Do you ever struggle to condense a presentation, message, email, or essay to its essentials and ensure maximum impact? I do! My dissertation was ultimately all in all over 350 pages and it would have been better if it had been under 250!
I’m not the only one.
We all struggle either in writing or in speaking in two big areas:
1) Making sure we have a clear point to what we are doing
2) Making sure that the point is being communicated effectively verbally or in written form.
Get to the Point! Sharpen Your Message and Make Your Words Matter by Joel Schwartzberg was a book I saw at an affordable price and checked out for my own development as a communicator. It’s fairly short and concise (so it backs up its main point!) and you can find it on kindle often for $2.99. I don’t regret it one bit because I found myself evaluating my communication regularly before I finished reading the book – from blogs and lectures to emails and resumes.
I won’t repeat what’s in the book, but there is really helpful content and coaching that helped me get sharper and more committed to being crystal clear about my main point. I can come into a project with dozens of points and want to communicate them all – but usually, there is a main point that can add power and clarity to both the organization and the delivery of a presentation. I feel more clear and equipped to craft that point and build the other pieces around it.
There is great feedback on the typical roadblocks to clarity and how writers and speakers can both develop clarity and guard against the types of things that generate confusion or take away from the power of a presentation. I found it practical and helpful.
We all appreciate it and take notice when people in our lives communicate in timely, focused, and powerful ways in which the main point is loud and strong. We should hold ourselves to that standard as well and keep growing as communicators and writers. Some books help with grammar and language – this one is a great tool to help sharpen the goal, design, and persuasive impact of our presentations. It’s personally helpful, but I can see my high school kids benefitting greatly from this in their school writing and presentations.
