Spin #6: Speechwriting

Deadly spin #6:

You should work with a speechwriter.

Giving a speech is a great way to win the hearts and minds of employees. They'll give you their undivided attention while you say something important that everyone needs to hear at the same time -straight from your lips to their ears. When you step up to the lectern, it becomes a powerful platform for sharing your views, spreading your ideas and inspiring change.

Delivering speeches to employees and other audiences is a sure-fire way to grow your influence and authority as a leader and give your self-confidence an extra boost.

Communication skills are widely seen as the single most important skill for leaders. And nothing shows off your communication skills like standing and delivering a speech that engages audiences.

We know that you're busy. Your days are jammed with meetings. No worries. We'll write you a speech that does it all -informs, inspires, entertains. We'll help you shine on stage.

We can write a complete ready-to-deliver speech. Or if you like, we can give you crib notes and talking points. You're a skilled communicator. A natural storyteller and performer. Quick on your feet. Loads of charm and charisma that'll win over an audience. Sometimes, it's better to stray from the script and be spontaneous. In the moment. Connecting and responding in real time with an audience. We'll share the speeches you give outside our organization with employees -whether it's a video, audio recording or a written transcript. We'll also turn your speeches into guest columns and op-eds. You'll reach and influence an audience far beyond who's in the room where you deliver your speech.

What employees think

With apologies to Paul Simon's "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover", here are 34 ways to lose us and the rest of your audience while giving a speech.

We'll start tuning you out if you:

Grossly overestimate your public speaking skills. It looks like we're an engaged audience. We're looking up from our phones, we're laughing, nodding our heads and applauding. We're less an engaged audience and more a captive audience. We're pretending to pay attention because you sign our paycheques. We have a mortgage to pay and kids to put through school. So please, for our sake and your's, don't wing it.

You're not that gifted. If you can't be bothered to rehearse, we won't be bothered to do anything beyond pretending to pay attention.

Go way over the top in giving thanks for such a warm, kind, flattering, glowing, sweet, humbling and generous introduction. We all know that you or your PR people wrote it. Stick with "thanks for introduction and good morning / afternoon / evening everyone".

Take out your phone, pan the audience and then post the video to your social media accounts. The audience in front of you matters more than the bots that follow you on social media.

Confuse us with your kids and order us to put away our phones and give you our undivided attention. Our attention is earned. If you see us on our phones, take it as constructive feedback to do better at the lectern.

Lead off by telling us you didn't have time to write a speech so you jotted a few notes down on a napkin while you were being introduced and you're just going to wing it.

Lead off by telling us your PR team wrote the speech and "let's see what they want me to say".

Lead off by telling us your PR team wrote the speech but you're going to ignore what they want you to say and wing it instead. Toss the speech over your shoulder for added effect.

Open with a joke we've all heard before.

Open with a joke that's not funny.

Open with a joke but flub the punchline. Retell the joke.

Open with a joke but never get to the punchline because you're laughing too hard at your own joke that no one else finds funny. Misread the room and open with a joke that's in poor taste or offensive.

Open your speech by recounting how you started your day, with a litany of first world problems that none of us in the audience can relate to. Your nanny was sick so you had to pack your kids' lunches but you instead gave them $50 to buy a sandwich in the school cafeteria. You had to take your car in for a tune-up at the Mercedes-Benz dealership and waited 15 minutes for the keys to a courtesy car and then spent another 10 minutes readjusting the driver's seat and side mirrors. Your new $10,000 sub zero fridge was delivered the same time you were heading out to the dealership, and your feverish nanny who's whacked out on cold medicine, just texted to tell you the glass door on your fridge is chipped. But on the good news front, your breeder called to say you can pick up your Tibetan Mastiff puppy next weekend.

Start any sentence in your speech by saying "the Merriam-Webster defines...".

Start any sentence in your speech by saying "It all started back when I was a young child growing up in...".

Make a reference to a Family Circus cartoon from 1982, the one where all four kids when to the Sugar Bowl ice cream parlor and had a zany adventure.

Deliver a string of quotes we've all heard many, many times before, with a mix of historical figures, authors, motivational speakers, Harry Potter, Yoda, superheroes and Peter Parker's uncle (with great power comes great responsibility). If life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Reach for the moon -if you miss, at least you'll be among the stars. The world needs dreamers and the world needs doers -but above all, the world needs dreamers who do. If you want something said, ask a man -if you want something done, ask a woman. Do or do not -there is no try. Patience you must have my young padawan.

Deliver these quotes while trying to impersonate John F. Kennedy, Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Mark Twain, Batman, Yoda or whoever you're quoting.

Break up your string of quotes with a proverb we've all heard many, many times before (If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together) and that has no obvious relevance to what you're talking about.

Deliver a speech that seems like it was cribbed from motivational posters that plaster the office of that one eternally positive and blindly optimistic co-worker that everyone secretly worries about. The only way to guarantee failure is to never try. Tough times never last but tough people always do. Even worse, show a screen shot of a motivational poster and tell us it's hanging in your home office. Read your speech for the very first time while you're delivering it from the lectern. Seem as genuinely surprised as us by the words coming out of your mouth. When you stumble over a sentence, stage whisper something about needing to hire a better speechwriter.

Read your speech either very slowly or very quickly without once looking up and establishing eye contact with anyone in the audience.

Read the stage directions embedded in your speech that aren't meant to be read aloud (Pause. Look up. Smile. Breath. Slow down. Look concerned. Try to be human).

Do nothing but inform, battering and burying us with a barrage of facts and stats for 45 minutes straight.

Do nothing but entertain, playing for cheap and easy laughs and saying nothing of substance for 45 minutes straight.

Turn your speech into just another PowerPoint presentation with you standing off to the side narrating in the dark.

Turn your speech into just another PowerPoint presentation with you standing in front of the screen with your back to the audience and obstructing our view.

Apologize in advance by telling us we won't be able to read any of the charts on your PowerPoint slides and then go ahead and walk us through each and every unreadable chart.

Rip into whoever's running the PowerPoint when there's a technical glitch, the slides don't advance or there's no audio with the video. (I was at a conference where the speaker tore into the AV team. He then quit giving his speech in mid-sentence and stormed off the stage. The audience didn't just boo. We hissed. Someone even clapped when he left the banquet hall.)

Avoid using weekend words at all costs. You use big, confusing words that make you feel smart even though they leave us feeling stupid.

Run way past your allotted time, especially if we're waiting for breakfast or dinner to be served and we've long since eaten the muffins, buns and pads of butter that were on our table when you started talking 90 minutes ago.

End your speech without a rally cry. Don't tell us what we should or could do next. Don't close the sale or ask for the order.

End your speech by saying "well, I guess that's it. I've got nothing more to say. Thanks for listening".

Invite us to ask questions but make it very clear by tone of voice and body language that you want nothing more than to get off the stage. I've written lots of speeches. Most were forgettable. Some were truly regrettable. And only a couple were memorable.

The best speeches were never really speeches. They were transcripts. Lightly edited transcripts from open and honest conversations with leaders who made it personal. Who told a story that only they could tell. A story that didn't have a single quote from Yoda, Harry Potter or Maya Angelou.

I wrote a convocation speech for an interim president. He was a good leader and a great guy. Low key, no ego and definitely not a natural performer. We didn't want to dust off and recycle a speech given by a previous president. He deserved a speech to call his own. A new president would be installed by the time the next convocation ceremony rolled around.

The interim president agreed to meet and gave me an hour of his time. I pitched the idea of having the president reflect on the advice he was given during his graduation ceremony many years ago. What advice was out-of-date? What advice aged well and was still relevant today? What advice did he follow? What advice did he wish he'd been given?

The president didn't want to do that. I can't do that, said the president. Were his graduation speeches that forgettable? I don't remember the speeches because I wasn't there, said the president. Were you working? There was a long pause.

What you can do instead.

You don't need a speechwriter. What you want is someone who can start and carry a conversation that gets you opening up.

The president looked uncomfortable. I didn't to my graduation ceremony because I didn't graduate. Okay, how about the speeches from your high school graduation. I didn't graduate...from high school, said the president. I was a high school drop out.

And now we had something to talk about.

The president explained why he dropped out of high school and relived the moment when left his desk during first period, cleaned out his locker and walked out of school. How his dad gave him an ultimatum -get a job by the end of the week or get out of the house. How he got a job and started out in a mailroom. How his job included checking the clocks in all the offices. How a senior executive struck up conversations every time the future president delivered the mail and checked the clocks. How the senior executive asked if he aspired to do something more than work in a mailroom. How that executive gave him a vote of confidence and inspired him to go back to night school while working full-time and raising a young family. How he somehow made it all work and wound up a college president.

The president was very reluctant to share this story with the graduating class and an auditorium full of their family and friends. He was slightly embarrassed. But he finally agreed. It took real courage to be that vulnerable -to stand in front of freshly minted grads and say he was a high school drop out. The president didn't read his speech. He delivered it. There's a notable difference. And it wasn't a speech. It was his life story. It's a story that had important life lessons for each and every grad. It was a speech free of jokes, quotes and proverbs. It was a speech only he could deliver.

He gave the same speech many times over a week's worth of morning, afternoon and evening convocation ceremonies. At each ceremony, it was like he was delivering it for the first time. He wasn't bored or going through the motions. And each time, he got a big round of applause from grads, family and friends who usually tune out when presidents start talking and serving up career and life advice.

Grads thanked the president while they shook his hand on stage and accepted their diplomas. Family and friends did the same during the post-ceremony celebrations. The local newspaper reprinted his speech. He got nice emails and was thanked by strangers while out in public for months afterwards.

So you don't need a speechwriter. What you want is someone who can start and carry a conversation. Someone who can gently persuade you to make it personal and stray outside your comfort zone. To be vulnerable. To speak less from the head and more from the heart. And someone who will then take your conversation and lightly edit that transcript into a story that only you can tell and that everyone will listen to and remember.

Giving a speech isn't a chore. It's a privilege. Where else do you have the opportunity to get in front of an audience who's willing to look up from their screens and give you their undivided attention? It's a gift. Don't waste it with bad jokes and Yoda quotes.