DB Post

Public Speaking Techniques One of the things you may have noticed about this course is that it took us nine sessions before we start to talk in earnest today about speeches as a part of leadership communication. This was for a reason. While we as a society inherently focus on speeches as a very public forum to test a leader's ability to inspire a vision, take charge, and create a sense of magnetism, the truth is that most leaders communicate much more in other settings which are not so public. Most leaders spend much more time in small group meetings, interacting with people person-to-person, making calls, drafting memos, and the like, than they will ever spend making speeches. These other forms of communication are, in many respects, just as important if not more so than any speech a leader could giv But nonetheless, speeches are an important part of a leader's job. While they may be infrequent for many leaders, speeches provide one of the best platforms for a leader to inspire a collective vision within his/her followers. They are a very public way of displaying the pathos and ethos of the leader's message and can provide a memorable way to cement values into a corporate culture One of the reasons we spent so much time prior to this week on the topic of knowing yourself, knowing your audience, and crafting a message is that these are essential elements of any good speech. Great speeches don't just happen; they require a great deal of foresight, practice, and cultivation. One of the books we read for this course, Talk Like TED, provides some of the basics of what it takes to create a compelling speech. We will look at some of these elements together in this session by looking at Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. While most of us will never have the chance to speak from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to a crowd of tens of thousands, my hope is that, by dissecting his speech, we can gain some insight into how to create our own speeches that can inspire others towards a common goal, much as MLK did with his speech. Text of the "I Have a Dream" Speech First, let's read the text of the "I Have a Dream" speech together: I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation. Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity. But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination.

One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children. It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges. But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here

today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: "For Whites Only." We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream." I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest-quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends. And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today! I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification"-one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today! I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together." This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day. And this will be the day—-this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning: My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride, From every mountainside, let freedom ring! And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania. Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California. But not only that: Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee. Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! What a powerful speech that was! Reading those words s powerful, but let's watch it together to see the true power behind its delivery, as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I47Y6VHc3Ms Now, after reading the speech and listening to it being delivered, let's unpack its key qualities together. Crafting a Speech which is Emotional In his book, Talk Like TED, Carmine Gallo has three chapters on the topic of making a speech emotional: 1) Unleash the Master Within; 2) Master the Art of Storytelling; and 3) Have a Conversation. In the first chapter, he discusses the need for speakers to find a topic they are passionate about sharing with their audience. As he notes, many speakers focus on mundane topics, never bothering to bring forth topics they truly have a passion for sharing. Yet Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK) exemplified the type of passion one needs to truly make an emotional appeal to one's audience. This is where watching the video is particularly helpful, for in watching MLK's body language, you can see that he is passionate: he appears resolute, brings his whole body into the message, and emphasizes his points with hand gestures that are not contrived, but come out of an overflow of his own emotions. It is clear that he is not someone who is delivering a mundane speech about a mundane topic; instead, everyone who watched can see that he is excited about delivering a speech that will hopefully inspire a nation. Gallo's second chapter discusses how a leader can utilize good storytelling techniques to create an emotional appeal. As he notes, most good speechwriters draft messages that have a combination of ethos (building credibility), logos (providing evidence for your assertions), and pathos (creating an emotional appeal), with the heavy emphasis on pathos. Like most great speakers, MLK did this well in his speech. In the first few paragraphs alone, he devoted much of his language to building an emotional appeal to his audience through the use of word-images such as "a great beacon light of hope," "seared in the flames of withering injustice," "the manacles of segregation," and "lonely islands of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity." Likewise, throughout the speech, he used phrases and quotes from songs, the Bible, and familiar quotes to connect emotionally with his audience. He talks about his children and the rest of the children of America, and talks of places that each of them knew: Stone Mountain, Lookout Mountain, and the molehills of Mississippi. All of these phrases provided an

emotional undercurrent for the speech that allowed people to understand and embrace his deeper points (such as the imagery of a promissory note that harkens back to the Declaration of Independence itself). By creating the emotional bond with his listeners, MLK was able to drive home his deeper points about the need for a better future for Black Americans. Gallo's third chapter discusses a grab-bag of speaking techniques that can help a speaker connect emotionally with his/her audience—from tone, to rate of speech, to hand gestures, and more. While he gives some good advice on each of these topics, even going so far as to analyze the preferred rate of speech (he says it should be faster than 150 words per minute), I think his key point is that speakers should use a conversational style that feels comfortable to them and which they practice relentlessly. No two people are alike, and thus no two speakers are alike. For instance, communication theorists have praised MLK's speech for decades, but his average rate of speech is roughly 104 words per minute, far lower than what Gallo recommends. But the key to MLK's effectiveness is that he crafted a style that fit his natural giftedness and practiced it relentlessly until it became a powerful technique. He used a tone that worked for him, rising with the tide of his most passionate words, and waning with the more subtle moments in between. He used a rate of speech which fluctuated to accentuate his most important points and most emotional appeals (e.g., he ended the speech talking much more quickly than he began). Finally, he used hand gestures and bodily movements that were natural for him, and which emphasized the words he was saying. In light of Gallo's recommendations and MLK's speech, I think the takeaway for aspiring leaders is to utilize a style that fits your personality and practice it religiously so that you can draw out the emotion using techniques that work for you. Do not try to be MLK; be yourself, and let your own passion drive the stylistic techniques that show your own passion for the topic. Crafting a Speech Which Is Novel The next three chapters of Gallo's book focus on creating a speech that is novel. In chapter 4, "Teach Me Something New," he offers this bit of advice: "Reveal information that's completely new to your audience, is packaged differently, or offers a fresh and novel way to solve an old problem" (p. 134). MLK shined in this particular aspect. In multiple places throughout the speech, he recast the meaning of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the legacy of Abraham Lincoln and his Emancipation Proclamation. As discussed before, he focused his logos (evidentiary argument) around the ideal of a promissory note created by the "architects of our republic." This novel argument was both extremely complex and deep while also being easy enough for all of his listeners to understand. Likewise, near the end of his speech, he recasts one of the hallowed songs in American society, "My Country 'Tis of Thee," and states that he hopes it can be sung by all Americans with "new meaning." During the whole of the speech, he constantly recasts old ideals into a new imagery that spoke to the people of his day (and even down the centuries to the people of our day). Gallo's fifth chapter talks about delivering "jaw-dropping moments." Again, MLK was masterful at delivering just the type of rhetorical bombshells that made his speech so evocative. For one,

his consistent, repetitive, and emotional phrases "I Have a Dream" and "Let Freedom Ring" created a cohesive pathos throughout the speech that drew together all of his thoughts. But much more than connecting the dots, these phrases punctuated his ideas with words that each man and woman present could remember. Whether they took away nothing more from the speech, each person could likely have recounted MLK's dream to "Let Freedom Ring." Likewise, MLK included other jaw-dropping moments such as when he forcefully noted: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." What an emotional appeal that any parent could understand! And his closing lines, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!" created the type of emotional crescendo that made this speech resonate in the minds and hearts of his listeners. While most leaders will never be able to deliver a speech with such jaw-dropping moments as MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech, I do believe we can also look for stories that create a heart-tugging moment with our audience. Just as MLK, who was a father, used the imagery of his own children to evoke a deeper dream within his listeners, so, too, can we use the stories and images of our everyday lives to drive home our points. As I prepare Sunday School lessons, lectures, and speeches myself, I find that some of my most powerful moments are when I share a truth from a story about one of my own children. Such stories make the speech more relatable and stick with the listener long after the finer points have been lost. For the sake of time, we will skip over Gallo's chapter on "lightening up," especially since this concept was not particularly relevant to MLK's speech as he was speaking on such a weighty topic. Crafting a Speech Which Is Memorable Gallo's last three chapters focus on making a speech memorable. Gallo argues that leaders should "stick to the 18-minute rule," "paint a mental picture," and "stay in your lane." Once again, MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech is a good example of many of these concepts. MLK's speech, lasting only 16 minutes, is one of the most remembered speeches in American history. His second paragraph ("Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation") harkens back to another very short speech, the Gettysburg Address. While both were short speeches, they packed a rhetorical punch that left listeners and readers inspired to change the nation. I believe this was because both painted mental pictures that drew people to a higher plane of thinking. For MLK, this imagery included the famous promissory note, the use of phrases such as "a great beacon light of hope," the imagery of specific places in the South, and even of his own children. During his speech, you can almost see yourself on a mountain top looking down, listening to his words "Let Freedom Ring!" Whether rich or poor, black or white, Northern or Southern, everyone in his audience could understand these simple images that evoked so much meaning. These were not images that he had conjured up out of nowhere; instead, they were images from his own childhood, from his own experiences, and from the places he had been himself. He "stayed in

his lane" by not creating obtuse arguments, but instead sharing his heart with his listeners through the mental pictures he painted. Conclusion While most of us will never give a speech that has near the significance that MLK's speech had, it is still inspiring to analyze MLK's speechmaking abilities to glean wisdom for our own speeches. From Gallo's book and this analysis of MLK's speech, we can see that it is important for leaders to find their voice, craft a message that uses their own experiences and stories, and then practice that speech till they can deliver it with passion, emotion, and confidence. As you create your own speeches, I hope that you will take the time to practically apply these lessons in your own vocational context.