15 Jan 08, Mike Robinson, Athenians winning speech
Only connect:
Why do we come here each week to speak?
To craft a speech, which describes a technical point, a story that is important to us, or to explore our own feelings and share them with you.
I suggest we speak to connect to each other. We do it by intent. It may happen by accident. Opening a window on our soul, to tell you who I am.
In that moment we as speakers connect with the audience as human beings. Only connect, the affirmation in the opening pages of E. M. Forster’s book Howards End.
Often an Icebreaker makes this connection. The speech is structurally flawed and delivered badly
----it is still a successful speech.
Why? Why, because the speaker is not experienced to do the job properly. He is told to speak about himself. It is the subject he knows well. He is an expert. We get that opened window. We know who the speaker is.
A spectacular example of an opening a window happened at the New Hampshire primaries in the United States a week or so ago. The election to choose the winner to go forward to the next round. And a race between Hillary Clinton and Mr Obama for the Democratic nomination and the Presidency.
Mrs Clinton had opened a lead from Obama. Commentators said it was unassailable.
As the election neared Mrs Clinton lost ground. The polls showed Obama in the lead.
(Show front page of the FT)
Here is the FT headlines. “Polls back Obama.”
The article tells she will loose, and sack key staff. A new direction, a new strategy is needed.
Something happened, before the electors went to the polls. At a Question & Answer meeting, Mrs Clinton was asked by a woman from the floor:
“ How do you do it?”:
Mrs Clinton spoke for some two minutes. Tears welled in her eyes..
She said, it was personal, she said she cared about her country, she said it’s about our children.
For a moment we saw who she was. It bought a tear to my eye. It may have been deliberate. It worked. She won. I bought the Evening Standard within an hour of reading the FT.
Here’s the headline (Holds up Evening Standard):
“MRS CLINTON ROARS BACK.”
Does of this matter on a Tuesday night here at the Hop-pole?.
It does! It shows the raw power of a fragment of speech. That two minute, 340 word delivery, might well give us the next president of the United States of America.
Now you ask. “Okay Robinson, why is speaking important to you?”
It is a surprise to me that I do this at all. Less than two years back I stood up in a class at university, and gave a short unscripted talk on the mathematics of finance.
It surprised my audience, it surprised me. I had never talked in public before. Within a month I had joined Athenians. You can judge the result for yourself.
There is now a delight preparing and delivering a speech. If by chance a window opens and you see who I am, and we connect, then it is a successful evening for us both.
There is an extra joy exploring the themes for a speech.
Reaching back to into the (Long pause) , Elysian Fields of imagination. To meet again those long gone friends of the past. To explore ideas that never quite made it. To bring out a whole clusters of possibilities from that imagination.
And then the pleasure to pare the ideas, discuss them with friends, link them to a theme, and come here to deliver the result.
You can’t plan a moment to connect. You deliver many speeches that are technically good, but don’t engage with the audience.
Now and then, a window opens, to who I am. It is a surprise to you and certainly to me.
For that moment, we connect. You leave with the point of the speech, but more, the sense that as human beings we have connected.
Its a delicious moment for us all!. Only Connect.
Madame Toastmaster. Good night!.
680 words
6 min. 40 sec.
Delivered at Athenians 15.01.08