Speaking Up without Freaking Out: 50 Techniques for Confident and Compelling Presenting

I use Matt’s book, “Speaking Up Without Freaking Out”, in my MBA classroom. As a lecturer, I stress to students to be “succinct” and “cogent” in order to be effective business communicators; and that’s exactly what this book is. It’s not a dense book; and only contains useful and practical suggestions to be an effective speaker.You would think that speaking anxiety is negative and should be avoided or eliminated. Instead, Matt talks about embracing our anxiety and learning to manage it instead of it managing you. Like many words of wisdoms, the messages are counterintuitive. You’ll discover plenty of words of wisdom in this book once you get your hands on it.

Often when I finish a business book, I realize that I got most of the content of the book in the first third. The best info is at the beginning of the book and the rest of the book, not so much. This is not the case with Matt's book! This book has great tips from start to finish. Grab a highlighter and get busy highlighting. Read and enjoy the entire book. Your public speaking will significantly improve with Matt's stellar tips.

I've seen the youtube video by Stanford Graduate School of Business and was compelled to buy this book. A great source to better public speaking as I cannot remember all the points from the video at will. To me, there are a lot of additional points not mentioned in the video so this is a great buy! I would recommend this book to anybody. There is not much one can really write about public speaking other than the techniques. This is not a thick book downed with a lot of stories proving a point. Matthew Abrahams does a good job in walking the talk. He doesn't nor have to bore the audience. Thanks!

I'm only on about page 40, but I'm blown away by the depth of knowledge displayed by the author. If you decide to do as the author says, you will become a very good public speaker. Will people do the work?

I know the subject; and people who have stage fright they'd like to turn off or who want to learn to speak well who practice the techniques in this book will succeed.Matt Abrahams has taught speaking classes at Stanford and coached people to speak well through his coaching company. He also has a knowledge of psychology.Because of those two things, where I and others teach specific techniques that work, he explains the general principle involved and then gives several ways to solve that problem. With his experience, he has seen many people get the job done but doing it different ways.And, you get the benefit of his experience in this book. So if other books haven't done the job for you, this book may have ideas that fit you better.

The delivery is great but the YouTube video summary almost covered relevantly. I was hoping this book to be longer for my good read with more examples. However it is good for put carry along anywhere I go.

This concise, easy-to-read, yet chock full of research book is a great handbook for addressing public speaking anxiety. It covers soup-to-nuts: how to overcome roadblocks like procrastination and perfectionism in writing a speech to how to handle the anxiety that can grip many (if not most) of us right before taking the "podium". The book has little highlighted "Try This" sections that are extremely helpful and applicable. Extra bonus-- the book is small enough to fit into a backpack or bag so you can keep it with you for emergency situations (like right before going on stage).

If you get nervous when speaking in front of a crowd, you need this book. It's a perfect guidebook that you can reference over and over. The way it is structured makes it extremely easy to follow along with and remember the main points. The examples given in the book are both realistic and more importantly, they work! If you truly want to overcome your fears of public speaking, add this book to your collection.

well written

Overpriced

The book includes very practical tips which you can use to improve your presentation skills.

It was quite smaller than I expected. I wasn’t very impressed by its print and binding as it’s not very attractive. You have to force yourself to read it. The points are all good and useful but it didn’t add to what I learned by simply watching author’s videos which are freely available on an online video sharing website.

Small, compact, easy to use and I know from experience that all these things work because I have been using many of the techniques for years.