Charles Crawford CMG is a communication consultant who has drafted speeches for members of the Royal Family, Prime Ministers and other senior figures. He gives masterclasses in negotiation technique and public speaking / speechwriting. He is an expert on central Europe, having served as British Ambassador in Warsaw, Belgrade and Sarajevo.
***************
What’s the secret to drafting and delivering a great speech or presentation? The one they’re all talking about in the bar afterwards. The one that prompts a message from a head-hunter asking you for a quiet but urgent chat about a new senior position.
A good place to start is this unnerving thought: What will everyone else do? Don’t do that! Be deliberately ambitiously different. Stand out from the crowd. Say something that no-one else there has said – or dares to say.
Wait … but isn’t that risky? What if it all goes wrong, and you’re seen as massively messing up? Far better to be safe than sorry, especially with all those audience smartphones ready to pounce on anything embarrassing and put it up on TikTok before your speech has even finished?
I unobtrusively supported the then (and current) Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski’s remarkable speech in Berlin in 2011 on that period’s Eurozone crisis. It was arguably the most powerful speech by any Foreign Minister in living memory. Here is the key passage, much quoted round the world:
What, as Poland’s foreign minister, do I regard as the biggest threat to the security and prosperity of Poland today, on 28th November 2011?
It’s not terrorism, it’s not the Taliban, and it’s certainly not German tanks. It’s not even Russian missiles, which President Medvedev has just threatened to deploy on the EU’s border.
The biggest threat to the security and prosperity of Poland would be the collapse of the Eurozone.
And I demand of Germany that, for your own sake and for ours, you help it survive and prosper. You know full well that nobody else can do it.
I will probably be the first Polish foreign minister in history to say so, but here it is: I fear German power less than I am beginning to fear German inactivity.
Strong meat! But it was powerful and influential precisely because it was so ‘undiplomatic’. Look at the weirdly personal language he used: “I demand of Germany …”. And how, after all Poland has gone through down the centuries squeezed between Russia and Germany, he talked about fearing German tanks less than German inactivity.
Of course his speech attracted plenty of negative commentary both in Germany and in Poland. Who’d authorized such a provocative and diplomatically risky text? Yet it helped shift the European debate. Above all it showed leadership. Radek Sikorski joined the list of Foreign Affairs magazine’s Top 100 Global Thinkers in 2012.
* * * * *
My first Cicero Award for speechwriting was for a speech about green funerals. (There are no boring topics.) It started with some lines from the film Mars Attacks!
Why… are you doing this? Why?
Isn’t the universe big enough… for both of us?
We could work together
Why be enemies? Because we’re different? Is that why?
Think of the things we could do
Think how strong we would be
Earth… and Mars… together
That utterly unexpected opening pinned back the ears of the assembled funeral service sector audience. This is what the speaker Tony Ennis wrote afterwards:
That speech was one of the most enjoyable moments in my whole professional life. My conclusion?
Most of us think that knowing our subject and being able to talk qualifies us to give a good speech. It took a personal crisis (being embarrassed by being asked to leave a podium) for me to seek help.
My one recommendation to anyone fretting over an upcoming speech? Get an expert in. This is not a DIY discipline.
Change your ambition. Don't try to give a “good” speech. Go for outstanding. You want this reaction:
“Wow—that was the best speech I've heard in a long time. I need to talk to that guy. I want to do business with him!”
Too many people settle for “good enough.” Open yourself to the risk of being amazing.
In April I heard that a speech I’d supported for Dr Robert Floyd, the Executive Secretary of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organisation (CTBTO), had won two more Cicero Awards for speechwriting, in the Foreign Policy and Technology categories respectively. What was so good about this speech?
It’s all too easy for speeches about arms control and the risks of nuclear weapons proliferation to slump into impenetrable technicalities, teeming acronyms and awful security-studies jargon. On this occasion – a lecture in honour of the late Australian diplomat John Gee who accomplished many great things in the global arms control area – Dr Floyd wanted to be expansive. To present the CTBTO and its remarkable technical work as an unambiguous force for good. To come across as generous, as wise, and above all as convincing.
After short opening formalities, here's how he started:
The Oppenheimer movie does its best. But it’s hard to grasp now how our world changes on 16 July 1945 in New Mexico.
That first nuclear weapon test features a metal casing festooned with cables,
roughly the size of a good home paddling pool. It’s called ‘the Gadget’.
It’s heavy. It’s hauled to the top of a steel tower.
Legendary nuclear scientist Enrico Fermi is watching. Nervous anticipation, excitement tinged with a little fear. Will the very atmosphere ignite? And if so, will it destroy just New Mexico, or the whole planet?
The Gadget explodes. Nothing like this has been seen in the Earth’s 4.5 billion-year history. We cunning humans have set free the energy trapped in small amounts of matter, creating a vast explosion.
21 days later, the world’s first atomic bomb falls on Hiroshima…
Many micro-points of speechwriting and public speaking techniques here. Another popular (if obvious) movie reference right up front to catch their attention. The jolting juxtaposition of the bomb and a home paddling pool. The mind-boggling if not openly insane questions. And note how that test back in 1945 is described here in the present tense. This draws the audience right into the moment.
Later in the speech he described the CTBTO’s astonishing International Monitoring System, a wonder of today’s science:
Friends - our planet is noisy!
Earthquakes. Landslides. Asteroid strikes. Explosions in conflicts. Mining-blasts. Whale sounds bouncing through the oceans. There’s plenty going on out there!
Our system detects it all. It gathers a tremendous amount of valuable data. And it has been put to a vast array of different uses.
But, just say an explosion happens this very evening. A large and unusual one. Our IMS network detects it in seconds: something significant has happened!
IMS stations detect the vibrations and send the data to Vienna. Our computers compare these signals with all the planet’s usual background noise.
Alarm bells start ringing within a couple of hours if the technical ‘profile’ of the event matches a nuclear test. Where EXACTLY was that test? We’ll have a pretty good idea, down to just a couple of kilometres, depending where exactly on earth the explosion happens.
Testing in secret? Impossible!
Then the diplomacy starts…
Again, the use of the present tense brings out the practical human drama involved in CTBTO’s search for possible nuclear weapons explosions amidst everything else happening around the world, every minute of every day. Amazing.
* * * * *
If you’re interested in learning more about Charles Crawford’s world-class public speaking and presentation support, please contact our Partnership Secretary below
