The Truth About Confident Presenting - Softcover

James S. O’Rourke, IV teaches management and corporate communication at the University of Notre Dame, where he is a Concurrent Professor of Management and the Arthur F. and Mary J. O’Neil Director of the Eugene D. Fanning Center for Business Communication. In a career spanning four decades, he has earned an international reputation in business and corporate communication. Business Week magazine has named him one of the “outstanding faculty” in Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business.

In 2004, he was named as recipient of the Fifth Annual John A. Kaneb Teaching Award in the Mendoza College of Business and was recognized during the University’s 159th Commencement exercises.

His publications include Management Communication: A Case Analysis Approach (3rd edition, Prentice-Hall, 2007), and Business Communication: A Framework for Success (Thomson Learning, 2001). Professor O’Rourke is senior editor of an eight-book series on Managerial Communication from Thomson Learning and is principal author or directing editor of more than 130 management and corporate communication case studies.

Professor O’Rourke is a graduate of Notre Dame with advanced degrees from Temple University, the University of New Mexico, and a doctorate in Communication from the S. I. Newhouse School of Syracuse University. He has held faculty appointments in such schools as the United States Air Force Academy, the Defense Information School, the United States Air War College, and the Communications Institute of Ireland. He was a Gannett Foundation Teaching Fellow at Indiana University in the 1980s, and a graduate student in language and history at Christ’s College, Cambridge University in England during the 1970s. He has delivered invited lectures at leading universities in Denmark, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, and Singapore.

Professor O’Rourke is a trustee of both The Arthur W. Page Society and the Institute for Public Relations. He is a member of the Reputation Institute and the Management Communication Association. He is also a regular consultant to Fortune 500 and mid-size businesses throughout North America. Dr. O’Rourke and his wife, Pam, have three daughters: Colleen (St. Mary’s College, 1994), Molly (Notre Dame, 2000), and Kathleen (Notre Dame, 2007).

Harvard Business School professor John Kotter studied a number of successful general managers over a five-year period and found that they spend most of their time with other people, including subordinates, their bosses, and numerous people from outside the organization. His study found that the average manager spends just 25 percent of his time working alone. Most of that time with others, Kotter found, was spent talking and listening—and a sizable fraction was spent presenting ideas and actions to others.

Similarly, management consultant Dierdre Borden found that successful managers spend about 75 percent of their time in verbal interaction with others: on the telephone, face-to-face, in meetings, and in presentations to large and small groups. The fact is, most information in contemporary business and social settings is passed orally, and our most important ideas are frequently formalized in presentations to clients, customers, shareholders, superiors, and key decision makers.

You can't avoid it. At some point soon in your career, you're going to be asked to give a presentation. The problem is that most people are genuinely apprehensive about doing that. We can compose a memo, letter, report, or e-mail in the quiet and comfort of our home or office, but standing in front of a group to offer our thoughts—or to motivate them to action—is simply frightening to many people. Like it or not, during a presentation you're being evaluated by everyone in the audience. You're being sized up, critiqued, and assessed. For those 15 or 20 minutes, your value to the organization, your career...your future are on the line. No wonder people get nervous.

I've been teaching public speaking to business school students, government and military officials, and professionals in all lines of work for more than 35 years, and I've learned one simple truth about public speaking: It's not easy, but it's certainly doable. I've helped people overcome fears, anxieties, and apprehensions of all sorts and watched them go on to wow an audience with their presentation skills. If they can do it, so can you.

This book, simple and compact as it is, can do three things for you. First, it can help you to diagnose your current speaking abilities It can help you size up your skill levels and get some sense of whether you're "ready for prime time." Second, it shows you the standards of the North American marketplace. Point-by-point, you find the expectations of the business and professional world. Finally, this book gives you the toolkit you need to prepare, improve, and present. It's all here, neatly tucked into 51 Truths.

The most important truth to be learned, however, is this: Great presenters weren't born that way. They became great by focusing on their message, the needs of the audience, the pattern of organization, and the details of presenting. Persistence, dedication, and a little practice can go a long way toward making you a top-notch public speaker. The details are straight ahead.

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.