The Law of Committology, or How To Kill Your Speech

I want to tell you a story.

It’s about a man who's very successful in his career. He built himself up from the beginning of his career, and he learns a lot along the way. In a few years, he was top in the industry. So he is asked to give a speech at the industry, body meeting for that year. He was pretty excited.

He sees it as a great opportunity to expand its profile. To grow as a human being, but also as a person in his field.

And he really wanted to make a great impression.

So he had six months to prepare, and he made sure he used every minute at that time.

He went to the experts. He studied speech writing.

He wrote a speech that was from the heart.

'Cause he knew, as the oldest advice in the world goes, you should write what you know, be yourself. So he wrote that.

But he wanted it to be great.

And he thought, since this is his first big speech, he couldn't be great on his own.

So he took it to people he trusted, trusted advisors, and he asked them what they thought.

And so one guy looks at it and says, “You know, this is, this is really good. But I think you were opening, it's just, it's a little bit too out there. It's not exactly what people are expecting. You know, this is a very serious audience. You’ve gotta make sure that you speak to that seriousness, that serious audience. Maybe remove that joke there.”

And the man thought, “That's a good point. This is a serious audience. I should remove that joke.”

So he cuts that opening, and takes it to another trusted advisor. And this guy says, “Well, look, I really love it. You've got a really natural style. I'm just not sure about a few of the points here. This could be taken the wrong way. It's just a little bit too strong. Maybe we can back off a bit.”

And so the man softens his speech in several places, and this goes on and on and everybody he asks, has some advice for him.

And this man is so excited, he's so happy. He thinks to himself, “This speech is getting better and better at every moment.”

Eventually, six months in it's time to give that speech.

He gets up, delivers it. Everybody claps, and as he sits down and he just can't help thinking, they didn't seem to clap with enthusiasm.

They clapped because that's what people do.

Then after him, another guy gets up to speak. And his speech, well, it comes on a little bit strong at a few points. Actually. It's a bit rough around the edges, but boy does he have passion. Boy does it sound like him. It sounds honest and true, full of enthusiasm.

And when he finishes, people around stand up, cheering, clapping, clapping, clapping. And this guy, who was nervous when he got up to speak, he smiles and he's happy.

He sits down, and the first man is wondering, “What's going on?”

How is it that this great big speech that he spent six months preparing – that he's got the best advice on – how is it that that speech only got normal, polite applause? Not a smattering of applause, sure – everybody clapped. But he knew deep down that they were clapping because that's what you do when somebody finishes talking. And yet, this other man, who he happened to know was only asked to speak a week ago, who got up feeling a bit nervous… His speech was rough around the edges, wasn't polished, made a few bad jokes here and there. Somehow his speech got people excited.

What went wrong, he wondered to himself.

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Now, the point of this story, it should be pretty clear to you by now. It should be obvious where I'm going with this.

The first man, sadly, is someone I see too often.

Now I've exaggerated him perhaps for the story, but speechwriters from going back to the beginning of time complain about what they call ‘speech writing by committee’. Peggy Nunan, who wrote President Reagan's famous speech after the destruction of the Challenger, complained about this precise problem. This was 45 years ago.

It’s a problem I've seen time and time again.

We're so afraid. So many people are so afraid of writing and saying something that might turn somebody away. And so we refine, we craft, we modify, we soften just in case somebody gets offended or somebody doesn't like what we've said. But the problem is we end up like that man in the story. We end up with a speech that everybody agrees was a speech… everybody agrees we said something, but nobody's going to be talking about it the next day.

They might be talking about the man in our story – remember he was very successful – but they're not going to be talking about his speech.

Everybody agrees that he said something. And that's really about it.

The second man may have annoyed some people, may have turned a few people away. Every now and then, he may even have offended somebody. But his speech was so true to himself, was so full of conversational power, so full of passion, that it got people engaged. They felt like somebody was really speaking to them. And so they responded as if somebody were really speaking to them. And so they stood up and gave a standing ovation when he was finished.

Now, of course there is a middle ground.

As a speech writer myself, I know the value of polishing and crafting and improving. But I also know that it can never be done to the point at which you lose that power. The power of person. More importantly, the power of a personality.

Now there's a corollary to this, and that's boldness.

A leader does not lead by looking like everybody else standing in the middle of the crowd. The leader leads by standing out from the crowd.

We have this word in English, ‘outstanding’ – it means standing out from the crowd.

Only by standing out from the crowd, by being bold, by being brave enough to risk displeasing somebody, can you ever inspire somebody. That’s the only way you can ever really present a case that’s worth fighting for.

Anyway, this parable is full of ideas here for any good speech writer or anybody working on a presentation.

Yeah, it does take guts. But so does glory.

That's all I've got for you.

Talk soon,

Alexander

P.S. If you’re interested in a bit more guts and glory in your next talk, speech, or presentation, shoot me an email at [email protected] and let’s talk.