The best news of the month was the message from Pom at Marshall-Cavendish last week, fixing the publication date for the first two books in Tork & Grunt’s Guides to Business Skills. I should see the cover designs in the next few days, then the next task will be proof-reading and checking everything. That sort of detailed task isn’t my strong suit, but the prospect of finally getting to print will be worth working towards. You can already pre-order from Amazon, and in mid-June there’ll be a unique pre-order option on the Tork and Grunt website incorporating an audio CD-ROM based on Tork & Grunt’s Guide to Negotiations.

That’s my big project for April, getting into a local sound studio to lay down the audio tracks and choose some music to break up the sections of the recording. The CD will be available from the Tork and Grunt website, both as a CD and hopefully – if I can work the technology – as a downloadable podcast. I think people react well to hearing an argument put across by its author, in addition to having the printed word and being able to go back and re-read it.

Which is why I am using this week’s blog posting to highlight the beautifully eloquent speech of Barack Obama made on March 18th with the title of “A More Perfect Union.” There are no visuals, no video clips, and certainly no PowerPoint. There are also no attacks on either the other candidate or the other party. What you have is a superb piece of story-telling. Almost the entire speech is about Obama’s personal experiences, his background and his beliefs.

So, where are the policies and the political principles behind the man? The answer is that in this contest both candidates are representing the same party, and there will be few real differences in their policies. The question is whether the electorate can put their faith and confidence in the speaker. It is not until the last minutes of this speech that Obama comes to policy, by which time he has - I would suggest - won over the audience as far as trusting him and believing his sincerity.

When I looked on the Youtube "comments" on this piece of video, I came across a posting that encapsulates the essence of what is happening with politics, blogs, and the accelerating revolution in the communication of information.

This is what was written:

"The information war is the final war. This final war will be fought with weapons of mass cooperation. The enemy will be ignorance. Ignorance is not always a lack of good information. Ignorance is often an abundance of bad information. We are not born with this bad information. It is all learned behavior. Fear is the product of ignorance. Racism is one of the many byproducts."

Information is spread many ways, but when a CEO is speaking the key element is not the communication of information, it's about the individual and it's about the audience. If there are major policy changes to be communicated, then these are best done in interactive workshops, where people have the opportunity to probe, challenge, investigate, analyse and understand. Keynote speeches should be about giving the audience confidence in the speaker and hence, under the speaker’s leadership, confidence in themselves.

Which is where my day-job can help you. If you want me to work on your conference presentation, let’s start with the basics in establishing why you’re speaking, what outcome you want, and what stories you can tell that will unite your audience behind your messages. My task is to help you find those stories, and then help you deliver them convincingly.

Bob Harvey is an author and writer who gained his reputation by specialising in designing, scripting and delivering all types of corporate events, presentations and videos.

He was the British Public Speaking champion in 2003, having previously held the title as Impromptu Speaker and now both facilitates international and management conferences and trains on all aspects of interpersonal communication.

Bob lives on the fringe of England’s vineyards and fruit orchards, in the beautiful Regency town of Royal Tunbridge Wells. His children have settled in the four corners of the world which gives him an excuse for his favourite pastime – foreign travel. His career stretches across marketing, advertising and export sales, achieving in the latter area the Queen’s Award for Exports for the soft drinks machine company, SodaStream. He went on to run his own acclaimed group of restaurants in the East Midlands then, in 1994, when rent rises, business rates and soaring competition led to the demise of that venture he created “Messages into Words,” specialising in helping companies to communicate with all of their stakeholder audiences.

The idea behind Tork & Grunt’s Guides to Business Skills is to bring together the latest theories and principles on communication and weave them around the metaphor of an amusing and entertaining set of characters.

Then the stories developed with other characters in modern scenarios like house purchase, holiday-planning and promotion at work.

In the course of the book Grunt's tribe decide to live with Tork's community and the two tribes decide to live together.

When Grunt is persuaded to stand for election as the new leader, Tork has to teach him how to make a presentation, which links into the second book on that subject.

Both books are based on sound academic theory, written in what I hope you will find to be an entertaining and accessible style.

 

There are details of special offers and corporate training courses to be found at the main website: http://www.torkandgrunt.com/ which goes live in mid-June - at which time this blog will also migrate to that location.

You'll find more about my work as a writer and conference presenter at:-

http://www.messagesintowords.com/ and http://www.bobharvey.co.uk/