Working the Room: By Nick Morgan, Harvard business school press, 2003, 230 pages list price: $24.95, ISBN: 1-57851-819-9 - Books in brief - Book Review

HR Magazine, Oct, 2003

An HR professional, slated to talk following two well-known speakers, worried that she couldn't match their skills.

An adviser helped craft her message, adding a special touch: blank index cards for everyone in the audience. During the speech, the HR professional urged listeners to write goals on those cards and share them with their neighbors. The result? The audience rated her speech above those of the famous speakers because she made them take action.

The adviser was Nick Morgan, founder of Public Words in Arlington, Mass., a communications coaching company, and editor of the Harvard Management Communication Letter. Encouraging audience participation is one method speakers can use for the "audience-centered speaking" that Morgan details in Working the Room.

In an age in which television conditions audiences to expect intimacy from speakers, public speaking remains remote, with the stage and the podium distancing speakers from audiences. Morgan offers ideas for more interactive speeches and more physical closeness between speaker and listener.

For example, he advises speakers to boil down the talk to an "elevator speech," the one-sentence summary you would give someone who boards an elevator with you and asks, "Why should I attend your speech?"

Morgan explains how to walk listeners through a problem and its solution, how to handle controversial topics, how to end with a call to action instead of a dull summary, and how to deal with audience questions.

Get the audience involved, Morgan recommends. For example, one speaker, after talking about his three models for chief information officer performance, divided the audience into groups and asked each group to coach a volunteer. Then the speaker interviewed the three volunteers who pretended to be CIOs.

Morgan emphasizes practice, advising readers to rehearse speeches with exaggerated emotions and in different personas-mimicking Humphrey Bogart or anyone whose style works for them-to stretch their emotional range.

Plan to move to within four feet of selected audience members as you reach important points, Morgan says. He also explains how posture, vocal pitch and speed, facial movements and gestures affect a speech.

Recognizing the speech phobia that paralyzes many people, Morgan includes tips for the truly nervous. He also points out how his techniques can help with other tasks such as making introductions, handling the media and interviewing for jobs.