OnSpeechwriting

Here’s something new for 2012 on www.TheSpeechwriter.com: the five-question interview. Throughout the year, I’ll run a series of short interviews with leaders in the fields of speechwriting and executive thought leadership. Some you may have heard of; others perhaps not. But all of them will be people I’ve been fortunate enough to run across and who I believe can add to our understanding of speechwriting and executive communications. So welcome to the inaugural interview with executive visibility maven Terry Catchpole.

The image of a speechwriter whose only job is to write speeches is a bit old-fashioned. Yes, some still make a living doing that as a sole endeavor. But the role has changed over the years. It has expanded and grown as organizations have begun to understand that sometimes it’s not just what you say, but also where you say it and how that fits into a larger communications plan. And with that recognition has come new opportunities for speechwriters to widen their ability to help their organizations and their speakers. There are as many corporate types, for examples, with titles like “executive communications” and “thought leadership” on their business cards. And we’re working on not only individual speeches but thought leadership programs that maximize leaders’ time and energy in very deliberate and focused ways.

With that in mind, I’ve asked one of the leading experts in executive visibility to provide his thoughts on what it takes to more fully develop this other role. Terry Catchpole is Executive Chairman of The Catchpole Group in Boston. For 25 years, Catchpole has been working with companies (full disclosure: he works with Dow) to help them elevate their speakers’ profiles and to more fully develop their thought leadership programs. Although their specialty is sustainability, they are experts in helping organizations that are eager to expand the presence of their leaders.

1Q: Based on your experience, as well as on feedback from clients, how important is it for companies to have an executive visibility speaking program in place for its c-level executives?

1A: The short answer is that it depends on the executives, as some are just not comfortable in a public speaking role and do not feel that it is important for them in delivering value to stakeholders. For most companies and most executives, however, it  is a very important part of their overall corporate communications plan to have a well-considered strategy for having senior executives articulate a series of messages that map to their overall business objectives and for effectively delivering these messages to key target constituencies – customers, partners, investors, and, in some instances, the general public.

2Q: Many organizations have not even considered having an executive visibility speaking program. How would you recommend that they launch such a program?

2A: The best place to start is by identifying the messages that the company wants to communicate to its target constituencies. These “messages” cannot be warmed-over boilerplate about how terrific the companies’ products or services may be. They should be new, compelling, and relevant insights into their market – genuine “thought leadership,” in other words, not lagging-edge cliches trying to pass as such. Next they need to identify the best executive speakers to address facets of the messages set – the CFO or CMO will have a different perspective to share from the CEO, for example. Finally, identify their target stakeholder audiences and the forums where they can be found in attendance – deep due diligence in the conference world.

3Q: What is the most common mistake that companies make in launching an executive visibility speaking program?

3A: There are several. One, alluded to above, is thinking that your marketing copy passes for a thought leadership message, and failing to bring original insight with which you want to establish your executives’ stature as business leaders. Another is failure to cast a wide net in amassing a universe of conferences and other platforms from which your executives might speak and then to perform careful analysis as to the pros and cons of each – you can never have too many forum options or spend too much time researching and analyzing them.  Finally, perhaps the biggest mistake, is failure to respect the role of a conference organizer in understanding his or her attendees and what it is they want to hear from conference speakers – it might not be what you think they should hear or want to tell them. It is very important to be respectful of conference managers’ understanding of their attendees and be flexible in tailoring your messages to be synchronous with their agenda program plans.

4Q: Are there any big trends that you are seeing in trying to place client speakers at conferences and other speaking venues?

4A: Probably the most important development with executive leadership forums is the trend away from the traditional standalone, PowerPoint-driven keynote. What we are seeing instead are highly informal, unscripted sessions featuring three or four c-level speakers interacting with each other, the moderator, and audience members. Or a one-on-one “fireside chat” session with a CEO interacting with a moderator-interviewer, who could be a prominent business journalist or industry analyst.  The solo keynote is a dinosaur that, while never perhaps to be extinct, is seen less and less.

5Q: If you could provide just one piece of adv ice to an organization that is considering launching an executive visibility speaking program, what would it be?

5A: It may be fudging the question a bit, but I would say the one tip would be, “Respect the process” – but under that I would have sub-categories, including:  respect the fact that your “thought leadership” messages should be comprised of “thoughts” that are genuinely “leading” the dialog in your market, and are not lame and stale; respect the fact that conference managers do a lot of research on what their attendees want to hear, and be willing to work with them in providing content that adds value to their attendees’ experience; and respect the fact that your CEO will not always be invited to give a solo keynote presentation and should be prepared to consider participating in informal, interactive sessions with multiple participants  - all of whom should be of comparable stature in terms of title and company, of course.

When More is Less: The Presenter's Paradox

Sometimes, more really is less.

A study released last month revealed that gift givers tended to believe that giving more would always be perceived by the receiver in a more positive light than receiving less. Giving a cashmere sweater plus a $10 gift card, for example, would always be viewed by the recipient as being better than receiving the sweater by itself. Not so fast, researchers say.

“The gift recipient is likely to perceive the cashmere sweater alone as more generous than the combination of the same sweater and the gift card,” they say. This happens because recipients tend to follow “an averaging strategy.” Adding a small gift to a big one, in other words, tend to cheapen the whole bundle.

Interestingly enough, the same behavior applies to speeches and presentations. People who present a lot of proof points to back up their key messages often assume that adding every bit of evidence to the presentation will bolster their case. Research suggests otherwise.

“The addition of mildly favorable information dilutes the impact of highly favorable information in the eyes of evaluators,” says Stephen Garcia, an associate professor at the University of Michigan. “Hence, presenters of information would be better off if they limited their presentation to their most favorable information – just as gift givers would be better off to limit their present to their most favorite gift.”

The bottom line for speechwriters? Use your biggest ammunition and use it wisely and ignore the call to include vats of proof points.

Call it amplification through simplification.

5 Steps to a Successful Speech - Part 2

Here's the second part of an article that was originally featured in Communications Director magazine.

The third big tip is to give your speech a recognizable structure. This is incredibly important from the audience’s perspective. Here’s why.

Imagine someone you’ve never met asks you to take a trip with them. They won’t tell you where you’re going, how long you’ll be gone, what you’ll see along the way or even when you’ll be back. Would you go? 

You probably wouldn’t. And yet every day hundreds of speakers stand in front of audiences all around the world and do essentially the same thing. They begin talking without giving the audience any clues about where they are headed or when they’ll be finished.

Yet, listeners need those structural clues much like travelers need road signs. Knowing where they are, where they’re headed and what to expect along the way will increase their attention span and engagement. They will become active listeners instead of passive passengers in this speech journey.

There are lots of structures you can use. Here are a few favorites:

• Chronological – This is a simple structure often used to explain what has happened and why. Dates become signposts and listeners understand the progression.
• Geographic – You can use geography to break down the sections of your talk. Explaining what’s happening in the North, South, East and West, for example, gives the audience a comfortable sense of control and anticipation.
• Numbered Lists – This is one of the most useful and, frankly, my favorite. After identifying a common problem, the speaker can easily tell the audience something like: I’d like to discuss three ways we can address this problem. This allows the audience to follow along, understand the journey and anticipate an ending.

The secret to using any structure is in letting the audience know what the structure is. If you tell them you’ll make three important points, for example, you’ll see people pull out notebooks and write down the number “1.”  They’re now actively engaged and paying attention.

The fourth tip is for all of those corporate types out there who belong to the PowerPoint brigade. The tip is this: Work on the words first and PowerPoint slides second (if at all.)

Too many speakers today rely on PowerPoint slides for their presentations. As a result, they forfeit a good deal of leadership potential.

Here’s the most important thing to remember about PowerPoint. It is NOT your presentation. The speaker – along with the words they deliver – is the presentation. Least important is the slide deck.

PowerPoint can actually undermine a speaker’s potential to lead. After all, the point of any speech is to put your speaker/leader in front of an audience in an effort to persuade listeners to take some action. That requires a certain amount of logic, a certain amount of emotion and a certain amount of character – the three essential components of persuasive communications.

When speakers rely too heavily on slides, they lose two of those components: emotion and character. PowerPoint is the “coldest” and passionless speech tool available. It encourages passive learning and, importantly, takes the audience’s eyes away from the speaker where the essence of character lives.

PowerPoint also asks the audience to do too much. When we use PowerPoint, we expect an audience to HEAR the speaker’s words, WATCH the speaker at the podium, and READ the words on the slides. They simply can’t do all of that at one time.

My mantra is fewer slides not more. And while you’re at it, try to use fewer images and fewer words on each slide, too.

If your speaker insists on using PowerPoint, ease them off their addiction by first explaining that the audience wants to hear them, not read slides. Then encourage them to at least open their speech with five minutes of pure talking (to help establish character and credibility), followed by a few slides and ending with talking (again to reinforce those important leadership attributes.)

Remember that listening alone is hard work. And we do a disservice to the audience when we introduce material that makes it even more difficult.

That’s why the last of my five big tips to make your speech something the audience will actually listen to and hear is to add a little style into your writing.

No, this isn’t where you make your speaker sound like Kofi Annan or Winston Churchill. It’s where you edit the words toward three specific goals. You want to 1) make the words simple and clear; 2) make the language exciting and fresh; 3) make your speaker sound warm and personable (even if they aren’t).

Too many writers approach speeches thinking they have to sound dramatic and grand. As a result, their speakers appear to the audience as pretentious and pompous. The objective shouldn’t be toward elevated language; the objective should be audience understanding.

Small words are better than long ones. Familiar words are better than unfamiliar one. Sentences, too, should be simplified for the audience and the speaker.

This is especially true if you are writing for a non-native speaker. Audiences need time to process unfamiliar accents and speakers need to be comfortable delivering the words. Simplicity helps on both counts.

Simplicity doesn’t mean making the speech as lean as you can, however. In fact, most speechwriting is more expansive than other types of writing because you must give audiences time to catch up to what the speaker is saying.

If the goal is to create understanding, you often have to repeat your key messages, repeat and restate statistics and use examples and anecdotes to amplify your points.

At the same time, the language should be fun and exciting to hear. That means deliberately editing in a few of the most useful rhetorical devices. Inserting a rhetorical question, for instance, not only breaks up the speaker’s delivery patterns, it makes the audience think.

You’ll also want to make sure to vary the length of your sentences. Follow a longer sentence with a few short, staccato ones and make sure none of the sentences are too long for your speaker to deliver without gasping for air.

Finally, strive to make sure your speaker seems warm and personal. No one wants to hear someone – or be led by someone – who is all business all the time. So make an effort to make your speaker seem real and approachable.

The best way is to have them share personal anecdotes with the audience. If the anecdotes include some soft, self-deprecating humor, even better.

You can also use short, humorous quotations to great effect. These allow the speaker to be funny even if they naturally aren’t. These don’t have to be from Greek philosophers or business gurus, by the way. The speaker could quote one of their own children, a spouse, a funny headline from the newspaper or even an ad from television.

Lastly, make sure the speaker uses the word “you” a lot. Rewriting sentences to include the word “you” ensures the speakers talk directly to the audience. It’s a subtle device that audience members appreciate and will respond to.

This simple exercise is one of the last editing steps I take because I find it helps me – as a writer – remember who I’m really writing for. I’m writing for an audience and the speech has to be interesting for them above all else.

 

New Speechwriting Book Available

 

It’s officially official. My new book – 10 Steps to Writing a Vital Speech – is being published by the best brand in executive communications and speechwriting: Vital Speeches of the Day.

Here’s a link to the publication on Amazon.

So what are you waiting for? Buy one. Or two. They make great Christmas gifts for the favorite speechwriter in your life.

Official News Release:

PHOENIX (November 16, 2011) - It happens every day. A boss asks a communication staffer, "Can you write a speech?" The staffer wants to say yes—not just to the boss, but to the thrilling and potentially lucrative opportunity to craft messages directly for the leaders of the organization.
 
But the truth is the communication staffer is not sure where to begin.
 
Now the staffer can get up to speed—quickly and completely—by turning to 10 Steps to Writing a Vital Speech  the wise, realistic and readable new guide to speechwriting. It's written by speechwriting guru Fletcher Dean and published by the prestigious monthly magazine, Vital Speeches of the Day.

Written to cover every aspect of corporate, nonprofit and political speechwriting in the most practical terms, the 10 Steps speechwriting process is a foolproof recipe. Readers learn how to analyze audiences and tailor their words. Research the speech and tell compelling stories. Structure the talk and lend it some style. Support the speaker with visual aids and sound coaching on delivery.
 
Award-winning speechwriter Fletcher Dean teaches it all, in his no-nonsense style and with illuminating examples from the corporate, political, military and religious worlds.
 
“Lots of books contain advice on one or another aspect of the speechmaking process but I wrote this book because I wanted to have the whole thing in one place,” says author Fletcher Dean. “Plus, I wanted a book that reflected my own philosophy of speechwriting in a way that will give confidence to anyone struggling to write a speech.”
 
And Dean has done exactly that, says Vital Speeches editor David Murray, who wrote the Foreword to 10 Steps. For aspiring speechwriters or communication generalists pressed into speechwriting service, “This book is the best start you could possibly have,” Murray says.
 
Murray also sees distributing copies of 10 Steps as a shortcut for communication managers to achieve a common framework for far-flung speech contributors and even freelancers. Murray says his publisher is prepared to make generous bulk deals.
 
Though the book doesn’t officially go on sale until January 10, 2012, it can be purchased for $39.95 in advance of that date directly through the website of publisher Vital Speeches of the Day.

ABOUT FLETCHER DEAN
Fletcher Dean has more than 20 years’ experience as a communications professional. He is an award-winning writer of speeches and articles for a wide variety of business, educational and motivational speakers. He won the Cicero Speechwriting Awards Grand Prize for the best speech of the year in 2008 as well as three other Gold Cicero Awards. He’s a four-time presenter at the annual Speechwriting Conference in Washington, D.C.
 
ABOUT VITAL SPEECHES OF THE DAY
Vital Speeches of the Day gives you an unbiased look at the most important speeches from today's top speech givers. You’ll read the finest examples of rhetoric by those who have attained leadership in the fields of business, politics, education, government, and more.

5 Steps to a Successful Speech - Part 1

This post was originally featured in Communications Director magazine. Here's Part 1. Check back for Part 2.

It can strike fear into the heart of even the most seasoned communications professional. You’ve been asked to write a speech.

The first reaction is usually flattery that someone thinks so highly of your writing skills. Then there’s panic. Then mind-numbing, blank-page introspection. How do I start? Should I try for humor? Does my speaker need to sound like President Obama? Or should he just try to be himself? Is it too late to find another job? Why me?  

Never fear. What to others may seem like a mysterious, arcane endeavor can actually be a very straight-forward and successful task. So what’s the secret to writing a successful speech? It’s quite simple: a successful speech is one the audience will listen and react to.

Yes, there are entire shelves of books on speechwriting. (I have one myself that’s coming out this fall in a project with Vital Speeches of the Day.) And yes people go to conferences and get training to become better speechwriters. But all of the books and all of the training essentially land on this single point: will the audience listen and will it react the way you want it to?

So here are five must-do tips for ensuring the next speech you write is must-listen-to material.

Tip One

The first tip is to begin every speech by focusing on the audience itself. If this is the only tip you follow, the next speech you write will be better than most.

When I first began writing speeches, an older and wiser speechwriter took me aside and explained this very bluntly. Like a lot of younger writers, I wanted the speeches I wrote to sound grandiose and soaring. I wanted the language to be lyrical and every speech to get a standing ovation.

“Listen,” he said, “all audiences are the same. They just want to know how to be healthier, wealthier or happier. If you can give them even one of those, you’ll do just fine.”

In fact, every audience member is asking the same thing when your speaker stands at the podium: What is this speaker going to say that’s going to make my life better?

Answer that first before you begin to draft your own messages.

Too many writers turn the speaker/audience paradigm around and begin with what they want to say. The result is that speakers seem out of touch and boring because they haven’t identified a common problem.

So tip number one is to focus on the audience and solve their needs. If you write a speech that could make them healthier, wealthier or happier, they will be interested in what your speaker says and you’ve got the beginnings of a great speech.

Tip Two

The second big tip for a successful speech is to rely more on emotions and less on logic.

I was listening to a radio program a few weeks ago about an effort by photographers in the United States to show the new face of poverty in the country. The interviewer asked why it was important to get these photographs in front of everyday people rather than simply giving them the data about poverty.

The photographer being interviewed said something every speechwriter should hear. “The fact of the matter is,” he said, “anecdote trumps facts every time.”

All of us are creatures of emotions. It’s why television commercials asking for asking for aid money to feed the hungry or help those injured in natural disasters use images of destruction and despair.

Unfortunately, too many speakers believe if they just explain the situation in a cool and reasoned way, the audience will get it. But if you really want to connect with an audience, use emotional devices. And the best way to do that is by telling stories.

More than any other device, stories can deliver the emotional appeal that audiences respond to. Stories can actually bring material to life and are often more believable than facts alone. Why? Because they do two things very well.

Stories let audience members place themselves inside the story, relate it to events in their own lives, and compare it with something personal to them. They also allow the listeners reach their own conclusions about the facts by putting abstract, logical data into context.

I encourage speakers to include stories about who they are or how they learned what they know to be true. Teaching stories – where they learned a greater truth – are especially powerful and emotional.

 -- To be continued --