What’s the last great book you read?
If you feel guilty reading for pleasure, would it help you to know that reading can help you become a better speaker? Would it make you more eager to pick up a great book if you knew it had lasting benefits in your career? You can improve your writing, your empathy, and your attention span when you read. All of which can benefit you as a speaker.
Improve Your Writing
Research from the University of Florida has proven that our quality of writing is affected by the quality of our reading. Professor Yellowless Douglas found that we emulate the language patterns of what we read in our writing. I saw this phenomenon with my own daughter. As she was learning to write, she was reading Junie B. Jones books, which are primarily written in spoken slang. It started showing up in her writing. She would write fragments and then tell me she had seen “sentences” like this in her book. We put Junie B. Jones aside until she learned to write correctly.
We need to make sure that what we are reading models great writing. It’s probably not a matter of incomplete or ungrammatical sentences like it was for my daughter. It could mean choosing writers who have a way with words that we find exciting or novel. Or maybe we want to read authors who sound more persuasive and authoritative so we can learn to write that way too. Great language and presentation content can start with what we are reading.
Improve Your Empathy
Studies show that when you read great literature it increases your capacity for empathy. A 2013 study found that readers experienced greater empathy after reading emotionally engaging books. All speakers need empathy to help us write more sensitive content, consider diverse perspectives, and connect emotionally with our audience members. If we can’t empathize with others, we run the risk of delivering presentations which are narrow-minded and self-serving. But just reading a great book can help us to avoid this.
Improve Your Attention Span
Reading forces us to focus our attention for longer periods of time. Many of the activities we engage in today involve technology. And it’s literally changing our brains. Writer Nicholas Carr says, “I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.”
I’ve experienced the phenomenon Carr talks about. And I’m guessing you have too. But presenting involves sustained and focused thought. So reading can help us to recapture that attention span that technology seems to be draining.
Ready to pick up a great book and reap the benefits? Check out the New York Times best-selling hardcover fiction list here.
And reach out to us at Ethos3 for more information about presentation design and delivery.
