How Much to Say?

A professional speechwriter put it succinctly: "No one will get mad at a speaker who made a twenty-minute speech when he was scheduled for twenty-five minutes." The tolerance level of the typical audience, con­ditioned by half-hour television sitcoms, is not what it used to be. Even captive audiences (employees, fellow professionals, students in class­rooms) become restless when the big hand on the clock completes a full circle. If you've narrowed your topic sufficiently, you can be complete and still be brief. If you've been commissioned to fill an hour, why not plan to devote half of it to fielding questions?

When managers are going to address a friendly and familiar audience, they probably will not ask the public relations department for help in preparing the speech. On the other hand, many managers attained their positions because they were superb engineers, planners, or economic analysts, not because they have a knack for getting an audience in the palms of their hands.

Even when the manager is a competent speaker, making an effec­tive speech is not merely a matter of turning on the charm or reaching into a bag of oratorical tricks. One of the most important contributions the PR department can make, for example, is to research the composi­tion of the audience in order to advise the speaker who the listeners are, what their interest level is, what they already know about the subject, and what kinds of questions they are likely to ask.

Working with the Speaker

By this point, it should be clear that the speechwriter must work with the speaker on every phase of developing the speech. The word choices, even the length and rhythm of the sentences, must be appropriate to the indi­vidual speaking style. The speaker must feel familiar enough with the supporting data to field questions and defend his or her views. And fi­nally, the speaker must have a general confidence in the speech in order to give it with conviction. Ideally, the person selected to write a speech should have worked for some time in close conjunction with the speaker. If that is not the case, then the writer must have access to the speaker to go over the information, and there must be at least one session in which the writer hears the script read by the speaker. That way, the words can be tailored to the speaker, and the speaker can develop the necessary trust in the writer.

Every good writer is not necessarily a good speech writer. Corporations know that, and they often use the consultant services of a specialist who writes major speeches for chief executive officers.

Speechwriters don't necessarily have to be experts about the busi­ness of the company whose CEO they are writing for. That's because their job is to take the information provided by the public relations de­partment and shape it into easy-to-understand statements that are written for the ear, not for the eye.

The key trait for the consummate speechwriter is that he or she is widely read. In addition to absorbing the leading news media and busi­ness publications, the speechwriter also is familiar with the latest non-fiction books on a variety of public affairs topics, and probably also the current novels that deal with problems that affect society.

Part of the speechwriter's homework is to study the style of the CEO—observing the speaker in public situations—in order to choose phrases and expressions that will seem natural when read from a script. The speechwriter must have access to the CEO before the speech is writ­ten and when the first draft is ready for the speaker's comments, ques­tions, and suggestions.