Leading Out Loud (Terry Pearce)

Pearce's thesis is that effective public speaking, or "leadership speaking" (xii), can be an instrument and index of leadership and strong management if it is embedded with what he calls "authenticity," or clear evidence that the speaker/leader is honestly engaged by not only his or her ideas but seeks to engage and persuade an audience to a line of thought or action. The general idea is to demonstrate how to make the highest and beat use of the methods of rhetorical persuasion, in ways that tend to legitimate management or organizational objectives and philosophy by way of effective communication. This does not mean that public speaking is simply a function of technique. Rather, it involves intellectual and planning faculties that might include various rhetorical skills, but that are principally focused on action-oriented objectives.

Leading Out Loud is divided into four sections that correspond to the method that Pearce advocates for creating an effective leadership speech. The first section deals with the philosophy of leadership speaking, and the following three sections deal with strategies for creating, respectively, a beginning, middle, a

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ace, as well as the speaker's understanding of his or her connection to the group being addressed. This, too, relates to the concept of the speaker's authenticity. The chapter titled "Engaging Your Audience" deals with the speaker's statement of purpose: "Say what you want them to change and anticipate resistance" (54). In other words, this is an overt statement of what the speaker wants and an acknowledgment that he or she is not preaching to the choir. The first part of the statement has the value of clarity. The second part of the statement has the value of demonstrating the speaker's courage to expose and articulate convictions. Implicitly, this becomes an index of authenticity, but even that value is outweighed by the need to articulate in general terms the importance of change--i.e., the benefits of change and the disadvantages of not changing. Once the introduction has created a context in which a speaker's ideas can be articulated, it is time to get to the middle part, or substance, of a speech. In the chapters on this subject, Pearce explains the need to "transmit not only information but also the subjective basis of your conviction" (68). Whereas the introduction describes the need for change, the middle part of a speech
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Approximate Word count = 2176
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)

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