Bert Decker’s revised edition of  You’ve Got to Be Believed to Be Heard was one of many books recommended by Six Minutes readers last year.

Now I know why.

Decker’s public speaking classic is a comprehensive book which deserves to be on your public speaking bookshelf.

This article is the latest of a series of public speaking book reviews here on Six Minutes.

There is much to like in Decker’s book. To keep this review shorter than the book itself, I’ll focus on the three parts of the book that stand out the most for me.

1. Emotion and the First Brain

The first half of the book establishes the case that effective communicators (Decker describes these as New Communicators) understand the importance of emotion in the communications process. That is, communication is more than logical arguments. More than facts and figures. More than metaphors and triads.

Decker explains the importance of emotion by reasoning that our brains are composed of two parts:

• The New Brain – the intellectual part of the human brain which reasons and processes at a conscious level, and
• The First Brain – the nonreasoning, nonrational, subconscious, primitive part of the brain.

The First Brain, he argues, acts as a powerful filter. Before your message can even get to the New Brain, it must first pass by the First Brain. For that to happen, you must connect emotionally.

2. Communication = Leadership ?

Decker asserts that communication and leadership are intimately linked. He clearly reasons that to effectively communicate is to be a leader; to be a leader is to effectively communicate.

Decker is not unique here. I, too, hold the belief that communication and leadership are joined at the hip. However, Decker is so persuasive on this point that, as I was reading, I began to wonder whether leadership and communication are actually the same thing. Are they really separate concepts at all?

3. Speechwriting and Delivery Tips Abound!

While the first half of the book is somewhat theoretical, the second half is packed with practical tips for speechwriting and delivery.

Here are just a few of the public speaking issues addressed by Decker in You’ve Got to Be Believed to Be Heard:

• Eye contact,
• Posture and movement,
• Dress and appearance,
• Gestures,
• Vocal variety,
• Word selection,
• Pauses,
• Fear of speaking,
• SHARPs (Stories and examples, Humor, Analogies, References and quotations, Pictures and visual aids), and
• A comprehensive speech organization method he names The Decker Grid System.

These tips can be found in other books or blogs, in one form or another. The great value here is descriptions offered by Decker, and the relationships he makes between them and the concepts introduced earlier in the book. For example, Decker offers insights into public speaking fear drawn from the First Brain concepts.

What Could be Improved?

I loved this book, but it’s not perfect.

• Is emotion ignored in traditional communications training?
  Decker claims that the role of the First Brain (that is, the importance of emotion in communication) has been “virtually ignored by communications experts”. While I concede that many traditional public speaking books underestimate the importance of emotion, I think “virtually ignored” is overstating it. For example, one of the oldest books on the topic of public speaking — Aristotle’s On Rhetoric –  recognizes emotional appeals as one of the three primary forms of persuasion. Aristotle’s lessons have may have been skewed a bit, but they are not ignored.
• Slow start
  When I read a book for review, I mark the page whenever there’s a key insight or a golden quote. In the first 75 pages of this book, I only marked two pages. By contrast, I marked 15 in the final 150 pages. Those first 75 pages ran through a large number of politicians, business leaders, and celebrities, and labelled them as either old (bad) or new (good) communicators. The analysis isn’t superficial, but I still would have liked to see deeper analysis here to demonstrate the positive and negative communication traits. It’s difficult to do this, however, in print… perhaps this book needs a companion DVD?

About the Author – Bert Decker

Bert Decker is the CEO of Decker Communications, a communications training company that has worked with hundreds of thousands of executives, managers, and salespeople in the past 30 years.

Bert is the author of several books, including Creating Messages that Motivate and You’ve Got to Be Believed to Be Heard.

And he writes a public speaking blog too.

What Others are Saying about You’ve Got to Be Believed to Be Heard

Nancy Duarte:

This updated version of Bert’s book is fantastic.

Mark Sanborn:

This book is a classic bestseller that has been revised and updated … I recommend it.

Trent Hamm:

You’ve Got to Be Believed to Be Heard is brilliant at helping you to become a better speaker mechanically by breaking down speaking into lots of little, practicable pieces.

If you’re involved with public speaking – or would like to be – You’ve Got to Be Believed to Be Heard is a very worthwhile read.

Chris Spagnuolo:

The book concludes with a section on organizing your content to create a focused message… Bert’s proven Decker Grid System. … It’s a simple method, but one that I find to be extremely powerful in helping deliver targeted messages to the needs and wants of your audience. I’ve been using it for about three months now and I am amazed at the results.

Jeff Bailey:

This is THE book on presentation that you have been looking for: If you learn the contents it will literally improve your life. I don’t say that lightly and I am not exaggerating — I mean it!

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Have a Question? Contact me anytime, or find me on Twitter: @6minutes

Andrew Dlugan is the editor and founder of Six Minutes. He teaches courses, leads seminars, coaches speakers, and strives to avoid Suicide by PowerPoint. He is an award-winning public speaker and speech evaluator. Andrew is a father and husband who resides in British Columbia, Canada.

But, after reading his “Top Ten Best (and Worst) Communicators of 2008” list, I’m confused — how did he get it wrong?

Best Communicators of 2008

1. Barack Obama
2. Tim Russert
3. Randy Pausch
4. Colin Powell
5. Mike Huckabee
6. John Chambers
7. Sarah Palin
8. Nancy Duarte, Garr Reynolds, Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki
9. Tina Fey
10. Anderson Cooper

Worst Communicators of 2008

1. George Bush
2. Richard Fuld
3. Rod Blagojevich
4. Eliot Spitzer
5. Roger Clemens
6. Sarah Palin
7. Dan Rather
8. Al Davis
9. Rosie O’Donnell
10. John McCain

Okay, top 10 lists are subjective by nature. They are one person’s opinion. Can Bert Decker really be wrong in his opinion? No, he can’t.

So, instead, I’ll just have to say that I am disappointed with this year’s lists for three reasons:

1. Too much emphasis on politics.

60% of the individuals cited are intimately tied to the political arena.

• 7 of the Best are either politicians (Obama, Powell, Huckabee, and Palin) or closely tied to politicians in 2008 (Russert, Fey, Cooper)
• 5 of the Worst (Bush, Blagojevich, Spitzer, Palin, and McCain) are politicians

This is a bit like having 60% of the “Best Athletes of 2008″ be Olympic heroes and disappointments. [Then again, perhaps Michael Phelps could be #1, #2, ... #8.]

Yes, 2008 is a presidential  election year. And, yes, communication is an integral part of politics. However, there’s a whole world communicating out there outside of the political arena too. Duarte and Reynolds merit much higher consideration, for example, because they are helping transform the public speaking status quo.

2. “Worst Communicator” = “Scandal-ridden”??

(At least) Six of the 10 Worst were caught up in scandals of varying degree in 2008: Fuld, Blagojevich, Spitzer, Clemens, Davis, O’Donnell.

Which of these seem more likely?

1. Bad communication leads to scandal?
   Did these people end up embroiled in scandal because they are poor communicators? No, the scandals resulted because they made (very) bad decisions.
2. Scandal leads to bad communication?
   Before the scandal broke, were they particularly bad communicators? Maybe. Maybe not. But without those scandals, none of these people would be on the list. Feelings of guilt plus a camera and microphone is a bad combination… for just about anyone.

I’m not saying that these people demonstrated good communication habits under fire. But, it is rare for someone to be under fire and come out looking like a great communicator.

I’d prefer more emphasis on this list on genuinely bad communicators not tied to scandals (Bill Gates is the often cited example here, although that title is not always deserved.)

3. Randy Pausch, not Barack Obama, is the Best Communicator of 2008

It’s a difficult task to argue against Barack Obama in #1 position. It would not surprise me if he earns that position for the next eight years.

• His oration skills have been compared regularly to Lincoln, Churchill, and Kennedy.
• His speaking prowess far outdistanced that of his two main rivals this year (Hilary Clinton, John McCain).
• His speeches are worthy of analysis (he has already been featured on Six Minutes, and he will continue to be going forward).

But, it is overkill to suggest that “he was elected President BECAUSE of his communications ability“. Numerous factors contributed to his victory, including these three:

• Superior Fundraising — His campaign excelled at fundraising in ways never seen before.
• Superior Strategy — His team had the best strategy (both in the Democratic primaries and the general election).
• Inferior Bush — The economy and Iraq (among many other reasons) doomed any candidate the Republicans put forward.

Running for President put Obama in a very select group, and gave him a global audience. To his credit, he maximized this opportunity. But would he be first on this list if he were giving these same speeches as just the Senator from Illinois? Would he have moved millions to action if he were just a party strategist? Or a community organizer from Chicago? Or a computer science professor?

Randy Pausch was a computer science professor. He had virtually no audience — just an auditorium filled with 400 people at Carnegie Mellon University. He had no fame. No reputation. No speechwriters. No army of volunteers. He had nothing to guarantee an attentive audience other than a particularly timely lecture and a death sentence of pancreatic cancer. As he points out in his book, this fact hardly makes him unique — more than 37,000 Americans are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer each year.

Despite all of this, over 8 million people have watched Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture on Youtube alone. That’s quite an increase from the 400 who saw it live.

Pausch’s Last Lecture is poignant, thought-provoking, emotional, funny, inspirational, and memorable. Pausch lacked Obama’s polish as a classical orator, but he is second to none as a communicator.

His skillful communication continued beyond his famous speech into his bestselling book, which I received for Christmas a few days ago. In addition to all the life lessons, every speaker can learn from how Pausch teaches a lesson through storytelling. If you enjoyed the stories in the speech, you’ll love the additional stories in the book. Ditch the facts, figures, and PowerPoint… just tell stories.

In short, 2008 saw Pausch emerge from complete obscurity to touch the hearts of millions… all from a single speech to an audience of 400. He proved that if you speak from the heart, the world will listen. For that, he’s the best communicator of 2008 in my book.

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Andrew Dlugan is the editor and founder of Six Minutes. He teaches courses, leads seminars, coaches speakers, and strives to avoid Suicide by PowerPoint. He is an award-winning public speaker and speech evaluator. Andrew is a father and husband who resides in British Columbia, Canada.