Five Tips for Getting Your Speaker to Actually Deliver the Speech You’ve Written
Written by Shawn Bannon
So you’ve done the legwork. Phone calls to event organizers. Audience analysis. You’ve outlined the speech and refined that outline with six reviewers. Sought out all the right quotes and double checked the numbers that support your argument. You’ve tooled and retooled the jokes. Poring over your drafts while pacing the hall between your bedroom and the bathroom, you’ve driven away the cat that can’t bear to hear you read aloud again that passage about the post-9/11 world. You’ve moved through nine revisions, taken notes from 12 reviewers who don’t know the first thing about writing or effective oratory, and you finally have it – a speech that is purposeful, poignant and poetic. You turn it in to your speaker, and he says it’s great. Now, how do you keep him from tripping all over himself when the time comes to share the wonderful speech you’ve written with the rest of the world?
It happens all the time. A speaker stands on the dais with a well-written speech in hand, but the words that come out of his mouth don’t bear much, if any, resemblance to the words on the page. He refuses to look down at his speech. Maybe he’s afraid the audience will be gone by the time he looks back up at them. Maybe he’s heard so many people reading speeches instead of delivering them that he’s afraid he’ll fall into that pit if he even hazards a look at the text. Maybe he thinks he is good enough to speak extemporaneously for 15 minutes. Scripts are for lightweights, and he’s a heavy hitter. So, instead of delivering his speech – your speech – he bobbles the jokes, misses the sticking points and blathers about irrelevant details. He travels off on tangents that make it difficult for him to find his way back to his key messages without an awkward “so” or “umm” where a graceful segue should have been placed. He finally stops abruptly, breathes a deep breath, and says, “In conclusion,” wrapping up with two or three poorly articulated sentences that his audience will have forgotten by the time they turn in their tickets at the coat check.
Somewhere along the way, your speaker may have blurted out a line – or even a few – that he remembered from the speech you wrote, but they’re either so superior to the rest of what he’s said that even the good lines come across as forced and unnatural or he completely bungled them, too. And when it’s all over, you get the blame for how poorly it went or your speaker is oblivious to the fact that he just spent 20 minutes reenacting the Hindenburg tragedy while 250 prominent people (or more) anxiously looked for the nearest fire exits.
Are you, the speechwriter, helpless? Are you doomed to repeatedly experience the rage and disappointment that an event like this inspires? Should you be driven to stop attending your client’s speaking engagements because you can’t bear to watch the carnage unfold? The short answer is no.
There is plenty you can do to help your speaker become better at delivering the speeches you’ve written. Here are five tips that should produce positive results and just might help you to solidify your role as an advisor to your speaker.
1. Knock your speaker down before you lift him up.
It’s the hardest thing about the job for most of us – telling the client that he’s delivered a terrible speech (or a series of them). Our clients often have big egos, and they don’t always react well to criticism. They may become defensive or angry. But as a speechwriter, you’re doing a disservice to your speaker if you don’t tell him that he’s losing the attention of his audience and accomplishing very little when he steps to the podium. Nobody else will tell him, and you are taking a risk doing it yourself, depending on his temperament and your tactfulness. But that is the job, and as a client of mine who frequently ignored the text on the page once blurted out during a speech, if you can’t take the heat … get out of the room with the stove and the food.
If you don’t believe your client will take constructive criticism well, consider using audience polls or asking him to watch/listen to a recording of himself to demonstrate that there is a lot of room for improvement. Look for strengths he can build on to become more comfortable working from a prepared text. Ask him pointedly what it is he’s struggling with when it comes to working from a written speech. And remind him that a lot of people – people he trusts – put a lot of effort into making sure he was armed with a speech he could be proud to deliver. All he has to do is continue to trust them when he steps in front of the audience.
2. Give your speaker time to practice, and make sure he does it.
I know I’m preaching to the choir when I say that the day the speech is to be delivered is not the day your final draft is due to your speaker. But for many of us, procrastination is part of the creative process. We also know that it can kill any chance you have of getting your speaker to deliver a fantastic speech.
Try to establish a “final” draft as far in advance of the actual event as possible. There may be changes made to the text up to and even during delivery of the speech, so it isn’t really final until the event is over. But if you can get your speaker to sign off on a final draft a week or two in advance of the event, any changes he makes will be the result of reading – and therefore familiarizing himself with – the language you’ve provided.
With a final draft in hand, schedule time for your speaker to rehearse his delivery. Suggest that he go over the speech once or twice alone, and then meet with him to make observations, suggestions and minor revisions if you find him tripping over any of the language. (Bonus tip: invite your speaker’s administrative assistant – if he has one – to attend rehearsals. These people sometimes spend more time with our busy speakers than the speakers spend with their spouses. They know how our speakers think and talk. They often feel more comfortable giving honest opinions to our speakers than we do. So, their presence at rehearsals is rare but can be invaluable.)
3. Keep it short, and give your speaker a cheat sheet.
Of course, there will be times when you’re asked to develop a speech under tight deadlines, with little time for review, let alone rehearsal. In those situations, try to limit the time your client is expected to speak. Trade off minutes of prepared remarks for minutes of Q&A if you can. Then, when you give him the speech, also give him a one-page summary of key messages – those lines from the speech that he absolutely must nail to make his time in front of the audience effective. He may not have time to read the speech over and over, but one or two passes over the full text and some review of the key messages summary in the car or at his table before he delivers the speech will help to ensure a successful appearance.
For speakers who like to appear to deliver their remarks extemporaneously, this can be an incredibly effective tool even when you’ve had plenty of time to prepare and rehearse. The sentences on the summary serve as triggers and remind him of the segues you’ve developed to help him move from one topic to the next.
4. Write the way your speaker talks. And if you can’t do that, keep the language simple.
We’d all like to write for speakers whose words sound like poetry. Think Kennedy, King or Reagan. But it would be downright painful to hear most of our speakers try to deliver their kind of oratory. Speakers of that caliber just aren’t common enough to meet our needs. And as speechwriters, we have to adapt to that reality.
If you are fortunate enough to spend time – preferably one-on-one, but even in small groups – with your speaker, you need to use that time to listen for and make note of the way he talks. Identify the rhythms of his speech. Jot down words he uses frequently. If he sees those words in a speech you’ve written, he’ll feel more comfortable with the speech. While you may be tempted to quote sources like Euripides, your speaker is likely more familiar with Jack Welch. Ground your quotes, references and examples in your speaker’s reality.
But what if you don’t get the face time with your speaker to learn his tendencies and preferences? There are ways you still can write a speech that fits your speaker. The trick is to keep the language simple. Use short, declarative sentences. Look for the least complex ways of saying what needs to be said. Use “use” instead of “utilize.” “Cooperation” instead of “inter-agency collaboration and challenge resolution.” Working from a plainly written speech, your speaker will be able to quickly absorb the text you’ve prepared and will be able to change those passages that don’t fit his personal style either during the review process or on the fly without significantly changing the speech overall.
If you’re working to keep the language simple, stick to quotes from contemporary and well-known historical figures. Although some of the most wonderful quotes come from the most obscure sources, the safe bet is that the speaker with whom you aren’t familiar is going to be most comfortable quoting Abraham Lincoln or Lee Iacocca.
5. Let your speaker tell his own story.
One sure-fire way to craft a speech your client will be able to deliver is to weave in his own stories. If your speaker can open with a story about how he met his wife, if he can use stories about his children or his most unusual business trips to illustrate his key messages, and if he can close with an image or a vision about which he is personally passionate, he’ll have to do an awful lot of hard work to mess up his delivery.
So, your first hurdle is getting the stories. Unfortunately, many of us don’t have the kind of access to our speakers that we’d like. Sure, there are some speechwriters who travel frequently with their speakers and have regular one-on-one meetings we could use to collect these incredibly valuable nuggets. But most of us are lucky if we even get to meet with the speaker before we’ve written a first draft. We’re kept at arm’s length – or even further away – until he’s got a draft in-hand. We don’t know who he is, really, so how do we get at his stories?
One route is to become good friends with his administrative assistant. They can really dish the dirt when you’re looking for a story that humanizes your speaker. But dig deeper. Talk to lower-level people in your organization who do travel with the speaker for business. Usually, you can get time with these folks much more readily than with the speaker, and they often are happy to talk about their time with the boss. Does your speaker have friends you can approach within the organization? We’re talking genuine friends here – the kind who will tell you that your speaker is such a bad golfer that his golf coach bought him a tennis racket. If you can spend some time with these friends or – if you sell your soul – his family, you’ll get golden stories your speaker can tell with ease and to good effect.
Getting the stories only gets you halfway home, though. Now you’ve got to get your speaker to let down his guard long enough to share a little of himself with an audience. Personal stories and self-deprecating humor can win over an audience in an instant, but it can be hard for a speaker with an ego to demonstrate humility. Admitting that he is known among friends and family for being the anti-handyman may not come naturally. Getting him to tell the story about how he nearly electrocuted himself while trimming hedges the day before his son’s wedding (that one’s for you, Dad), may simply not be possible. If your speaker isn’t immediately willing to open up to audiences, try beginning a few speeches with stories about his professional experience and closing with personal stories that bring together his key messages. Keep them short at first, and begin to weave them through the speeches you develop as your speaker becomes more comfortable with this kind of speechmaking and storytelling. When you get the speaker telling his own stories, he’ll begin delivering your speeches.
About the Author:
Shawn Bannon is an Assistant Vice President of Corporate Communications and senior editorialist with Mellon Financial Corporation in Pittsburgh, Pa., where he insists that all of the executives for whom he writes (especially those who may read this piece) are wonderful public speakers completely at ease working with or without a script. A graduate of Carnegie Mellon University’s Creative Writing program, Shawn also has written for and served as a freelance communications consultant to a number of civic, business and community leaders.
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