Allison Shapira - Speak with Impact: How to Command the Room and Influence Others

PRAISE FOR

SPEAK WITH IMPACT

Allison Shapira has become not only a master of public speaking but one of the best speech coaches in the US. In this new book, she provides a clear, practical roadmap for those who want to have an impact in todays clamorous world. If you want to excel on your feet, read this, keep this, and read again.

DAVID GERGEN,

CNN senior political analyst, Harvard Kennedy School professor of public service, and former White House advisor to four presidents

Allison can prove and has proven that anyone can learn to lead; it all starts with your voice.

JORDAN HEWSON,

founder, Speakable

If you want to improve your public speaking, spend a few hours with Allisons book. Its loaded with good advice and tricks of the trade that will help you up your game.

DAN HEATH,

coauthor of Made to Stick and The Power of Moments

The brilliance of Speak with Impact is in its simple genius. Allisons lessons are by nature specific, practical, and transferable. With Allisons help, I was able to arm my team with the proper tools needed to enhance their presentations skills and build self-assurance in public speaking.

DEBORAH DUGAN,

CEO, (RED)

Allison has written a practical and thoughtful guide to public speaking that equips the reader with a powerful set of tools that are applicable to any presentation or speaking opportunity. Allison successfully blends her narrative voice with key takeaways that I found to be incredibly useful.

BRUCE SOLL,

senior VP and counsel of company affairs, L Brands

Allison Shapiras new book is as much about leadership as it is about public speaking. She prods us to ask tough questions: what do we want to accomplish, who is our audience, why should they listen to us? And then she makes us critique ourselves and test our messages with the audience. I wish I had met her years ago.

GERALDINE LAYBOURNE,

media entrepreneur, first president, Nickelodeon, cofounder, Oxygen

Reading Speak with Impact is like having a one-on-one session with a master trainer in public speaking. Allison Shapiras practical advice and well-hewn insights are captured on every page and will give novice speakers confidence and seasoned veterans a stronger voice.

JEFFREY SEGLIN,

director and senior lecturer, Harvard Kennedy School Communications Program

Allison skillfully commands the attention of her audiences with professionalism, grace, humor, and insight. Through Speak with Impact, she provides pragmatic tools, practical advice, and examples that will help readers build powerful public speaking skills.

ZO DEAN-SMITH,

vice president, economic empowerment & entrepreneurship, Vital Voices Global Partnership

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Please note that footnotes in this ebook may contain hyperlinks to external websites as part of bibliographic citations. These hyperlinks have not been activated by the publisher, who cannot verify the accuracy of these links beyond the date of publication.

2018 Allison Shapira

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or otherexcept for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published by HarperCollins Leadership, an imprint of HarperCollins.

Book design by Elyse Strongin, Neuwirth & Associates.

Epub Edition September 2018 9780814439364

978-0-8144-3936-4 (eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018956212

978-0-8144-3971-5

Printed in the United States of America

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Contents

The act of writing may be a solitary process, but publishing a book takes a team. From conducting research to sharing advice to providing feedback, a significant number of people can be seen, felt, and heard in this book.

Thank you to Anthony Mattero at CAA, whose expert advice guided me throughout the process, and to Ellen Kadin, who recognized the need for this book and took a chance on a new author. Thank you to Jeff Farr at Neuwirth & Associates and Timothy Burgard and the team at HarperCollins Leadership for their partnership and enthusiastic support.

Friends and fellow authors Diane Mulcahy and Jennefer Witter readied me for the writing process and continue to model the way. Emily Adams sifted through pages of dense academic papers and left no digital stone unturned to verify a statistic or simplify a concept. Jeffrey Seglin was a constant source of wisdom and patience through my countless questions. David Gergens mentorship paved the way for many of the experiences in this book. Arthur and Barbara Bushkin have been incredible champions of both the book and my career.

Friends, colleagues, and mentors spent hours reading and reviewing the manuscript and gave me honest and practical feedback: Paul Anghinetti, Margaux Bergen, Trudi Bresner, Marie Danziger, Timothy Patrick McCarthy, and Jeanine Turner.

Dozens of people agreed to be interviewed or quoted, many of whom are friends or colleagues and a few of whom have never met me: Sidd Chopra, Roger Courville, Jacki Coyle, Glenn Croston, Marshall Ganz, Hadas Golan, Kristi Hedges, Stephen Krupin, Timothy Moffett, Helen Moses, Tim Murphey, Scott Perlo, Mike Rayburn, Matthew Rees, Tamara Elliott Rogers, Olivia Schofield, Annette Simmons, Patrick Pendleton Smith, Bruce Turkel, David Wells, and Gordon Whitman.

Many others provided invaluable support along this journey: Morra Aarons-Mele, Sedrick Banks, Kimberly Berger, Bill Cates, Barbara Day, Zo Dean-Smith, Greg Dinkin, Deborah Dugan, Rob Eager, Gregg Gregory, Dan Heath, Jordan Hewson, Sabra Horne, Dara Iserson, Jinnyn Jacob, Marcus Johnson, Geraldine Laybourne, Brian Mandell, Raegan Moya-Jones, Arnold Sanow, and Bruce Soll.

To the stellar team at Global Public Speaking, especially Meghan Gonzalez and Brittan Stockert: thank you for making the business run so smoothly while I was sequestered throughout the writing process.

To my parents, Betty and Richard Greenspan, and my brothers, Shaun, Peter, and Scott: thank you for trusting me six years ago when I took an enormous leap of faith.

To the thousands of women and men whom Ive worked with over the past fifteen years, thank you for confiding in me your challenges and goals, your fears and insecurities, your hopes and aspirations. Your willingness to be vulnerable showed me how similar we all are, and your experiences turned into powerful teaching lessons that will empower people around the world.

It was 1996. I was an undergraduate music student at Boston University. A younger, eager sophomore in the vocal performance program, I was about to have a difficult conversation with my voice teacher. I just didnt know it yet.

We were in her office during one of our weekly voice lessons: she was sitting at her baby grand piano, one hand resting on the keys, one hand flipping absentmindedly through People magazine, as she sometimes did during our lessons. I was standing a few feet away, in the curve of the pianos body, waiting for her to play a scale.

After she finished playing one of those scales, in the middle of the lesson, my voice teacher casually said something that made my heart drop to the floor. She said, You know, you might want to consider other avenues for a musical career besides performing.

I had wanted to be an opera singer since I was thirteen years old. I had studied in the Visual and Performing Arts program at Booker High School in Sarasota, Florida, and had spent my teenage years as an overachieving young vocalist: competing, singing, studying, performing. I had trained in the Tanglewood Young Artists Vocal Program in Lenox, Massachusetts, and I was about to spend my upcoming summer in Italy with the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music.