stick offers specific, actionable steps readers can take to find, craft, and leverage the stories they already have and simply aren’t telling. Every person, every organization has at least four stories at their disposal. Will you tell yours?

    Presentation Zen challenges the conventional wisdom of making "slide presentations" in today’s world and encourages you to think differently and more creatively about the preparation, design, and delivery of your presentations. Garr shares lessons and perspectives that draw upon practical advice from the fields of communication and business. Combining solid principles of design with the tenets of Zen simplicity, this book will help you along the path to simpler, more effective presentations.--back cover

    Meanwhile, people with important ideas--entrepreneurs, teachers, politicians, and journalists--struggle to make them "stick."In Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath reveal the anatomy of ideas that stick and explain ways to make ideas stickier, such as applying the human scale principle, using the Velcro Theory of Memory, and creating curiosity gaps. Along the way, we discover that sticky messages of all kinds--from the infamous "kidney theft ring" hoax to a coach's lessons on sportsmanship to a vision for a new product at Sony--draw their power from the same six traits.Made to Stick will transform the way you communicate. It's a fast-paced tour of success stories (and failures): the Nobel Prize-winning scientist who drank a glass of bacteria to prove a point about stomach ulcers; the charities who make use of the Mother Teresa Effect; the elementary-school teacher whose simulation actually prevented racial prejudice.Provocative, eye-opening, and often surprisingly funny, Made to Stick shows us the vital principles of winning ideas--and tells us how we can apply these rules to making our own messages stick.

    Your product or service works beautifully - but something is missing. People just don’t see the big idea - and it’s keeping you from being successful. Your idea has an explanation problem.The Art of Explanation is for business people, educators and influencers who want to improve their explanation skills and start solving explanation problems.Author Lee LeFever is the founder of Common Craft, a company known around the world for making complex ideas easy to understand through short animated videos. He is your guide to helping audiences fall in love with your ideas, products or services through better explanations in any medium. You will learn to:• Plan: Learn explanation basics, what causes them to fail and how to diagnose explanation problems.• Package: Using simple elements, create an explanation strategy that builds confidence and motivates your audience. • Present: Produce remarkable explanations with visuals and media. The Art of Explanation is your invitation to become an explanation specialist and see why explanation is now a fundamental skill for professionals.

    We spin fantasies. We devour novels, films, and plays. Even sporting events and criminal trials unfold as narratives. Yet the world of story has long remained an undiscovered and unmapped country. It’s easy to say that humans are “wired” for story, but why?In this delightful and original book, Jonathan Gottschall offers the first unified theory of storytelling. He argues that stories help us navigate life’s complex social problems—just as flight simulators prepare pilots for difficult situations. Storytelling has evolved, like other behaviors, to ensure our survival.Drawing on the latest research in neuroscience, psychology, and evolutionary biology, Gottschall tells us what it means to be a storytelling animal. Did you know that the more absorbed you are in a story, the more it changes your behavior? That all children act out the same kinds of stories, whether they grow up in a slum or a suburb? That people who read more fiction are more empathetic?Of course, our story instinct has a darker side. It makes us vulnerable to conspiracy theories, advertisements, and narratives about ourselves that are more “truthy” than true. National myths can also be terribly dangerous: Hitler’s ambitions were partly fueled by a story.But as Gottschall shows in this remarkable book, stories can also change the world for the better. Most successful stories are moral—they teach us how to live, whether explicitly or implicitly, and bind us together around common values. We know we are master shapers of story. The Storytelling Animal finally reveals how stories shape us.

    It is a book for everybody who wants to learn how to write or who needs to do some writing to get through the day, as almost everybody does in the age of e-mail and the Internet. Whether you want to write about people or places, science and technology, business, sports, the arts or about yourself in the increasingly popular memoir genre, On Writing Well offers you fundamental priciples as well as the insights of a distinguished writer and teacher. With more than a million copies sold, this volume has stood the test of time and remains a valuable resource for writers and would-be writers.

    Throughout, the emphasis is on promoting a plain English style. This little book can help you communicate more effectively by showing you how to enliven your sentences.

    Rethinking the usage guide for the twenty-first century, Pinker doesn’t carp about the decline of language or recycle pet peeves from the rulebooks of a century ago. Instead, he applies insights from the sciences of language and mind to the challenge of crafting clear, coherent, and stylish prose. In this short, cheerful, and eminently practical book, Pinker shows how writing depends on imagination, empathy, coherence, grammatical knowhow, and an ability to savor and reverse engineer the good prose of others. He replaces dogma about usage with reason and evidence, allowing writers and editors to apply the guidelines judiciously, rather than robotically, being mindful of what they are designed to accomplish. Filled with examples of great and gruesome prose, Pinker shows us how the art of writing can be a form of pleasurable mastery and a fascinating intellectual topic in its own right.

    For managers and teachers -- and anyone else who talks and expects someone to listen -- Confessions of a Public Speaker provides an insider's perspective on how to effectively present ideas to anyone. It's a unique, entertaining, and instructional romp through the embarrassments and triumphs Scott has experienced over 15 years of speaking to crowds of all sizes.With lively lessons and surprising confessions, you'll get new insights into the art of persuasion -- as well as teaching, learning, and performance -- directly from a master of the trade.Highlights include:Berkun's hard-won and simple philosophy, culled from years of lectures, teaching courses, and hours of appearances on NPR, MSNBC, and CNBCPractical advice, including how to work a tough room, the science of not boring people, how to survive the attack of the butterflies, and what to do when things go wrongThe inside scoop on who earns $30,000 for a one-hour lecture and whyThe worst -- and funniest -- disaster stories you've ever heard (plus countermoves you can use)Filled with humorous and illuminating stories of thrilling performances and real-life disasters, Confessions of a Public Speaker is inspirational, devastatingly honest, and a blast to read.