Hello and welcome to our resources page! You will find here a treasure trove of useful things to inspire you to become a confident communicator. We’ve go infographics on being ready for screen and posture, the Amplify Blog, you can sign up to our monthly newsletter, Amplify in the Middle, listen to our podcast, Sully and Stew, and check out our favourite books, videos and articles.
We hope they inspire you to keep stepping forward into greater communication, greater influence and greater confidence!
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Published in 2023, The Storytelling Hero will help you gain the confidence needed to become a phenomenal public speaker. You'll discover simple tools and techniques you can apply every time you speak to a group or an individual.
This book comes out of Harvard and a shed-load of research. Even in the first chapter I saw things I hadn’t seen before in my story-telling. It will highlight immediately relationships and conversations where we have got stuck in our positions and forgotten the person and their story in front of us. I know that to truly communicate well I need to listen to and tell stories well. This book is a practical tool to help making that happen.
I had no idea that the chapter on listening would transform my marriage, my parenting and my business all at once. It turns out that if you listen to understand rather than to reply, you actually get to know the person who is speaking. It changes everything. This book will open your eyes to how bad you are at listening and then you can get good!
This book is all about why some ideas stick, why some don’t and how to make sure your ideas are always memorable. It is full of stories and things you can do, but honestly the introduction has got enough to keep you going for life! Read it, underline it, re-read it and then start to play.
Daniel Kahneman won a Nobel Prize for his work on behavioural economics. In this book he explains why telling a story is so important and how too much information can cause our brains to shut down. In essence – less is more. Speak in short sentences. And tell stories.
Timothy Gallwey writes about how he sets his clients free from their bad habits. It’s all about paying attention to what you do. This book goes way beyond tennis and into our inner life and how we can control adrenaline.
As French Writer André Gide put it, 'Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no-one was listening, everything must be said again.'
You don’t have to create anything new – you just have to find what is there and then use it! I have used most of the ideas in his book to keep me creative and generating new ideas.
Power poses - Amy Cuddy In this Ted Talk, Amy Cuddy gives a deeply compelling story for the science behind ‘power poses’ and offers some practical advice. Watch it, then take a trip to the bathroom / corridor / anywhere where no one can see you and practise a power pose for two minutes just before you get online. It will feel weird but makes a big difference!
The Hero’s Journey Hollywood use it in most of their movies and when I coach my clients I teach it to them as a really helpful framework for their messages. This 4:33 TED-Ed talk is made in animation – short, sweet and full of all the ingredients you need to know. As with every description of the hero’s journey, there is extra detail you don’t need, but it gives a great overview and will help you place your story and your customer’s story into a framework of you as wise mentor and them as hero. It will help you create a beginning, middle and end and your audience will thank you for that!
The first 20 hours - how to learn anything, Josh Kaufmann It is possible to learn anything – if you give it 15 minutes a day. This is a deeply encouraging and funny TED talk.
Feats of memory anyone can do - Joshua Foer One of the many things adrenaline will try to steal is your ability to remember your lines. In this TED talk Joshua Foer talks about the memory palace and how your mind can be a brilliant place to connect the dots to make sure you always remember your lines.
It takes work, but if you want to go deep, this is one of the places to do it!
Blueprint for a quiet revolution, Susan Cain It’s the first three-and-a-half minutes you want to watch. I am an extrovert and that undoubtedly affects how and when I speak. In these first three minutes, Susan tells the story of the other half of the planet – of army generals and teenagers – and how, as introverts, they have used their stories to lead. Wherever you find yourself on the Extrovert/Introvert scale it is a beautiful three-and-a-half minutes.
