The Eloquent Woman

From the vault: 7 secret advantages of the speaker who practices

2013-06-19T05:15:00.000-04:00

(Editor's note: Published last year, this post is one of the most-read-ever on the blog--and it's one I share with my trainees again and again, in the hopes they'll discover these bonuses for themselves.)

As a speaker coach and trainer, I can tell you that the one thing I always recommend is the same thing my trainees rarely do: Practice, and lots of it.

I don't just recommend practice for your speech or presentation because it sounds good. I know there are seven secret advantages--some of the best advantages in public speaking--reserved for speakers who practice. And by practice, I don't mean flipping through your slides an hour before the presentation. I mean run-throughs, full of stops and starts, until you're able to deliver that talk as you envision it. Helpful observer friends and cameras optional, although they both can help the practice process. Whether you do it solo or with a team, practice will help you:

Look like you didn't need practice: Call it the Great Irony of Public Speaking: The speaker who practices winds up looking relaxed, unruffled, at ease and extemporaneous. The speaker who gets up to speak without preparation looks like, well, she isn't prepared. The unprepared speaker is more likely to run overtime, stumble, forget and otherwise look forced. You can only get that extemporaneous, casual look through practice--and it's the biggest practice advantage.
Remember more of what you wanted to say: No question about it, repetition through practice means your brain will retain more of what you wanted to say. Every speaker has those moments when her mind goes blank. Practice means that the words have a better chance of coming out of your mouth, anyway.
Roll with the punches: If your slides don't work, you can still speak. If the room changes, the mic doesn't work, or you wind up with lots of other last-minute public speaking snafus, you can still speak. Knowing you have practiced your speech--including what might go wrong--keeps you cool under difficult and changing circumstances.
Work out your stumbles ahead of time: Keep tripping over that troublesome word or phrase? Hesitating to say that strong, pointed statement? You'll get better at it with practice. And who doesn't prefer to make the mistakes in private, rather than into a microphone? If you're working with a speechwriter, let her sit in on your practice so lines can be rewritten on the spot to make them easier to say.
Try a new speaking skill with lower risk: If you're trying something new to you, from storytelling to speaking simply about technical topics, practice makes that first foray less risky...because it won't actually be your first foray after you've practiced many times.
Build a stronger structure for your speech or presentation: Want a strong, fast start to grab and hold your audience's attention? A big ending? A section of your keynote that gets the audience engaged and active? Practice can make sure you have the time to plan, try out and perfect those key sections of the presentation.
Hit those grace notes: Whether you want to polish the delivery of that special quote to use your vocalizing well, maneuver the stage smoothly, or get creative with your special thanks and acknowledgements, grace notes are practice-worthy. The things that can take your speech from good to great are best nurtured with time to practice.

Don't think you have time to practice? Check out my 5 stealth ways to find the time for public-speaking practice. You can do this.

I'm delighted that Andrew Dlugan's great Six Minutes blog chose this article for his weekly roundup of the best blog posts on public speaking for the week ending July 14, 2012. Thanks, Andrew!

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The Eloquent Woman's weekly speaker toolkit

2013-06-17T05:15:00.000-04:00

Readers who follow The Eloquent Woman on Facebook are already used to seeing links to good reads, resources and ideas from other sources there, in addition to posts from the blog. On Mondays, I summarize that extra content and put it here on the blog, so all readers can benefit. Every weekly speaker toolkit has a mix of the practical and the inspirational for speakers, especially women speakers. Here's a look at the week just past:

Recollecting where we've been: We have always fought: Challenging the women, cattle and slaves narrative pokes at our assumptions about what women have done and can do.
Yes, really: If you get the public speaking jitters, here's a chance to reflect on why a little bit of stress is actually good for you.
What the audience sees: I'm a big fan of using what I call the "invisible visual," a word picture that your audience can see in the mind's eye. Imagine a flying pig: How words take shape in the brain clues you in on what's happening to them when you do that.
Come to Brussels in September: I'm chairing the autumn conference of the European Speechwriter Network in Brussels in September and hope you can join us for this focused two-day event. It starts with a full-day workshop on the nuts and bolts of speechwriting, followed by a day of top speakers on leadership communication. If you want to improve your ability to write and deliver speeches or improve your company's ability to communicate ideas and engage staff in developing new behaviors, this is the meeting for you. Please do join us and share the conference information with your colleagues.
Are you sure your story should be told? Snoopy has the last word in a cautionary tale for speakers.

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More ways to use The Eloquent Woman Index of Famous Women's Speeches

2013-06-14T04:45:00.000-04:00

With more than 100 speeches and counting, The Eloquent Woman Index of Famous Women's Speeches is a powerhouse resource if you're looking for quotes, speech examples or inspiration and training help from women speakers. This year, we're slicing the Index to make it more useful. Check out these posts that share famous speeches by type of speaker, speaking style and topic:

Reach: Find inspiration and aspiration in these 8 famous commencement speeches by women
Stretch: They make off-the-cuff look good in these 6 famous extemporaneous speeches by women
Represent: They lived up to "lift every voice and sing" in these 14 famous speeches by African-American women speakers
Seek: Smart, passionate searchers can be found in these 6 famous speeches by women scientists
Overcome: Jitters stopped them at first, but you'll find how to overcome your own fears in these 5 famous speeches by women who feared public speaking
Express: Speaking on the most personal of topics, these 7 famous speeches by women about health will open your eyes and your heart.
Stand and deliver: The inability to speak in public spurred the earliest of these 6 famous speeches about voting by women speakers
Go global: More than a third of the Index includes non-U.S. speeches. Here are 13 famous UK and European speeches by women
Say it plain: Hillary Clinton said it best: "Women's rights are human rights," and she's among these 13 famous human rights speeches by women

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TEDMED editor Lisa Shufro on fear and the first-time speaker

2013-06-12T05:15:00.000-04:00

Lisa Shufro on the TEDMED stage

In a Huffington Post essay, TEDMED managing editor Lisa Shufro shares an insight into fear and the first-time speaker -- and while it may seem to be a story about magician David Blaine and how he prepared for a TEDMED talk, it's about Shufro, too. That's because she and Blaine belong to a small but amazing club: They both gave their first-ever public talks from the stage of TEDMED.

Full disclosure: Shufro is a longtime reader of The Eloquent Woman and my client, since I coach TEDMED speakers, thanks to her. She leads the editorial team that finds, selects and preps TEDMED speakers, who range from celebrities to unknowns, patients as well as physicians, scientists and policymakers. But to my mind, her biggest accomplishment was her first speaking gig on a stage where the stakes were high:

Two years later I gave my first talk in public from the stage of the Kennedy Center Opera House. In front of two hundred thousand people. Many of them were accomplished doctors and scientists. I was now the Managing Editor of TEDMED -- without a formal degree in science or medicine. As a musician, I'd been on stage thousands of times. But never without a violin between the audience and me. Right before going on stage, my words drained from my mind. I started holding my breath.

If you're a first-time or would-be speaker--or just remember the first speech you ever gave--you'll love this essay. Shufro writes it in the manner of a good TED talk: It's personal, and follows a path from one first-time speaker to another. She uses a visual you can picture in your mind's eye, a playing card on which Blaine had written a note for his talk, which he gave her once his talk was done; later, she took that card onstage when her turn came to speak. Lovely symmetry there. This is a story full of small, intimate moments, juxtaposed against the looming, large stage they shared. And for speakers, it's a good discussion of risk and fear and how they come into play during preparation and that moment when you step on the stage. I'm so delighted Shufro has shared this story with us.

(TEDMED photo)

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The Eloquent Woman's weekly speaker toolkit

2013-06-10T05:15:00.000-04:00

Readers who follow The Eloquent Woman on Facebook are already used to seeing the "extras" I share there: links to good reads, resources and ideas from other sources, in addition to posts from the blog. I'm summarizing that extra content and putting it here on the blog, so all readers can benefit. Here's a look at the week just past:

Suss them out: Not sure who you're up against in a negotiation? You can plant a "trust land mine" to get your bargainer to reveal more.
Speechless: Thanks to some notes he made, we get a glimpse of a speech President Eisenhower never gave.
Will you ever be taken seriously? If you're always the youngest person in the meeting room, that's a fair question. Some great tactics here for anyone to use in speaking to the powerful.
Heckle this: Michelle Obama confronted a heckler--and won the exchange. Here's my take on five things you can learn about handling hecklers when you speak.
Don't just Google it: Google employees teach one another professional skills. Here are tips on how to present the next great idea from inside the place that has plenty of them.
September in Brussels: After the great experience I had keynoting the International Speechwriting Conference in London last month, I'm especially pleased to say I'll be chairing the autumn meeting of the same group in September in Brussels.
About the quote: Inspiration for you to remember before your next speech, from our Pinterest board of quotes for public speakers.

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Famous Speech Friday: Robert Kennedy on the death of Martin Luther King, Jr.

2013-06-07T04:45:00.000-04:00

If I'm going to blow up the rules for Famous Speech Friday, it will be for this speech. I saw it broadcast live 45 years ago, and it stands among the best impromptu speeches I know. Normally, this series brings you famous speeches by women, but I find myself unable to let this one pass unnoted this week: Yesterday was the 45th anniversary of the speaker's own assassination, an indelible memory for me.

In 1968, Robert F. Kennedy was running for the presidency of the United States, and on the campaign trail. His brother, President John F. Kennedy, had been assassinated just five years before. He arrived in Indianapolis to learn that civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. had been assassinated. He was to speak in the heart of the city's black neighborhoods, and it was feared that citizens would riot. Kennedy threw away his stump speech and spoke to the moment in brief, extemporaneous and simple, yet elegant, language--words designed to unite the crowd at a divisive moment:

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.

So I ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King -- yeah, it's true -- but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love -- a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke.

If there's a speech that exemplifies the great insight I heard from speaker coach Peter Botting at the International Speechwriting Conference in London--the idea that "big ideas don't need big words"--it's this one. Anyone might follow this speech, which deals with the minutiae of the moment and hints at a larger vision of what this means for America. It quotes Aeschylus but stays close to the emotions of the crowd. It's a quiet speech, not at all anxious, but appropriate in its sadness, regret and respect for the events of the day.

What can you learn from this famous speech?

Speak from your heart, not from your notes when the moment is tense and emotional. You can see Kennedy fidgeting with what must have been notes--he had a plane ride's worth of time to craft notes in between learning that King was shot and learning that he'd died--but this speech didn't rely on them.
Heal with the song of poetry: Kennedy calls this his favorite poem, and the Greek poet he quotes blessedly translates into the simplest words: Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget/falls drop by drop upon the heart,/until, in our own despair,/against our will,/comes wisdom/through the awful grace of God. In effect, he's letting the audience offload its emotion into the poet's words and subtly reminding them that these powerful feelings are ancient as well as current. And--so like the ancient Greek poets-- the poem is bracing and forthright, not maudlin and weepy. It fits the moment. This also works because Kennedy stays true to himself by sharing his favorite poem, a well-worn, well-known-to-him stanza, one he's unlikely to forget in the moment.
Be willing to face the music: A dogged campaigner, Kennedy could have gone ahead with his prepared stump speech, but he even tells the fans "Could you lower those signs, please?" in the first phrases of his remarks. This speech speaks forthrightly about the tragedy, and aims to help the listeners make sense of it in real terms. "In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it's perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black -- considering the evidence evidently is that there were white people who were responsible -- you can be filled with bitterness, and with hatred, and a desire for revenge," said Kennedy, laying out the realities. "We can move in that direction as a country, in greater polarization -- black people amongst blacks, and white amongst whites, filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand, and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion, and love."

Would that we all could pull ourselves together as speakers in such a moment as this, and so effectively. His words carry all the more power for us today because, two months after this event, Kennedy himself was assassinated.

You can read the text of this famous speech and hear the audio here, and the video is below. What do you think of this famous speech?

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Follow @NoWomenSpeakers to track conferences with few or no women on program

2013-06-05T05:15:00.001-04:00

I just gave a speech about women and public speaking in which I pointed to the tweets I see on Twitter, every day of the week, in which people are complaining about the lack, or dearth, of women speakers on conference programs. And I was confronted by a male audience member who dismissed the premise, telling me it must be "rare"--it's just not a problem he sees.

While it's normal to think first of one's own experience, we none of us attend all the world's conferences (thank heaven). About this time last year, I blogged about the growing Twitter buzz about conferences with few or no women, and at that time I said:

About 150 days into 2012, you can say that, on average, more than a tweet a day can be found complaining about the lack of women on conference programs. On some days, that means dozens of tweets; on others, just a few. But the drumbeat is persistent, and growing.

Since then, I've continued to collect tweets mentioning few or no women speakers. The file's bigger, and it's my sense that these types of tweets are gaining in frequency, both from prospective attendees and those sitting in the audience.

I think that's an important distinction if you think of these tweeters as the dissatisfied audience--make that the dissatisfied paying audience--for any conference or meeting. It stands in contrast to the rise of women's conferences in the U.S., which are highly profitable and well attended. Imagine, as I said in my London speech: Profitable conferences featuring lots of women speakers and seemingly finding no difficulty in locating them. Isn't that something?

Some conferences have heard the drumbeat and started setting very public quotas for women speakers: The World Economic Forum has a 20 percent quota for participation by women, which it has yet to meet, and Social Media Week, with events in 18 countries, has set the bar at 50 percent women speakers and participants for its events by the end of 2014.. Other conferences have started tweeting defensively, pointing out their good ratios of women speakers, or defending the lousy ratios awkwardly, as in this exchange. TechCrunchDisrupt New York announced a roster with no women speakers:

techcrunch disrupt NY has 0 female speakers out of 20; all things d's NY-based event has 3/20techcrunch.com/events/disrupt…allthingsd.com/conferences/di…
— matt (@mattbuchanan) April 12, 2013

When a female executive from the conference replied defensively that "there are women speakers we haven't announced," he added this wry headline:

secret women await everyone at techcrunch disrupt NY RT @alexia: @mattbuchanan There are women speakers we haven't announced. :)
— matt (@mattbuchanan) April 12, 2013

No surprise, the next day, those secret women speakers were added to that program. Let me be clear: Tweets are anecdotal evidence, but when the issue is one of invisibility, that actually makes these tweets valuable.

Since last year, I have been archiving and sharing tweets that mention no or few women speakers in this publicly accessible Evernote notebook, and it's a great resource to have on hand--but not as nimble and transparent as I'd like it to be. After my recent speech and that reaction, it occurred to me I could use Twitter in a different way, to help me do the tracking and to more finely and publicly curate the kind of information I'm storing in that notebook. The bonus: You can all watch this phenomenon with me, as it occurs, and Twitter will help us keep track.

So beginning on May 24 this year, I've launched another Twitter account, @NoWomenSpeakers. It is already focused on retweeting mentions of few or no women speakers on programs of all kinds--except for women's conferences, where we may expect plenty of women speakers. This account also will share mentions of conferences where the balance is better, or at least being mentioned, as well as coverage of this trend. Mainly, I'd like you to be able to see the stream that I see, to build awareness of the issue. I will focus on sharing just the original tweet, although many of these types of tweets are re-shared frequently. Handily, Twitter keeps track of that for us, so you can click on "expand" and see the number of retweets.

Please follow and share this new account, and send your examples to @NoWomenSpeakers directly, to help build the database of tweets. I'm looking forward to this new way of sharing the issue and the data directly with you.

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The Eloquent Woman's weekly speaker toolkit

2013-06-03T05:15:00.000-04:00

3 speaker coaches put their heads together.

Readers who follow The Eloquent Woman on Facebook are already used to seeing links to good reads, resources and ideas from other sources there, in addition to posts from the blog. I'm summarizing that extra content and putting it here on the blog, so all readers can benefit. Here's a look at the week just past:

The Lady Vanishes: Here's my keynote for the International Speechwriting Conference, on the disappearing woman speaker.
Two-way brains: Ever wonder how bilinguals switch between languages when they speak? It's complicated.
The past is prologue: Here's an appreciation of a little-remembered Lyndon Johnson speech, given at Gettysburg on Memorial Day in 1963, that's remarkable for how it presaged coming civil rights changes and reflected his personal history around race issues. Nice details here on how it was put together, for the speechwriter in you.
Speaking out for votes: Someone rescued this extensive diary of a British suffragette and turned it into a book. Take a look at her recollections, which include memorabilia from public speeches and assemblies of the day.
Earth mother: April 22 was the anniversary of Rachel Carson's birthday. You can read about a speech that scared her, but helped advance her cause of alerting the public to environmental dangers, as part of our Famous Speech Friday series.
Looking for women's quotes? Start here: You don't ever have to step away from The Eloquent Woman on Facebook, which includes a tab with all of our great quotes from eloquent women board on Pinterest.
Speaking to speechwriters: I added an album to the Facebook page with photos from the recent International Speechwriters Conference, one of my favorite conferences ever. Above, I'm in discussion with two great speaker coaches, Max Atkinson and Edmee Tuyl. This week brought wonderful news: I've been asked to chair the group's autumn conference in September in Brussels.

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Famous Speech Friday: Ellen Johnson Sirleaf: "If your dreams do not scare you..."

2013-05-31T04:45:00.001-04:00

Focused as I am on women and speaking, this commencement speech by the powerful Ellen Johnson Sirleaf --the president of Liberia and the first female head of state in Africa--is remarkable because it details how public speaking got her into serious trouble more than once in her career.

The first time, she was a junior official in Liberia's treasury department, and at a conference, "my remarks, which challenged the status quo, landed me in my first political trouble." Harvard officials at the conference helped her land a fellowship at the university to study public administration. But on her return, giving a commencement speech at her high school alma mater, she "questioned the government's failure to address long-standing inequalities in the society. This forced me into exile and a staff position at the World Bank." Sirleaf has been jailed for speaking out, as well.

These dramatic episodes, smoothed out and made crisp for the lectern at a formal speaking event, are only hinted at in her words. Instead, you'll catch her lively and strong voice when she uses sly humor throughout, tweaking the noses of her hosts, history and herself. Recalling George Marshall's speech in the same spot where he unveiled what's now known as the Marshall Plan, she said, "He began, 'I need not tell you gentlemen'," then added "I don't know where the ladies were."

Johnson recounts her administration's accomplishments against tall odds, then tells the graduates:

The size of your dreams must always exceed your current capacity to achieve them. If your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough. If you start off with a small dream, you may not have much left when it is fulfilled because along the way, life will task your dreams and make demands on you.

Here's what I think you can learn from this famous speech:

Big ideas don't need big words: That was my favorite insight from speaker coach Peter Botting at the International Speechwriting Conference this year, and Sirleaf demonstrates it in the way she shares the measure of her success in building a peaceful nation: "Our seven-year-olds do not hear guns and do not have to run. They can smile again." It's an evaluative measure anyone can use, from an economist to a grandmother.
Mention women in many roles: It's only when you hear a strong woman like this deliver such a speech that you realize how frequently and easily she mentions women, saluting Harvard's first woman president, asking where the women were at George Marshall's commencement address, talking about moving more women into leadership roles in her country. This is decidedly not a speech that only casts women as "mothers, wives and daughters."
Add mirth to the mix: Sirleaf could be excused for giving a speech with an unrelenting catalog of serious issues. Instead, she pokes fun and prompts smiles throughout, not to make light of her nation or its challenges, but to take the mighty down a peg or two. It's a balancing act that makes this speech more personal and ultimately, more powerful and effective.

You can read the text of her speech here, and watch the video below. What do you think of this famous speech?

(Harvard University photo)
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A real life story: When we ask cancer patients to become public speakers, too

2013-05-29T05:15:00.000-04:00

Helen Pedersen

I get a lot of mail here at The Eloquent Woman, but perhaps no missive so unusual as a request that came in some time ago from a speaker coach seeking help: She'd just been asked to help a dear friend who was dying of cancer to prepare a speech about her life and illness. In addition to becoming an activity that engaged readers of this blog, it gave me a new perspective on something I've seen many times in my communications career: The process of asking grateful cancer patients to become public speakers on behalf of research and care fundraising for the disease that may eventually represent the end of their stories.

In this case, the patient was extra fortunate: She had a good friend who coaches speakers. While we withheld names to protect their privacy, now it can be told that the speaker coach was Claire Duffy of Australia, and her friend was physician Helen Pedersen, who died May 21. In that first email, Claire shared her professional and personal dilemma and asked me to ask you for help:

I've done tough things before, and if she weren't my friend I could laugh. Black humour, irreverence...they are all tools to help make an unbearable subject bearable. But my sadness and our attachment are blocking my ability to think clearly about how to help her prepare - let alone write the script

So I posted "How do I help a dying friend with a speech about her life?" relaying Claire's request for help from readers of this blog. Preparing a speech for a friend who's dying: 7 ideas and resources collects the responses, all from women speaker coaches in The Eloquent Woman community. Some famous, some not so well-known, some fictional, these speeches are the kind of collection I never imagined creating and that Claire never imagined needing, I'm sure. But now I'm glad they're here.

Claire writes here about the speech that resulted, titled "Not dead yet. What are you going to do?" I think it's fitting and important that she made sure to include and publish the full text of Pederson's final speech, since not publishing our speeches is one way women speakers are effectively silencing ourselves. (Find out more about why and how you should publish your speeches here.) Really, there's no better tribute than her own words, and no better way to add to our collection. The speaking gig came about as part of a cancer fundraiser, and was made difficult by the patient-speaker herself, as Claire relates:

Helen dreaded public speaking. It wasn’t an easy job for either of us.

Her first draft opened with excuses about the unseemliness of drawing attention to herself. She blamed her Presbyterian missionary grandparents. I blamed her. Self-promotion was not among her many gifts. But at the end of our second run through, on stage in an empty hall, she straightened up, tidied her notes, and said “I can do this." And she could.

Claire wrote last week to share news of Helen's death and to send a message to my readers. Here it is:

It's been over two years since I asked for The Eloquent Woman's help on a speech by my terminally ill friend, Helen. Preparing that first speech was hard for each of us, but it set us up wonderfully, me for two more years of friendship, her for a new 'career' speaking about cancer. I am so grateful to you and your readers for your assistance, support and kindness, we couldn't have done it without you. Thank you.

One reason I'm glad that Claire reached out to us for help is that the resulting collection of advice and speeches--as well as Helen's speech--might help someone else in the same position. Let's do this to honor Helen, and her coach friend Claire: If you work with a volunteer group, fundraising office, university cancer lab, medical institution or other organization involved in cancer research or patient care, please do share these posts with the organization, so they can be shared with other patients who are challenged to speak in public at a similar difficult time. We ask much of these articulate and grateful patients when we ask them to speak in public. Let's share some of the wonderful support generated by Helen's efforts as a speaker at the end of her story with those who are just beginning to tell theirs.

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The Lady Vanishes: My International Speechwriters Conference keynote

2013-05-28T11:33:00.001-04:00

Hitchcock's last big UK hit before coming to US

(Editor's note: When you advocate that women should publish their speeches, it's tough to duck the obligation when you give one yourself. My speaking style is to work extemporaneously and from notes on occasion, so I can bring you most of what I said at the International Speechwriters Conference, although this is by no means a transcript. For those who heard it in person, this version includes many useful links to the resources I cited.)

Most people want to know: Why would you blog about women and public speaking? and if you told me 20 years ago that this would be my topic, I wouldn't have believed you myself. It started with a client. She had just had her performance review, and she was told “Your presentations aren’t sexy enough.” And that message came from the all-male board that held her job in its hands.

If you could see her, you would see the consummate professional. She gives presentations every day in her work as a fund-raiser, and she raises millions of dollars each year for her organization. She was handling this as she needed to do, by using her own budget to seek training to "correct the problem," so that she didn't further jeopardize her position. I told her I couldn't help her make her presentations "sexy," but I thought we could do enough to make a change apparent. We did two half-days of coaching together, and midway through the second day, she burst into tears--tears of relief, it turns out. She could see that she'd be able to get through this, and that she wouldn't have to leave her job, as she had feared.

I sensed that she’s not the only female executive experiencing this, and that led me to start The Eloquent Woman. Today, it's a popular blog on public speaking, with thousands of page views and Facebook fans and readers on every continent but the North Pole and South Pole. It drives fully 50 percent or more of my coaching business.

When I started the blog almost six years ago, right at the start, I encountered a mystery--and it's a mystery I've been trying to solve ever since.

Almost immediately, I started getting requests from other speaker coaches and speechwriters. And the request was always the same: "Do you have any good examples on video of famous women speakers that I can share with my clients...specifically, famous women speakers more recent than Eleanor Roosevelt and Barbara Jordan?"

Of course, Eleanor Roosevelt was the First Lady of the United States while her husband Franklin Roosevelt was president and she guided the passage of the UN Declaration on Human Rights.

She died in 1962. I was three years old.

Barbara Jordan, an African-American member of the U.S. Congress in the 1970s, may not be as familiar to you, but she too is an eloquent speaker. She died in the 1990s. I was getting these questions in the 21st century.

Surely there were more examples to be found. I set out to find them...and then I discovered that my speechwriting and coaching colleagues were correct: Good examples of women speakers--women from today--were hard to find. In many cases, good examples of women speakers in history were hard to find.

If I had to give this mystery a title, I would call it "The Lady Vanishes," and it's a complex tale. Today I want to take you through the clues, the motives and the solution to this mystery--and you're part of that solution.

It turns out that we do a lot to keep women speakers invisible, and you can find the clues in the lists we keep of famous speeches. On American Rhetoric's list of the top 100 women speakers, about 30 percent are by women--but in the top 10, only Barbara Jordan is represented. So that explains why she's noticed. On The Guardian's list of the 100 top speeches of the 20th century, just three women are listed: Margaret Thatcher for "The Lady's Not for Turning," British suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst for a speech she gave in America, and Virginia Woolf for the lectures that became the book A Room of One's Own.

· The most current woman speakers on those lists did their best in 1974 and 1980. I'll just remind everyone that it is 2013 today. And so the lady vanishes.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson said, "History has many themes. One of them is that women should be quiet." From ancient times until now, we have many more clues about why we don't see women as public speakers. Women have more often been forbidden to speak in public than men throughout history. That's been true from the first century, and it's still true today in parts of the world where public speaking is still a luxury and not a right. When women did speak, they were labeled as whores, as androgynous, even as men disguised as women, because no women could speak that well. It’s been said that public speaking could prevent women from bearing children. Even today, the president of South Korea, Park Guen-hye, is called “the neuter president” because she’s perceived as a strong woman and public speaker. So we’ve taken away the womanhood of women speakers…and so that lady vanishes.

Today, we reduce the woman speaker to her wardrobe, particularly when female politicians are running for office. This is more subtle than banning women speakers, but it's nearly as effective. In fact, a recent study showed that women political candidates whose wardrobes were the subject of media coverage were more likely to lose than to win their campaigns.

Hillary Clinton famously tired of coverage that only remarked on what she was wearing. When she ran for the U.S. Senate, she wore the same thing every day--a black pantsuit--to get reporters to stop the commentary. But she tired of that uniform. When she ran for President--the only woman in that race--her wardrobe often was the lead of news stories about the presidential debates, merely because she was the only person on stage not wearing a black suit. And so the lady vanishes again.

But the biggest clue to this mystery--where are all the women speakers?--is on the podium. At conference after conference, in today's world, women are underrepresented as speakers. The World Economic Forum has a 20 percent quota for participation by women, which it has yet to meet, and Social Media Week, with events in 18 countries, has set the bar at 50 percent women speakers and participants for its events by the end of 2014.. The TED conference has achieved as high as 42 percent women on the program, but more often comes in at less than that. The German Marshall Fund’s Brussels conference recently offered child care to get rid of one possible barrier to women’s participation. And even the New Yorker magazine highlighted the problem in a cartoon that showed an all-male panel, with the moderator saying "The subject of tonight's discussion is ‘why are there no women on this panel?"

Every good mystery hinges on a motive. Why do we seem to have a problem with women speakers? There's lots of speculation that this is really women's fault. They're shy. They don't promote themselves. They aren't qualified to speak. We couldn't find any women. There aren’t enough women speakers to go around. We don't want to be overcompensating and get too many women. These are actual things that conference organizers say when asked about the lack of women on their programs.

But research shows a simpler reason is at work here. When you control for all other variables--such as level of education or status in the company or expertise--women are consistently viewed negatively by both men and women when they speak up in meetings. If you want more on this topic, read the excellent book "Women Speaking Up: Getting and Using Turns in Workplace Conversation" by Cecilia Ford at the University of Wisconsin.

So it's as simple as that. A long history of limiting women's ability to speak has left us with a negative view when they do speak. You see something similar in research on women negotiating for pay raises. They don't ask for them--not because they're shy or they think themselves unworthy, but because they've correctly sized up the situation and sense that both male and female managers are less likely to give a pay raise to a woman.

Today, however, I think there's another powerful motive at play, and it involves the audience. One of the wonderful serendipitous things about Twitter is that it gives the speaker's audience a microphone...and the audience has noticed that there aren't a lot of women speakers on the program.

For almost two years, I've been tracking tweets that mention the number or proportion of women speakers on conference programs.

I don't track conferences that are focused on women or women's issues, as those typically have plenty of women speakers. Some would call those conferences a ghetto for women speakers, but I'll just note that in the U.S., women's conferences are numerous because they make money and get excellent attendance. Imagine--conferences with lots of women speakers making money.

But at other conferences all over the world, the conferees are getting the programs in advance of the conference and finding that they advertise appallingly low numbers of women speakers. 5 out of 99 speakers. No women speakers. 17 percent starts sounding like a high proportion.

Interestingly, complaints about the lack of women speakers occur not just in professions dominated by men, like high technology, but at conferences for professions dominated by women, like nursing and library conferences. And so the lady vanishes.

Recently, TechCrunch announced speakers for a New York conference, with a lineup that included no women speakers at all. When this was called out on Twitter by a male observer, a female executive from TechCrunch responded rather defensively, along the lines of "we do too have women speakers. We just haven't publicized them."

And that resulted in the rejoinder: "Secret women await at the TechCrunch conference!" Again, the lady vanishes.

I think all that activity on Twitter is a positive sign that we might be able to solve this mystery together.

First, let me tell you that I’ve taken up the challenge on The Eloquent Woman blog. For the last two years, I’ve researched and written about a famous speech by a woman every Friday—we call that series “Famous Speech Friday.” I’ve written about historic speeches and speeches of today. The women speakers are not necessarily famous, but the speeches are. And I set myself an extra bar to reach, so wherever possible, the focus is on a speech about women’s issues in some way. I’m pleased to tell you that fully 35 percent of the speeches in this collection are from women speakers outside the U.S., including many from Europe and the U.K.

Today, there are more than 100 speeches we’ve collected in this way in The Eloquent Woman Index, and where possible, these posts include the full text, audio and video, so that women speakers have more resources and role models. There’s an intriguing new study out that suggests that young women do better at public speaking if theysee photographs of powerful women speaking—and the photos used, by the way, were of Angela Merkel and Hillary Clinton. So we need those role models.

I think speechwriters can play a critical role in helping women speakers fulfill their potential—and in creating a more level playing field for them as speakers.

It starts with keeping in mind what they’re faced with, including the likelihood that they won’t be well received. This is not a surprise to them, by the way, but it should prompt a smarter discussion between you and the speaker you’re working with. Knowing that it’s not her fault is vital.

You may need to change how you write—not just for women speakers, but for all speakers. If we audited your speeches, would we find that you don’t mention women at all? That you never quote women, but only men—or more precisely, only Winston Churchill? If the lady vanishes from your speeches, you might want to put her back in. Hillary Clinton, in her first 20 weeks as U.S. Secretary of State, mentioned women more than 400 times in her speeches, so it can be done.

When you do refer to women, are you referring to them only as “mothers, wives and daughters?” That's a favorite line for many political speechwriters. In the U.S., voters sent President Obama a petition after his last state of the union address to demand that he stop doing that very thing. Remember, the audience is watching—and in the U.S., at least, that audience is 51 percent women.

I know many political speechwriters who opt for talking about mothers because it’s seen as safer and less controversial than speaking about women’s issues on a wider scale. But some of the most powerful women in the world are effective speakers precisely because they speak on women’s issues in personal terms. Christine Lagarde likes to say she’s spent the last 30 years with too many men in the room. Ruth Bader Ginsberg, the American Supreme Court justice, describes how she gets talked over by the men in the room—and has throughout her career.

The novelist Ursula Leguin has given some amazing speeches, and in one of them, she shares the perfect metaphor for women speakers. She says, “We are volcanoes” and says that when women share their experiences, the truth from their perspective, that “the maps move. There are new mountains.” So don’t be a speechwriter who fears the volcano that is a woman speaker.

There’s no better example of why this strategy works than Julia Gillard, the Australian PrimeMinister, who gave a cracking good speech in Parliament, accusing the opposition leader of misogyny--a speech so powerful, some dictionaries changed their definition of the word on the strength of that speech. It was clear she worked with a prepared text, but took advantage of some wonderful extemporaneous moments, too. It's a pointed, fiery speech and it's had 2.3 million views on YouTube, putting it at the audience level of the most-watched TED talks.

You also might keep your eye on the volcano who is Viola Davis, the American actress. She’s a fantastic extemporaneous speaker—she says even attempting to write down remarks makes hermore nervous. And she has just bought the rights to a book about Barbara Jordan, and she intends to play her in the movie that will be made.

Finally, the best way to make sure the lady does not vanish is to make sure your speeches are published—by you, if not by your clients. And make sure that’s particularly true for women’s speeches. As one who is looking for famous speeches by women, I can tell you that the biggest barrier I face to writing about them is the lack of documentation. Time after time, I’ll hear about a speech or speaker, only to find no text, no transcript, no video, no audio of the speech. Please don’t assume that someone else is doing this—often, they are not, and we’re losing many great role models in the process. That lack of recorded speeches is the true way the lady vanishes, for all time.

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The Eloquent Woman's weekly speaker toolkit

2013-05-27T05:15:00.000-04:00

Fans of The Eloquent Woman on Facebook see links to good reads, resources and ideas from other sources there, in addition to posts from the blog. But you won't miss a thing, since I'm summarizing that extra content and putting it here on the blog for all readers to see. Here's what I shared in the week just past:

Who could ask for anything more? Tips on how to deliver presentations that are awe-inspiring, not yawn-producing.
Vote for The Eloquent Woman: Skinny Scoop's putting together a list of the top 25 feminist blogs--and The Eloquent Woman is nominated. Go to this link, find us in the comments, and hit "like" there to vote us through.
Image or weapon? After her death, the New York Times took this look at how Margaret Thatcher used her wardrobe as a weapon in her public image.
Can the weapon be used against you? Data show that when we talk most about a woman politician's wardrobe, she's more likely to lose that election.
Speaking to speechwriters: I had a great time at the International Speechwriters Conference in London earlier this month, and here are photos from the conference to prove it.
About the quote: Napoleon Hill, with a reminder why you should persist--a good thing for speakers to keep in mind.

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Photos from the International Speechwriting Conference in London

2013-05-26T09:12:00.000-04:00

Photos from the recent International Speechwriting Conference have just been posted on Flickr, and I've pulled shots of the day and some of my favorite speakers for an album on The Eloquent Woman on Facebook. This was among my most enjoyable speaking gigs, and the photos will give you a sense of this lively group, the European Speechwriters Network, which will have its first conference in Brussels in September--well worth considering for speaker coaches and speechwriters.

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Five famous speeches by women who feared public speaking

2013-05-24T04:45:00.000-04:00

Jacqueline Kennedy

According to numerous polls, you're more afraid of this than snakes. Or spiders. Or needles, enclosed spaces or heights. Thank goodness you're not likely to encounter any of these in combination with that chart-topping fear: public speaking.

Being a nervous or fearful public speaker isn't that unusual, but a few of the speakers in The Eloquent Woman Index had the unusual task of having to confront that fear in their very public roles. Speaking became a key part of their careers, and each of them found ways to push past their nerves to succeed. Take a look at their examples below. Could any of their techniques work for you?

1. Lady Bird Johnson prayed for smallpox before her high school graduation, so she wouldn't become valedictorian or salutatorian and have to give a speech. Now that's nervous. She didn't get sick but she did come in third, escaping the dreaded task. But her husband's vice presidency and presidency put her on stage early and often. This First Lady's 1964 whistle stop campaign tour of the southern United States put her to the test as a speaker who needed to rise above the raucous and sometimes insulting crowds, who were angry with her husband for signing civil rights legislation. One of her tips for the shy speaker: ask questions, as a way to build confidence and engage an audience.

2. Like Johnson, Jacqueline Kennedy was forced to push past her shyness to speak on behalf of her husband in her role as First Lady. During her famous 1962 televised tour of the White House, her nerves were evident; one producer remarked on her "constricted voice." But Kennedy had prepared extensively for the speech, and she managed her nerves in part by taking pauses to collect her thoughts before each question.

3. How about one more First Lady? It's difficult to imagine Eleanor Roosevelt as a shy speaker, after she delivered so many eloquent remarks on everything from African American civil rights to women in the workplace to her 1949 remarks on the United Nations' Declaration of Human Rights. She was also the first presidential spouse to hold press conferences and speak at a national political convention. For Roosevelt, intense bouts of writing and practice were key to overcoming her fear of public speaking.

4. Princess Diana was so terrified of public appearances when she first became part of the British royal family that the press dubbed her "Shy Di." But she knew there was no way she could avoid these appearances, and she worked with several speaking coaches to become more comfortable with public speaking. Her coaches noticed that she spoke best when she allowed herself to sound more conversational, and to speak from the heart. By the time she gave this 1997 presentation on the international ban on landmines, she had found a way to let her passionate interest guide her through a public event.

5. We've highlighted Rachel Carson's speeches as a scientist, but she also was a notably shy speaker--so much so, one of her biggest speeches was noted in her obituary as one she'd accepted despite her fears. She called herself "scared to death" before some of her earliest environmental talks, but she also used her passion for her subject to propel her into speeches she might have otherwise avoided.

The fearless freelance writer Becky Ham contributed this post.

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London notebook: Lessons from speakers and speechwriters at #ESN2013

2013-05-22T05:15:00.000-04:00

The view from lunch with a speaker

When you say "yes" to an invitation to speak, you hope it embraces you in return, and that's exactly what happened on my trip to London last week to give the closing keynote at the International Speechwriting Conference. As one whose biggest motivators are intellectual challenges and creativity, this conference was a perfect fit for me. I have weeks of great blog posts to come, but wanted to share these notes from my trip, particularly as they relate to my topic of women and public speaking. I think it's better than a handout:

Before the conference, I had lunches with two TEDMED speakers with whom I worked this spring: Pritpal Tamber, MD, and artist Sue Austin, both based in the UK. It was lovely to get encouragement and advice from them, in a bit of reverse coaching.
For me, the conference began with a social dinner for conferees at London's Frontline Club, where club member and Deloitte speechwriter Caroline Johns took the time to show me the preserved cellphone, bundle of Deutsche marks and pack of cigarettes that kept a bullet from killing one of the club's founders. We spoke of club member Marie Colvin, the US/UK war correspondent killed in an attack in Syria last year. Colvin's London eulogy for fallen war correspondents is in this blog's Famous Speech Friday series.
At the conference, "Big ideas don't need big words" hit me like a lightning bolt in the first talk of the day from UK speaker coach Peter Botting. Make that an elegant, crisp bolt of lightning: I've said much the same thing to the scientists and big thinkers I work with, but perhaps not so simply or well.
It's like they knew I was coming: Even as we started the meeting, Reg Starkey, creative director of

From The Guardian

QUMIN, shared this article from the Guardian about a new study showing that just 18 percent of the presenters over age 50 on UK television are women. When I described in my talk the New Yorker cartoon that features a five-man panel, with the moderator saying "The subject of tonight’s discussion is: why are there no women on this panel?", Reg kindly gave me a copy of another good one from Punch: "That's an excellent suggestion, Miss Triggs. Perhaps one of the men here would like to make it." The cartoons underscore this as a top-of-mind issue right now. We may not know how to solve it, but we're talking about it.
My theme was "The Lady Vanishes," looking at the various ways, ancient and modern, in which we silence women speakers or render them invisible. I didn't think this was a problem myself until other speechwriters and coaches kept asking "Can you find more recent examples than Eleanor Roosevelt?" Why can't we name more examples of famous women speakers? was the mystery I posed to the group. The reasons range from forbidding women to speak outright and shaming them publicly to discourage speaking, to reducing them to their wardrobes. Primarily, though, we just keep selecting few or no women speakers for our conference programs. I shared hopeful signs that audiences (via Twitter) and conferences (via quotas) are publicizing the lack of women speakers. There's much speechwriters can do to help, including making sure their speeches get published so people like me can find and share them in places like The Eloquent Woman Index--and so more women can have female speakers as role models, as new research shows that seeing strong women speakers has a positive impact on young women's public speaking skills. UPDATE: I've put the notes for my keynote on the blog here.
I cited two books for which many in the audience wanted references: Kathleen Hall Jamieson's Eloquence in an Electronic Age: The Transformation of Political Speechmaking, is an excellent analysis of television's impact on political speeches, with perhaps the best one-chapter recap of the history of women and public speaking. Cecilia Ford's Women Speaking Up: Getting and Using Turns in Workplace Meetings,is the source of the research review showing men's and women's negative views of women who speak up, which may be one reason women turn down speaking gigs when invited.
Wardrobe as weapon: My points on reducing women speakers to their wardrobes provoked lots of discussion. I promised to share this article on Margaret Thatcher, criticized for being a strong, even overbearing leader, but among the most feminine of dressers--and even then, she saw wardrobe as a weapon. I heard the views of some that they'd like Hillary Clinton better "if she'd just put on a dress," something I don't hear in the US, after I shared this recent research on how media coverage focusing on a woman politician's wardrobe may predict her losing the election campaign. Smart students of rhetoric Guy Doza and Layla Claridge were among those staffing the conference, and Layla shared this clip of London Mayor Boris Johnson, who has widely remarked-upon fashion issues of his own, opening London Fashion Week.
"Women bring different ideas to a program," were the wise words of conference organizer Brian Jenner. Women speakers were one-third of this meeting's roster. I was honored to share the mic with Martha Leyton of Creativity Works; Annelies Breedveld-Smit, speechwriter for Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, the Netherlands' first female minister of defense; and Edmee Tuyl, a ballerina-turned-speaker-coach from The Hague who coached us to use movement and gesture to express words, an inventive exercise. "A speech should be to the speaker as music is

Speechwriters dancing their words.

to the dance," she told us.
Disparate views: No smart speaker expects complete agreement in the audience. After I told him about this incident in which a female speaker was subjected to live comments on Twitter from men in the audience speculating what it would be like to "do her," Charles Crawford neatly demonstrated in his blog post on my talk some of the blame-the-victim backlash against strong women speakers, writing "You feminists helped create the 'anything goes' morality-free pornographied Western world we now have. Accept your share of responsibility for that." As Ronald Reagan would say, "There you go again." Speaker coach Celia Delaney blogged about my talk and shared some of her own experiences with that same problem as a woman speaker and organizer, quite a different view.
Keep an eye out for guest posts: How could I put myself in a roomful of speechwriters and not ask for guest posts, or recommendations on famous speeches by women for the blog? I am gratified by the responses. Annelies Breedveld-Smit shared with me this video of her minister at an earlier time in her career, standing up at age 30 against a US proposal in the EU Parliament, and getting a standing ovation--a great example I'm glad to have and share. Peter Botting shared this International Women's Day tribute to his mother with me, as well as insights about women speakers from Africa and Asia--I think I counted seven potential blog posts in all the ideas he shared. Max Atkinson shared his own post on Are Labour's leading women better speakers than Labour's leading men?, with some fine examples, and we're on a hunt for speeches from the late Member of Parliament Barbara Castle. He also shared this speech by Shirley Williams, 83, longtime British politician and professor at Harvard, on Do women make good political leaders? It's long, but worth a listen:

I don't know if this constitutes going into the belly of the beast, but on my last night in London, I was treated to dinner at London's most conservative club--one which did not admit women as full members until the 21st century--and shown the spot at the foot of the stairs where "cads" used to lollygag to catch sight of whatever might be seen below the hem of ladies' skirts as they went up the stairs. This earned it the name Cad's Corner, and prompted a rule that women must use the lift in lieu of the stairs (why should the men have to change their behavior?). I am told Margaret Thatcher, herself only an honorary member while Prime Minister, laughed at the rule and stepped up the staircase. The cad in question on the night I was there has unofficially protested my tweet recording the incident:

On my last night in London, swept away for dinner at the Carlton Club, and a look at Cad's Corner there, with an actual cad in tow. Lovely!
— Denise Graveline (@dontgetcaught) May 17, 2013

My favorite comment of the week about my own talk has to be one from a woman who wrote privately to say, "I especially liked the way you presented your story. Powerful, sure of yourself, standing there...I don't know if this is just something all Americans seem to be born with, but with you it worked so well. Not a 'trick', just a strong person who knows what she's talking about. It honestly made me feel more powerful, just seeing you do that." And if that isn't a case for getting more women on programs, I don't know what is.

Finally, there's another International Speechwriting Conference coming up in September in Brussels. Brian Jenner is a thoughtful conference organizer, and if this session was any indication, you'll find the September conference loaded with great content and smart people with whom to network. I'm thankful to have had this plum speaking slot at the spring conference, and am already plotting a return visit.

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The Eloquent Woman's weekly speaker toolkit

2013-05-20T05:15:00.000-04:00

I'd love to see you along with the readers who are fans of The Eloquent Woman on Facebook. That's where you can see these good reads, resources and ideas from other sources, in addition to posts from the blog. But I'm also sharing those finds right here, from the week just past, just in case you missed them:

Back-pocket help for speakers: Any of us might need this handy list of 14 ways to be fearless.
Negotiating is tough. Here's a guide to when to use your heart and when to use your head in negotiations.
About the quote: This fiery gem from author Ursula Leguin originally came from a commencement speech, and you can find more like it on my Pinterest board of great quotes by eloquent women.

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13 famous human rights speeches by women from The Eloquent Woman Index

2013-05-17T01:45:00.000-04:00

We've already rounded up famous speeches by women about voting rights, but women are frequent speakers on human rights of all kinds. Here's a baker's dozen of speeches on a wide range of rights--and wrongs--by women who've inspired us from the mid-19th century to this century, listed here in chronological order so you can see the progression:

Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I a Woman?" speech is one of the most frequently quoted speeches about the rights of women and of women of color, yet even its title may have been added later by others altering her words. Even so, it's an inspiring view of human rights from the perspective of the person trampled upon.
Clara Barton testified before Congress about the horrors she witnessed at the Civil War prisoner of war camp at Andersonville. An unusual speaking role in a time when women rarely spoke in public, she drew honest and graphic attention to the rights of prisoners of war.
Women's rights to birth control were Margaret Sanger's campaign in the 1920s, and for her efforts to speak out on this issue, she was arrested and ignored and fought. Her focus was the children born "unwelcome, unwanted, unprepared for, unknown," a stirring bit of alliteration.
Margaret Chase Smith stood up for freedom of speech in her "Declaration of Conscience," a forceful attack in the U.S. Senate against fellow Senator Joseph McCarthy's famous "witch hunts" targeting suspected Communists. Describing his chilling effect, she said, "Freedom of speech is not what it used to be in America. It has been so abused by some that it is not exercised by others."
Eleanor Roosevelt gave dozens of speeches on the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, a document for which she created an international consensus. I've got the speech where she described that process, along with video of one of her many talks on this important and seminal work.
Betty Friedan used her final speech as president of the National Organization for Women to call for women to go on strike in 1970. And they did, with 50,000 women taking to the streets in New York City alone. "Don't iron while the strike is hot" was one slogan.
Phyllis Schlafly took the opposing view on women's rights, declaring What's Wrong with Equal Rights for Women? Her contention: Women in America had never had it as good as they did in the 1970s. Not the prevailing view, but a forceful speech.
Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi gave her famous "Freedom from Fear" speech in 1990, noting how oppressors use fear to control people, and how fear of losing power corrupts leaders. She was placed under house arrest to silence her for 15 of the 21 years following this famous speech.
While First Lady, Hillary Clinton declared "women's rights are human rights" at a UN Conference on Women in Beijing. It took Roosevelt's work a step further, and it's far and away the most popular Famous Speech Friday post on this blog, proving it resonates even today.
Lady Gaga stormed the Rome Europride festival with this speech on gay rights. For Gaga, it was a more formal speaking effort in front of a massive open-air audience, and a forceful and eloquent defense of LGBT rights.
A YouTube video of Manal Al-Sharif driving a car in Saudi Arabia was a viral sensation because driving is not among the rights of women in that nation. It prompted her detention, but that didn't stop her from speaking out. In this 2011 speech at the Oslo Freedom Forum, she explains the more than two-decade fight to gain the right to drive.
When actress Sally Field spoke at the Human Rights Campaign annual dinner in 2012, it was in her role as the mother of a gay son. She was honored as a parent standing up for gay rights, and used her platform for a funny, passionate and heartfelt plea to others.
Washington State Representative Maureen Walsh also spoke out for gay rights in debate on a bill about gay marriage rights in her state. The parent of a lesbian, she surprised the assembly by speaking in deeply personal terms about her hopes and dreams for her children and her support for their rights.

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Working metaphors throughout a message: @rosannecash & @ivanoransky

2013-05-15T01:45:00.000-04:00

When I'm coaching speakers who want to use an analogy or a metaphor, most of the time, they spend a lot of time thinking about the metaphor--and then toss it away in a moment. It's a one-liner, a clever riposte, a throwaway line, sometimes.

I much prefer to find ways to work the metaphor or analogy all the way through a talk or presentation. Not to beat it to death in a heavy-handed way, mind you, but to get the full use of it. It may seem like an intellectual exercise, but sometimes, working your way through a metaphor or analogy in a thorough way will help a speaker see holes in her argument. Analogies are useful for this purpose when you use them as a logical argument, and both analogies and metaphor can help speakers find a path toward a stirring and memorable speech. Our minds like to look for patterns, so when you work that analogy or metaphor all the way through a speech, I can almost guarantee its success rate in terms of audiences remembering what you said.

Listening again recently to a 2009 Fresh Air interview with singer-songwriter Rosanne Cash, I found a great example to share with my trainees as a model: her recording of the classic country song Sea Of Heartbreak, which features lyrics by Hal David and great harmonies from fellow vocalist Bruce Springsteen. The song begins this way:

The lights in the harbor/Don't shine for me/I'm like a lost ship/Adrift on the sea.

Sea of heartbreak/lost love an' loneliness/Memories of your caress/so divine I wish/you were mine again, my dear/I am on this sea of tears/Sea of heartbreak.

How did I lose you?/Oh, where did I fail?/Why did you leave me/Always to sail?

The song comes from Cash's album The List, and in the interview transcript, where Terry Gross asks Cash why she chose to record the song, Cash says:

It's kind of a perfectly constructed country song. And it was on the list, so you know that gave me permission. And it embodies that longing that is in so much of country music really, really well, and beyond that, it takes a metaphor and carries it to the very end without breaking that narrative about the metaphor, without becoming kitschy, which a lot of songs do. And that's kind of perfect to me. And it's also - it makes it a bit of a period piece because you don't hear many modern songs that do that. And there's also some language in it that's not modern, you know, when he says divine and my dear. These are kind of old-school ways of talking, and I really enjoy that. So it was like stepping into a period piece. At the same time, it has the hallmark of every great song, which is that it transcends time. It has a timeless quality to it, and it feels very modern.

I think some of that timeless quality comes from a metaphor or analogy that's so recognizable, so reflective of real-life experience and imaginings that it resonates strongly with audiences over time--and that's why speakers should think about working a metaphor or analogy all the way through a speech or presentation.

Here's another example: Reporter Ivan Oransky, who spoke at TEDMED last year, uses the baseball movie Moneyball to explain the trend of diagnosing "preconditions," saying that medicine's looking for preconditions in the erroneous ways scouts used to look for good pitchers in baseball. He works it throughout the talk, explaining the link at the start, using a three-strikes analogy midway and bringing it home, so to speak, by tossing a baseball throughout the talk.

Cash herself is a prolific writer of prose in addition to lyrics, and you may enjoy her book Composed: A Memoir. Do you work your metaphors and analogies all the way through your speeches? If you're confused about the differences between metaphors, analogies and similes, look here.

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The Eloquent Woman's weekly speaker toolkit

2013-05-13T01:28:00.000-04:00

Readers who are fans of The Eloquent Woman on Facebook see these good reads, resources and ideas from other sources there, in addition to posts from the blog. You can keep up with the pack right here, with the finds I shared in the week just past:

Around the water cooler, Hello Ladies blog is finding that Sheryl Sandberg's is making it easier for women to speak up at work about gender issues.
Strike a pose, but make it a confident one. Here's another look at how a confident stance helps lower stress and boost confidence, two things every speaker needs.
Get out those pictures of yourself speaking: Research shows that young women do better at public speaking if they can just see a photo of a prominent woman public speaker. We can all be role models in this way.
Practice makes...: In You play like you practice, you can borrow from a sports metaphor that could extend to your speaking. Are you practicing in the way you mean to speak?
Keep your eye on this commencement speech: Spelman College has selected twins Kirstie and Kristie Bronner as its co-valedictorians.
About the quote: Aung San Suu Kyi's "Freedom from Fear" speech pinpointed the emotion that undermines people under the scourge of power. Read the Famous Speech Friday post on this wonderful speech here.

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From The Eloquent Woman Index: 8 famous commencement speeches by women

2013-05-10T04:45:00.000-04:00

Cue the Pomp and Circumstance, it's that time of year again. Commencement is the start of something new, yes, but we're often stuck listening to the same old tired speeches in celebration. Can you remember your commencement speakers, or any memorable speakers at the graduations you've attended?

Admittedly, the commencement speech is a tough gig. Speakers want to be inspiring, and to avoid cliches. They want to be broadly appealing to a diverse-age audience, but not so broadly appealing that every line they deliver has lost its bite. And they want to be memorable, but they're speaking at an event that rarely changes from year to year.

With all that in mind, we've compiled a list of commencement speakers from The Eloquent Woman Index who managed to meet these challenges, in ways that pleased the people who heard them live and that echoed long after the graduates shuffled off the stage.

1. Carol Bartz's 2012 commencement speech at the University of Wisconsin, Madison was full of plain speaking from the ex-CEO of Yahoo!, including jokes to bridge the gap between parents and students. She also decided to talk about the importance of failure--an unusual and memorable topic at an event held to celebrate success.

2. Viola Davis' 2012 speech at Providence College was full of the deep emotion and dramatic flair that you might expect from the Tony Award-winning actress. But a speech that included a scene from The Exorcist as a way to encourage graduates to find their authentic selves? Maybe not so expected.

3. Also in 2012. teacher and author Margaret Edson spoke beautifully at Smith College. Her speech, along with several other commencement speeches in the Index, used gentle humor to take the pomp out of the day's events. She also spoke without notes, allowing her to look out at her audience and establish a strong and instant rapport with them.

4. Nora Ephron's 1996 commencement address at Wellesley College is a terrific example of how humor and deft language can give new life to a standard speech. The journalist and screenwriter spoke directly about the year's top stories, from O.J. Simpson to Hillary Clinton. That's somewhat daring in a commencement speech, to be so topical when the occasion itself is so timeless. But I bet the graduates appreciated hearing where they fit into a moment in time.

5. Ursula K. Le Guin's commencement speeches at Mills College in 1983 and at Bryn Mawr in 1986 are some of the most poetic calls to action for women that you'll ever hear. The Bryn Mawr speech, in particular, has been considered among the 10 most memorable commencement speeches.

6. Before "lean in" became a buzzword and a best-selling book, Sheryl Sandberg was exploring the idea in a 2011 commencement speech at Barnard College. The Facebook COO was especially good at reaching out to today's mixed audience of graduates, speaking not just to the obstacles facing women in their 20s, but also those facing women earning their mid-life degrees.

7. When Maria Shriver spoke at the 2012 University of California Annenberg School graduation, she urged students to consider "the power of the pause." Like Carol Bartz, she chose a topic that was memorable because it strayed away from the usual gung-ho, march-to-the-future rhetoric that graduates are accustomed to hearing.

(Freelance writer Becky Ham contributed this post.)

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Why memorizing your talk is like memorizing lyrics on your favorite album

2013-05-08T05:15:00.000-04:00

As speaking tactics go, memorizing an entire talk is among the most difficult. So who wouldn't want an easier way to anticipate it? In a recent interview with Studio 360, actor Tom Hanks talks about starring in a Broadway play, Lucky Guy, and the challenges of memorizing lines and performing them live on stage, instead of the cuts and takes and retakes he's used to when making films.

But Hanks thinks that the process of memorizing your lines is no different than, say, they way you memorized all the lyrics to songs on your favorite album when you were a teenager.

His own favorite? Bruce Springsteen's Darkness on the Edge of Town, laden with long songs and memorable but complex lyrics.

That tactic is similar to one of my 6 stealth ways to find time to practice, specifically the one in which you record yourself giving your speech or presentation and then listen to it over and over again--on your iPod when you run, in your car when you're commuting--until you know it by heart. Yes, you won't like the recorded sound of your voice. Yes, you should try it anyway.

Here's the interview for you to listen to. Do you agree with Hanks?

(Photo from Virginia Manso's stream on Flickr)

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The Eloquent Woman's weekly speaker toolkit

2013-05-06T05:15:00.000-04:00

Get your story tutorial here: Handily for speakers, TED has compiled this 6-talk playlist of TED talks about storytelling.
Fine, or fumbled? Oscar-winning actress Jennifer Lawrence has had some high-profile speaking fumbles, but one observer things her winning ways help her get past them quickly.
About the quote: Hillary Clinton made this historic statement during a UN Conference on Women in Beijing while she was First Lady of the United States. From the Famous Speech Friday post that is far and away the most-read post on this blog.
Keynote prep: I'm working on my keynote for the International Speechwriting Conference in London May 16, and having a lot of fun with this one. Join me and get a discount on registration by using the code "EloquentWoman."

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Famous Speech Friday: Indira Gandhi's "What Educated Women Can Do"

2013-05-03T04:45:00.000-04:00

The third Prime Minister of India, first elected in 1966 and again in 1980 until her assassination, Indira Gandhi was a force formidable and the only woman to serve as India's leader.

Given at the Golden Jubilee celebrations of the Indraprastha College for Women in 1974, Gandhi's speech on "What Educated Women Can Do" is not just a politician's boosterish speech for a popular cause. Gandhi herself understood the spotty educational opportunities women faced in India. Wikipedia notes that her own education consisted primarily of home tutoring, and that her university education was upended by the need to care for her mother. It likely didn't help that she stopped and started her university education a few times in both India and England.

As a result, this speech decades later took the listeners back to her own childhood, as she noted how unusual it was for girls to leave the house, let alone get an education:

I remember what used to happen here. I still remember the days when living in old Delhi even as a small child of seven or eight. I had to go out in a doli (carriage) if I left the house. We just did not walk. Girls did not walk in the streets. First, you had your sari with which you covered your head, then you had another shawl or something with which you covered your hand and all the body, then you had a white shawl, with which every thing was covered again although your face was open fortunately. Then you were in the doli, which again was covered by another cloth. And this was in a family or community which did not observe purdah of any kind at all.

Later, she turned to some educating of her own, asking the educated women in her audience to broaden their world view about India and help turn its public image around. It's a call to action that I suspect she knew would also help women to speak out in situations of all kinds:

I do not know how many of you know that the countries of Western Europe and Japan import 41 per cent of their food needs, whereas India imports just under two per cent. Yet, somehow we ourselves project an image that India is out with the begging bowl. And naturally when we ourselves say it, other people will say it much louder and much stronger. It is true, of course, that our two per cent is pretty big because we are a very big country and we have a far bigger population than almost any country in the world with the exception of China. We have to see and you, the educated women, because it is great privilege for you to have higher education, you have to try and see our problems in the perspective of what has happened here in this country and what is happening all over the world.

What can you learn from this famous speech?

Share your perspective: Gandhi uses this speech to disclose her perspective that the people of India were contributing to the nation's image around the world, then used data to debunk the going image--at one defusing the practice and arming her listeners with a new weapon to use when they encountered the myths. When people ask you to share your "wisdom" with the crowd, this is an effective way to do it.
When you're the leader, be generous with your personal perspective: If you think it's tough today to find women speakers on the program, it was even more the case in India in the 1970s. So this female prime minister shares stories of her own upbringing and even addresses visible objects of curiousity to the women she's addressing, like her decision to cut her long hair in defiance of tradition. These personal details close the distance between the public figure and the audience, and allow the audience to relate to its leader.
Don't let your hosts off the hook: Gandhi saves her congratulations on the school's anniversary for her closing lines (something I wish more speakers would do instead of front-loading them). But she by no means sticks to platitudes, nor does she let them off the hook for future achievements: "This college has had a high reputation but we must always see that we do better than those who were there before us," she says. It's a call to action, wrapped in a congratulatory note, and one important to a national leader hoping to affect change on a great scale.

Once again, I'm caught wishing we had a video of this fine speech, but here's the text for you to examine. You can read more about her life in Indira Gandhi: Daughter of India. What do you think of this famous speech?

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Instead of wincing: 10 things to look for on that video of your speech, updated

2013-05-01T05:15:00.000-04:00

(Editor's note: I've updated this post annually since it first appeared in 2010, and I promised to post it this week for the many speakers I worked with at TEDMED 2013--they'll be seeing video of their talks in about a month, and wanted to know what to look for. This is the advice I share with trainees in all my public speaking workshops when we do video practice, and it's a great tool to help you spot problems, see what you did right, and make improvements, based on your own video.)

A longtime friend and colleague just completed a major and special speaking event, giving a sermon at his church. But when I was telling him how well he'd done on the video, he admitted he hadn't looked at it and didn't want to--so much so, he hadn't even listened to the audio.

He has that in common with the best in the business: Any professional newscaster, actor or performer will tell you that they hate how they look and sound when recorded, so it's no surprise we ordinary mortals do, too. New research suggests that if you hate the sound of your own voice, there may be a physiological reason for that. As a coach, I see it differently: If you're lucky enough to be recorded when you speak--whether you do the recording or someone else does--you've got a golden opportunity to learn things you might never otherwise know about how you speak. If a video is made available to you, take the opportunity. Or rig your own ultralight camcorder or a pal with a smartphone, and take charge of your own recording.

Rather than torture yourself with how bad you think you look, focus instead on these cues and clues that would be hard to discern without help from a camera. This list is what I coach my clients to look for when viewing video of their speaking, whether it's in practice or the real deal:

Visual "ums:" Instead of saying "um" when you're pausing to think, you may look to one side or up or down; make a repetitive gesture over and over; or move in a pattern, if you're on your feet and away from the lectern. It might be putting a hand to your face, a wink, a grimace. Watch for those patterns--freeze-frame if you need to catch them--and work on buying yourself time to think with new phrases, or work more on your message in advance and practice. It helps to watch the video sooner rather than later after your talk to catch this slip-up, since you'll be better able to remember what you were thinking at the time your visual "um" occurred--and that may help you avoid repeating it next time. Often, the visual "um" happens when you haven't quite got your message down, or forgot something you wanted to include, just like a verbal "um."
Invisible gestures: You may be gesturing like a windmill, but if it's below the height of the lectern or out of camera range, all the audience will see is your body moving slightly. That's great if you're gesturing to keep your speech fluid, since gestures help you avoid "ums" and stumbles. But if you wanted your gestures to help get your point across and hold the audience's interest, make sure we can see them. Typically, that will mean gesturing at shoulder or chest height. Practice will make that more comfortable for you.
A body with a mind of its own: Some speakers planted in one place will sway from side to side, and some who like to move around wind up drilling a path into the floor as they pace back and forth, back and forth, in an unrelieved line. Either one calls for a change: You may need to focus on keeping your core body stable, or move in different directions if you like to roam the audience. If you are going to move your body, vary the pattern--think triangle, rather than straight line--and plan places in the talk where you pause verbally and stop physically, to break up repetitive moves.
How you react to interruptions: Listen for those unexpected noises--door slams, crying babies, audience laughter, applause, sneezes--during your talk. How do you react? It's a great chance to catch your immediate reaction, and to think through how you might handle that next time. While you're at it, pay attention to how you react when you're asked a question; your face may give a different answer than your mouth does, showing apprehension, for example, when you don't need to do so. And when you get applause, you have two choices: Talking right through it, a forceful tactic called "surfing the applause," or pausing to let it happen. Knowing your unforced reactions helps you plan better for the next time the interruptions happen.
Expressions that match your words: Your face is part of your connection with the audience, but it gets confusing, at best, if you look like you're grimacing when giving praise or sad when talking about something exciting. Since it's not at all unusual for speakers to feel disconnected from their facial expressions, video helps you focus and fix that. Most people's mouths, when at rest, are either flat-lined or slightly downturned, making you look bored or sad. Smiling, even a little, corrects that natural downward turn. You get to decide how much to smile, but smile at least somewhat.
Gesturing. Yes, it's a good thing: Gestures are good for both speaker and audience, helping your brain form language fluently and helping the audience understand you, even if the gesture is random and doesn't match your word. Think of gestures as a condiment: If you gesture for every word, you're missing the chance to emphasize some of them to good effect. Try counting your gestures on the video, watching for the repetitive single gesture that could be a visual "um." If you're not gesturing, or immobilizing your hands in your pockets, you may observe on the video that your speech is less fluent.
Your posture and body language: Are your shoulders up around your ears, or slumped? Are you leaning in one direction? Are your arms crossed in a defensive posture? Is your head down when you should be looking up at the audience? Turn off the sound for this review, and see what your body language says.
Do you really look nervous? Do you look at ease? You may be surprised: Most speakers find they feel nervous, but don't look as if they are. If you're not sure, ask a friend to watch and tell you what she thinks, but 99.9 percent of the time, the audience can't tell that you're nervous. Many TEDMED speakers told me this was the tip that helped them "nerve up" the most before going on stage, so keep it in mind for next time.
Can you hear your message clearly throughout? To find out, you may need to just listen to the audio once, then watch the video. Do you find it hard to follow your progression? Did you forget to include a key point? Did your gestures, movement, facial expressions and props help get that across? What can you notice that will help you next time in terms of clarity and focus?
What did you do that was wonderful? You may need some outside perspective on this, but try looking for your successes in the video. Did you nail a great laugh line, pause with effect, gesture with aplomb? What did the audience like and react to positively? Did you stay on time? Take the time to note what went well, so you can make a point of doing it again--and so you know you can focus on another skill the next time you practice.

There's an even better reason to embrace that video: More and more, conference organizers tell me that video of you speaking to an audience is what they're looking for before they extend an invitation to join the program. Once you've reviewed your video, don't hide it! Share it on social networks, repost it to your blog or website, and send a link to it when you are seeking a speaking gig in the future.

(Photo of Deborah Estrin speaking at TEDMED 2013 via TEDMED)

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The Eloquent Woman's weekly speaker toolkit

2013-04-29T05:15:00.000-04:00

Readers who are fans of The Eloquent Woman on Facebook see these good reads, resources and ideas from other sources there, in addition to posts from the blog. Want to keep up with them? Here are the finds I shared in the week just past:

We all like to think that if we choose the right words, we'll be persuasive in our speaking. But the psychology of your listener also plays a role in why some words are more persuasive than others.
Queen bee or mother hen? Those are popular cultural stereotypes of women in business. Glass Hammer blog has a great look at these contradictory images of professional women.
Fears and how to beat them: A frequent speaker writes a moving essay about empathy and the fear of being exposed, and how to beat your fears--not just in public speaking, but very relevant to speakers.
Add your voice to your speaker image, since the sound of your voice may well determine how you are perceived.
About the quote: Another good reminder from my board of quotes for public speakers on Pinterest.

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7 famous speeches by women about health from The Eloquent Woman Index

2013-04-26T04:45:00.000-04:00

A speech about sickness and health may loom like a minefield for some women speakers, planted with all the challenges they've been taught to avoid in public speaking. Vulnerability, emotion, the female body--all of these attributes might be on display in a speech about health, even if the speaker doesn't plan for them to be the focus of her content.

And yet, a glance through the 100-plus speeches collected in The Eloquent Woman Index of Famous Women's Speeches shows just how powerful these women can sound when they talk about battling disease, or standing up for reproductive health, or urging political and scientific action. They succeed by stepping right into that minefield of vulnerability and emotion, realizing their bravery and determination will carry them through. Let's take a look at a few of these speakers from our index and see what they accomplished:

They spoke about the unspeakable: During the 1992 presidential election, Mary Fisher and Elizabeth Glaser made noisy convention halls fall into silence by talking passionately about HIV/AIDS in a time when the disease was still under the radar for most Americans. Although not as taboo a topic as HIV, straight talk about cancer was seldom heard in 1975 when Betty For d broke with all kinds of conventions in describing her mastectomy. And after decades of hiding her condition, Elyn Saks lifted some of the stigma of mental illness when she went public with her schizophrenia diagnosis.

They seized the bully pulpit: Glaser, Fisher and Ford are all good examples here, but a few more of my favorites in this category include Margaret Sanger and U.S. Congresswomen Jackie Speier and Gwen Moore. In her 1925 speech "The Children's Era," Sanger skillfully focused on the health and welfare of unwanted children as a way of garnering more support for birth control and the need for women to control their own reproductive health. In 2011, Speier threw away her prepared remarks during a floor debate about Planned Parenthood to give a wrenching description of her own abortion, and Moore spoke about going into labor and being unable to even call for an ambulance. Their impromptu speeches provided short but blistering examples of why women in similar circumstances need affordable healthcare.

They turned powerful stories into powerful actions: Saks' speaking tour about her schizophrenia book prompted her to launch new research projects about the disease, which soon led to a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant. Ford's speech sent thousands of women to get their first mammograms. Sanger helped organize the first World Population Conference two years after her speech--although she and the other women at the conference had to remove their names from the program.

(Photo of Betty Ford touring a breast cancer center courtesy of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library)

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Speaking Science: How to reframe your speaker stress

2013-04-24T05:15:00.000-04:00

It's no secret that many people find public speaking stressful, and even the speaker who describes herself as calm can find herself puzzlingly short of breath right before stepping to the lectern. But what if there were a different way to look at speaker stress?

University of Rochester psychologist Jeremy Jamieson and his colleagues recently tested whether "reframing" the stress that people feel during public speaking would help them feel less anxious during the task. In their study, published earlier this month in the journal Clinical Psychological Science, they asked 73 women and men to deliver a five-minute speech about themselves--with only three minutes to prepare. They then told half of the group that the stress they were feeling about the task was beneficial, rather than harmful. They even gave them a few scientific articles to read before speaking, which backed up the notion that stress is the body's way of ensuring success under difficult conditions.

"It seems like people just never take the time to consider that stress could be good," Jamieson said, explaining the reframing process. "So when they experience a sign of arousal like a racing heart or sweaty palms, they interpret this as negative."

The study participants then delivered their speeches in front of two research assistants--and oh boy, was it a tough crowd. The researchers had instructed the assistants to "respond negatively" during the speeches, scowling and tapping their clipboards and generally giving the impression that they had better places to be. On top of that, the participants were then asked to count backward by sevens, starting at 996. If they messed up, they got a stern warning from the assistants to start the counting again.

Jamieson's team discovered that the speakers who had been taught to reframe their stress as a good thing were more likely than the other speakers to say that they felt they had the resources to cope with the difficult experience. They were also less likely to notice negative feedback like yawning and that irritated tapping by the research assistants. Physiologically, the reframed group fared better as well: their stress-challenged hearts beat more efficiently.

Jamieson said it's not clear yet how long these effects last, although he is eager to test longer-term reframing as therapy for people with social anxiety disorder. He also says that anyone can try reframing their stress in this way, before a speech or another high-anxiety event.

"The reappraisal techniques we used in the study could very easily be done alone," he said. "Really, the core of what we do is change people's mindsets about what stress is. Rather than viewing stress as a unilaterally negative experience, we point out that stress responses have evolved for specific reasons and that they actually can help us perform better in stressful situations."

Jamieson talks more about the technique in this video produced by the University of Rochester. Is this something you might try before your next speech?

(Freelance writer Becky Ham contributed this post.)
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The Eloquent Woman's weekly speaker toolkit

2013-04-22T05:15:00.000-04:00

Margaret Thatcher reconsidered as a woman speaker: British speechwriter Max Atkinson reposted these thoughts about Margaret Thatcher and the evolution of a charismatic woman. It's the best look I've seen since her death about her public speaking.
Nearly everyone hates the sound of her own voice, even broadcasting pros. Turns out the sound of your own voice is affected by physiology, and what you hear is probably not what we hear.
Feel like a paper tiger on stage? Then check out author George Plimpton's vintage advice on mastering public speaking and dealing with stage fright.
Many speakers get in their own way through self-sabotage, often unconsciously. Victim no more: How to stop self-sabotage helps you put an end to the practice. My favorite example of the practice is in The Eloquent Woman Index, where you can learn how Lady Bird Johnson prayed to get smallpox if she wound up first or second in her high school graduating class, so she wouldn't need to speak at graduation.
Are you a speedy speaker? A reader on Facebook asked about average speaking speeds, prompting me to share this post from the vault on how to hit the brakes if you're a speedy speaker.
If you speak at the front of a classroom, check out What's the Use of Lectures?, a book that will share data on just how fast those students are falling asleep and other good presentation tactics for teachers and professors. It's on my Pinterest board of books for public speakers.
About the quote: Pulled from a stirring 1950 speech in the Senate by Margaret Chase Smith, this quote and others from our Famous Speech Friday series can be found on my Pinterest board of great quotes by eloquent women--which is also a tab on our Facebook page.

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Famous Speech Friday: Francine Wheeler's radio address on gun control reforms

2013-04-19T04:45:00.002-04:00

What if the President of the United States stepped aside and let you give a talk in his place? That alone can make a speech famous, and it happened last week to Francine Wheeler, who gave the president's weekly radio address--broadcast on major television networks, YouTube and the White House website, an audience in the millions virtually guaranteed. It's a rare opportunity for any political leader, let alone a citizen, and the first time in the Obama administration that someone other than the president or vice president has delivered this address. The president even sent out a special email explaining the reason for the switch.

Wheeler is the mother of a six-year-old, Ben, who "was murdered in his first-grade classroom on December 14th, exactly 4 months ago this weekend," as she reminded us three paragraphs into this taut and powerful four-and-a-half-minute message. She and her husband were brought to Washington by the White House to lobby Congress on behalf of stricter gun control laws.

The setting was controlled, scripted and focused, with a teleprompter in front of her and her husband David by her side. Yet Wheeler, with a delivery described as "raw" and "struggling to maintain her composure" in press reports, transcended the limits of the setting to speak as a mother of two sons whose grief is still fresh:

David and I lost our beloved son, but Nate lost his best friend. On what turned out to be the last morning of his life, Ben told me, quite out of the blue, “ I still want to be an architect, Mama, but I also want to be a paleontologist, because that’s what Nate is going to be and I want to do everything Nate does.”

Ben’s love of fun and his excitement at the wonders of life were unmatched. His boundless energy kept him running across the soccer field long after the game was over. He couldn’t wait to get to school every morning. He sang with perfect pitch and had just played at his third piano recital. Irrepressibly bright and spirited, Ben experienced life at full tilt.

I'll just guess the President isn't likely to lend you this microphone, but I still think you can learn something from this famous speech:

You can balance tears and a straightforward delivery: Here, the trappings of the seasoned politician--supportive spouse by her side, tight camera focus, quiet setting, teleprompter and script--help shore up the emotional impact on the speaker. Even so, Wheeler tears up nearly every other paragraph in this talk, underscoring for us what moves her: references to her son, to reactions following the shootings, to the need to the act. It's powerful. Another help: Wheeler's text deftly alternates positive memories with difficult passages, giving her someplace to go with her emotions.
Share something of what your life is like now: When you're the focus of attention in a tragedy, perhaps a survivor yourself, even a glimpse of your reality today can lend immediacy and clarity to your remarks. "When I packed for Washington on Monday, it looked like the Senate might not act at all. Then, after the President spoke in Hartford, and a dozen of us met with Senators to share our stories, more than two-thirds of the Senate voted to move forward." A simple statement that conveys action on the issue and the whirlwind in which she finds herself, this pair of sentences cements a connection.
A specific call to action makes your talk effective: This wasn't just a memorial speech or eulogy, since Wheeler's role was to encourage other citizens to take action. "Please help us do something before our tragedy becomes your tragedy," her heart-tugging plea, comes at the turning point in this address that is just 12 scant paragraphs. But Wheeler also opens with a signal that she is looking for action, and winds up with concrete action steps and specific reasons why action is needed now.

Ultimately, this plea went unanswered as the Senate bill failed the week after this address. You can read the transcript of Wheeler's address here and watch the video below. What do you think of this famous speech?

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1 question for the speaker coach: "Effective hand motions and hands at rest?"

2013-04-17T05:15:00.000-04:00

If you could ask a speaker coach one question about your speaking or presenting, what would it be?

I asked that question recently on The Eloquent Woman on Facebook, and I'll be answering those questions here on the blog. You're welcome to post your questions here in the comments or on Facebook.

LaTracey Copeland asked, "What are the most effective hand motions to be using throughout your presentation, and where do you hold them when not speaking?"

We've managed to make speakers feel bad about gesturing for some time now, and needlessly so. For starters, gesturing actually helps your brain produce speech--so you will speak more fluently if you gesture, and not so much if your hands are immobilized when you speak, so avoid putting your hands in your pockets while you're talking. Gestures also help you think while you're speaking.

The truth is that any kind of gesture--random or planned--will have those effects on your brain as a speaker. Here are some tips for how to think through and choose gestures for your next speech:

Can a gesture help you substitute for a chart or slide? Maybe all we need you to do is sketch the upward climb of a chart in the air, rather than show it to us on a slide.
If your talk is being recorded on video or you're in a television interview, remember that we won't see your gestures if they are behind the lectern or, on camera, below the level of your head and neck. That's fine if all you want to do is keep the words flowing, but keep in mind that the audience's ability to see the gesture can help us understand you and stay engaged. So hands up!
Pointing at the audience is a no-no in most cultures, so use my alternatives if you need to call on a questioner or direct attention to someplace in the room.
When your hands are at rest, if you can't rest them lightly on the lectern, stand with your elbows bent and your hands lightly touching at the fingertips. You'll look relaxed, but your hands are in a position that keeps them ready to gesture without looking awkward. But don't put them in your pockets, grip the lectern too tightly, or otherwise immobilize them--it will cause you to stumble more in your speaking, since gestures help your brain produce fluent speech.

What's your 1 question for the speaker coach? Leave it in the comments.

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The Eloquent Woman's weekly speaker toolkit

2013-04-15T05:15:00.000-04:00

The best conference hack: When you're on the audience side, do you sit in the front? Here's one author who advocates the practice.
Successful negotiating isn't about the win. It's about the win-win. Find out how to become a great negotiator in 5 steps.
About the quote: Speakers, here's your mantra. You'll find more like it on my Pinterest board of great quotes for public speakers.
Maya Angelou is always an inspiration. Here, she recites her poem "And Still I Rise," giving you a quick lesson in using inflection and facial expression to enliven your speaking, as a bonus. She's in The Eloquent Woman Index for her famous eulogy for her dear friend, Coretta Scott King.

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Famous Speech Friday: Shirley Chisholm introduces the Equal Rights Amendment

2013-04-12T04:45:00.001-04:00

"As a black person, I am no stranger to race prejudice. But the truth is that in the political world I have been far oftener discriminated against because I am a woman than because I am black."

Let other speakers mince words and dodge the difficult. Shirley Chisholm didn't so much speak in public as confront society verbally with its contradictions and inequalities. She wasn't anxious--her diatribes had a calm knowing about them--but she was adamant. Chisholm applied those speaking skills in 1969 as a member of Congress, introducing the Equal Rights Amendment and reminding her fellow members, five paragraphs in, about the two kinds of discrimination she'd faced herself. Later on, she reminds the House of Representatives that this particular piece of business had been before it for 40 years.

Chisholm had just become the first African-American woman elected to Congress the year before this speech, and it's an example of how she waded right into the task. Here, she tackles a common argument against an equal rights amendment protecting the rights of women:

One is that women are already protected under the law and do not need legislation. Existing laws are not adequate to secure equal rights for women. Sufficient proof of this is the concentration of women in lower paying, menial, unrewarding jobs and their incredible scarcity in the upper level jobs. If women are already equal, why is it such an event whenever one happens to be elected to Congress?

It is obvious that discrimination exists. Women do not have the opportunities that men do. And women that do not conform to the system, who try to break with the accepted patterns, are stigmatized as ''odd'' and "unfeminine." The fact is that a woman who aspires to be chairman of the board, or a Member of the House, does so for exactly the same reasons as any man. Basically, these are that she thinks she can do the job and she wants to try.

Just a few years later, Chisholm would run for president in 1972, the first major-party black candidate to do so. What can you learn from this famous speech?

Don't mince words: "The happy little homemaker and the contented 'old darkey' on the plantation were both produced by prejudice," said Chisholm, unafraid of echoing stereotypes to make her case. This is a plainspoken speech--an important quality when you're standing up for what's right or challenging the status quo. She leaves no doubt about where she stands, and where she thinks you stand in taking this position.
Reveal secrets as well as public positions: Chisholm spoke not only of overt discrimination, in the form of the only question asked of women job candidates ("Do you type?"), but called out "a calculated system of prejudice that lies unspoken behind that question....The unspoken assumption is that women are different. They do not have executive ability orderly minds, stability, leadership skills, and they are too emotional." Much as suffragette Nellie McClung did in 1914, Chisholm here gives voice to men's unspoken assumptions, the barriers that stood between women and equal opportunity.
Draw unexpected parallels: Speaking at a time when the civil rights movement was making strides, Chisholm knew from personal experience that women were discriminated against even in that movement. Knowing that civil rights had begun to gain political support, she ends her speech with a call to reject the "male supremacist myth," equating it with the white supremacist myth.

Chisholm was the subject of a PBS film, Unbought and Unbossed, which takes its title from Chisholm's autobiography, now updated as Unbought and Unbossed: Expanded 40th Anniversary Edition. You can read the text of this famous speech, and watch this series of clips of Chisholm speaking around the announcement of her candidacy for the presidency in 1972. You'll get a great sense of her pacing and cadence, and her sharp enunciation:

As an extra treat for our speechwriting readers, here's speechwriter Jill Franklin on writing for Chisholm:

A hat tip to reader Matt Shipman for the pointer to this text. Thanks!

Take charge of that meeting: 8 ways to make sense of Robert's Rules of Order

2013-04-10T05:15:00.001-04:00

If you're going to chair meetings or rise to a high post in your professional society, you're likely to run up against Robert's Rules of Order. In the U.S., it's the most widely used authority on parliamentary procedure--and many a meeting chair has struggled to follow those rules. A reader of The Eloquent Woman wrote in recently to say:

I've been trained in facilitation, but now chair boards that follow Robert's Rules of Order which I'm not that familiar with--and have not found a good resource (only one that is dense and antiquated). It would be great if you could identify one.

I've found 8 resources--all sizes and styles--for you to dip into if you need to master Robert's Rules. I find it helps to keep in mind the purpose of the rules, which help establish important meeting issues for women, such as who gets to speak next, allowing speakers to speak without interruption in favor of turn-taking, making sure that there's room for debating issues to be voted upon, and more. More recent editions of the book include versions of the rules for videoconferences and conference calls, an area where most of us need help taking turns and getting a word in edgewise. Check out these useful aids to learning the rules:

Start at the source: Robert's Rules publishes its own Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised In Brief, not quite a pocket guide at 208 pages, but an abbreviated version you may find useful. It also offers a plan for study if you're starting your own group to learn the rules.
Motion study: Robert's Rules also publishes a free, printable quick chart of motions you can make, including at-a-glance information on whether they need a second, whether you can be interrupted and more.
Cheat sheets galore: Many organizations have watched their members and staff struggle with the rules, so cheat sheets abound. Try the civil engineers cheat sheet, the dummies cheat sheet or the city of Madison's guide. Or, if you're working with a particular organization -- like 4H, a PTO, or a homeowner's association -- search for the generic group name along with "Robert's Rules." Someone may already have anticipated your need and produced a guide for it.
Charting your way through the rules is this six-page chart version of Robert's Rules Of Order, useful for posting in your office if several of your colleagues need to have a ready reference.
Bully pulpit? The Guerrilla Guide to Robert's Rules takes a different approach, comparing parliamentary procedure to guerilla warfare. It applies Robert's Rules to keeping bullies in check in meetings, and using the rules to get your way when decisions are being made. I like that it discusses how bullies use misconceptions to sway the debate, a good tactic to keep in mind.
Plainspoken rules: Robert's Rules of Order in Plain and Simple English aims to clarify the entire rule book in simpler language; this book comes in Kindle and paperback versions.
Smart option: Robert's Rules For Dummies breaks it down for you in the classic "For Dummies" format that's anything but stupid. Included in this guide are sample agendas and minutes, as well as other easy-to-follow checklists and advice. This volume was updated in 2012.
Robert's Rules Made Simple offers DVDs and books to guide you through the process of learning the rules. Watch a preview on YouTube about mastering the three most important motions.

Need more help than a book can provide? The National Association of Parliamentarians certifies professional parliamentary experts and you can even hire one to help your board meeting or assembly follow Robert's Rules smoothly. In my own experience, it's helpful to designate someone officially as the parliamentarian and give her the training she needs to advise you on a case-by-case basis. Please do share your own favorite resources on the rules in the comments.

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The Eloquent Woman's weekly speaker toolkit

2013-04-08T05:15:00.000-04:00

Speakers and speechwriters are always in search of the kinds of ideas, reads and resources that fans of The Eloquent Woman on Facebook see in addition to posts from the blog. I'm summarizing that extra content and putting it here on the blog. Here are the finds I shared in the week just past:

All about that meeting troll: If there's one person who consistently trips you up or stalls your progress in a meeting, you've met the meeting troll. Here's how to handle him.
Do you visualize everything that might go wrong before a talk? Seth Godin thinks that's a good way to rehearse failure instead of rehearsing success.
TED talks are so popular that even a fictional doctor on Grey's Anatomy had a TED moment.
Always too busy to practice your speaking or that upcoming presentation? Don't look now, but you might just be procrastinating.
We lost an eloquent man this week when film critic Roger Ebert died. I reposted this piece about how Ebert reinvented his public speaking without a voice of his own after cancer surgery took away his ability to speak. It's an inspiring tale of persistence by a self-described "motor-mouth," and holds lessons for speakers on emphasis, facial expressions, gestures and other non-verbal tools
About the quote: A favorite of mine from Henry Ford--and I think this is especially true for public speakers. Find more like this on my Pinterest board of quotes for public speakers.

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13 famous UK & European speeches by women in The Eloquent Woman Index

2013-04-05T04:45:00.000-04:00

I'm giving the closing keynote at this year's spring conference of the UK Speechwriters' Guild and European Speechwriter Network in London in May (and readers of The Eloquent Woman get 10 percent off the registration price with the code "EloquentWoman"). So it seems a good time to gather up the UK and European speeches in The Eloquent Woman Index. This group has speeches given in the region by American speakers as well as speeches by UK and European natives. It's a diverse and forward-thinking collection:

Lady Gaga's speech at Rome Europride is a formal effort at speaking from a flamboyant performer. Look past her wig and costume and listen to this inspiring and heartfelt human rights manifesto that follows the first rule of speakers in foreign lands with a nod to "when in Rome..."
France's Christine Lagarde at the Global Women's Forum demonstrates the economic importance of women in a speech from one of today's most eloquent women. Lagarde, among many other qualities, speaks as fluently in English as in her native French.
Elizabeth Murdoch's lecture to the UK television industry took to task its lack of invitations to women speakers, and acknowledged the honor of being asked to give the lecture as "a pain in the ass." A forthright speech that knows its audience well.
Britain's Princess Diana spoke out in favor of a ban on landmines in a speech that represented her effort to find and express her own voice. Sadly, this one was delivered three weeks before her death; the mission wasn't fulfilled until it was too late for her to see it.
Elizabeth I's speech to the troops at Tilbury is the oldest speech in the Index, so far--and with three different recorded versions, we can't be sure it's what she said. Still, it's among the most stirring of speeches, one that inspires speakers and speechwriters alike.
Queen Elizabeth II's tribute to Princess Diana represented a first for this frequent speaker of a queen: It was her first speech on live television, with an audience in the hundreds of millions. In giving up the control of a recorded speech, this Elizabeth gained a much-needed connection with the audience. Our post also includes audio of her very first speech, given at age 14 in 1940 on the BBC.
British author Virginia Woolf's "A Room of One's Own" lectures took place at Cambridge University in 1928 in an "acoustically dreadful" setting. But the essays based on them have inspired women writers ever since.
Primatologist Jane Goodall knows what separates us from the apes, and today this British scientist spends most of her time speaking in public. Her 2002 TED talk draws on her studies of Shakespeare and her Welsh ancestry to tell stories that captivate.
British suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst described her violent fight for votes as "Freedom or Death," and she wasn't kidding. This talk--given in the U.S. as she evaded another jail term--is noted for the line "you cannot make omelettes without breaking eggs; you cannot have civil war without damage to something."
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher got her nickname from the "Iron Lady" speech at the height of the Cold War, and made jokes about it in subsequent speeches. The foreign policy speech that sparked the nickname was a strong and serious example from an adept public speaker.
Journalist Marie Colvin's moving eulogy for fallen war correspondents took place in London. Though an American, she worked for British news organizations in war zones, losing an eye in the process. Two years after this eulogy, she herself was killed in a targeted attack in Syria on the day she was scheduled to leave the war zone.
Swedish golfer Sophie Gustafson stutters, and rarely speaks in public. So when golf writers gave her a special award, she videotaped her acceptance speech. It's a rare chance to see a stutterer conquer a speaking task and still convey her innate humor and humanity.
Tilda Swinton spoke about David Bowie at the opening of an exhibit about him at London's Victoria & Albert Museum, and made it more personal and detailed than most ribbon-cutting speeches. This is a tribute that encompassed the crowd and the exhibit lovingly...and with an eye to the freak in all of us.

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