Speechwriting Under the Gun

10/6/2003

It doesn't matter to your audience if you have ten days or ten minutes to write a speech. You still must deliver. Here are tips for speeding your speech prep.

by Nick Morgan

The higher you rise in the corporate ranks, the more you're expected to speak on public occasions, and the shorter the preparation time often is. The temptation is to wing it or, if you do prepare something, not to rehearse but to rely on your native ability and good luck to see you through. The sad truth is that when you wing it, the performance is rarely as good in the audience's memory as it is in the speaker's. The reason is that your heightened adrenaline literally makes you feel better—more energy, more enthusiasm, more acuity—and so you rate your own performance better.

What the audience all too often sees, on the other hand, is disorganization, fumbled examples, and the vagueness that comes from not knowing your material thoroughly.

What's the alternative? Take some tips from Blank Page to First Draft in 15 Minutes: The Most Effective Shortcut to Preparing a Speech or Presentation, by Phillip Khan-Pami, a coach and competition-winning speaker himself. Khan-Pami suggests beginning by identifying your core message:

When you have completed your presentation or speech, what will people remember? What will they take away with them, to apply and change their ways, and one day perhaps even thank you for? What one sentence will correctly sum up your entire presentation? That's your Core Message.

Make no mistake: Your listeners will take away a core message of sorts. They will carry away an impression of what you were saying. It may be complimentary, it may be less so. It may be about you and your delivery, or it may be about your content. If you want them to receive and carry away the right message—your Core Message—you must first identify what you believe it to be and write it down.

Once you've developed that one-sentence summary of what you want to say, you're ready to brainstorm supporting ideas, arguments, anecdotes, and information. Then, Khan-Pami advises, test everything you've come up with against the core message. Ruthlessly eliminate anything that doesn't support your message.

Finally, pump the raw material you've developed into one of these structures:

PREP, which stands for Position—Reason—Example—Position. The idea is that you state your claim (which should sound a lot like your core message) and then give your reasons for it. Follow that with a compelling example, and close by restating your position.

Past—Present—Future, which takes the storyline of your idea and presents it in chronological form.

If you're trying to make the case for jumping into a new market with an untested new product, you might begin by telling your corporate history of marketing successes, working your way up to the present and closing with how you think this new product will lead to future marketing success.

Problem—Cause—Solution. This structure works well for business arguments and situations. You state the problem—declining sales, say—and then analyze the cause. You follow the analysis with your recommendations for a solution.

This format has the advantage of following the natural thought processes of the business world, which is all about problem solving. We recognize we have a problem. We figure out the causes. Then we develop a solution. It's the way most of us think on a day-to-day basis, so it works well in presentations.

AIDA, which stands for Attention—Interest—Desire—Action, works best when you're trying to persuade someone of something. First you grab their attention with a statistic or anecdote or claim that is sufficiently surprising to take your audience away from its concerns to yours. Then you raise the audience's interest by stating the benefits of the position you're advocating.

Tellx3, which, despite its trendy appearance, is actually the most conventional of structures. It stands for "Tell 'em what you're going to say, say it, tell ' em what you said." Today's audiences are impatient and people are in a hurry, so there is considerable debate as to whether this is still an effective speaking structure.

If you use it, make the preview and summary high-level and quite brief, to avoid shutting down audiences that are already information-overloaded. Using these techniques won't guarantee a magnificent speech; that's up to the speaker. But they will save you time in preparation—which means you may actually prepare rather than wing it. And that in itself will mean a better presentation.

Reprinted with permission from "How to Put Together a Great Speech When You're Under the Gun," Harvard Management Communication Letter, September 2003.

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Nick Morgan is editor of the Harvard Management Communications Letter.

Channel Your Fear

By Nick Morgan

It's 6 A.M. You awake to a gnawing feeling in the pit of your stomach. For a moment you lie there in the hotel room, reconnecting, remembering where you are. Then it comes rushing back—the reason for that feeling in your stomach. Today's the day. You have a presentation to give. The organizers tell you that there could be as many as five hundred people in the room. Neither you nor your career can afford for you to screw up now.

Most people find these preshow jitters distinctly unpleasant, and they won't be happy again until the speech is history and they're relaxing in the bar. Some people fare worse; they are so debilitated by fear that if they ever get this far, they're probably getting sick in the sink by now. But a lucky few actually enjoy the experience, using the butterflies to bring them to peak performance during the presentation and reveling in the excitement of working with a receptive audience. What separates them from the others? How can you get to where they are? And what are the other tricks that will help you give your best presentation ever the next time you're up?

You can begin right there in the hotel room. You need to focus on both sides of the adrenaline equation from the beginning, and now is the time to do it. Both your mind and your body are involved in creating the circle—either vicious or virtuous—that creates adrenaline, and both need to be involved in controlling and channeling it. Start by creating a film of yourself giving a splendid speech. Make it as detailed as you can. Replay it in your mind until it's clear and precise. You cannot possibly do this exercise well if you haven't visited the venue and—at the very least—stood in the space you will occupy later today. Ideally, you've already rehearsed the speech in the space, so you've got some good, specific sensory memories to draw upon.

Then, once the virtuous circle of positive thinking is initiated, treat the body just as well. Breathe properly and undertake a mild workout, focusing on muscles that you know tend to tense up for you. Don't exhaust yourself; that would be counterproductive. Rather, exercise to release some of the unusual amounts of energy your adrenaline is providing. If you're not much for exercise, simply flexing and relaxing major muscle groups should help; a brisk walk is also a good idea. As you exercise, keep visualizing how you'll deliver the presentation successfully.

Are you still feeling nervous? A little nervousness, as we've noted, is actually a good thing. The positive imagery should help—keep at it. This is also a good time to review the speech once again. Don't give the whole thing; it's too late for that, and doing so will only make you sound stale when you deliver the speech for real. Instead, go through the outline of the talk in your mind, so that you know exactly where you're going and what you're covering at every step of the way.

Now go enjoy yourself and the audience.

Reprinted with permission from "How to Put Together a Great Speech When You're Under the Gun," Harvard Management Communication Letter, September 2003.