Nolan Martin :
Hello, welcome to the NEGOTIATEx Podcast. My name is Nolan Martin. With me, as always, is my good friend, Aram Donigian. Aram, you want to kick it off for today?
Aram Donigian :
Thanks, Nolan. I’ll do that. Terry Szuplat is a sought-after speaker and trainer and the author of the national bestseller: Say It Well: Find Your Voice, Speak Your Mind, Inspire Any Audience, in which he shares the public speaking lessons, he learned as one of president Barack Obama’s longest serving white house speech writers.
From 2009 to 2017, Terry served as a special assistant to the president. And as a member of the national security council staff, and from 2013 to 2017, he was the deputy director of the white house speech writing office. Today, Terry runs his own speech writing firm, Global Voices Communications, and he teaches speech writing at his alma mater, American University School of Public Affairs. He lives outside Washington D.C. with his wife and two children. Terry, welcome to the NEGOTIATEx podcast.
Terry Szuplat :
Thanks so much for having me here. It’s great to be with you.
AD :
So, maybe you can answer one of those burning questions. It’s one of those for as long as time questions and here it is: Are great speech writers born or made?
Terry’s Unexpected Journey From Aspiring Lawyer To Speechwriter [01:10]
TS :
I think great speech writers are like great public speakers, great speakers. They’re never born. They’re always made.
AD :
So Terry, if great speechwriters are made, I’m curious about your own journey. Was this a natural calling for you, a natural path, or how did you get into this line of work?
TS :
Not at all. I think, you know, very few people, it seems, grow up wanting to be speechwriters. In fact, even now, when I speak to people, a lot of folks don’t realize it’s something you can actually do with your life as a career path. And I certainly did.
I came to Washington D.C. for college. Like so many people in Washington, I thought I was going to be a lawyer. I was going to go argue cases before the Supreme Court, but sort of a funny, not so funny thing happened on the way to law school. I didn’t get into law school. So as I was preparing to take the LSAT again, trying to improve my skills around that area, I got a speech writing job at the department of defense for the secretary of defense.
Something I’d always been interested in rhetoric and government and politics and history. And in the course of that job, just absolutely fell in love with it. Love the idea of helping a leader, kind of find their voice, capture their voice, be the best version of themselves at the podium and never applied to law school again, so I’m grateful and it’s just led to an incredible career of opportunities that I could never have even dreamed of.
AD :
That’s great. It’s amazing. The doors that open when other doors shut. Terry, we’re recording this on the day that in 1776, Thomas Paine published common sense. And although there was a pamphlet, it was commonly read out loud to the people of the time. In less than a week from now, we’re going to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday.
And obviously we’ll be thinking of his, I have a dream speech and his letter from a Birmingham prison and so many of his other great, you know, both written and spoken words. If you were to pick one speech, not one that you’ve written on, but one that inspires you, or you just think is the epitome of kind of what the written and spoken word should be. What would it be? What’s your favorite?
How Historical Voices Inspire Modern Movements [02:55]
TS :
Well, you know, you’ve mentioned some of the greats and there’s so many others. I think one that I always enjoy that I always go back to is Robert F. Kennedy’s speech in South Africa in 1966, often referred to as sort of the ripples of hope speech. And there he is speaking in apartheid South Africa.
He’s speaking to an audience of young people and he has this famous line where he, you know, he talks about how, you know, every act of compassion, every act of courage is like a small ripple that builds over time and can wash away the mightiest walls of oppression.
It’s just, you know, really just a beautiful, I think, distillation of the power of the individual to make change in the world against seemingly overwhelming odds. And there’s a beautiful passage too, where he recites, he goes through history and talks about some of the great leaders in history, Martin Luther, the Protestant Reformation, the great leaders, Thomas Jefferson, just 32 years old, he points out so many of them were just young people.
We think of them as these gray haired giants of history, but so many of them were young. And so it’s just a beautiful tribute. I think, you know, anyone who’s ever sort of down or doubting their ability to make change in the world, it’s a great speech to go back to. And it does what all great speeches and presentations do. You know, it’s timeless. It’s something that speaks to people even today.
NM :
You’ve had the unique opportunity to craft speeches for the US President. What did you learn about the power of words to influence people at the highest levels of government and beyond.
The Dual Pillars Of Leadership: Mastering Communication & Bridging The Gap To Action [04:14]
TS :
Two big lessons that I took away from that experience and they’re sort of the opposite sides of the same coin, which one is that leadership, in so many ways, does come down to communication. You can be a great technician, a tactician. You can be great at moving the levers of government and institutions and getting these complex bureaucracies to do what you want to do. That’s a component of leadership, but so much of leadership ultimately comes back to your ability to articulate some just very basic, profound questions.
Who you are, why you should be in that job, why people should trust you, what your values are, what your vision is for that organization or for the community you lead or the country you lead. If you can’t, you know, we’ve seen, and I think there are a lot of great examples of this. Leaders who, you know, they’re good people, they’re decent people. Maybe they’re good at running an organization, but they’re not effective communicators. And I think ultimately those leaders don’t succeed.
So I think that experience, eight years of writing for someone who, whether you liked his politics or not, I think everyone agrees is a very effective communicator taught me that, but then it also taught me about the limits of rhetoric, the limits of words. Ted Sorensen, John F. Kennedy’s legendary speech writer, once wrote that simply saying so doesn’t make it so. You know, you can’t just go out and give a speech and everybody falls in line. The speech, the rhetoric, the communication, that’s the beginning of the process.
That’s I think whether it was in the Barack Obama presidency or other presidencies, you know, you can see the limits of rhetoric as well. And, you know, beautiful words alone don’t solve wars, you know, end wars, end epidemics, cure ails, social ailes. You actually have to go and do the work. Your words have to be matched by deeds and that’s something I talk about in the book as well.
People ask me, you know, what’s your measure of a good speech? And to me, the measure of a good speech is it’s not so much what someone says at the podium. It’s actually what the audience does when the speaker’s done speaking, whether their words actually have life and legs and go out and actually inspire people to work harder, to donate more, to try harder, and then whether it gives people hope decades later, like I was talking about the RFK speech.
NM :
You highlight there that’s a critical skill for leaders. How can organizations help develop this skill amongst their leaders or their junior leaders just to improve the organization?
Elevating Organizational Success Through Enhanced Communication Skills [06:23]
TS :
Yeah. Well, I think number one, just simply recognizing it as a skill that’s important to the success of the organization. Organizations have workforce development budgets, leadership development budgets. They learn all sorts of skills. And one of the reasons that organizations bring me in to advise them is because I think a lot of them don’t have this built in capacity to, you know, make their leaders better communicators.
And one of the things that I tell folks when I come into organizations is that whether you see yourself as a core public speaker or not, everybody is a communicator on behalf of your organization because every day you’re communicating to your team, to your colleagues, to your peers, to your superiors, to your customers, your clients, your potential customers and potential clients, the basic, you know, who you are, what you do, what makes you different, why they should partner with you.
It’s not always in front of a group of people. It can be on an email, it can be in a zoom, it can be on a phone call. We’re all communicators and it’s something we all have to invest in.
AD :
You just listed a very wide range of potential audience members, internal and external. You’ve written speeches on many different complex topics for a, you know, a very wide assortment of international audiences.
How do you think about crafting messages to ensure that they resonate appropriately with the listener, whoever they are, wherever they might be, while also ensuring. As you were talking about the RFK speech that they’re more than just a soundbite or white noise because there’s just so much out there these days and the message is actually it’s memorable.It’s lasting.
Understanding Your Audience In Leadership Communication [07:52]
TS :
I think, and I talk about this in the book, I think one of the, you know, great communicators spend a lot of time thinking about their audience deeply about the audience. Who are they? What do they want? What are their values? What are their lived experiences? What are their expectations?
What do they need in that moment? Are they hopeful? Are they scared? Are they optimistic? Are they pessimistic? What’s driving them? What’s going on in their lives? I think great communicators speak to all of that. In the book, I list out 10 questions that I think everybody should answer before we ever get up to give a presentation, a speech, a pitch of any kind.
And a lot of the questions are about exactly that, the audience and what they bring. Now, because again, if you’ve been doing this for a while, or even if you haven’t, most people have a pretty good sense of, I hope, who they are, why they do the work they do, what you and your organization are trying to achieve.
You don’t have to reinvent that every time you speak but Every time you speak or pitch, you’re talking to a different audience. So you shouldn’t be giving the same exact pitch to everybody all the time because it’s not gonna, you know, it might resonate with some people sometime, but if you’re not thinking deeply about all those things about your audience.
And so that’s what we would do when I traveled with President Obama to more than 40 countries. And now his value core belief system, his agenda, his global vision didn’t change every time he stepped foot in a new country. But the way he talked about it would shift and evolve. And we would, because we would spend a lot of, you know, you’re going to get up and talk to Australians about your vision for international cooperation.
Well, then you might have, I mean, you should, same guy, same vision, same values. Different speech when he went to Africa to speak at the African union. Because again, you’re trying to connect with people in ways that are meaningful in their lives. And I think, you know, great leaders in business and. Advocacy, politics, that’s what they do.
AD :
And I think that’s a connection to the work that Nolan and I do through influence and negotiation, which is taking the time to think deeply about the concerns of the person we’re going to interact with. In this case, it’s potentially a large audience.
NM :
Quick question here. Did you serve with President Obama when he did his Bin Laden speech in May of 2011.
TS :
I was there. I confess, I was not one of the very small group of people who was read into that operation. I learned about it just minutes before everybody else did. You know, I was, I think it was a Sunday night. I was at home with my family. And I don’t remember if it was still when we had blackberries or not, but across the phone came final remarks. And that was unusual because usually we would circulate many, many drafts of remarks.
So what is this speech that’s being circulated? How can it be final when none of us have seen it? And then we saw the headline. So, and then a few minutes later he went on the air. So yeah, it was a remarkable moment. And then there were a series of speeches that he gave in the days and weeks that followed. He went down to Fort Campbell to thank the personnel who participated in that. He went up to New York to ground zero to honor the victims and pay tribute.
So there’s a whole series of speeches and remarks that he gave around that moment, you know, we felt was important for him to, again, like as effective leaders do to frame the moment and to not understand that it was the culmination of many years of work by countless people.
NM :
What a powerful speech. So I was a cadet in my first year. I’m graduating that same month. So I’m a senior. Less than a month from graduation at the military academy, getting ready to go be an infantry officer. And that speech comes out and it was a riot across all the entire campus. Everyone going crazy, and I just remember it being an extremely emotional and powerful speech. So it’s awesome how those can get crafted.
And then president Obama, just being such a great order delivered it beautifully. Now, is there a difference between writing for someone else who may have a very distinct voice and style, like we said with president Obama first writing for yourself, and if so, how do you manage the differences?
A Speechwriter’s Quest For Authentic Voice [11:37]
TS :
Yeah, actually, this is something that a lot of us who wrote for president Obama experienced. When we all left the White House. So we had spent years and years. I mean, in my case, almost eight years with this man’s voice in our head every day. That’s as a speechwriter, that’s what’s going on. You’re hearing the person’s voice in your head and trying to replicate it as best you can.
And then all of a sudden you’re out there giving interviews, giving speeches. And to a person, we all had the same experience. We start to write and we, you know, we start writing at this defining moment. And I’m like, wait a second, that’s not me. That’s the other guy that’s Barack Obama. And so you start to think, well, you know, where does that person end?
And we began, and I think one of the reasons I wrote the book is because I did have to go through this process rather late in life of finding my own voice. And now it’s something that I think we all go through at one point or another, and if people are lucky, they’re doing it in their 20s and 30s.
Because I had been a speech writer and kind of suppressed my own voice for so long, for nearly 30 years, just trying to capture other people’s, I didn’t know what my voice was. I didn’t know where my space was, how I could contribute to discussions and conversations and debates. And so it took me a while.
And I write about this in the book because I think it’s something we all have to go through. I offer a series of questions that I hope everyone can think deeply about, because one of the things that President Obama told me once that I share in the book, I had asked him, you know, what do you think makes a compelling, persuasive speaker?
All the years I worked for him, and I’d never asked him that, I’d never heard him ask it or answer it, and I, so I wanted to know, and it was interesting, because I thought he was going to talk about maybe the structure, or, you know, breathing technique, or all these sort of tactical things we do, but he had a much bigger answer, and his answer was, you know, he believes that effective public speakers, and communicators know who they are, know what they believe, and they speak from a place of core conviction.
That was really, I thought, very profound because I think we all have sat through presentations and speeches by speakers who clearly don’t know who they are or what they believe because they get up on Monday and say one thing and on Tuesday, they say something else, and someone who was sure of their convictions wouldn’t do that.
And so I think one of the things I offer in the book is that here are some questions you can ask yourself to kind of make sure that you are rooted in core convictions and belief and a value set that doesn’t change from event to event so that you don’t feel like you have to reinvent yourself every time you’re invited to make a presentation or a speech. It’s a process I had to go through and it’s a process sort of that journey is what I share in the book.
AD :
This feels like we’re getting into the mechanics of speech writing and talk about knowing the audience, knowing yourself, knowing your voice. Let’s say someone comes up to you and says, you know, I have the speech to give. I’m just not any good at public speaking. I don’t even know how to get started. How would you coach someone like that to just start getting prepared?
Embracing Authenticity: The Power Of Personal Connection In Public Speaking [14:17]
TS :
Well, the first thing I’d say is take a breath, relax. It’s okay. What you’ve described is how most people feel. Most of us don’t get up on a regular basis and give presentations and speeches. And the second thing I’d say is, you know what? Don’t do that thing where you start watching famous people’s speeches and try to replicate it.
You’ve been invited to speak or given this opportunity to speak because somebody who knows you, your colleagues, your sector, your industry, likes you, knows you, thinks that you have something to contribute.
So you don’t have anything to prove. You don’t have to be anybody else. They’ve invited you because they want you. The best thing you can do is just be yourself. And they say, well, I don’t know myself. Okay. That’s where we can begin and I often walk people in the book. I explain how you can do this is again, ask these basic questions.
The most effective communicators I believe are the ones who personalize their remarks. You know, they’ve invited you. They don’t want a generic speaker. They’ve invited you because they want you. They want to hear about your experiences, your life, the stories that you’ve had in your professional and personal life.
Those are the ones that resonate, you know, we’ve all been in the audience. We know the kinds of speeches that resonate with us. And so, I have a whole chapter in the book on all the different ways you can just personalize your remarks. You know, I know I see it in the business community is often a reluctance by a lot of business leaders to do this. Like, well, I’m no, no, I’m here to represent the company. I’m here to talk about the product, the services, the features, the benefits. That’s what I’m there to do. And I asked him, well, is that an interesting speech? And the answer is no, that’s not very good. Or I talked to the speechwriters who work for CEOs.
I say, how’s that working for them? It’s like, it’s not working because again, we’re all human beings in our audiences. We want more than just a product. We want more than just service. We want to know about you. You know, what brought you to this work? Why do you care so deeply about this product or this company?
What has it meant to you in your life and your family, your community? That’s what people remember. That’s what resonates with people. So I had a client once who, after about 30 minutes of this, put her hand up and said, okay, this feels like a therapy session. And I think, fantastic. That’s exactly how you should think about this, because if you want your audience to know you. And believe in you and follow you, then you have to know yourself. That’s a big part of the book is how you kind of pull those stories from your own life.
NM :
I’ve always found that mixing these stories and examples can be helpful. How important is storytelling to becoming a better speaker or skill or practice involved in becoming a better storyteller?
How To Transform Speeches Into Memorable Narratives [16:33]
TS :
It’s everything. It’s absolutely everything. You know, great speakers, great presenters, great communicators are in the end, great storytellers. You know, whether it’s a story about yourself, your organization. The work you do, the people you’re trying to help. I teach speech writing at American University here in Washington, D.C., and we spend a lot of time working on how to effectively tell a story.
You know, whether you open your speech with a story, close a speech with a story, or maybe you make one story, the spine of your entire presentation, and you start with it and you come back to it throughout. And this is ultimately often the most memorable part of your presentation, right? People remember human stories. This is what resonates with people. This is what they take away.
We had an experience with President Obama. You may remember this. I think it was the 2014 state of the union. So, you know, 50 minutes, 60 minutes speech. And in the last few minutes, he devoted his conclusion to a tribute to a wounded warrior from Afghanistan named Cory Remsburg, army ranger, Cory Remsburg.
And he got a, you know, two minutes standing ovation. It was very emotional. The next day, all people were talking about was Cory Remsburg. Who is this man? Let’s say he became sort of a national. The face of a generation, almost to the point where people weren’t talking enough about the president’s policies. So he had talked for you know, 48 minutes. But it was only that two minute tribute because that just speaks to how powerful these human stories are much more.
So if we ever had to trim a speech for president Obama, it was too long. I’d trim the policy and keep the stories, keep the real people that’s what resonates with that’s what your audience is going to remember. So it’s, you know, it can be your story of why you do this work and could be the story of an employee or a member of your organization that can be a story of a customer or client you helped. Someone in the community who benefited from your work, you know, really bringing the work that you do alive through storytelling,
NM :
You know, we talked about the power of the story just now and how you can basically hold someone’s attention throughout by being able to stretch out the story and come back to it. Revisit it in a day when we’re at a time when we are all day trading attention. How do we hook them from the start? What’s the start to this whole thing? How can we be better at the beginning of a speech?
Say It Well: Mastering The Three-Part Structure Of Impactful Speeches [18:42]
TS :
I actually have structured the book: Say It Well, around how you, I believe you can structure any great presentation or speech and sort of, it comes down to three big parts. I know this is going to sound over simplistic, but you know, it helps, I think, to think of any presentation as having a distinct beginning, a distinct middle, and a distinct end.
And when I teach speech writing, we actually spend three weeks on this. We’ll spend a whole week session on the beginning, a whole week on the middle and a whole week on the end, because I think it’s useful. You know, you don’t have to be thinking about the entire speech all the time. There are lots of things you can do at the beginning of a speech to pull people in.
There are some don’ts that I would highly encourage people to avoid, which is death by acknowledgments. We’ve all been in these situations where, you know, you’re at a graduation ceremony, at a wonderful event of some kind, it’s energetic, you know, there’s spirit. And the speaker of the master ceremony just gets up and starts listing a long, horrific list of acknowledgments.
And, you know, Two minutes in, all that energy and spirit’s gone. So, there are some things we shouldn’t do. One of my favorite things to do, though, is to just jump right into a story. Jump right into it. Like a great movie does, like a great book does, like a great play does. Just take your audience to the climax of the most emotional moment in your story, and pull them in.
You know, the moment you start telling a story, people perk up. You’ve grabbed their attention. Your audience wants to know how the story ends. And you don’t necessarily have to give it to them in the beginning. Again, you can stretch it out and come back to it. I think, again, it goes back to effective storytelling.
And again, I think we know this, right? Because we love movies. We love good books. We love good plays. So we’re consumers of this. And then we have to give a presentation or something. We forget all of this. Well, think about the last movie you really enjoyed, you know, it pulled you in in seconds, you know, and I think we can do that as speakers too.
NM :
Hey everyone, Nolan here. I have to jump in and end today’s podcast for part A of the show. Be sure to rate, review and subscribe to the NEGOTIATEx podcast, if you haven’t already. And join us next week for part B of this awesome interview.
