Personal Impact: The Art of Good Communication

A recent poll demonstrated that over seventy per cent of top managers and decision takers, when asked what they most feared or disliked, admitted that it was having to speak in public or being interviewed live on radio or television. Many well-qualified and able people fail to get the recognition, the promotion, or the high office they deserve because they put themselves across badly in interviews and in communicating with other people generally. If there are, for example, three or four equally well-qualified candidates for a top position in industry, in the professions or in the public sector, the one who will be accepted will be the one who most looks the part and who comes across best in the selection interview. Yet, otherwise highly intelligent and able people still fail to recognise the importance of such personal impact to themselves and to the organisations they lead or represent. They have learned and acquired many qualifications in their adult lives but, after the age of five or six, they have made little attempt to improve their oral communicating and presentational abilities. In Personal Impact, Michael Shea argues that our presence and paralanguage - the whole tenor and authority of our voice - are usually much more important than the words we use. No book can teach these skills, but this book offers a whole range of vital hints about how to improve the impact one makes, from first impressions to making a speech or being interviewed either by the media or for business, professional, career or personal reasons.