OnSpeechwriting

The Professional Speechwriters Association: Welcome to a Brand New World

David Murray, long-time speech hound and editor of the invaluable Vital Speeches of the Day, is at it again. Actually doing stuff that others had only dreamed about. This time? Two major events. First, he's co-founded the Professional Speechwriters Association. And, second, he's arranging for the first-ever Professional Speechwriters Association World Conference.

He was gracious enough to share some of his thoughts about the association, the future of speechwriting and, mostly, the "why" behind the "what." Here's a short interview with him.

Fletcher: You’ve formed a new Professional Speechwriters Association. Tell me why you thought one was necessary.

David Murray: Car wash managers have a professional association! Almost 2,500 years after Aristotle, speechwriters don't? The question is, why has it taken us so long? This is a unique discipline, demanding more specific kinds of intellect, craft and emotional intelligence than other public relations specialties, like media relations or community relations. So speechwriters need a way to learn from one another—because they have many problems only fellow speechwriters can solve.

Also: Though speechwriters are generally better paid than their peers in other communication disciplines, they are also much more vulnerable. It's common that a leadership turnover leaves a perfectly good speechwriter suddenly out of a job, as the new leader wants to bring in his or her own person. So speechwriters need to have a one-stop shop for networking, and as PSA grows, it will provide that.

Finally, speechwriters are a tribe. They like to be together. For years I organized the Ragan speechwriting conference, and invariably people would come up to me afterward and pump my hand. Thank you for putting this together. The Professional Speechwriters Association is designed to give that sense of comfort, stimulation and sense of community all year round.

FD: What’s the benefit to speechwriters for joining?

DM: Members will basically get lots of stuff they need, for cheap or free. They get to use the PSA logo, which marks them to employers and prospects as committed members of the profession. They get a free subscription to Vital Speeches of the Day, which keeps them current on what the leaders of the world are saying on all the current issues. They get free access to an exclusive, members-only LinkedIn Group Almost half-off the annual World Conference. 

They also get big discounts to industry events, discounted entry into the Cicero Speechwriting Awards and lots of other benefits. Basically, a membership is a bulk discount on all or most of the things speechwriters normally by. And we plan on adding benefits as we go—making discount deals for our members with conveners of speechwriting seminars around the world, and making affinity deals with regional speechwriting groups so that the whole speechwriting world.

Eventually, we also see ourselves conducting salary surveys, studying trends in the business and possibly providing member spokespeople to represent the point of view of the speechwriting profession in public conversations that call for it—really doing all the advocacy and information-gathering that other associations do, but just for this very select group: people who call themselves speechwriters.

Speechwriting, as a profession, seems to be changing since I joined the ranks 20 plus years ago. Do you see if changing and how?

DM: It's changing in a million ways, for good and ill. But the Professional Speechwriters Association is a sign of one of the best ways it's changing. Twenty years ago two speechwriters working in the same city would have had a hard time finding one another. Now speechwriters commonly have speechwriting friends all over the world thanks to the Internet and to regional speechwriting associations like the UK Speechwriters Guild and the European Speechwriting Network. Having a global umbrella organization like the PSA will only make the small world of speechwriting that much smaller, so speechwriters can find one another and get the information or inspiration they need. Speechwriting need not be a lonely job any longer.

To help kick off the PSA, you’ve organized the first annual World Conference. What’s the goal and what can attendees expect?

DM: Attendees can expect to listen to speakers and share space with other speechwriters who are committed to the profession and experienced in the peculiar facts of the life of a speechwriter or executive communicator. They can expect candid, high-level discussions. Among the keynote speakers at this conference are PR legend Fraser Seitel and a leader with experience on both ends of the speechwriting game, actually—former CIA director and U.S. Forces Commander (and onetime speechwriter, did you know?) ... General David Petraeus. But most speakers will be people you've never heard of—anonymous speechwriters—who have found better ways to do this difficult work, and want to share their knowledge with their peers.

Also at this first conference especially, we're going to talk explicitly about the profession itself, answering questions like yours, on how the business is changing, what speechwriters need to do to adapt—and how the Professional Speechwriters Association can help them do it.

And particularly cool—and I think some speechwriters might actually enjoy this aspect the most—attendees will get a chance to talk to undergrads at the NYU's Department of Strategic Communication, Media and Management about a speechwriting career: What it is, what it's not, and what it takes. NYU is hosting the conference this year, and we hope to make mentorship an important part of the conference every year—and a big component of the PSA. 

Let's try to make speechwriting something more than a weird job people just "fall into" by accident. And let's make it a lot more comfortable landing for those who do.

 

The Amazing World of Speechwriting

So I heard an amazing story last week at the Ragan Speechwriters’ Conference. OK, maybe not amazing but it’s a story every speechwriter and everyone who uses a speechwriter should hear.

I was there to mingle with some of the best people in the world: speechwriters who “get it.” And I delivered a workshop, a breakout session and was on a panel. But the whole conference began with a great keynote.

The speaker was Jon Favreau who was President Obama’s chief speechwriter for about eight years before he stepped out of the White House to open his own shop. That’s heady stuff, especially for someone as young as Favreau.

He talked about what it was like to write in the White House, what it is like to be on his own now – see this related article by David Murray – and what it was like writing for Obama.

It was this last part that I found so reassuring and relatable. What he described was a speech process founded on collaboration, trust and mutual admiration. At least that’s what I took away. He said it’s humbling to write for someone who’s a better writer than you are. (That was, indeed, a refreshingly humble thing to hear from someone who had every right to have a puffed chest.)

He said he would often send drafts to POTUS and have them come back with many, many tracked changes. And that it was OK. That it was part of the process. And that the process wasn’t over with one draft but often multiple drafts as they worked on the right words for the right audiences.

So many times, I hear of speechwriters who get no initial input yet are expected to write solid drafts and who have to send material up the line for approval anyway. They then have a graf or two changed and are seen as “missing the mark.” And yet here’s a guy who can write as well as anyone and describes a process that is characterized by a constant and respectful give-and-take.

Hmmm. See some problems here?

What he described is the way the process SHOULD work … and yet rarely does according to so many of my speechwriting friends in Washington. Instead, they describe an opaque process where they write in a black hole with little or no initial input then are criticized for a speech that doesn’t hit the target.

One speechwriter was so distraught he told me privately he was thinking of simply retiring. He said it wasn’t worth the frustration any more. A man who’s a capable writer, smart and engaging and yet who’s bosses stifle him at every turn by shutting him out of the one process that’s critical to his job and his client’s success: the speech-making process.

Even Favreau complained that some of his corporate clients had no clue WHY they should speak. They just wanted to sound like a leader. And they have no time for the initial discussions. As Favrau said, if POTUS has time to think about his speeches and discuss them between fighting Congress and managing wars, corporate clients should, too.

The best process includes an initial discussion about what the communications strategy is, what the speech itself needs to accomplish that goal, and some real back-and-forth discussion built on a foundation of mutual trust and respect. Then you go write and have some additional back-and-forth.

Are you going to hit a home run every time? No, not even with the best process. But having a process in place like I described prevents a lot of missteps, gives a better end product and makes for happier clients and satisfied writers.

And it is amazing, if only because it’s so often rare.

David Murray - in the aforementioned article - believes it's because the clients no longer believe in the power of a speech. Maybe. I'm willing to entertain that idea.

Then again, maybe it's our fault for not making the case strong enough. I've found that speechwriting entails a constant process of re-education. Most executives I know don't come up through the organization giving a lot of speeches. They're managers who - at most - speak to employees in small town hall sessions. They haven't been on the big stage. They don't know what it CAN do.

Part of our job, it seems, is to demonstrate that speeches still matter. Becuase you and I know that looking people in the eye and telling them what you think - instead of hiding behind an anonymous twitter feed or blog - is amazingly effective when done right.