March 2004

Craig L. Howe, PMP

Prior to the founding of the Great Falls Group, a web development firm, Craig worked as an executive speechwriter.  He is also Co-Director of Publications for the PMI Westchester chapter and can be reached at craig.howe@greatfallsgroup.com.

Please note that the views expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of the PMI Westchester chapter.

As you hang up the telephone, the icy fingertips of panic grip your stomach; your heart races.  Your most recent project was delivered on time, within budget, and is approaching payback one year ahead of schedule.  As a result, your industry association wants you to address their annual convention.

Relax: they believe you have something to offer.  Here are ten rules to ease your palpitations.

As you think about your speech, remember the second rule: all great speeches, and even some good ones, require shape.  As a practitioner of the forensic form, I find the old saw is hard to beat: “tell them what you will tell them; tell them; then tell them what you told them.”

Wait a minute, you say.  What is the first step?  “Shake hands with the audience” is the answer.  I already did it by noting that you have something worthy of being said.  Former Ambassador Robert Strauss used to begin his addresses like this: “Before I begin this speech, I have something to say.”    This passage was always composed in a style that enabled him to reclaim a powerful tone for the instructive portion of his remarks.  Make the first step a quick one.  Put on your smile; calm your nerves, then get to work.

Your skeleton now needs flesh and blood to spring to life; structure needs a pulse.  A good speech needs a beat, a sense of movement to get the audience tapping its mind’s foot.  One technique orators through the ages have used is anaphora, the repeated beginning.  For example, from Rev. Jesse Jackson: “Get ready.  It’s morning time.  From the slave ship; to the championship; it’s morning time.  From the outhouse; to the state house; to the courthouse; to The White House, it’s morning time...”  Don’t overlook parallelism.  It sings.  It excites.  It works.

What else is required?  Occasion.  There comes a dramatic time in the life of a person, party, organization or nation that cries for the uplift and release of a speech.  Recall that day in September.  President George H. Bush, megaphone in hand, mounted the remains of a once proud monument that only days before had been reduced to ruble in a mere matter of minutes.   Veering from his original text, his words articulated the grief, pride and hope of New Yorkers, the Nation and the World.   That September day, he became the center of attention and the world stopped to listen.

A closely related item is forum.  Be it the floor of the United States Senate or the dais in the convention hall, each viewer in the audience must feel like the extension of a vast audience.  One-on-one may sell; one-in-a-million thrills.

The fifth is focus.  A “great” speech does not need to start out great and stay great to the finish.  It engages the listeners.  Makes allowances for a dip in interest in the middle.  Then, it gathers anticipation for its key moment.  John Stuart Mill, the political economist, defined the orator’s art as “Everything important to his purpose was said at the exact moment when he had brought the minds of his audience into the state most fitted to receive it.”

To handshake, shape, pulse, occasion, forum and focus add purpose.  A speech should be made for a good reason.  To inspire, to instruct, to rally, to lead are noble purposes.  To sound off, to feed a speaker’s ego, to flatter or intimidate are not.

Add theme to the list.  If you cannot answer the question “what do you want to say” in a single, declarative sentence; do yourself and the audience a favor: decline the invitation.

(Ten Steps to Oratory Excellence continues on the next page)