My foray to Geneva last week to give a two-day Speechwriting in Action masterclass to international officials went well:
The workshop you facilitated was truly exceptional. The drastic improvement one could observe from one day to another was more than convincing
My instincts did not let me down when I decided to follow the entire programme myself. It was definitely one of the highlights during my 5 years in charge of staff development
This one featured the luckless participants both drafting and delivering short speeches. In the final exercise they had to produce a short speech and then watch someone else do their best to deliver it. Vivid! It showed just how tricky it is to turn words on paper into something that sounds like a conversation with the audience, not a lecture. What works, what doesn't.
Plus the hosts were good sports, allowing me to take one of their former speeches and go through it paragraph by paragraph, showing how small drafting changes could bring it to life.
The main problem for many speechwriters is, of course, the propensity of the speaker to use good material. The culture of international organisations is crushingly risk-averse on many levels simultaneously - it's just so much easier to slump into vacuous platitudes and above all say nothing that might be taken by anyone on Earth as 'controversial'. Motivating speechwriters to lift their game in such circumstances is not easy.
That said, even the dullest international functionary might be willing to sound like a real human being now and again. And there are many easy ways to use a text to make that happen. So, despair not. Well, not too much.
In June I go off on a Baltic cruise during which I give some lectures on the End of Communism. While afloat I hope to have a stab at writing a short book on Speechwriting, drawing on my own experience of watching top people give top speeches, organising venues for top speeches and even drafting a few.
The point is that you have to look at the whole process, from getting the first letter of invitation through to what the final text looks like on the Internet. What is the whole speech really about? Where does it fit in to everything else going on? What tone does it need to adopt, and how to make sure that on the day the words and the presentation of the speech do in fact hit just that tone?
To this end I have been running some FOI requests past the friendly FCO and retrieving some telegrams I sent reporting on big-ticket or otherwise noteworthy speeches:
• Prime Minister John Major in Moscow in 1995 for the 50th anniversary of the end of WW2
• Pope John Paul II in Sarajevo in April 1997
• French FM Vedrine and German FM Kinkel in Sarajevo (December 1997)
• US President Bill Clinton in Sarajevo (December 1997)
• French President Chirac in Sarajevo (April 1998)
• Serbian PM Zoran Djindjic at the LSE (23 April 2002)
• Russian President Putin, HRH The Earl of Wessex and others at Auschwitz in January 2005
• Pope Benedict XVI at Auschwitz on 28 May 2006
• Polish President Lech Kaczynski during an official visit to the UK (November 2006)
Good to see some of this material reappearing. Brings back memories.
The problem in the meantime is that I have to zoom off today to a school to lead a session on Difficult Conversations, then I head back to my own old school on Friday to harangue the sixth form on Some Lessons for Life. Then I have to prepare a draft presentation for someone at a fancy business dinner, before racing to Stockholm to give a workshop on Presentation Skills. Then it's off to Torun in Poland for this year's YoungMarkets event, before I dash to the ship and become a cruiser. And the rest.
While all that is going on, I am leading a session on Speechwriting at the forthcoming European Speechwriters' Network conference in London on 15 May. Tickets are still available. So be there. Or send your colleagues. Or be square.
