Customer Reviews
Insightful, practical, and very useful - By: Eric May, 30 Jan 2008 
Ailes & Kraushar's tips & techniques for expressing ideas clearlyin public orin private are right on. Recognizing you don't have to memorize rules to communicate effectively is at the center of this insightful & useful book. Highly recommended.
High Energy Focused Positively in the First 7 Seconds!! - By: Donald Mitchell, 20 Aug 2004 The world is full of speaking coaches, but probably no one has a better track record for success than Roger Ailes. You may remember that Mr. Ailes helped President Reagan prepare for the critical second debate against former Vice President Walter Mondalein 1984 (". . . I promise not to hold his youth & inexperience against him"), & was a senior media advisor to Vice President Bushin the successful 1988 election campaign. His advice is to keep it as simple as possible for the speaker by building on the speaker's own natural conversational patterns, while accentuating the positivein communicating, avoiding the negative, & adding lots of directed energy.
Mr. Ailes is a great story teller, & he builds his key points with punchy, personal examples. For example, to establish his key principle about making an impressionin the first 7 second you are with someone, he tells about meeting Charles Mansonin prison & facing him down with steely eye contact. Manson looked away first. Afterwards, Manson was a willing interview subject. A second story builds the point by describing how a subway stick-up gang extorted money from those showing fearful body language by intimidating them.
Even if the book's message was not so important, it would be worthwhile reading the book for the many wonderful stories.
Mr. Ailes' basic point is to break down the art of face-to-face & televised communication into the most important elements. He encourages you to emphasize the unspoken dialogue . . . by how you use your body & respond to what others say. Listeners pay much more attention to the body language & to the emotion they feel from you than to the intellectual content of the message. This accentuated on television. Hit the mute button on your remote, & watch people talking to see his point.
The whole advice could be boiled down to "keep your conversational style. Increase the energy." In doing this, it helps to be prepared, make others comfortable, be interesting, be committed, be likeable, & be helpful. Whatever the circumstances, he advises controlling the emotional tone of the communication.
The book contains many helpful lists including one on the ten things that most hurt communications, such as not establishing adequate rapportin the beginning, or making stiff body movements.
The end of the book contains a helpful user's guide that outlines all of the key points.
I thought that the best advice for improving was to practice watching yourself on video tape, & evaluating your effectiveness along the lines of what Mr. Ailes suggests. The book also contains many excellent exercises for becoming better at deciding what to do as well as implementing your desires.
When I first began making television appearances 20 years ago, I had the benefit of speech coaching. I can certainly agree that the advice here matches well with the experiences that I have had over the 20 years since then, & vastly simplifies what I learned during that coaching. I highly recommend this advice both for its accuracy, & for the relative ease you will feelin implementing it.
After you use this valuable advice to become a much better communicator, I suggest that you think about what is important to you, what you are committed to, & what you can be interesting about. How much time are you spending to communicating with others about those matters? Perhaps you should also focus on getting the message out more . . . as well as improving your delivery of the message.
Be yourself . . . more energetically . . . & help more people!
A must read for the frustrated public speaker - By: , 03 Sep 1999 
Mr. Ailes does an outstanding job communicating how to leverage your own strengths to be an outstanding communicator. The book is joyful & entertaining to read & well deserved to be on any leaders reading list.
A powerful book. - By: , 04 Mar 1999 If you are interestedin high impact material this is the book for you. Today,in our Internet/computer connected world, we frequently find ourselves running at break-neck speed. I also recommend you get "Life & Death on the Internet" by Keith A. Schroeder. It will be easier to livein the world we do with the information provided.
A powerful book. - By: , 04 Mar 1999 If you are interestedin high impact material this is the book for you. Today,in our Internet/computer connected world, we frequently find ourselves running at break-neck speed. I also recommend you get "Life & Death on the Internet" by Keith A. Schroeder. It will be easier to livein the world we do with the information provided.
