Nolan Martin :
Hey everyone, thanks for joining us on the NEGOTIATEx podcast. We’re continuing our conversation with Terry Szuplat. If you haven’t already checked out part A of the show, be sure to do that first. Let’s jump into the conversation with Terry.
Aram Donigian :
In addition to, kind of, this crafted prepared start. There’s also your physical presence that feels so important to be able to launch well. The communications professor I had when I was in graduate school, we’d talk about a rocket launch, right? That a lot of people slowly warm up into their start versus this powerful, just ground yourself and rocket launch.
When you think about being able to deliver that hook, well, however you do it, physically, like in terms of physical presence, what’s the advice there?
Rethinking The Role Of Body Language In Effective Communication [00:42]
Terry Szuplat :
What you’re asking about is sort of body language and presence, right? And I’m really torn on this. And I talk about this in the book and I do offer some suggestions on useful tips when it comes to body language.
But the reason I say I’m torn is because I worry that we put too much emphasis on body language because you know, you go online, you go on LinkedIn, there’s all these gurus. And they’ll tell you, you know, you must do these 18 things. You have good body language, you know, to put your feet here and his shoulders here and your hands here.
And don’t ever do this with your hands. Don’t ever do that. And, you know, by the end of it, you might, your head is spinning and you think, wait, I’m supposed to remember all these 18 things when I’m giving a presentation, there’s just no way to do it. There are a lot of great speakers out there, including Barack Obama.
Who, you know, have at times had body language or verbal tics that you would equate with someone who is not an effective speaker. Filler words, too many ums and ahs and maybe not, you know, too many hand gestures, but yet they’re still effective speakers. And so, yeah, I think there are some basic things, you know, stand up straight, you know, smile is one of the most simple things you can do to engage your audience from the very beginning.
But, you know, I encourage people not to get too hung up on body language, you know. I tell the story in the book about a college student who was invited to give her commencement address at her university in Florida and, you know, what an honor, right? Her name is Elizabeth Bonker and she happens to be a nonverbal autism, so she can’t do any of the things that you would associate that we’re always told you must do right?
She can’t maintain eye contact. She didn’t smile. She didn’t, you know, move her hands and bring her audience in. In fact, she can’t even speak. She used text to voice software. A computer played her speech. Her body language was non-existent. It was a phenomenal speech. Absolutely phenomenal. It went viral. It went viral around the world.
Millions of people were inspired by it because the content, her message was so powerful. She delivered a powerful message about using the voice that God gave you. Phenomenal speech went viral, touched the hearts of millions of people around the world. So that is a long way of saying, get the message right. Get your content right first. Do your best with body language, but don’t obsess about it. That’s my take.
NM :
That’s great. When I think of President Obama, he always seemed to take big pauses and then place emphasis on different things. Is that a style that you recommend for nervous speakers or anything like that to just take more pauses and to think about what they say before they say it or any advice on that?
Mastering The Pause: Crafting Impactful Moments In Public Speaking [03:14]
TS :
Well, that was just his particular style and some speakers do it, some speakers don’t. I mean, there is what we call, you know, the power of the pause. You can, sometimes what you don’t say can be as effective as what you do say. You can drop a powerful idea and then pause for a moment. Let it sink in with the audience.
Let them process it for a second. Don’t just run over the idea. Pausing gives your audience a chance to applaud if they want. I’ve seen a lot of speakers deliver just a phenomenal line or make a terrific point. And you can just see the audience, they start to put their hands up to clap and then the speaker keeps going.
So they’ve denied the audience a chance to participate in the experience, which is not good. Because again, speeches are in the end experiences between the speaker and the audience. And so there’s a lot of reasons to use the pause. I mean, you can use it too often. We’ve probably all been in situations where you want the speaker to pick up the pace a little bit.
So yeah, I think it’s a person by person thing, but there, I write about that a little bit about, there are ways you can use the pause to make your point.
NM :
What you just said reminded me of maybe a comedian that tells a joke and, you know, he’s expecting, or she’s expecting the audience to go crazy and they don’t. So are there times in a speech where you’re anticipating? An awesome applause and it doesn’t come, but you like programmed in a pause there and it’s just kind of awkward for a second.
TS :
Yeah, you know, it happened. You know, it’s funny whether we were in person at the event with the president or back at our desk at the White House watching it live. You know, we would write it. I would write a speech, imagining that, okay, this is a moment where the audience might cheer or applaud. You know, this is kind of a powerful point. I could see them engaging. And there were some, you know, a lot of times it worked, but then sometimes it didn’t. And so it was interesting to watch because I would watch, I was like, okay, the audience, here’s the line, it’s coming up, nothing.
And I could almost see President Obama kind of like, all right, okay. And then, maybe it would happen again a minute later and like, okay, this audience is for whatever reason, this audience is not feeling it. And I found there were many occasions where clearly he’s the one giving the speech. He was seeing the same thing.
He then didn’t deliver the third line with the emphasis that I had imagined him doing it. And I never had a chance to talk to him about this, but I sometimes wondered, you know, is he sensing what I’m sensing with this audience is just not there. So, there’s no sense in nailing that line every single time. You’re just not going to get the feedback you want. So, but again, that speaks to what’s going on here. Good speeches, good presentations are an experience between the speaker and the audience and it can build on itself. We’ve all seen great examples of that. You know, the audience applause, the speaker starts riding the applause.
They kind of talk over the applause, which adds another element of drama to it. But the opposite can happen too. And I would sort of put my head down at my desk like, well, today’s not the day.
NM :
It reminds me of Michael Scott as he takes the stage before Dwight gets up there to give his salesman of the year speech. And he goes to pump up the crowd, says all these jokes, nothing happens, runs off stage, says, tough crowd. Good luck.
TS :
Yeah, right. Exactly. And it becomes a cycle because I’ve sometimes wondered, I remember sitting there watching the president going, okay, no, don’t like give up. There’s some great stuff coming, like just really nail it.
And, but you know, if the audience, you know, maybe it was too hot. Maybe the audience has been sitting there for hours waiting, you never knew what was maybe the pre-speech music, what didn’t get him in the mood. You just never know. It’s just, but you know, sometimes it just doesn’t happen. And I talk about that in the book, the president, I should say, you know, a lot of the book is me sharing my conversations with the president from what it was like to learn from him.
And, and one of the things he talks about, you know, it’s. Some days you’re just not there. It’s like you’re shooting hoops and things are just clanking off the backboard. It’s just not happening and you do your best.
You said that, you know, as a cadet, we had President Obama come to West Point a couple times. And whenever he’d speak, the whole corps would go to the auditorium, but we’d have to go through security first.
TS :
That was nice of you to do, by the way. You had to do that, I think. That was a command performance, wasn’t it?
NM :
Yeah, but it was cool. I mean, it’s still a unique opportunity. Did it with President Bush as well, but we’d get there like four hours early. And so, and we’re in dress uniform, it’s hot, so by the time he gets up there,
TS :
No one’s having fun.
NM :
Yeah, there’s like, occasionally the camera will catch a sleeping cadet, and it’s like, all hell breaks loose, but, so I can understand the audience in those rare moments, so.
AD :
I wanna ask about writing jokes, because, are all speech writers expected to be comedians too, and be able to write jokes that are going to, you know, kind of land because you’re talking about speech writing, you know, or giving a speech as this experience between the speaker and the audience. And humor is a great way to connect.
I also have a cadet story. I remember sitting and listening to Vice President Gore deliver some jokes that weren’t that funny. So I’m just curious, how hard is it to add the humor piece in?
The Subtle Craft Of Humor In Speechwriting [07:50]
TS :
If all speech writers had to be comedians, I probably wouldn’t be a very good speech writer. So, you know, you use two different words in there and I appreciate that jokes versus humor, right? So, you know, everyone thinks of the correspondence dinner speeches that presidents give every year where they go in and then for about 20 minutes, they sound like a standup comedian, right? And those are jokes.
You know, it’s what we see on late night television every night. It’s serious line joke. We know what the two set up the delivery. Those are jokes. I don’t write jokes. I’ve never known how to do that, but we could get a lot of laughs. I wrote for the, like I said, I wrote for the President for nearly eight years in more than 40 countries, and we could get laughs.
And we did that by using humor. And one of my colleagues, John Lovett, who took the lead on a lot of the President’s correspondence dinners when he was there, And, who’s a very funny guy. I interviewed him for this book and he had this, I’m going to butcher it, but he had a beautiful explanation for what humor is.
And it was something to the effect of, and it’s in the book. Humor is when we surprise and delight our audience in a shared connection. And the laughter is that emotional release, right? So you get a laugh when you give a shout out to the local sports team or the favorite food of that city or something they’ve done, or what you had for dinner last night that they love, or just, again, a shared experience.
People delight in that and it often surprises them. And it leads to them laughing. I have to say, I worked on a speech for the President to the Parliament of India. And, you know, the government of India wanted the speech to be all about science and technology and the rise of India. And, you know, there was a lot of that in there.
But we also felt it was important for the President to speak to just ordinary folks, ordinary people in India, including people, you know, just a few miles away in some pretty, you know, rough conditions. I mean, we often use the word slum to describe their neighborhoods, you know, no electricity, no running water.
And we imagined someone, you know, crowding around a television somewhere watching that. And we thought it would be important if he mentioned some of those neighborhoods where people are just working every day to kind of eke out a living and he did. I was sitting there in the Indian Parliament with him and I heard laughter. I heard people laughing in the chamber and it confused me so much and I think why are they laughing, you know?
He just took a moment to recognize some of the most sort of vulnerable people on the face of the earth and I asked some Indians about it later and oh, they just couldn’t believe he mentioned their neighborhood. They were so surprised. They were so delighted. They weren’t laughing out of mockery. They were laughing out of just an emotional release.
And so again, that’s not humor, but that brings joy. How can you bring joy to your audience? So, that’s what I would spend a lot of time on. Sometimes I would think, you know, what can we say in the first 30 seconds or so that might get Barack Obama flashing that big smile, which will get the audience smiling?
Or what could he say that might get a chuckle out of him and then get a chuckle out of the audience to kind of have everyone, again, delight in some sort of shared connection. So I think that’s, but the great thing about it, you don’t have to be a joke writer. You know, people often come to me, I have to give a speech.
I need a joke. No, you don’t need a joke. You just need to find some sort of connection that’ll let you surprise and delight the audience.
AD :
Now, maintaining that connection throughout the speech is critical. You mentioned that before. You mentioned the structure about beginning, middle, and end. It feels like in the middle. If I’m really, if that’s the place that I’m trying to deliver some meat, all right, make some key points, maybe even get really technical, but that’s where the detail is going to be.
My kids are involved in speech competitions. I feel like that’s always where the audience will start to go to sleep. You had a great hook or something. You got a great wrap up coming or something, but it’s in that meat. Does that happen at all levels? And then how do you advise speakers to keep the audience engaged during that really more dense or meaty part of what they’re trying to say?
Engaging The Middle: Transforming The Core Of Speeches With Storytelling & Connection [11:41]
TS :
The middle is where the West Point cadet falls asleep, right? That’s when the head drops. And we’ve had plenty of examples of that over the years of different leaders speaking to groups like that, if you think of the middle is where you do the business, the work of the speech, the purpose of the speech, every speech has a different purpose. That’s kind of where you’re doing it.
I think that’s where storytelling becomes even more important. You know, you can bring out your policy ideas, the, your proposals, your initiatives, your four point plans, whatever through stories, it doesn’t all have to be just dense policy or dense programmatic, tell a story about the kind of person you’re trying to help.
Tell a story of the problem that you’re trying to fix, bring it alive. That’s going to make it more memorable. It doesn’t have to be a slog. And even, you know, we went through, I thank God I was never the lead speechwriter on a State of the Union address. State of the Union is that speech that every speechwriter says they want to write and then when they do it once, they never want to do it again.
It’s sort of a brutal process. I would assist with them. I would help with them. Sometimes I take a first crack at the foreign policy section, but thank God I never had to be responsible for the whole thing. I could be an editor and but yeah, state of the unions are a great example. I mean, we’ve all right as citizens, we’ve sat through those things are brutal.
No matter how hard the president or the speechwriters try they’re almost always as brutal a litany of policies You know, they bring in the stories of ordinary folks to try to liven it up some jokes to liven up But it’s hard. I have a whole chapter of the book devoted to the middle. And I think another one of the ways you can do it is rather than thinking about it as sort of bland policy points, thinking about it as an opportunity to really connect with your audience around shared values.
As divided and polarized as we are, research and study shows that there still are basic fundamental core principles that most Americans believe in. The challenges that everyday politicians and TV pundits aren’t. They’re talking about that. They’re talking about the things that supposedly divide us. So, but, you as a speaker, you can make a different choice. We can all make a different choice and we can choose to try to appeal to our audiences around the things that we share.
AD :
Yeah. And as you talk about a State of the Union. I also find that the ones that land particularly well with me are. I can follow the transitions makes sense. There’s a structure to where the president is going. It doesn’t feel like we’re jumping from here to there, right? On different issues. And what’s that storytelling piece, right? That in their mind, anyways, there’s a story to what they’re saying, even if it involves different pieces.
TS :
Yeah. And it should, right? Right. This is, I mean, the State of Unions, right. That, yeah, we’ve all sat through them and a president will say, now let me talk about the economy. Like, wait a second. I thought we were just talking about something that’s sounds just like a list.
This is not fun and interesting to listen to. Yeah, to always try to find some sort of core animating theme that does connect things, disparate topics. We tried very hard to do that. I wish more presidents would try to do that. I think we owe the American people coherence, a compelling vision. It’s not just, you know, there is a connection between the economy and the environment.
There is a connection between immigration and inflation and whatever, what have you, and housing. These things relate to one another. So, like a good book, like a good movie. We’ve all seen bad cuts in movies. There are bad cuts in speeches too. So yeah, I think having a coherent story, and one of the things that President Obama would tell us when we would, for a particularly big speech, we’d get to go up to the Oval Office and sit with him and listen and kind of get his thoughts. And one of the things he would often say to us was, you know, before we ever get into all the details and the mechanics was, you know, what’s the story we’re trying to tell here, which was his way of saying, you know, just what’s the big message you want the audience to remember before you go off and try to tell them 10 different things.
And so in the book, I recommend this is something we can all do to set aside time before we start trying to write a presentation or create a hundred slide deck PowerPoint. What is it I want my audience to remember? What’s the one thing I want them to take away. You get that right. And it makes the whole process much easier.
AD :
All right. Well, that ties to the last part of your structure. How do you start? What’s the middle? Now the end. So you have a chapter in the book called the only way to end a speech. Nolan and I are dying to know what’s the only way to end a speech. What do the great communicators do, how do they conclude and how do they leave that audience?
The Power of Hope: Ending Speeches with Optimism to Inspire Action [15:51]
TS :
I think, great communicators, great presenters, great speakers, great leaders always end their speech with hope. There is no point in getting up and standing up in front of a group of people in person or on television. Taking their time, asking them to listen to what you have to say, unless you’re going to leave them with a sense of hope and optimism that the thing you’re trying to do is possible.
That the war can be ended, the disease can be cured, the economy can be improved, the fires can be put out. Whatever it is you’re speaking about, that this company can do better next quarter. We can beat the competition. We can raise more money. Unless you actually believe and give your audience a sense that they can actually do it.
I mean, cause that’s the purpose, right? You’re taking people’s time because you want them to do something. Think differently, act differently, work harder. You have to leave your audience with a sense of hope. There’s a lot of science behind hope and what optimism really is. There’s a neuroscientist out of the UK who spent years studying how we all think about the future and just very, I’m not a neuroscientist, but I’ll paraphrase it, that we tend to overestimate the likelihood of good things happening in our lives and underestimate the likelihood of bad things happening.
They call it the optimism bias. And they feel that like in their research, they find that about, you know, 80% of people across cultures and countries and backgrounds and demographics have this bias. Most people believe that if you work hard, you can make things better. I think as speakers, as a presenter, this gives us a superpower.
Because if most of the people in your audience believe that tomorrow can be better, believe that the problem can be solved, then it’s your job as a speaker to really tap into that and just release that and unleash that optimism. And then, you know, again, we see great leaders throughout history, politics, business, advocacy.
When you give people a sense of hope, it’s remarkable what they will do. Soldiers will sacrifice, people will work long hours. Give them hope that they can actually achieve something, a goal to work towards that’s achievable and your audience will, you know, will rise to the occasion. So, that to me, yeah, great speakers always end with hope.
NM :
Terry, as you reflect on a lifetime of work and at the highest level, is there one speech that you’ve crafted that you’re most proud of that not only landed with the audience, but truly changed something or had the desired impact?
How Personalized Speechwriting Can Resonate With A Broad Audience [17:59]
TS :
Yeah. So I grew up in Massachusetts. And so after the Boston Marathon bombing, and we heard that the president was going to go up and speak at the memorial, I asked if I could take the lead on our speech writing team and working with the president on it, because I knew how important it would be to my family and friends back home.
And so, you know, one of the things I’ve always tried to do when I work on a speech is imagine one person that I’m writing the speech to. You know, and I encourage people to do this. You know, you have to give a speech, a eulogy, a tribute, a toast, or a presentation at work. Oh my God, I have to speak to 50 people, 500 people, 5,000 people.
That’s how do I connect with that many people? It’s almost impossible to imagine. Just pick one person, someone who maybe even, you know, and write the speech, prepare the presentation for them. If you can connect with them, you probably connect with most of the people in the audience. So all that week.
Working on the Boston Marathon draft. I was thinking of my family and friends back home, including my uncle Dan, who’s sort of a lifelong Bostonian, Boston through and through. Everything you love and loathe about Boston. He was that, and he was also a staunch conservative who didn’t care for Obama, didn’t particularly care for the fact that I was working for him.
And so Thanksgiving dinners were always a joy. But I thought for, you know, I, a lot of that week I was thinking, what, maybe in this one moment, what could Barack Obama say that might resonate with someone like my uncle Dan? And I kind of imagined him watching it in a pub with his buddies. And so much of that speech with the president’s edits, by the way, he really went multiple rounds and just really took the speech to a whole different level, both in terms of his edits and his delivery at the pulpit.
And one of our staffers, also from Massachusetts, said that speech was a love letter to Boston. And it really was later that day, I noticed I had a voicemail on my phone and I listened. It was my uncle Dan and I could tell from the background noise, he was in a pub with his buddies in Boston and in his thick Boston accent, you know, he said something to the effect of, you know, we all just watched the speech, the president did a very fine job and he hung up.
It was about as much as he was ever going to say about Barack Obama. But I, that experience, the reason I say all this is because it really reminded me that, you know, as divided and as polarized as we are, there are still things and spaces and places where we can come together as Americans.
There are things that we share. That if we can lean into them, if we can speak to those things, you know, not everything has to be political. If we can move the conversation into these areas where there are still things we share, then you can actually have a connection, an unlikely connection, even with the most skeptical of audiences.
And so to be able to have played a part in a speech like that meant a lot to me. I would say one of the things I always tell people is, so you can do it too. You know, when you’re giving a presentation, again, maybe don’t focus on the fact you have to speak to a thousand people or a hundred people or ten people.
Just find that one person, find your Uncle Dan, prepare the presentation for them, and they will, I guarantee you, if you can connect with that one person, you can connect with the whole room.
AD :
Well, I just love that story. I, when I think about the work that, you know, again, that we’re trying to accomplish through this podcast and that others in this field are accomplishing, trying to work, it’s finding those places and the ability to have those conversations.
And I love how you both thought through it and then created an environment in which words could land and be heard, perhaps. Differently than they would have been without the same kind of care and attention.
Terry, as we get ready to wrap up, kind of a final thought or question. Most of our listeners are never going to give a speech on a global stage or have to write one that will be delivered on the global stage, but they still need to influence in their daily lives.
And as you were just referring to, these skills have great application to us drawing closer together as individuals and as a society. So what final word or thought would you give in terms of encouragement for someone who says, I want to take some ownership over my ability, both written and spoken word to get better, what would you tell them?
Be Yourself: Terry’s Final Thoughts on Authentic Public Speaking [21:44]
TS :
I’d say you’ve got this. You actually have everything you need to excel and to succeed at this already. You may, even if you haven’t done it again, the audience is looking for something authentic, something unique from you. Say what only you can say, that’s one of the chapters in the book. Don’t try, you don’t have to be anybody else.
You don’t have to sound like Barack Obama or Ronald Reagan or whoever it is you admire. That’s not who they want. They want you. And so however you speak, however you carry yourself, that’s what they want. That’s what they’re looking for. Be willing to share stories and experiences from your own life. Be vulnerable and yeah, don’t be afraid to kind of be vulnerable and share the parts of yourself and the parts of your work that maybe you don’t always feel comfortable talking about. It will make for a remarkable presentation.
AD :
I really appreciate that authenticity and vulnerability, two great ingredients to connecting more effectively. Thanks, Terry.
TS :
Thank you so much.
AD :
This has been great. Really appreciate you taking the time. I know you have a busy schedule. Thanks so much for the book that you’ve written. I’ve already told my older kids, it’s going to be on their reading list this spring as they get ready for speech competition.
TS :
Oh, great.
AD :
Thanks a lot though for being with us.
TS :
I appreciate it.
NM :
That is it for us on today’s podcast. Be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the NEGOTIATEx podcast if you haven’t already, and we’ll see you in the next episode.
