KEEP IT SHORT, STUPID!
Most leaders are not known for their brevity. As they climb the stage, I whisper, “KISS-Keep It Short, Sir!” For me, a good speech is about valuing every word you speak. Each word, like a currency note, has a purchasing power. Every word counts when they purchase meaning for the audience. Ideally, speeches should have an intimate introduction, a crisp conclusion and very little in-between.
A good mother can lull two kids to sleep whereas a leader can put two thousand people on ‘horizontal mode’. Leaders have different styles of lulling their audience to sleep. Some have starting trouble like a sputtering car engine without a silencer. But once they start, it is difficult to stop them. Audience signals such as blowing of nose and frequently looking at watches don’t really help. There are others who start with a bang—like a thousand piece orchestra but get stuck like a scratched CD. They go on and on until the whole audience breaks into a thunderclap of mock applause to shut them up. There are still some who ignore such stop signals and simply break their speech to take a sip of water. They then take deep breaths and carry on like whooping cough.
A certain leader scolded his speech-writer, “I told you to cut my speech short by one-third. You have again written a three hours speech for me instead of one hour—my entire audience started to snore.” The speech-writer politely said, “Sir, I did exactly what you had asked for. Along with your one hour speech, I gave you two photo copies to be kept in file. Unfortunately, you read all three copies on stage!”
The author is a Professor at IIM, Lucknow.
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