It is Sunday afternoon.  My wife is away for a week at a poetry summit in California.  No food in the fridge, dishes in the sink, bed unmade.   Too much TV. 

My daughter is engrossed in the music scene of Brooklyn, hard at work on her new CD.  My parents are unhappy in their new retirement home.   My sister and I are powerless to make them happier.  My Blackberry doesn’t work.  I can’t send emails from my home computer.  My car had a flat tire last Monday.  My lawn is brown.  I never know how much money I’ll make.  Should I continue?

Nevertheless, I am excited about my work.  I have the chance to work with scientists on their scientific presentations, with CEOs on their leadership communication, with consultants on how to move the mountain of client opinion, and with all kinds of people who want to grow and expand their personal and professional horizons.

I have plans for a public seminar, a new book, and I love my office almost as much as I like my home.  My assistant is fabulous.  All this is good.

I just need to learn how to walk the tight rope between things as they are and things as I’d like them to be.  I need to keep my eye on the prize and not look down at the terrifying things I imagine will happen if I misstep. 

I am told that I should live in the present moment, and I try.  But I find myself lost in thought a good deal of time.

Maybe that’s a start.  To find myself lost is to begin to figure out where I am—which is somewhere in thought, somewhere in my head.

I want to be in other people’s heads, not my own.  Which means I have to get busy and do stuff that’s interesting.

Sims Wyeth is an executive 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.

A good speech has a voice.  It sounds like an individual—specifically, the individual who is delivering the speech. It should not sound like the speechwriter.

And yet us speechwriters are often given only a brief time with the speaker to determine what she wants to say.  From that brief meeting, we are expected to extract the message she wants to impart, and the sound, tone, texture, and rhythm of her verbal personality.

So, if you are a speaker, and you are working with a speechwriter in New Jersey or New York, (or anywhere else for that matter) how can you maximize the few minutes you have with your speechwriter?

• Be prepared for the meeting with the speechwriter.  Know the DNA of what you want to say.  You can come up with this DNA by imagining that an audience member is considering coming to hear you, and asks, “What’s your speech about?”  You’ve got less than 30 seconds to tell her.  What do you say?  Your answer should be one sentence long, and should contain the benefit that the listener will derive.  For instance, President Obama might have said about his speech on race relations, “ My speech urges every American to have the difficult conversations about race so that our country can move beyond the historical divisions that have plagued our nation.” 

• Next, in order to help your speechwriter (and yourself), figure out the question to which your information is the answer.  At the heart of what you will say is the information that you have mastered and your own interpretation of its meaning.  But you can’t just dump the info on your listeners.  You’ve got to figure out what emotional concern drives their interest in your topic.  What question would the audience have to have in mind in order to make that information a fascinating, provocative question?  Believe it or not, you have to spend about a third of your speech asking the    question—even more if they are not that familiar with the topic or the issues.  For instance, when trying to raise new rounds of venture capital, a biotech president might have to answer the question, “Why do we have to spend millions of dollars creating a new formulation for the molecule when it already demonstrates efficacy in its current formulation?”

• Finally, give your speechwriter plenty of time to ask questions.  Encourage him/her to get to know you.  Take her out to lunch.  Have a glass of wine with him.  He or she needs to soak up who you are, what you care about, how you think, what you like and dislike, and your personal verbal style. 

Only by inviting your speechwriter into your inner circle will you get what you want and need—a speech that captures not only what you want to say, but how you want to say it.

Sims Wyeth is an executive 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.

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.