17 June 2008
The Four Speeches Every Speaker Delivers
In any single trip to the podium there are four separate, different speeches every public speaker makes :
1) The one he gives in the car to the event.
2) The one he gives at the event.
3) The one he gives in the car leaving the event.
4) The one his audience heard.
In any speech, I’m lucky if any of two of these match up.
Your Business Blogger(R) was recently honored to give a lecture on Time Management, Managing Management Time(TM) and Completed Staff Work at Morton Blackwell’s Leadership Institute.
As a college professor, I am careful to keep with the speakers’ adage of,
Tell them what you are going to tell them.
Tell them.
Tell them what you’ve told them.
And repetition works in a speech. Repetition does not work in writing. ‘Repeating words’ are hard to read.
But easy to listen to.
So, while I’m busy speechifying with speech-tricks: repeating myself, using four seconds of silence, my audience is getting the message.
However, it wasn’t quite what I wanted to emphasize. They heard what they needed to hear.
Charmaine once made the pages of Vogue magazine. The writer didn’t talk about her flawless debating and managing abilities. Nope. Vogue was only interested in her “sharp” red suit. Clothing was all that interested Vogue.
Like most of us, I guess…
In my talk I made only a head-fake at “Time Management.” I am more interested — and I thought the audience would be more interested — in the Managing of Management Time(TM).
Nope.
A number of attendees came up afterward or sent me emails referring to time management strategies.
I had made only a passing reference to the time-management-of-paper-dictum of,
Do,
Delegate,
or
Destroy.
These days the fourth “D” would be ‘delete’ from the email inbox. A good, efficient staffer or manager only handles a piece of paper or email once.
This wasn’t what the bulk of my talk was about. But in any communication it is not enough merely to transmit a message. It is the sender’s responsibility to know that the message has been received.
Proper transmission and knowing the audience needs is the speaker’s job.
Delectare et Docere.
And sometimes we don’t need to be taught, we just need to be reminded. RR writes,
Dear Mr. Yoest,
I just wanted to thank you for your lecture today. I found it to be very interesting. Especially with regard to the advice you gave, it was very sound and logical.
Sometimes we forget to act according to plain old common sense, and your speech was a great reminder of exactly how acting with common sense can help one manage both his time and his life in general.
After your compelling speech today, I thought that it would be most logical on my part to follow your very own instructions and send you an email. Once again, thank you.
Best Regards,
One attendee, Channa Yu, did, well, get the message,
In particular, your lecture on Time Management spoke deeply to me, as it was directly relevant to the interaction and relationships that take place daily in the APIA office, and related to the past experience I had managing a small painting business last summer.
Through today’s lecture, I realized that the best employees (painters) I had were the diligent ones who carried out the tasks they were entrusted with, solving problems individually first instead of receiving constant direction, and I feel encouraged to do the same in the context I am in now.
I loved the new perspective you brought on how we can best manage our work load and time through an effective relationship with our boss. As an intern and perfectionist, I have often thought of doing the job as flawlessly as possible instead of considering the best approach to take in my tasks or relationships at hand.
Your lecture voiced out important steps to strengthen office relationships and create an efficient office environment, and it was both refreshing and fun to reevaluate my role…
I appreciate your time today as well as your honest and helpful advice, and thank you for a wonderful new perspective on how I can serve my best at the office this summer.
Ms. Yu understood my talk best, perhaps, because she had some managerial experience. Most attendees were individual contributors (as Your Business Blogger(R) is currently) and didn’t have a frame work to build on my brilliance…
The group needed and wanted to learn more about time management: efficiency.
I wanted to talk on management time: effectiveness.
An audience, like a customer, is not always right — but they must always be happy.
I gave four different speeches — and the audience heard the right one. For them.
And we all ended up happy.
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