You are judged wise or foolish by your speech
There are as many types of speeches as there are types of speakers. Some are eloquent, some are inarticulate, and some are barely able to bring home a lucid point. A good leader delivers a good speech. He clearly communicates his purpose and intent and successfully connects to his audience. His talk heals wounds, lays out his leadership agenda, delivers the key metaphors for what’s to come, and rallies the local and international public to cooperate.
Speech is power — to persuade, to compel, to convert. You must acquire the talent and the skill of identifying what to say and how to say it. And most of the time, it’s not what you say, but how you say it. Here are some tips:
• Great speech is great rhetoric. Aristotle defined it as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion. Truly, how you persuade is at the core of a good speech. You may use logic (the rational approach) or magic (the emotional approach), to write and deliver it. Better to have both for more effectiveness.
To a large extent, emotional appeals connect better. Aristotle reinforced the point when he said, “The arousing of prejudice, pity, anger, and similar emotions has nothing to do with the essential facts, but is merely a personal appeal to the man who is judging the case.” Without question, the key skill of a leader is in knowing where the sentiment of an audience is every time he opens his mouth.
You might be a powerful orator who can entertain, but not necessarily be an effective speaker. The measure of a good speech is its impact on people. That is certainly as true for a head of state as for a company CEO who is expected to speak for a reason.
• A good speech achieves an end with a minimum of wasted time and energy. It is efficient communication. It could be amusing for the singular purpose of entertaining listeners. It could be stretched if your audience needs to be brought step-by-step to the point of persuasion or stunted if your audience is persuaded but needs motivation.
• Content is what you should be concerned with when researching and writing a speech. Pay attention to content, but content does not exist by itself. It exists in your relationship with your audience. A hostile audience and a poor speaker are a disastrous pairing. The value of content or the written expression of it can be diminished in such a situation. Thus, the most important task of the speechwriter is to create content to be delivered that the audience can understand.
• Your sincerity is as important as the words you articulate. Show genuineness. An audience doesn’t just listen; it looks at your whole persona and what your persona communicates through verbal and non-verbal expressions or the lack of these vital ingredients. It is important to place words in your mouth that you are likely to say in the way you naturally express your ideas. While an audience dictates how you should deliver a speech, you set parameters of what you can and should say to ensure an effective speech.
• Training in media and presentation skills helps manage nerves, perk up mechanics, and improve effectiveness. Go to these workshops. Presentation skills training can teach you what distracts from your speech, and how to develop ringing mnemonic phrases that crystallize your thoughts, and edit out words you have difficulty pronouncing well. Former President George Bush, for example, is vocally challenged by his West Texas accent and is often lampooned or ridiculed for it. A speechwriter writes for the positive aspects of a person’s speaking style and around elements likely to create problems. Media training will bring you to an understanding of how media works, how to relate with media people and how to do better interviews.
• Keeping your speech simple and short makes you connect better. Expose an idea, defend it and motivate the audience quickly, then get off the stage. However, this rule has limits. For CEOs who can indeed charm audiences, asking them to leave the stage quickly is a disservice to both the CEOs and their audiences. Winston Churchill, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Barack Obama, Steve Jobs, Ferdinand Marcos, Ninoy Aquino, Miriam Defensor-Santiago, Raul Roco, and Dick Gordon all have (or had) an orator’s gift. They often write their own speeches because they know what works for them. Few speakers, though, are gifted writers and fewer still have the time to pen speeches, but if you have the tandem talents, you can truly go places.
• Not all speeches are equal. You may give a ceremonial talk at a plant opening or at the swearing-in of new directors in a professional organization, or deliver a logical presentation to a regional or international leader summit. The former can be spontaneous, jovial and familiar; the latter supported with evidence. In both, the speechwriter supplies the fabric — either a few bullet points in a PowerPoint, or a well-researched talk. The significance of a speech mandates meticulous groundwork. You have to prepare, prepare, prepare.
• Dreaming your audience’s dream is a surefire technique. You know your speech hit its mark if you captured the attention of the audience, the filled-out survey revealed positive scores or part of your talk was captured on the evening news. That means you were able to articulate what your listeners wanted through your words. The feedback can be instantaneous or long drawn-out, but the true measure is the level of persuasiveness of the speech and the speaker, and how his ideas made people switch beliefs or change behaviors. Seasoned speechwriters confirm that there are rules on how to structure a good speech, but the conventions bend to an audience. Remember, an audience and the final mindset of each and every individual in an audience are what you will try to sway.
• “Tell them what you are going to tell them. Tell them. Tell them what you told them,” is an effective mantra. In a show-and-tell situation, research supports that showing is better than telling. The eyes rule over the ears, but as you will agree, numerous and tedious PowerPoint slides can be tiring and defeat the purpose of what you are trying to do. Showing can be telling when you write for the ear and paint a picture of what you want to communicate. However, this can be deadly if you don’t have the skill or the will to deliver a speech well.
• The reputation you bring to the podium is not enough; your persona must be revealed in the words of the speech. Use words that fit your personality, but will not offend your audience or other parties. A speech generally needs personal language simply because it is delivered by a live human being whose words should not sound, as Wabash College professor William Norwood Brigance put it, “like an essay standing on its hind legs. It should persuade, and persuasion is achieved by your personal character.”
• Bring your character to the speech by tooting your own horn. Use the one-two punch approach espoused by speech communication professor Jerry Tarver. Say, “I know.” Your firsthand knowledge can be a credibility booster (“I know what we are all going through, and I would like to reach out and help”). Say, “I care.” Your show of compassion and concern can be made stronger by turning the sentiment into a compliment (“I recognize and appreciate your success, and I know that it has made a difference”). Say, “I am honest.” Take responsibility and demonstrate trustworthiness (“I’m sorry it happened, and you can bet that it won’t happen again. And that’s a promise”). The three-point system requires self-promotion, but in the words of the great American baseball player Dizzy Dean, “It ain’t braggin’ if you can back it up.”
Tone of voice, look and manner, and choice of words are the building blocks of eloquence. Use the power of speech to teach, delight and move the hearts and minds of your listeners and constituents. Demosthenes said, “As a vessel is known by the sound, whether it be cracked or not, so men are proved, by their speeches, whether they be wise or foolish.”
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