Eric McErlain
Public speaking has always been one of the leading causes of anxiety among corporate executives, but it's a phobia every CEO needs to overcome to be an effective communicator
and leader. Add a hostile or disbelieving audience into the mix, and the challenge becomes all the more daunting - for the executive, and for the unlucky soul assigned as the
speechwriter.
If you're the speechwriter, your main mission is to help your speaker establish credibility with an audience. But before you can do that, you must first establish one-on-one
credibility with the speaker.
"The first step is for the speechwriter to convince the speaker that the speechwriter is not the ventriloquist and the speaker is not the dummy," says Bob Steck, an independent
speechwriter in Washington who has written for chairmen at Dun and Bradstreet, IBM, Gulf Oil, E*Trade and Westinghouse Electric, among others. "No speaker can give every speech,
and there is no speech that can be delivered by every speaker." Personalization is key.
As such, a good speechwriter serves as a sort of middleman or "interlocutor" between the orator and the audience, Steck adds. The goal isn't to play Cyrano and put words in
the speaker's mouth, but rather to help the exec flesh out his or her own ideas - and then to buttress those ideas with research, statistics and other back-up material. In the
best scenario, the speaker is intimately involved in the writing process, and the resulting speech has the speaker's fingerprints all over it.
Then again, speechwriting isn't just about writing and researching. As a speechwriter, you also must have a broad knowledge base, be a good listener and know how to keep your
ego in check. These assets can be just as critical in the speechwriting game as being an accomplished prose stylist. Also having a good handle on the bare logistical facts about
the speaking engagement - the basic who, what, where, when and why - can help you put your executive at ease. Prove that you're with the program and the speaker will be more
likely to trust your judgment about more complex matters, such as how to weave an unfamiliar (yet cogent) anecdote into the speech copy, or the best way to approach a cynical
audience with tact.
A Tale of Two Speeches
In most cases, speeches aren't fair weather PR strategies. They are more often injected into the communications mix during periods of corporate flux - that is, during mergers,
divestitures, crises and other contentious periods. Steck, for one, has handled his fair share of hot potatoes. As director of corporate communications at MCI in 1997, he faced
a virtual lion's den in helping to sell the company's proposed merger with British Telecom (BT) to reporters, employees, community leaders, regulatory agencies and the financial
community.
This was no easy task, considering that MCI was known around the world as the informal, American upstart that smashed AT&T's monopoly dominance in long distance. BT,
meanwhile, was seen on Wall Street as a proper and polite, yet unreformed monopolist, not much different than the AT&T MCI had helped dethrone from its lofty perch. It didn't
help matters that the two CEOs - Bert Roberts at MCI and Sir Iain Vallance at BT - were polar opposites. Roberts was an engineer by training who spent his free time racing
classic cars, while Vallance earned an English degree from Oxford and spent his off hours listening to string quartets.
Steck worked with his counterpart at BT in London (speechwriter John Melmouth) to compose a basic 50-minute script for Roberts and Vallance to deliver in multiple stops during
a global speaking tour. But instead of simply splitting the CEOs' podium time at 25 minutes apiece, the writers took a more dynamic approach, scripting a stage with not one, but
two podiums on opposite sides. Both CEOs took the stage simultaneously, and each took five minutes, in turn, to acknowledge their differences - with honesty and humor. (Steve
Case and Gerald Levin adopted a similar strategy in announcing the proposed AOL/Time Warner merger a year ago.)
At the same time, both Roberts and Vallance explained how the merger really made sense in the rapidly deregulating world of global telecommunications. In some cities, Vallance
would open the presentations; in others, Roberts would kick off the discussion. The result: many column inches of positive press - much of it concentrating on how well these two
dissimilar gentlemen seemed to get along so well. The speech, in essence, became the story.
Deferential Treatment
Steck faced a challenge of a different sort in 1987 in preparing a speech for Jack Holt, head of Nielsen Media Research. Nielsen, then part of Dun and Bradstreet, was already
suffering intense scrutiny, given its perennial umpire role in calling the ratings race between television networks. (Every time one network lost a particularly key ratings
period, it would attack Nielsen's research methods as a way of defending its performance.)
To make matters even dicier, Holt's first speech as head of Nielsen was before the Advertising Research Foundation - a group that typically held a jaundiced view of the company
and its methods. And Holt had the additional burden of having come into his job as a marketer, while the vast majority of the foundation's members were hard-boiled statisticians
who were often quick to dispute Nielsen's methods.
Steck suggested a no-nonsense approach: that Holt concede his shortcomings in the "nuts and bolts" of the business (flattering one's audience is never a bad idea) and then
"promise to defer to the people who knew the who, what, when and where of the business," Steck says. This deference, combined with a commitment to substantive initiatives like
increased technology spending and more user-friendly reports, helped win over a skeptical crowd.
Perhaps the biggest misconception in the speechwriting arena is that speeches are meant to inform, Steck says. "The purpose of a speech is not to convey information, but
rather to convey the excellence of the speaker." Think of the speech itself as an opportunity to position your company as authoritative by "establish[ing] the speaker as
knowledgeable and insightful." Sell the person, not the product. And if all you want to do is deliver facts and information, think about writing an op-ed instead.
(Steck, 202/363-8261) -Eric McErlain is a speechwriter and communications consultant living in Northern Virginia. [email protected] . 540/729-1702.
Apology Expected
It's common for a speaker to apologize when he or she makes changes to a draft of a speech, as if the speechwriter might take offense. According to Steck, this is an instance
that a savvy speechwriter should welcome. First of all, it means the speaker is taking the speech seriously. Second, it means that he or she is personalizing the script -
something that will only help enhance his or her credibility during the delivery of the speech. In most cases, the language the speaker inserts will enhance the speech by making
it sound more natural.