Shakespeare wrote his plays for the ear, not the eye. His punctuation is sloppy, the stage directions minimal.

It’s much more difficult to understand one of his plays if you just read the text silently. It’s only when you read aloud, or, better yet, see the play performed, that the power of the words is evident.

Example: Read the text of Henry V’s inspiring speech to his men before they go into battle against the French:

WESTMORELAND

O that we now had here
But one ten thousand of those men in England
That do no work to-day!

KING HENRY V

What’s he that wishes so?
My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin:
If we are mark’d to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God’s will! I pray thee, wish not one man more
.
.
.
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made
And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.’
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember’d.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember’d;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

(Act IV, Scene iii)

Now hear the speech as delivered by Kenneth Branagh.

Branagh’s voice brings out the nuance, subtlety and power of the speech that we miss when we just read the words.

The King literally brings his audience toward him from among the trees with a fine display of ethos – building a bond with the “band of brothers”. The bond is strengthened by contrasting their role with those “now a-bed”. He inspires them by painting in words a glorious future: their part in a story that will be told from “this day to the ending of the world”.

Very little of the power of the speech relies on gesture. Branagh is restrained. His fist is rigid, gloved and powerful. He relies instead on his voice, moderated at first, rising to a crescendo with the “ending of the world”. Then, seconds later, cracking to a whisper for “we few, we happy few” in preparation for the final lines delivered first with restrained humor, then mocking indictment and the final rousing claim which cues the troops to cheer.

Executive Communications Lesson

Find a corner of the office, or a space outside (perhaps in the woods like Henry), where you can read every speech you write out loud. Try reading it at different speeds. With different emphasis. Then, when you are happy with it, take it to your executive and make them do the same. You’ll probably have to insist, most speakers would rather skim the text in the back of the car on the way to the event.

But then, they never had to ask their audience to go fight the French.

My first major series of Deep End topics is an assessment of a sociological theory known as Ethnomethodolgy to see if it’s got anything useful to say for those of us involved in public speaking, presentation skills coaching, speechwriting and executive communications.

Ethnomethodology is an obscure branch of sociology. It’s concerned with the ways in which social order is maintained. It describes the practices (the methods) people use to describe social settings.

Ethnomethodology was all the rage in the mid-1970’s when I was a graduate sociology student. It attracted those of us who were looking for an alternative to structural-functionalism (Talcott Parsons seemed such a boring old fart) and were tired of mainstream Marxist sociology (Karl Marx was another boring old fart).

It was a ‘hip’ social theory. It promised the excitement of Street Theater and Happenings. It didn’t take the fact of social order for granted (Yeah! Anarchy Rules, OK!) It encouraged people to see things around them as if for the first time. This resonated for students who’d experimented with hallucinogenic drugs. It was an intellectual cleansing of the doors of perception. It appealed to anyone enthralled by the afterglow of the sixties that bathed the student population of Europe in the early 1970’s.

It was cool. Obscure. Angular. Immediate. Some went on to build careers out of theories like this. The rest of us got $20 haircuts, entry-level jobs in corporations and conveniently developed amnesia for these angry critiques of our late adolescence.

So it’s with a sense of deja-vu I return to Ethnomethodology to see if it has any value for my life, thirty-five years after I first studied it. Are there any useful nuggets I can find to help my work in executive communications in the 21st Century? Will I see speechwriting as if for the first time?

My search, inspired, as I have said, by Roy H. Williams, is a deep dive into and report on the core elements of the theory that are relevant. I’ll strip out the academic jargon. And, frankly, plagiarize the academic sources without the usual attribution, but I will include a full set of references for sources I use.

My next posting in the series will examine what the heck Ethnomethodology is all about and why should speechwriters bother examining what everyone else takes for granted?

My inspiration for a ‘deep dive’ into science and philosophy as it affects executive communications (which I’m classifying as ‘Deep End’ postings) is ad-man extraordinary Roy H. Williams.

Before I launch into the first deep dive of my own, I’ll try and show how useful Roy’s insights derived from ‘complicated stuff’ can be.

Apart from his books, be sure to check out his archives of Monday Morning Memos – fascinating and instructive notes he emails every week.

Take as an example Chapter 21 of his book Secret Formulas of the Wizard of Ads.

In four brief pages Roy clarifies the visual and auditory processing power of the brain and how two key areas are involved when people hear and see advertising messages: Wernicke’s area where the visual and auditory associations meet and we assign names to objects and comprehend spoken language; and Broca’s area where language processing, speech production and comprehension occurs.

Roy concludes the chapter by saying:

Describe what you want the listener to see, and she will see it. Cause her to imagine taking the action you’d like her to take, and you’ve brought her much closer to taking the action. The secret of persuasion lies in our skillful use of action words. The magic of advertising is in the verbs. Just ask Broca.

Having set this up, Williams then explains, in subsequent chapters, how to write compelling ads by ‘surprising Broca’.

Williams is not afraid to risk losing some readers in his detours into ‘advanced’ theories of neuroscience and medicine. The reward for those of us who stick with him is an incredible insight into the ways that communication works in the world of advertising.

My goal, in future Deep End postings, is to explore detours of my own and see what lessons can be learned.

Stay tuned.

Ever noticed there’s a slew of consultants out there who will offer advice on what the well-groomed public speaker should be wearing?

It all began with Dress for Success.

Now, for the executive on the fast-track, there’s outfits like Global Image Group who offer to

Perfect your understanding of industry appropriate business attire using The Style Scale System and define your own personal style.

Why sweat the details of speech structure, message and authenticity in communications when it can all be reduced to implementing the guidelines of confident dressing and dress for the position you want, not the one you have. Look for help from Michelle, a Certified Image Master.

If people are wow’d by the clothes you wear they’ll not even notice the sweat on your brow and upper lip; detect the fear in your eyes or even take much notice of your face at all.

On my last morning in DC I visited the International Spy Museum. It opened in 2002, post 9/11, in a city which had only just escaped devastation by a fourth gang of saboteurs operating behind enemy lines with impunity.

The Museum serves to remind us, Lest We Forget, that the history of espionage is filled with the actions of foolhardy men and women (brave fellows if they work for us, cowardly scum if they work for the opposition), who used deceit, disguise, cunning and forged documents to further their interests. Hero, villain or traitor, it depends which side you’re on. The Museum celebrates espionage in all its glory, gory detail. Espionage (spying) is the practice of obtaining information about an organization or a society that is considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information. It’s a form of warfare waged “unfairlyâ€? since the day the Trojans learned to Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts.

It was spooky (pun intended) to learn that Washington DC has one of the world’s largest populations of spies. I wonder how many have paid their $16 admission to experience this celebration of their chosen lifestyle. I wondered if the couple with the Eastern European accents standing next to me in line were here to learn a thing or two.

There’s a delicious irony in visiting an institution which puts on an exhibit aspects of a clandestine world.

I remembered the decommissioned Regional Seats of Government in the UK which are now identified by a tourist information sign:

If it’s ‘Secret’ why, err, have a sign on the highway showing you where it is? Of course, a grammatically accurate sign would read “Formerly-Secret-Nuclear-Bunker-Now-Open-To-The-Public”.

So it is with the International Spy Museum, which has items on open display that people, literally, once died to protect from view.

The Museum does a great job entertaining visitors with a stage-managed entrance routine. We’re marshaled into an elevator and asked to choose a ‘cover’ for our visit. The make-believe is that we are being groomed to become spies:

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to take an unforgettable hands-on tour of the all-but-invisible profession that has shaped history and continues to impact world events every day.

The driving directions for the Museum warn Beware. You may be followed. The ticket proclaims ACCESS GRANTED.

All familiar stuff to anyone who rents a DVD of the excellent BBC series MI5 (recommended).

Once inside, there’s a fascinating range of 007 gadgets: tear gas pens and lipstick pistols; decoder rings, invisible ink and Enigma machines – there’s even Bond’s Aston Martin.

This, however, is the real stuff, which caused real people to really die. Example: a Bulgarian Umbrella like the one the KGB used to murder Georgi Markov on Waterloo Bridge in 1978.

The exhibits are well researched and explained.

There’s a broad swath of history and geography covered: the Rosetta Stone; Jefferson’s cypher of 1790; WWI and WWII paraphernalia; Cold War tunnels; fragments of the Berlin Wall and of the cement foundations from the US Embassy in Moscow so riddled with bugs they tore it down.

There’s a very educational video showing how to pick a lock; an eye-opening series of bugs and listening devices which, like everything electronic, have shrunk to pin-head-size over the last 60 years.

There’s a rogues gallery of traitors: from the Rosenberg’s to the CIA mole Aldrich Ames and the FBI turncoat Robert Hanssen. There’s surprising detail on the extensive network of German spies operating in the Eastern US in WWII. But nothing to explain why we placed Japanese civilians in West Coast concentration camps.

Indeed, for a Museum that celebrates the Intelligence Services, there are aspects of the exhibit that are curiously misleading. The plaque discussing the Cambridge Spy Ring wonders if the “4th Man” would ever be found. “Could it have been…Anthony Blunt”? Duh. Is this misinformation deliberate, or just coy? Is the Red Scare video on McCarthyism so hidden inside a blanket of ‘enemy within’ propaganda that all but the carefully observant would realize the enormity of the witch hunt? Or was this more deliberate irony?

And what’s with the propaganda aimed at kids? The website lists a number of special programs which made me wonder.

So, once the School Outing jollies with which the Museum presents itself wore off, I was left wondering about the narrative they’ve chosen to tell the story of espionage. What’s their back-story? How did they select among the reflections in the mirror-world of spying. What choices were made between information and misinformation?

I think, my Dear Watson, two things can be deduced.

One, the ‘secrets’ on display in the Spy Museum are very much yesterday’s secrets. The Cold War is about as recent as it gets. Google Earth in the last room merely hinted at what the NSA (no, not the NSA I belong to, the other one) gets to see and hear down the road at Ft. Meade and over in Britain atGCHQ, Cheltenham.

Two, the Museum maintains a deafening silence on espionage involving today’s villains (or heroes) working in the Middle East. I’m afraid this is a case where no matter how much history we learn, we are destined to repeat it. The difficulty of infiltrating Islam outweighs those of building a cover to fool fellow-Caucasians in East Berlin. These are times when other side enjoys the Navajo code talker advantage. Our Farsi speakers are few and farsi between.

Executive Communications Lessons

A spy, like a writer, lives outside the mainstream population. He steals his experience through bribes and reconstructs it.
— John Le Carre

So what lessons can a speechwriter take away from a visit to the International Spy Museum? Apart from the opportunity to make bad puns. What, if anything, could the cloak and dagger world of espionage have in common with modern business? I can’t possibly begin to imagine.

OK, OK, I’ll try.

• Speechwriters often have to tell a nuanced story. After all, if things were cut n’ dried they’d hire stenographers to write the damn things.
• We practice our tradecraft anonymously, with no expectation of public recognition for our efforts. John le Carre’s novels echo the politics of some Exec Comms departments. Speechwriters do come in from the cold. Some are disappeared. Luckily, very few are tortured, at least physically.
• Corporations can lose key players to the competition. He went over to the Dark Side. The profile on yesterday’s Royal Art Historian needs to be edited out when it’s suddenly found that he (or she) was not to be trusted.
• Employees and customers need to have the past re-scripted in light of new facts. Secrets must be kept. C-Suite executives are well versed in being economical with the truth. You may think that, I couldn’t possibly comment.
• Competitive intelligence must be gathered, legally. High-level candidates recruited from competitors:
  

  Tis the easiest thing in the world to hire people to betray their friends
  — Daniel Defoe, author, Robinson Crusoe and creator of England’s first secret service

• Way back yonder staff may’ve used carrier pigeons and dead letter drops to get word back from the field to headquarters. Heck, some companies probably funded improbable, costly projects like the Berlin Tunnel to gather G2. Nowadays, we seed the web with listening devices to monitor traffic (they’re called RSS feeds).
• SIGINT only goes so far. Few speechwriters succeed without running a carefully cultivated network of agents across the company. These informants must be recruited, tested, protected and pampered. The information they supply on the operations of their business unit must be verified, synthesized, stripped of extraneous detail and woven into the seamless story of the final product. At the end of the day the speechwriter is the one whose head is on the block if misinformation has crept in.
• The Moscow Rules work as well for corporate executives at a Trade Show or Conference today as they did for those Cold War CIA case officers in East Berlin. Memorize them:

1. Assume nothing
2. Never go against your gut (Jack Welch led straight from his)
3. Everyone is potentially under opposition control
4. Don’t look back, you are never completely alone
5. Go with the flow
6. Vary your pattern and stay within your profile (PR calls this being on message)
7. Lull them into a sense of complacency
8. Don’t harass the opposition (some even enshrine this in the Employee Code of Conduct)
9. Pick the time and place for action (as Sun-Tzu well knew)
10. Keep your options open (just don’t back-date them, OK?)

Ways of Seeing

A winter’s day in DC. While I slept snow came shawling out of the ground…drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow grew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely-ivied the walls. (A Child’s Christmas in Wales, Dylan Thomas).

A brisk, crunchy, half-mile walk up the road, past Dupont Circle, I dropped into Teaism to breakfast on a pot of Assam and scrambled tofu. One tea shop and a hundred coffee bars in the capital of a nation that declared its Independence by a consumer revolt against the far leaves – will they ever, ever let us forget?

Around the corner to The Phillips Collection, America’s first museum of modern art, opened in 1921. Housed in the elegant home of Duncan Phillips (1886–1966), the collection includes Renoir’s masterpiece Luncheon of the Boating Party, along with other outstanding Impressionist paintings by van Gogh, Manet, Berthe Morisot, Degas and Cézanne.

The museum is wonderful, intimate and easy to navigate in a couple of hours. The most memorable corner of the galleries was the small room where four of Mark Rothko’s large canvas multiforms hang in close proximity “overwhelming the walls�, and a single bench in the center anchors the viewer. I sat down, breathed in, and spent a good five minutes gazing at each canvas in turn.

Strange and wonderful emotions arose in me as the colors drew me in. The shadow below the frame became part of the soft edges of canvas, included in my field of vision. By the time I turned to view the third canvas, Green and Maroon, things became really interesting.

Rather than looking at the painting I looked into the painting.

The maroon shade of the lower third of the piece began to flux. Paler and deeper areas revealing luminous patterns of inner light changed the longer and more profoundly I held my gaze. The upper section repaid extended observation by morphing from a swirl of dust that into turbulent cloud then eddying currents of deep water.

All this movement came as an utter surprise, an unbidden reward given by the pause in time I spent with Rothko’s masterpiece. In the space between these two elements – between the green and the maroon – there hung a distant horizon, a thundercloud over desert floor, or a glimpse of planet-fall from the window of some interstellar spacecraft. Then, with a sudden surprise I returned to the upper segment and found the smallest pinprick of white sitting in the green, like the evening star. The second I noticed it, it appeared to move across and around, a drifting point on a fluid background. My experience of the painting became utterly subjective, profoundly meditative, surreal and beyond the comprehension of the logical mind.

You won’t get any of this from the representation on the web page above, or the poster on sale in the museum shop. The scale of the original created the experience. Size mattered. The power of the sunset that overwhelms us on the shoreline is lost when we share a snapshot of the same with others. Reality bites.

Executive Communications Lesson

Artists like Rothko communicate non-verbally.

However, I believe astute professional speakers can learn from the response people have to great Art.

Remember that the audience is looking at you as well as listening to you.

Use words to paint pictures.

Be aware of the soft edges of your presentation.

Suggest, play with tone and vary the intensity of your message.

Shades of meaning and the open space around the big issues invite participation. Draw them in. Show, don’t tell.

Paint big; then bring it up close and personal. Overwhelm the walls – have your voice fill the halls.

Give the audience time to discover the hidden depth in your message.

Try this one on for size: use Green and Maroon as the outline of your next speech. Here’s how. Fill the majority of the talk with two main arguments which you lay on in thick, varied, contrasting colors. Then leave a thin space between to excite their imagination. Examples of a transitional area between bold statements that might work for your speaker:

• Night becomes Day with the beauty of Dawn; let us awaken to this new opportunity
• Good arises from Evil at the moment we make the Right Choice; that decision must be made
• The Sky meets the Ground at a Distant Horizon; will you take the journey there with me?

Following the success of the Washington Speechwriters Roundtable and similar ad-hoc professional associations in New York and Chicago, a group of us met at the Speechwriters Conference and launched a Northern California Speechwriters Forum.

We plan to hold face-to-face meetings in the San Francisco Bay Area. However, the main form of communication will be via the web. We’ve started a Yahoo Group for anyone who is interested in sharing job postings, professional development tips, and more.

If you are located in N. Cal and involved in any aspect of PR, Internal or External communications and would like to join please sign up here:

Click to join nc_speechwriters

Father McKenzie writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear
No one comes near.
Look at him working. Darning his socks in the night when there’s
nobody there
What does he care?

All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?

The Beatles ‘Eleanor Rigby’

Quick! What do HP, the AARP and the FBI have in common? No, it’s not geeky guys over 50 with a penchant for spying! Each of these organizations sent six or more speechwriters to the Ragan Speechwriters Conference.

The speakers at the event exhibited a love of French Generals and English Queens; I Claudius and Animal House. There were exhortations for writers to blog; speakers to stand sideways; calls for better rhetoric and simpler slides.

There was a fascination with great orators with three initials: MLK; JFK; FDR and WRC.

There were spooky representatives from the military-industrial complex: men and women from three-letter Agencies mixed with Canadian Space Agency people and guys and gals who were Proud to Be Americans.

At the other extreme there were free-associating consultants who Photoshopped salespeople with Beatles haircuts and billed their clients with a smile.

There were Fishbone Diagrams and Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level scales; baseline surveys and blogging platforms.

There was ethos, logos and pathos; decaf, regular and Earl Grey.

There was bone-chilling cold.

There were 250 people looking for the secret sauce so they can write the words of a sermon they hope someone will hear.

Gentlemen, he said,
I don’t need your organization, I’ve shined your shoes,
I’ve moved your mountains and marked your cards
But Eden is burning, either brace yourself for elimination
Or else your hearts must have the courage for the changing of the guards.

Bob Dylan ‘Changing of the Guards’

Debbie Weil: An executive communicator’s guide to corporate blogging

Following my quick experiment in ‘Live Blogging’ during Debbie’s afternoon seminar this post is a summary of the rest of her material.

If there’s one thing more up in the air than the future of corporate blogging, it’s the role of the communicator in supporting corporate blogs. Debbie Weil has forged a sophisticated vision for how organizational leaders can and should participate in the blogosphere—and how their speechwriters can (and can’t) help.

The session promised to share information on:

Along the way, you’ll see examples of leadership blogs, and learn from the best (and the worst) in the business. You’ll leave this session not only knowing how to create a leadership blog but how to create a whole blog strategy for your organization.

Debbie pays the mortgage by consulting with organizations on blogging. She works with CEOs as an executive blogging coach and writes a blog of her own, Blog Write for CEOs.com

A quick survey of the 250 attendees at the Conference showed that 88% of the companies represented are not publishing blogs and 69% not considering publishing blogs. Indifference? Opportunity!

Debbie first explained some of the basics to the dozen or so attendees. Not surprisingly, many of them were in the dark about much of this. Back in 1990 many people did not have email addresses. What a difference a decade made. Look for a similar sea change in blogging, says I.

Making Sense of Social Media

These defeat the silos found in federal government and other big corporations, allowing speechwriters to float like a butterfly over vast reservoirs of speech fodder (he wrote, in a late night mix of confused metaphor).

They allow employees access the creativity outside corporate America. They allow us to be part of the Naked Conversations (which is not to be confused with the Naked Lunch).

Social Media is good for Sharing; Collaboration; Creativity; Participation; Engagement; Authenticity and Transparency.

Example: Writing a book used to be solitary, a blog can encourage comments on text. Wikis also. The blog takes all the comments and centralizes them.

A business blog is:

Debbie led the group in a debate on pros and cons of blogging. By the end of the afternoon at least one former skeptic was convinced. Look for a blog by an employee of a Defense Contractor (of course, if you read it, he may have to shoot you!) She took us through a show and tell on setting up feeds in Bloglines. We discussed the best use of RSS feeds and such to help monitor the blogosphere. I refrained from mentioning my Handy Dandy Guide to setting up an RSS Newsreader, so I’ll do that here.

The question arose as to why more speechwriters don’t blog. One thing might be the load. David Murray, Editor of the Speechwriters Newsletter claimed to be the ‘world’s first retired blogger’ – he was actually paid to blog by Ragan Communications and gave it up due to the time factor. However, speechwriters who don’t get their own by-lines might get great joy out of blogging.

Debbie advised your topic has to be your passion. Her workbook on content development for blogging has worksheets on:

Debbie showed us how easy it is to start a blog in Typepad and post to it, change the URL to map to a web site you may have and more. She used her China Blogging Tour blog set up in anticipation of a book tour she’s undertaking over there, as an example, inserting pictures and video from YouTube and Bebo links.

And that, after an intense three days in Washington DC, was that.

Hal Gordon: Bite the bullet—Turn your speaker’s liabilities into assets

Hal Gordon has been a professional speechwriter for nearly 25 years. His clients have included cabinet-rank federal officials, corporate CEOs and General Colin Powell. He’s also one of the few pro speechwriters who blogs – way to go, Hal!

Good speakers, like good speechwriters, are made, not born. Some of the greatest speakers who ever lived have had to overcome a stammer, an accent, a natural shyness, a physical handicap or some other disadvantage before they could conquer a crowd. If your speaker has a problem, the best approach is not to duck it or paper it over, but to meet it head-on.

If you bite the bullet, you have a good chance of turning your speaker’s liabilities into assets.

This session promised that we’d learn how to:

Overcoming obstacles

As speechwriters, we know that if we’ve got a good speaker as a client, we’re halfway home before we’ve written our first word.

But what if we have a poor speaker? What if we have a speaker who has a lisp, a stammer or a distracting handicap of some kind? What if our speaker is shy, or not used to public speaking? Or what if we have a good speaker who is disadvantaged by circumstances? We have all had to write speeches for clients to deliver to audiences that are hostile to the speaker, or skeptical of his message, or both..

Hal teased us by quoting the case of a politician who was seen as a village idiot, and had to give a speech to a skeptical audience. No, it wasn’t the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but the Roman Emperor Claudius who addressed a hostile audience. “Senators, I understand you don’t want another Emperor, but you have been given one…As for speaking, it’s true that I have an impediment, but isn’t what a man says more important than how long it takes to say it.â€? Claudius takes each of his liabilities and turns them into an asset:

Another example of a speaker who triumphed magnificently over adversity is Churchill. he suffered both from a lisp and stammer and never fully overcame them. His devastating attack in the Houses of Parliament on Ramsey MacDonald in 1936 relied on a stammered pause before delivering the punchline:

I remember, when I was a child, being taken to the celebrated Barnum’s circus, which contained an exhibition of freaks and monstrosities, but the exhibit . . . which I most desired to see was the one described as ‘The Boneless Wonder’. I never thought I would have to wait 50 years to see the boneless wonder now sitting on the Treasury bench.

Other speakers use an accent to charm, as did JFK.

Using Humor

If you’ve got a good speaker and a hostile crowd, the speaker can often find something funny about the incongruity of the situation, and break the ice with a friendly laugh.

Self-deprecating humor is often the best approach to take in these situations. It is also the safest, since no one can object if the speaker makes fun of himself for having a stammer or an accent – or for being unusually tall, short or heavy. Or even for being bald.

Lincoln used self-depreciating humor – accused of being two faced he said “If I was, would I choose to wear this one?�

Defusing hostility

Example: Bush’s speech to the hostile crowd at the NAACP – a group he had avoided meeting until that point. He defused the situation as follows:

Thank you very much. Bruce, thanks for your introduction. Bruce is a polite guy — I thought what he was going to say, it’s about time you showed up. (Laughter and applause.) And I’m glad I did. (Applause.)

But what about those occasions where humor of any kind is, for some reason, inappropriate? That’s when you really have to bit the bullet and face the problem head-on.

In one respect, there is no difference in writing for a hostile, rather than a friendly audience.

Aristotle taught that there were three main devices for moving audiences – ethos, logos and pathos. They remain the same. We simply adapt them to the occasion.

Ethos – building a bond with audience
Logos – Appealing to reason and logic
Pathos – Appealing to emotion

The basics don’t change but need to be adopted when facing a tough crowd. Usually this means paying particular attention to Ethos.

Dig into your speaker’s background to discover a link to the audience. John Hofmeister, CEO of Shell Oil, spoke to the NAACP in Houston. The crowd wondered if he was committed to diversity. Rosa Parks had died shortly before the speech, this jogged his memory. He recalled living in Atlanta in 1955. As a 5-year-old he wanted to sit at the back of the bus when in those days Whites were not allowed to. His grandmother supported him and they were thrown off the bus. When he recounted this story to the NAACP and said “I hope that in Heaven God will introduce my grandmother to Rosa Parks” he brought the crowd to their feet.

The Byzantine emperor Justinian’s’ wife Theodora made a brief, telling speech under somewhat difficult circumstances: armed mobs were descending on the Palace and many of the nobles, plus her own husband, wanted to flee.

Theodora begins with the acknowledgement that urging acts of daring was not considered womanly but nonetheless she took a tough line and urged defiance. Her husband might flee if he wished, but she would stay, for she liked the ancient maxim which said that royalty made a good shroud.

My Lords, the present occasion is too serious to allow me to follow the convention that a woman should not speak in a man’s counsel. Those whose interests are threatened by extreme danger should think only of the wisest course of action, not of conventions. In my opinion, flight is not the right course even if it should bring us to safety. It is impossible for a person having been born into this world not to die. But for one who has reined it is intolerable to be a fugitive. If you wish to save yourself, my lord, there is no difficulty, we are rich, we have ships, yonder lies the harbor. Yet reflect for a moment whether you have escaped to a place of security, you would not gladly exchange such safety for death. As for me, I agree with the old adage that the royal purple makes the noblest shroud.

She seized on her liabilities as a woman who stays to fight. The men in the audience could not flee when they heard this. When she had them by their manhood, their hearts and minds followed.

I was struck by the ways in which female leaders such as Margaret Thatcher (the leaderine as the British Press called her) echo this. Thatcher’s cabinet were depicted as clustering around her like drones round a Queen Bee. She exploited the perceived ‘weakness’ of her sex by out macho-ing the macho. Are there not strong echoes of Theodora in her famous 1980 speech to the Conservative Party Congress:

To those waiting with bated breath for that favorite media catchphrase, the “U” turn, I have only one thing to say. “You turn if you want to. The lady’s not for turning.” I say that not only to you but to our friends overseas and also to those who are not our friends.

One wonders if America is ready to be taken to task by a Theodora, a Margaret or, dare I say, a Hilary?

The Motivational speech

Hal next asked us to consider the case of a new 27-year-oldgeneral giving a pep-talk to his men. They’ve not been paid in months. There’s no supplies or back pay. He’s inexperienced and they resent his appointments. Rumor is that he only got his job because his wife slept with the Minister of War. Napoleon (for it was he) was about to win his first battle with words not the sword.

On March 27, 1796 he roused his army with these words:

Soldiers, you are naked, ill fed! The Government owes you much; it can give you nothing. Your patience, the courage you display in the midst of these rocks, are admirable; but they procure you no glory, no fame is reflected upon you. I seek to lead you into the most fertile plains in the world. Rich provinces, great cities will be in your power. There you will find honor, glory, and riches. Soldiers of Italy, would you be lacking in courage or constancy?

In this short speech he devotes first half to ethos. He’s unflinchingly honest about the situation. The same issues are faced by an executive having to discuss downsizing. He motivates them by the promise of looting. (This might only work on Wall Street and during the glory days of Enron). Note how he does not tell, he asks Are you men enough to take it? It’s probably a better rhetorical device for the VP of Sales than the CEO. His confidence in his destiny allowed him to take the risks. He gave his men hope. His rival Wellington said Napoleon’s mere presence on a battlefield was worth 40,000 men.

The Aw Shucks Speech

When all else fails the best option might be to say how bad you are at speaking. I’m not a speaker and I don’t pretend to be, I’m just going to give you the facts. This is the one bond you have with every audience. Everyone can identify with this. None other than Shakespeare used this device in the play Othello, who, when accused of beguiling the daughter of nobleman with witchcraft (would ‘twer that easy lads!) says he’s not an orator, he’s a foreigner, an outsider. The speech he makes in his defense is disingenuously effective:

Most potent, grave, and reverend signiors,
My very noble and approved good masters,
That I have ta’en away this old man’s daughter,
It is most true; true, I have married her:
The very head and front of my offending
Hath this extent, no more. Rude am I in my speech,
And little bless’d with the soft phrase of peace:
For since these arms of mine had seven years’ pith,
Till now some nine moons wasted, they have used
Their dearest action in the tented field,
And little of this great world can I speak,
More than pertains to feats of broil and battle,
And therefore little shall I grace my cause
In speaking for myself. Yet, by your gracious patience,
I will a round unvarnish’d tale deliver
Of my whole course of love; what drugs, what charms,
What conjuration and what mighty magic,
For such proceeding I am charged withal,
I won his daughter.

All speechwriters should enjoy poetry. Do you?

Othello’s brave deeds on the tented field not pretty words acquitted him. Actions always speak louder than words, which is hard for speechwriters to admit.

Many thanks to Hal for a most entertaining and educational hour.