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The Spoken Word

May 18, 2012

It’s that time of year again, when school and college graduation speakers and their speeches make news.  That time of year when I think most about public speaking.

I enjoy a great speech.  I don’t have to agree with the content:  if a speech is well constructed and both articulately and passionately conveyed, I’ll listen intently and get pleasure from hearing it.

Sadly, in much the same way that written communication is being castrated by the likes of texting and tweeting, full-bodied speeches are being reduced to a series of soundbites to fit television newscasts and even briefer “reporting.”  Because politicians or comedians (if there’s a difference) tend to pounce on and poke fun at one line of a speech, today’s most articulate public speakers seem reluctant to chance a creative metaphor or to stretch an argument beyond conventional thought and expression.

I do recognize that it is important to not confuse rhetoric with results, or worse, to miss the follies that have often flowed from fine words and flowery phrases.

But still, l like the spoken word.  Where the speaker has spent time thinking about how the words sound, alone and in combination.  A speaker who uses stories to tell a story.  A speech that draws from other places and times to help us understand here and now, and to help us consider where we’re headed next.  And of course, a speech that’s brief – one when the speaker finishes just before the listener, who still has something to ponder when the speaker leaves the podium.

In Others’ Words

August 22, 2014

I’ve read and heard multiple times – so I’ve come to believe it’s at least partly true – that one of the techniques that marketing departments or agencies use when developing campaigns to promote a product or service is to look at it from the consumer’s, customer’s or client’s perspective.

The point is often brought home that if management would use this technique as much as marketers, then management would be more effective and would label itself, rather than marketers, as the “creative team.” It chafes me to hear a CEO say he or she wants to know what “creative” has to say about a sponsorship initiative before the CEO will offer an opinion.

Thinking about what our customers want doesn’t require that leaders suspend their personal beliefs or reverse experience-based opinions. It merely asks that we look at things from a different and sometimes even opposite point of view. And to be truly revealing, it asks that we try to put into words where other people stand on a particular topic.

It asks us to actually try to describe what our customers see from where they stand and what they say they want. For example, in our work, it would ask administrators to think about and actually describe what coaches want, and vice versa. And it asks both coaches and administrators to think about and put into their own words what student-athletes want, and what their parents want.

This has been an ongoing part of my life, provoked I suppose by my marriage of 42 years to a woman whose political views often point 180 degrees from my own. And this approach has been especially enlightening on school sports’ most troublesome topics, some of which we are tackling at this time, like ...

  • Out-of-season coaching rules
  • Junior high/middle school programming
  • Health and safety mandates