The Speaker’s Toolbox: 47 Tools to Build Better Speeches

The purpose of this book is to help newer speakers speak better … faster. This is achieved with its focus on the three essentials: a clear message, a close audience connection, and helping your audience remember. An important contribution the book also makes is an explanation why audiences’ minds wander and how you can hold their attention. The book comprises two parts: a set of 47 tools to build better speeches; followed by 11 world-class speeches, examples of speaking excellence illustrating many of the tools described. The book has a clear, easy-to-understand style, free of technical rhetorical terms. Each helpful tool covers two pages: a half-page description, followed by copious examples allowing the reader to clearly understand the tool’s use in different situations. In addition to triggering new speech ideas, readers can adapt the examples given to dovetail into their own speeches. Besides including some of the better-known speech tools such as Alliteration, Repetition, and Triples, it introduces the reader to some of the newer tools such as Twists, the Senses, and Visual Words. It is a toolbox of fresh, helpful ideas that every speaker will keep nearby.