The famed defense attorney, F. Lee Bailey, was once asked what the key was to a successful case.  People expected him to say a spellbinding closing statement or a good jury selection process or an impressive cross-examination of a crucial witness.

Instead his answer was “investigation”—knowing the facts of your case up and down, forward and backward.

The same holds true for a successful speech or presentation.  The key is research: knowing everything about your audience, about the place where the remarks will be delivered, about everything that has led up to the planning of the event, and then tailoring a speech to those facts.

In his new book Speech*Less, Matt Latimer, a presidential speechwriter, tells the story of how he prepared a speech for President Bush to deliver on National Adoption Day.

The first thing I did [as a speech writer] was consider the audience.  I pictured the president standing before a large group of adoptive parents and their kids.  I thought about the portraits of presidents that people would see just outside the East Room, including a portrait of an adopted son named Gerald R. Ford and another of an adoptive father named Ronald Reagan.

And then I thought of the large pictures of George Washington that would be just to the president’s left as he spoke.  George Washington had been an adoptive father too, raising two children who weren’t his by birth.  (They were the children of his wife, Martha.)

Searching the internet, I found a letter that Washington wrote to his stepson while he was in college, complaining about his lack of attention to his studies.  (I had our researchers verify its existence.)  This led to a perfect joke for President Bush.  After reading the excerpt to the audience, the president said, “Come to think of it, my dad once said the same thing to me.”

I noted that Thanksgiving was approaching and so many new adoptive parents and children, including those in that room, would have the blessing of celebrating it together as a family for the first time.  That thought made people cry.  The president teared up.  Even Mrs. Bush, who usually stood motionless while the president delivered his speeches, took an interest.  She leaned forward and stole glances at the president’s note card, as if to see how this was happening. 

When writing a speech, or in working with a speech writer, spend plenty of time thinking about the occasion, the audience, the location, and anything else that might give you an “in” with the audience.

Do plenty of research, on line or in a library.  Ask your speech writer to do the same.  Knowing the facts makes your speech more original and gives you confidence.  And that feeling can make your delivery livelier, and your audience more engaged.

Sims Wyeth is a speech coach in Montclair, NJ specializing in presentation skills and public speaking training in order to give accomplished people the knowledge and skill they need to become accomplished speakers. Learn more public speaking tips at www.SimsWyeth.com.

Senator Howard Baker said that he and his speech writers had a great relationship.  “They write what they want me to say, and I say what I think.”

They got along just fine.

The remark points to the essential challenge of speech writing: it needs to be done in the voice of the speaker. 

This is important because the speaker will be more effective if the text of the speech is aligned, in style and substance, with the way he thinks and talks.

There are great speakers who can read anything from a page or a teleprompter and make it sound like them.  President Obama is good at this, as was President Reagan.

In fact, anyone continuously in front of crowds develops a knack for reading text. 

But most of us are not up at the lectern every day, and so we need a speech writer who has the ability to collaborate with us—who has a good ear for our speech patterns, and can get our thoughts into the right words.

A collaboration with a speech writer should begin with your thoughts about what you want to say and what you want your audience to think, feel, and do after hearing your speech. 

Your speech writer should also explore with you the problem that you are trying to solve for your audience.  Audiences like it when your speech is all about how they can solve a problem or capitalize on an opportunity.

Audiences like speeches that are short, humorous, and generously sprinkled with stories.  But make sure that the humor is your own, not offensive, and takes a back seat to the point you want to make.

Similarly, the stories in the speech should be your own.  A good speech writer should spend time with you talking about your life experience and pull some stories out of your memory.  Of course, if your speech writer offers you a story that you can make your own, use it.  Just make sure you practice enough so that it feels natural.

For some of us, the chance to speak is rare, and so it leads us to want to say everything.  Your speech writer should be firm.  You can only say a few things to an audience before they get dazed and confused.

Make sure your speech writer doesn’t use any big words that are undeliverable.  Undeliverable is one such word.  So is indomitable, which can come out as “indominabubble.”

William Safire, the great speech writer for President Nixon and columnist for the New York Times, was once asked for a synonym for indomitable and gave indefatigable.  He was fired on the spot when someone nearby suggested steadfast.  Safire says in retrospect that he now sees he was intransigent.

In plain language, your speaking style should never be fancier than you are.

Above all, when you deliver your speech that someone has helped you prepare, you must feel comfortable with it and sound natural.   The pleasure of listening to a good speech depends on the connections that can exist between the elements of the occasion.

First, there is the speaker and the speech.  They need to connect. 

Then, there is the speaker and the audience.  The speech should help the speaker create that connection, and not get in the way.

And within the speech, your own thought should connect with the writer’s language deployed to express it. 

Finally, the speaker needs to connect with his own feelings, and rehearse enough so he can bring to the occasion, with his voice, gestures, and the vivid words of his speech writer, a full-throated belief in what he is saying.

Sims Wyeth is a speech coach in Montclair, NJ specializing in presentation skills and public speaking training in order to give accomplished people the knowledge and skill they need to become accomplished speakers. Learn more public speaking tips at www.SimsWyeth.com.

Presence is like pornography:  it’s hard to define, but you know it when you see it, or in the case of speech, see and hear it.

Presence is a powerful commodity, one that leaders, entertainers, and influencers of all types would like to have.  In fact, anyone who wants to be persuasive on the job or in social settings covets it.

Three questions.  First, admitting that it’s hard to define, can we sketch in its elements? Second, can we cultivate it? And if so, how?

What are the elements of presence?

Let’s start with what it’s not.  It’s not beauty or physical attractiveness.  There are lots of Barbies and Kens who look perfect and lack presence.

It’s not intelligence.  The socially inept genius is a cliché. 

It’s not talent, because some creative people are dull in person but vivid and electric in their work.

So what is it?  Here’s my attempt to describe it. Presence is confidence, composure, and responsiveness.  It is the capacity to communicate with others in an emotional, intellectual, and expressive manner.

Can presence be cultivated?

I believe it can be developed through deliberate practice, which is a term that has emerged over the last few years to describe how average people achieve extraordinary results.

Actors, singers, dancers, figure skaters and speakers all try to cultivate it. It’s part of their job.  For some, it’s a performance, for others it comes naturally.

Presence could include posture and a self-possessed quality of movement.  It could include an appealing voice, a sense of humor, the capacity for intimacy, and the ability to respond to the signals you pick up from others.

Presence can also derive from the perception that you don’t care whether people like you or not.  Since we are deeply social creatures, a person willing to walk away from the herd tends to get attention.

How can we cultivate presence?

Be curious.  Endlessly curious.  Be a good listener.  Ask a lot of questions.  Sit up straight.  Be expressive when listening.  Acknowledge what the other person has said so that they feel heard and recognized. 

Dress in order to dignify your encounters with others.  Have convictions and express them with care for the views of others.  Develop your voice so that it is resonant and musical.

Explain your point of view knowing what history and science have to say about organizing your thoughts for maximum persuasiveness.  Take such an interest in your audience that you care more about their understanding than you do about the outcomes. 

This is an important point.  If you have an objective you want to achieve, others sense it, and feel that you are talking at them, not with them or to them.  You have to start where they are, and lead them from that spot toward the spot on which you would like them to stand.

In other words, you must be highly empathetic, highly assertive and highly expressive.  None of us bats 1000 on all three, but presence is a journey not a destination.

It will come and go depending on the circumstances.  For some of us who are shy, or young, and surrounded by those with more power and experience, we will have to fake it ‘til we make it.

But the best way to change behavior is to practice changing behavior.  We can behave in a manner that is outside our comfort zone for short periods of time, and when we repeat those short periods for lengthier periods, we begin to find a new way of being.

And that can serve us well.

Sims Wyeth is a speech coach in Montclair, NJ specializing in presentation skills andpublic speaking training in order to give accomplished people the knowledge and skill they need to become accomplished speakers. Learn more public speaking tips at www.SimsWyeth.com.