I love writing speeches for folks and one of the musts in speeches for business audiences is the ability to both engage and inspire during the speech.
One of the best speeches I’ve seen in the past couple of years was the one that Al Gore delivered at Disney during a business conference I was covering. His opening line was, “Hello, I’m Al Gore and I’m a recovering politician.” With that singular line he held the audience’s rapt attention.
Self-deprecation is a surprisingly good tool in the current economic stratus because we all need a bit of a lift when it comes to surviving these challenging times.
Gore’s past speechwriter and best-selling author, Daniel Pink, noted three important elements in speeches, during an interview with Tim Ferriss who asked, “What are the necessary ingredients of a good speech?”
Pink said, “I’ve said many times that the three essential ingredients in any good speech are brevity, levity, and repetition.”
(To see the full Ferris interview.)
Effective speech giving is being able to naturally and authentically incorporate the real you into the speech. We all long for true connection especially in these days of Web 2.0, 3.0, 80.0 and beyond, we still want to be inspired and genuinely touched.
When I interviewed Doris Kearns Goodwin, I asked, “What is the most rewarding thing about being a historian?” and her response was, “It is a great gift to really get to know people through their letters and speeches because that is often where you will find the real person behind the historical persona.”
One of the best things you can do when you prepare a speech is to be a real person.
A stunning and still inspiring speech was Pierre Omidyar’s keynote speech, in that speech Omidyar says,
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