Alan Barker

Modular enchantment

Trivium:

the classical liberal arts of grammar,logic & rhetoric 

Edited by John Martineau

Wooden Books, 2016

£14.99

ISBN 978 1 907155 18 5 

John Martineau has developed Wooden Books, based in Glastonbury, as a collection of beautifully crafted pocket-sized oracles, which he describes as “a mathemagical ancient wisdom series”. Each book promises knowledge hidden, forgotten or downright arcane, in modular form (no chapter runs to more than two pages). Production values are high: Trivium, like all the other titles in Martineau’s catalogue, cries out to be picked up.

Enlightenment and entertainment are cunningly intertwined.

The trivium is the trio of liberal arts that, in medieval universities, comprise the humanities: grammar, logic and rhetoric. (Wooden Books has also produced a companion volume, Quadrivium, covering the four ‘scientific’ arts: maths, geometry, music and astronomy.) The subjects are ‘liberal’ because they liberate the student into citizenship: without them, we cannot participate fully in civil society. (Tell that to the vice-chancellors of our universities...)

Trivium will give you a pleasurable smattering of each art, with some amusing add-ons to keep you turning the pages.

This is actually a compendium of six short books by different authors – with three appendices by yet more; as a result, each section treats its subject slightly differently.

Turn to Andrew Aberdein's and Adina Arvatu's section on rhetoric – and there’s no need to read Trivium end-to-end – and you’ll find a decent enough introduction to its classical roots (but nothing about later rhetorical theory). There are gaps, even in such a brief overview: although it describes the five canons, it barely mentions topics of invention and deals not at all with the skills of delivery. You’ll find a few intriguing pages in the appendices on proverbs and the art of memory, but no fewer than 37 of the section’s 52 pages are given over, perhaps inevitably, to figures of speech.

Rachel Holley does a much better job with grammar. It would be hard to imagine a more cogent account.If you're looking for a straightforward guide to the basics, you won't go far wrong.  (Though at one point, at least, Ms Holley does go wrong - very slightly.)

At the other end of the scale, Earl Fontainelle promises much with logic and actually over-delivers: some aspects of the subject are introduced without being explained.

These core sections are framed with material reflecting the development of the humanities in the Renaissance. Octavia Wynne takes us on a wonderful journey through poetics: you need never worry again about distinguishing an anapest from a villanelle. As with every section, the quotations are wide-ranging and rich. The final book in the collection, by Gregory Beabout and Mike Hannis, offers the most through-written account of its subject, ethics.

Trivium opens with a marvellously batty “poet’s dictionary of enchantments” by John Michell, whose esotericism places him at the very heart of Wooden Books’ ethos (some of us fondly remember his book, The View over Atlantis, and his musings on ley lines...) Michell sees each letter as embodying some kind of natural meaning; “in some cases,” he suggests, “even the shapes of letters ... seem to accord with the sounds they denote.” With a nod to Plato’s Cratylus and some splendid cartoons, his dictionary opens the ear to the infinite possibilities of euphonics.

Trivium, then, is a book to dip into for inspiration and delight, though at a fairly hefty price. Put it in the bathroom (other small rooms are available).

The best lack all conviction

Mark Thompson: Enough Said

The Bodley Head, 2016

ISBN 978-1847923127

£25.00

The simple answer to the question Mark Thompson asks himself  – “What’s gone wrong with the language of politics?” – is that it has split in two. 

On one side, “the weirdly affectless and dehumanized style in which many public policy documents are written.” 

On the other, “honesty of emotion and at least the appearance of being willing to engage with the lowliest members of [a] chosen community.”  Thompson labels these two rhetorics rationalism and authenticism. 

“Something has gone awry with our politics,” he says; but it’s a mark of his intellectual sophistication that he resists simplistic explanations.  Instead, he places public language “in the centre of a causal nexus”: “our institutions and organizations,” he writes, “are living bodies of public language, and when the rhetoric changes, so do they.”  He quotes George Orwell (whose Politics and the English Language he submits to a nuanced analysis): “the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and … one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end.”

The dichotomy between gutless rationalism and the “punctiliously immoderate language” of authenticist politics is hardly a new phenomenon. As I read this book, I kept hearing Yeats's words from 1919: "The best lack all conviction, while the worst  / Are full of passionate intensity.”

In our own day, rationalism is evidenced in the impenetrable policy wonkery of government departments and NGOs, which Thompson traces to the gradual breakdown of technocratic consensual politics in the post-war period.  As data has become ever bigger, it has become harder to explain or justify policy decisions clearly.  (Deciding on a third runway, for example, is far more difficult than deciding to build Heathrow in the first place.)  Decision-making must involve compromise, but compromise hardly figures in political campaigning, which has by now become more or less a continuous process.  “The zone of ambiguity and flexibility,” writes Thompson “– that zone where almost all political progress takes place – has become rhetorically insupportable.” Instead, rationalism fetishises dialectic (and evidence), while the authenticist foregrounds narrative.  The rationalist venerates facts and evidence; the authenticist dismisses both as 'factoids', preferring greater, fuzzier, 'truthier' truths.

From a longer perspective, Thompson seeks the roots of both rhetorics in the Enlightenment. 

Rationalism derives from the empiricism of Hume and the positivism of Comte, and authenticism from the counter-Enlightenment writings of Johann Georg Hamann, through Hegel and Kierkegaard to Nietzsche and Heideigger (in whose work it connects explicitly to nationalism). 

Authenticism fuels the contemporary distrust of the political class.  Nietzsche, along with Marx and Freud, figures large in what Thompson calls “the school of suspicion”: all three “detected a layer of falsity and deception in human utterance that must be stripped away before the truth can be revealed.”  The meme of ‘false consciousness’ proliferated in the (very authenticist) counterculture of the 1960s and has now gone mainstream.  The presumption of bad faith in every politician (“Why is this lying bastard lying to me?”) also colours the investigative and analytical journalism that forms such a major part of Thompson’s own career (DG of the BBC, CEO of Channel 4, CEO of the New York Times). 

His analysis of these two competing rhetorics thus spirals, like a widening gyre, to encompass the media, celebrity advocacy and all the other components of an increasingly complex public space.

At every turn, his deep understanding of rhetorical principles – from Aristotle onwards – is leavened by vivid stories drawn from his experience.  He discusses Thatcher and Reagan, Berlusconi and Putin, Clinton and Trump.  He describes the parabolic adventure of spin from Campbell to Cameron.  All the big stories are here – the notorious Belgrano phone-in on Nationwide, Jo Moore’s “a very good day” email after 9/11, the David Kelly tragedy – and, in substantial chapters that repay repeated study, Thompson explores how a failing public language affects the discussion of three contentious issues: the presentation of scientific research, the decision to go to war, and the boundaries of free speech. 

How, then, to address the crisis? Thompson calls up our capacity for prudence – what the Greeks called phronesis – to help us “perform a sense-check on anything that sounds too good to be true.”  One way to develop prudence, he suggests, is to put public language “at the heart of the teaching of civics.”  It’s a tall order: “the humanities as a whole,” he writes, “stand at low tide, judged less economically valuable … than the sciences.”  But if the most important question confronting any society is how we are to live with each other, then becoming skilled in public language must be a first step in addressing it.  Thompson’s words should raise a cheer among all right-thinking liberals: “Let’s teach our children rhetoric.”

And where can we professional rhetoricians seek improvement, at the verbal end?   “The seeds of renewal,” writes Thompson, “germinate in unexpected places:” in the language of the immigrant, the refugee and the marginalized; in satire; and – intriguingly – in hip hop.  And he sees a promising new bud within political discourse itself.  “Though it is often spoken by the weak and dispossessed,” he writes, “there is something unstoppable about the language of fairness.”

Mark Thompson’s remarkable – and remarkably readable – book bulges with useful information and ideas.  For anyone who contributes to public language, Enough Said is essential reading.

How can I produce a great equity research report?

It’s clearly a question lots of people want to answer.  It's the question most often asked on the training programmes I run.  (You can find a typical outline here: Download Kairos_EquityReportWriting_proposal).  My Slideshare presentation, How to Write an Equity Research Report, has enjoyed 33,000 hits since I uploaded it in 2009.  (Take a look.  Click on the image.)

 

 

 

 

 

Large investment brokers print maybe 1,000 pages of research each week.  And a further 1,000 electronic pages.  A large fund management house receives maybe 7,000 envelopes of research in the post every Monday morning.  Maybe your report is in there somewhere, competing with 500 other researchers for your reader’s attention.

How will you make your report stand out from all the rest?  After all, you all have access to the same information (presumably). 

It’s not about the information.  It’s about the idea.

Why is your reader reading it?  Not to understand how you did the research.  Not to explore the finer points of a company’s profit margins or acquisitions policy. 

Your reader wants to know how to deal.

And only you can tell them.  No amount of information will do that job.  No algorithm, no software, however fancy, can give them that answer.  Only you, with your uniquely powerful human mind, can persuade them to deal.

So: the one thing you need to do to produce a great research report is take a position.

Don’t do what everyone else is doing.  Anyone can comment on the trends in financial statements, or compare a company’s valuation metrics with those of its peers.  And they do. 

Be different.  Find something interesting to say. 

Ok, that’s not easy.  It’s hard: most of the interesting things have been said. But having something to say is your job.  It’s what you’re paid for.  It's what puts us ahead of the computer.

If you really want to get ahead, study the craft of persuasion.

Here are three signposts to head you in the right direction.

• Find the story,
• Construct an argument.
• Bring it alive.

 

Find the story.  Use this simple narrative structure to help you. 

Situation: What are the market’s assumptions about this stock?

Problem: Why are the market’s assumptions wrong?

Question: What’s the key question arising from my insight?

Response: What’s my position?

SPQR:  you might recognise it as the motto of the Roman Republic.  That might help you remember it. (There's more about this structure here.)

How do you find the Problem in this sequence?  Daniel Martins, in a recent post on Linked In, suggests that every good stock call meets at least one of two key criteria: results and valuation.  He gives the example of a ‘buy’ call:

“1.Better-than-expected results. The analysis must show evidence that the company whose stock is under analysis will perform better than consensus seems to expect, in the case of a "buy" call. Little does it matter if I believe Facebook will double its earnings by 2018. The real question is: does the market ... believe that the company will grow earnings at a faster or slower pace than what I expect? If the latter, then maybe I have a "buy" recommendation in the works.

2.Higher valuation. For a "buy" call, the analysis must support that "the market" should and will value the company's stock at higher multiples (or the present value of the company's future cash flows at a lower discount rate). For example, is it fair that Apple’s stock be valued at 12 times the company's 2016 EPS consensus estimate?”

A 'sell' call would go the opposite way: you predict worse results and a lower valuation than consensus.  The trick is to put your position in context. 

Ok.  So you have your position.  Now you need to:

 

Construct your argument.  What makes an argument convincing?  Two things: logic and imagination.

Logic first.  The basic form of an argument is simple: [A] because [B].  Martins offers this hypothetical argument:

"Stock XYZ is a 'buy' because the company's flagship product will continue to be in high demand, as the Internet of Things continues to grow at a fast pace in the next 5 to 10 years".

The logic just isn’t there.  The word 'because' is doing no work.  As Martins says:

“While the statement may suggest that Company XYZ is in a high-growth industry, it tells me nothing about whether I expect (1) the company's future results to beat expectations and/or (2) the stock to be valued at higher multiples than it is now.

“In other words, it tells me nothing about whether the stock is a good buy.”

He suggests that the logic is stronger in this argument:

"Stock XYZ is a 'buy' as I expect EPS to grow 20% faster than the market projects in the next five years, and because the probable deleveraging of the company's balance sheet should lead to lower perceived risk and P/E expansion to 15 times."  

And hey!  You can impress us with your analytical skills.  But do so, please, in support of a robust argument.

 

Bring it alive.  Now, imagination.  Every argument in the real world depends on an appeal to more than logic.  We all know that smoking is bad for our health, but no amount of statistics can compare in impact with the picture of a lung ravaged by cancer – or, alternatively, the story of Uncle Basil who smoked 50 a day and lived into his nineties. 

Bolster your argument with material that stimulates your reader’s imagination.  Give your reader images, concrete examples, stories.  Use rhetorical devices. (Tricolons; antithesis; erotema. Look 'em up.  Learn, my friend, learn the craft.)

Make the argument human.  Jon Cooper, in a great posting on Quora, has this useful checklist (thanks, Jon):

Who are the players in this industry? What personalities are involved, either as corporate entities, or the specific people involved?

What are their inputs and outputs? What’s going on in those markets? Is the secular trend in market participants growing or shrinking? How about market size? How about supply constraints?

When are they chronologically weak or strong? Are there cross-industry dynamics in time that matter? How about intra-industry? Any regulatory changes on the horizon?

Where do these players operate? What’s going on in those localities?

Why have these players chosen the courses of action that they did? Is there evidence that the criteria they chose to set their direction are the right ones? Do you agree with their professed rationales?

How do these players view themselves and their peers? How are they viewed by other powerful actors that matter?

Check out, also, this blog post.  You’ll find plenty to inspire you there.

So: why do so few analysts dare to take a position?

Simple.  They don’t want to be wrong. 

And, many times, you will get it wrong.  But, you know: that’s not the point.  As Cooper says: “Whether you are right or wrong matters less than that you express a point of view that engenders a thoughtful conversation with the folks who will commit risk dollars.”

We're not academics.  We're in business.  The point is not how accurate your predictions are, but whether you provoke people to deal.

A reminder: I run training and coaching programmes for research analysts.  You can find a typical outline here:

Download Kairos_EquityReportWriting_proposal

Speechwriting for diplomatic candidates in South Korea

This is an adapted version of the slidedeck I use on the speechwriting module that I run for the Korean National Diplomatic Academy in Seoul.  The slides include references to a workbook that accompanies the course.  This link is aimed primarily at students who want a copy of the slidedeck.  But it might be of interest to anyone interested in speechwriting.

i also run speechwriting courses in other organisations and venues, and run The Essentials of Speechwriting regularly for the European Speechwriter Network.  Check out their website for details of the next course.

If you want to discuss training for speechwriting in your organisation, please contact me through this blog, or through my website.

Download KNDA_blog_version_course_slides

Arouse, Withhold, Fulfil

Houston, We Have a Narrative:

Why Science Needs Story

Randy Olson

University of Chicago Press

2015

978 0 226 27084 5

$20; £14.00

 

Scientists urgently need to use narrative well, and Randy Olson has developed a set of tools to help them.  But the tools can easily become empty formulae, so Olson offers a strategy to help scientists develop an enhanced understanding of narrative: what he calls ‘narrative intuition’.

That summary of Olson’s new book a model he calls ‘ABT’: and, but, therefore.  Olson borrowed it from Trey Parker, one of the writers on South Park. Hollywood, claims Olson, is the place to go for such models. 

(He gives short shrift to humanities departments, who are so busy ideologising that they wouldn't know a narrative if it...  Olson is not polite about humanities academics.)

Olson has developed this material in the years since publishing Don’t Be Such a Scientist.  That book offered five key principles of good science communication (I discuss them here); this one develops practical, useable techniques.

Why does science need narrative so badly?  Partly, says Olson, because scientists tend to communicate by offering “piles of facts”.  Partly because science is signally failing to engage a non-scientific audience.  (He is especially good on the conundrum of communicating climate change.)  And partly because a lack of narrative awareness is damaging science itself.  Journals are increasingly publishing research that’s ‘significant’ rather than sound: according to scientists Olson has spoken to, many papers in Science and Nature are overstated in their conclusions.  “Most of the claimed statistically significant effects in traditional medical research,” claims John Ioannidis of Stanford, “are false positives or substantially exaggerated.”  (Olson noticeably avoids discussing the role of Big Pharma in all this.)

The other reason scientists need to understand narrative is that they’re so hostile to it.  This storyphobia, Olson suggests, is the result of a profound misunderstanding of the terms narrative, story and storytelling.  He quotes Yarden Katz, in a paper called Against Storytelling of Scientific Results: “Great storytellers embellish and conceal information to evoke a response in their audience.”

Not so, says Olson: Katz and other scientists are confusing content with form.  True, stories can deceive, fabricate and exaggerate; but they can also be “accurate, honest, true and reliable”.  Storytelling itself is as value free as E=mc².  

“The bottom line,” asserts Olson, “is that I fail to see anyone taking [a] critical approach to these terms.”  

So, in this book, he sets out to do just that.

He defines a story as “a series of events that happen along the way in the search for a solution to a problem.”  Given this definition, Olson can link narrative to both explanation and argumentation.  He claims, for example, that the IMRAD structure of experimental papers – Introduction (I), Methods, Results And Discussion – “is the structure of a story, which has a beginning (I), middle (M & R), and end (D).” 

Sleight of hand?  IMRAD is surely an explanatory structure, designed to help other scientists replicate an experiment.  My own experience of working with scientists suggests that they tend to offer, not "piles of facts", but over-elaborate explanations.  Our task as science communicators is surely not just to find the core narrative, but to help scientists explain better.

Olson goes further.  He compares ABT to the argumentation structure offered by Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein in their book They Say, I Say (present what your opponents say, then what you have to say, before reconciling the two).  The two structures are the same! What’s more, they share that structure with the Hegelian Triad (thesis, antithesis, synthesis).  Narrative encompasses, not just explanation, but argument as well.

Little wonder that Olson can claim, “in science, narrative is everywhere.”

Heady stuff.  And perhaps he’s on to something.  Maybe the rhetoric of explanation and argumentation really is founded, at some deep, intuitive level, on narrative.  Maybe narrative itself instances an even deeper, musical structure of statement, tension and release: a structure that finds expression in IV-V-I chord progressions, in sonata form and the twelve-bar blues.

(Marcus Webb spoke illuminatingly on this theme at a recent conference.) 

It’s a pattern humans can’t resist: arouse, withhold, fulfil.  Maybe, if we can tap into that deeper structure, we can make our explanations and arguments more compelling.  And maybe this is useful, not just for scientists, but for anyone who wants to engage audiences in important issues.

To help us on our quest, Olson offers three tools, on three levels: word, sentence, paragraph.

ABT is the shaping tool at the sentence level.  And, but, therefore sits at the heart of his method because it embodies the narrative structure in a single, tripartite statement - and, probably, because Olson has found it the most practically useful of his techniques.  The model  bears a striking resemblance to Barbara Minto’s ‘situation, complication, question, response’ structure (which I use, substituting ‘problem’ for ‘complication’ to create SPQR as a Roman-themed mnemonic).  It also closely resembles the Freytag Triangle, although Olson doesn’t say so.

[Source]

ABT, says Olson, can rescue scientists from the structures they so often use: AAA (And, And, And) and DHY (Despite, However, Yet).   ABT informs the elevator pitch.   ABT, in short, “is the age-old structure of logic that works best for the masses.”

At the word level, Olson offers us the Dobzhansky Template.  Named after a notable Russian geneticist, this template helps us in our initial efforts to “find the narrative on a given topic”.  Which sounds very like Aristotle's "discovering the best available means of persuasion;" this template brings us close to invention, one of the five canons of classical rhetoric. 

The template goes like this:

Nothing in ___________ makes sense except in the light of __________ .

Fill in the blanks.

(Picture source: AZ Quotes)

The Dobzhansky Template gives your presentation a single focus.  It helps you stay on message when talking to the media.  It even helps you write grant proposals.

But this isn't quite invention proper.  The template focuses on a subject, rather than a topic.  The practical question for the science communicator is: how does subject [b] make sense of subject [a]?  Invention would suggest topics to answer that question: patterns of explanation, like comparision, cause and effect, categorisation...  patterns which simplify complexity.  None of this is quite narrative; but then, I've noticed that some patterns of explanation compel attention more than others - perhaps because they arouse, withhold and fulfil in a kind of narrative way. 

I'll try the Dobzhansky Template.  And I'll let you know how I get on.

At the paragraph level, Olson offers us the Hero’s Journey, as defined by Joseph Campbell and made famous by George Lucas.  Olson, wisely, tells us to treat this one with care.

All three  of these tools can become empty formulae, but none more so than the Hero’s Journey.  Check out the hundreds of books on movie writing that rely on it, and the resulting proliferation of identikit movies, “as if,” to quote Peter Suderman, “a mad scientist has discovered a secret process for making a perfect, or at least perfectly conventional, summer blockbuster.”  (An ironically apposite image, linking Hollywood to science in just the way Olson doesn’t want.)   Scientists can go to Hollywood for technical help with narrative, but they must resist “bending the science to tell a better story.”

(Olson recommends a good TED talk by Matthew Winkler on the Hero's Journey.  Find it here.)

Olson’s wisdom consists in precisely this: understanding that we should use his models perceptually rather than mechanically.  They help us see the structures inherent in our material, but we should resist imposing them unthinkingly.  The Hero’s Journey – that most seductive model of all – works best as an analytical tool, not a creative one.  “If you get to know it well,” he writes, “you’ll end up spotting the elements, by themselves, in real world situations.”

And, when you do start to spot those elements, you’ll develop narrative intuition: “the ability not just to know the basic rules of narrative but to have absorbed and assimilated them so thoroughly you can actually sense them.”

Narrative intuition helps you decide how much narrative to include; it helps you find the specifics that bring a narrative to life; and it helps you develop what Olson calls relatability: of character (“You’re just like me!”) and narrative (“That’s just what I did!”). 

But – and here Olson displays his wisdom once more – narrative intuition doesn’t come quickly

This book, like all Olson’s work, will benefit presenters of all kinds – not just scientists.  He mentions Nicholas Kristof, for instance, who dares to suggest that NGOs should embrace the dark arts of marketing to get inside people's brains.  And John Yorke, whose book Into the Woods delves into the fractal nature of stories.  And Karlyn Campbell, who writes in her book, The Rhetorical Act:

"Truths cannot walk on their own legs.  they must be carried by people to other people.  they must be explained, defended and spread through language, argument and appeal."

"This is a source of irritation for many scientists," claims Olson, "but it's the real world."  Hear, hear.

And there's more: hints and tips, examples and case studies, drawn from his own practical experience as a trainer, from real scientific papers and elsewhere. You’ll find yourself scurrying off to all the other books he’s read, and the TED talks he’s watched (and given).  

Olson is on to something.  I think he understands that narrative has some irreducible core of mystery; it can't ever quite succumb to rational analysis.  When it works, something magical happens.  That magic is what we rhetoricians are hunting for.  Olson's book will help us.  I for one will be using his ideas in my own quest, not least in my work with scientists.

I help scientists develop their communication skills, including - well, yes - their narrative intuition.  Find out about my work with the British Science Association here.  Contact me if you'd like to discuss training or coaching in science communication.

Five steps to action: Monroe's Motivated Sequence

When you plan a presentation or speech, what model do you use?  

Many people still cling to the old 'Tell 'em' principle.  You know the one.

1. Tell 'em what you're going to tell 'em.
2. Tell 'em.
3. Tell 'em you've told 'em.

It might work.  Sometimes.  Often, however, it fails. 

Why?  Repetition is not the problem; after all, repeating key elements is an essential part of any presentation.  Our audience is not reading but listening; we need to build their recall. 

No, the 'tell'em' principle fails for two other reasons.

First, it creates a structure that's built around the material.  And you should build your structure around the audience.

After all, what are the audience interested in?  You?  Your material?

Absolutely not.

There's only one thing your audience is interested in.

Themselves.

Structure the presentation to reflect the way they think, what worries them, what they most want - and it will interest them.

Secondly, 'tell 'em' fails because it lacks the crucial element of any successful presentation.

Suspense.

Your structure should take your audience on a journey, from where they are to where you want them to be.  And, at each step along the way, you should leave them wanting more.  Wanting, indeed, to take the next step.  

Your structure should be a sequence of cliffhangers.

That structure already exists.  It's called Monroe's Motivated Sequence.  It works because it focuses on the needs of the audience rather than the material, and it ratchets up the suspense.

Alan H Monroe, a Purdue College professor in the 1930s, realised that presentations must be structured around their audiences. 

Although individuals may vary to some extent, research has shown that most people seek consistency or balance among their cognitions.

When confronted with a problem that disturbs their normal orientation, they look for a solution; when they feel a want or need, they search for a way to satisfy it.

In short, when anything throws them into a condition of disorganization or dissonance, they are motivated to adjust their cognitions or values, or to alter their behavior so as to achieve a new state of balance.

 Monroe's sequence, in his words, reflects the audience's sense of dissonance and motivates them to adjust their values to achieve a new state of balance.

Step One: Get Attention

You may not need to fight to gain your audience’s attention.  They probably want to be there.  Indeed, they are paying attention to you because they need to be reminded of the significance of this event. 

Establish that you have something interesting to say.  (The audience may well be expecting that this ritual speech will say very little of interest!)

After the inevitable and necessary statements of welcome, thanks and etiquette, you could maintain attention by:

• telling a humorous or dramatic story;
• demonstrating the importance of your point;
• posing a question;
• arousing curiosity or suspense; or
• using a quotation.

In your opening, you should also:

• establish your credibility to be speaking at this event;
• state your purpose; and
• let the audience know what to expect.

Step Two: Establish the Need

Identify the needs being threatened.

Convince your audience that there's a problem.  What has created the need for this event?  What need in the audience has drawn them here? 

This is not the time for subtlety.  State the problem clearly, and emphasize its urgency.  You need to maintain the audience’s attention, and creating this sense of urgent need is a brilliant way to do that. Create imbalance, dissatisfaction, discomfort.  Create the need for resolution.

State that need in terms that the audience will recognize. 

• Use statistics to back up your statements.
• Talk about the consequences of maintaining the status quo and not making changes.
• Show your audience how the problem directly affects them.

Step Three: Satisfy the Need

Propose the solution.  That solution is, of course, the event itself, or some aspect of it.  How will this event address the problem you have outlined?  This is the heart of your speech.

The solution must be logical and clearly expressed.  The audience must be able to follow it; don’t get complicated and introduce masses of technical detail.

• Outline the values that the event embodies.
• Elaborate: give details to make sure the audience understands your position and solution.
• Summarise your information from time to time.
• Use examples, testimonials, and stories, as well as technical facts to bring your ideas to life.
• Prepare counterarguments to anticipated objections.

Simple explanatory structures work best in this section.

• pros and cons;
• action and consequence;
• process explanation.

Beware of simple numbered lists.  They are very common diplomatic speeches, particularly at this point.  Lists are inherently rather undramatic, and they can dissipate audience interest.  Lists of actions are better than lists of abstractions.

Step Four: Envisage the Future

You need to show the audience not just the logic of the solution, but how it will make their lives better.  You can use three methods to help the audience share your vision.

Positive method

Inspire the audience with a vision of a better future.

Describe what the situation will look like if this event succeeds.

Provide vivid, concrete descriptions. Select some situation that you are quite sure will arise in the future, and picture your audience actually enjoying the conditions which acceptance of your plan will create.

Negative method

Create concern about a future in which things do not improve.

Describe what the situation will look like if the event fails.  Focus on the dangers and difficulties caused by not acting.

Picture for your audience the danger or the unpleasantness that will result from failure to follow your advice. Select from the Need Step the most undesirable aspects of the present situation, and show how these conditions will continue if your proposal is rejected.

Contrast method

Develop the negative picture first, and then reveal what could happen if your ideas are accepted.

Use the negative method first, visualizing the bad effects if the audience fails to follow your advice; then the positive method, visualizing the good effects of believing or doing as you recommend.

Use sensory information: what will these situations look, sound, taste, smell, or feel like?

Step Five: Inspire Action

Your final job is to inspire the audience to act.

One of the most effective techniques is to bring the audience back to the very start of the speech and indicate how the speech has moved the audience on.  This creates a satisfying shape and a sense of completion, solidarity and unity.

Tell the audience what they should do.  Keep it simple and express that action in inspiring terms.

At this point, you could use:

• a challenge;
• a quotation;
• an illustration; or
• a statement of the shared values your speech is expressing.

You must conclude with a final stirring appeal that reinforces your audience’s commitment act now. 

Calls to action should contain a strong appeal to the feelings.

Monroe's Motivated Sequence is tried and tested.  It works because it reflects the way humans think - and feel.  It sets up a set of questions and answers them.  It generates a set of dissatisfactions and then satisfies them.

I explore Monroe's Motivated Sequence on my course, Stand and Deliver.  Contact me if you'd like to discuss running the course.

"Allow failure to be an option": Lupita Nyong'o at the Massachusetts Conference for Women

Lupita Nyong'o delivered this keynote speech on 4 December 2014.  It's brave and inspiring. 

And it offers three powerful lessons for any speechmaker. 

Construct your speech like a symphony.  Set up a theme and then develop it in four movements (this is Marcus Webb's idea, not mine):

1.  Main theme, excitement (the issue)
2.  Variations on the theme (list of facts)
3.  Battle or storm (intense, short, a promise of action)
4.  Reprise the main theme: triumph (take us to the future)

And a coda: affection for, and confidence in, the audience.

Nyong'o's first movement actually introduces two themes (in the time-honoured tradition of sonata form, but let that pass...): pursuing a dream, and overcoming fear.  She develops the tension between these two themes in the following movements (indicated by headings in the transcript).  Each movement ends in an emotional climax and a moment of suspense, driving us on to the next.  It's a profoundly satisfying structure.

Write tight, then riff.  It's fascinating to see Nyong'o using the script and not simply reciting it.  She starts with a lengthy, improvised address to the audience and fellow speakers.  On occasions she improves on her text as she speaks it.  At one point, she deletes a quotation because the pressure of the delivery demands it.  You need the security of a well written text, so that you can riff off it when you want to.

Embrace vulnerability.  It's not easy, being truly open with your audience.  Who wants to highlight their faults and failures?  But making the audience a gift of your vulnerability is exactly what will make your audience trust you.  (It's all part of what Aristotle called the ethical appeal.)   Nyong'o makes that gift, not because she wants her audience to trust and love her, but because she feels she owes it to us to be honest.

The first secret of speechwriting is finding the right themes.  The second is understanding how to put them in tension.  The third is creating the structure that allows you to take risks. 

Lupita Nyong'o shows us how it's done.

Explore more of the speechwriter's craft: The Essentials of Speechwriting runs in London on 13 March 2015.

The perfect eulogy

Thanks to Alex Chalk for pointing me towards Michael Clarke's superb eulogy for Phillip Hughes. 

You can watch it and read the transcript by clicking on the image (my screenshot taken from the BBC website).

 

Clarke demonstrates perfectly how a good eulogy must be planned to the last stroke.  When emotion is as raw and unbearable as it is here, every rhetorical technique is essential.  

This eulogy ticks every single box.

You can read the transcript and tick off the rhetorical questions, the antithesis, the three-part lists.  This eulogy works under the surface as well as on it.  The purpose and structure are beautifully realised.

Eulogies, like toasts and award speeches, are what the ancients called epideictic.  We'd call them ceremonial.  The person (usually a person) being celebrated might be called the honoree.  

The purpose of a ceremonial speech is always tied to the occasion on which it is given.  It also needs to articulate the idea or value the occasion represents.  Here, Clarke binds honoree and value in one word: 'spirit'.

Persuasion always has a part in ceremonial speeches.  But it's not quite the persuasion of a deliberative or judicial speech.  Here, the argument needs to be:

• less rigid;
• more emotional; and
• more related to the significance of the event for the audience.

Clarke constructs a gentle argument connecting the idea of Hughes' spirit to the spirit of cricket.  It's an argument using analogy that binds the audience to the event and creates a sense of shared belief.

Ceremonial speeches tend to have four main goals.

First, it commemorates the honoree.  In doing so, the speaker must immediately establish the emotional nature of that commemoration.  Not difficult in this case.

Clarke:

I don't know about you, but I keep looking for him. I know it is crazy but I expect any minute to take a call from him or to see his face pop around the corner.

Is this what we call the spirit? If so, then his spirit is still with me. And I hope it never leaves.

Second, it connects the honoree to the audience and to the event.  The aim is to create an intimacy between all three elements, to make the audience feel that they belong to this occasion.  Shared memories do the job perfectly, as do the many references to the shared values of the game.

Clarke:

Is this what we call the spirit of cricket? From the little girl in Karachi holding a candlelight tribute to masters of the game like Tendulkar, Warne and Lara showing their grief to the world, the spirit of cricket binds us all together.

Third, the speech creates a story or narrative about the honoree.  The story should display characteristics of the honoree and events relating to it; the story should also demonstrate why the honoree is worthy of being celebrated.  The goal is to tie the event to the past and to the future.  Clarke uses the story of his own walk onto the pitch and the sense of Hughes's spirit being with him to evoke the man's character and significance.

Clarke:

I stood there at the wicket, I knelt down and touched the grass. I swear he was with me.

Picking me up off my feet to check if I was OK. Telling me we just needed to dig in and get through to tea. Telling me off for that loose shot I played. Chatting about what movie we might watch that night. And then passing on a useless fact about cows.

I could see him swagger back to the other end, grin at the bowler, and call me through for a run with such a booming voice a bloke in the car park would hear it.

Finally, the speech conveys the significance of the event.  How does the honoree affect the lives of the audience?  How will it continue to do so in the future?  How will the audience act differently as a result of paying tribute to the honoree? 

Clarke:

Phillip's spirit, which is now part of our game forever, will act as a custodian of the sport we all love.  We must listen to it.  We must cherish it.  We must learn from it. We must dig in and get through to tea.  And we must play on.

Ceremonial speeches use a variety of strategies to make their effect.

The speech will make careful use of emotional language.  The speaker should choose specific terms and phrases that evoke the emotion they want to arouse in the audience.

Clarke:

The photos, the words, the prayers and the sense of communion in this loss from people across the globe have shown me his spirit in action. It has sustained me and overwhelmed me in equal measure.

The speech will always focus away from the speaker.  The speaker’s ethical appeal in such a speech will not be on their own experience or expertise, but on the three features of ethos that relate the speaker to the honoree:

• the values demonstrated by the honoree
• the reasonable, practical wisdom demonstrated by the honoree
• the honoree’s dedication, benevolence, self-sacrifice or significance for society

Clarke:

And the love of my band of baggy green and gold brothers and sisters has held me upright when I thought I could not proceed. His spirit has brought us closer together - something I know must be him at work because it is so consistent with how he played and lived. He always wanted to bring people together and he always wanted to celebrate his love for the game and its people.

The speech will make connections between the event and the honoree as quickly as possible.  Doing so helps the speaker focus on the honoree rather than themselves; it demonstrates the importance of the vent for the audience.  The speech will include descriptions of the event and about the honoree, and they will repeatedly stress the connections between the two.

Clarke:

I'm deeply honoured to have been asked by Phillip's family to speak today. I am humbled to be in the presence of you, his family, his friends and his community. He was so proud of Macksville and it is easy to see why today.

Ceremonial speeches benefit from being short.  Nobody ever wished a ceremonial speech to be longer.  Not even a eulogy.  Actually, especially not a eulogy.  Clarke comes in at just under 5 minutes.  More than time enough to make his point.    

Figure skating

The Elements of Eloquence  

Mark Forsyth

Icon Books, 2013

ISBN 978 184831621 8

£12.99

Mark Forsyth’s The Elements of Eloquence differs from his previous bestsellers in two respects.   First, it’s 50 pages shorter than either The Etymologicon or The Horologicon, which works to its advantage.   Secondly, it does more than catalogue a set of obscure linguistic facts entertainingly.   This book might actually be useful.

The title is something of a misnomer.   Forsyth himself admits that the figures of speech aren’t really the core components of eloquence, but only “one tiny, tiny aspect of rhetoric.”   The descriptive metaphor, historically, has been not so much chemical as botanical: the figures are ‘the flowers of rhetoric’, vivid ornaments that attract the attention and seduce the listener.   

They have a certain notoriety.   For a start, how many figures are there?  The Rhetorica ad Herrenium lists 65.   Quintilian deals with about 96 (some figures look confusingly similar to others).    In their heyday, however, the number rocketed.  Susenbrotus, in his popular manual of 1540, offered 132; thirty years later, Henry Peacham’s The Garden of Eloquence (that metaphor again) included no fewer than 184.   

In Renaissance society, the figures were promoted by the Humanists as essential tools of social advancement.   Tudor schoolboys were drilled in them relentlessly; would-be courtiers used them, rather as jazzers use licks, to fill the spaces of their conversation with ready-made wit.   The figures helped you cut a figure.   That’s why Shakespeare used them: the figures are inherently dramatic.

We moderns tend to neglect them.   Forsyth offers three plausible reasons: we prefer to teach information and technical skill rather than linguistic craft; we distrust rhetoric; and we labour under a confused notion of authenticity inherited from the Romantics, which makes the figures seem hopelessly artificial.    But we continue to use them, haphazardly.    Every memorable line – in a pop song, a speech or an advertising jingle – uses one or other of the figures.   The figure is what makes the line memorable.  And we use them in our own conversations.   The better acquainted we become with the figures, the more likely we shall be to use them well – which is what Forsyth wants us to do.    “These figures grow like wildflowers,” writes Forsyth, “but they can be cultivated too.”

Offer us too many, however, and we become befuddled.   (The impenetrable Greek names don’t help.)  Forsyth discusses about 38, though he mentions more without explaining them.   This puts him on a par with Jay Heinrichs, whose recent Word Hero covers about the same number.  Max Atkinson, in Lend Me Your Ears, concentrates on just three.    

The best strategy in becoming better figure-users may be to collect them, like specimens.   We could start with Atkinson’s core triad: antithesis, tricolon and the rhetorical question (of which Forsyth lists no fewer than 16 variants, although he discusses only about seven).   It’s easy enough to spot metaphor, irony and isocolon (all those bullet lists in parallel construction); listen to a few speeches and presentations, and you’ll soon find chiasmus, and even anaphora (“the king of rhetorical figures,” claims Forsyth).   Point them out and users will be intrigued, not to say flattered; suggest that they use them consciously, and they’ll soon develop the taste to use them well.   

Forsyth has written an entertaining field guide.  Thorough he isn’t (which is, I suppose, hyperbaton).  He resolutely avoids any talk of classification: no tropes or schemes here (scesis onomaton).  He provides the shortest of reading lists, and no index (which makes the asking price of £12.99 look a bit steep).  But then, unlike Heinrichs or Atkinson, he has no overt didactic aim.   As a result, he treats the subject more fully than Atkinson and more elegantly than Heinrichs.   If you really want to up your game in figure-spotting (anthimeria, m’lud), you probably need all three.

 

Finding our voices

This is a joint post by me (in handsome Georgia) and Imogen Barker (in elegant Trebuchet). 

Amsterdam in autumn.  A lone heron keeps watch over the Herengracht from a car roof.  At the Rijksmuseum, a soprano sax sends Bach skirling up into the arches.  And behind the welcoming doors of de Burcht, speechwriters from 11 countries meet to discuss their craft. 

The ESN conference is now firmly established as the go-to European speechwriting event.  And it has always welcomed delegates from other continents.  This year, 70 of the brightest and best met to inspire and be inspired. 

As usual, the day before the conference was devoted to masterclasses.  Delegates were able to choose from CreativityWorks (Martin Shovel and Martha Leyton), Rob Friedman and Denise Graveline.

(If you have blogged about any of these seminars, send me an email:

[email protected]

I'll link to your post here.)

I attended a session run by Denise Graveline, a Washington DC-based speaker coach.  She also runs the excellent blog The Eloquent Woman, writing about women’s public speaking, and is collating an index of women’s speeches. 

So she's the perfect person to lead a training session about women and public speaking. 

What was lovely was hearing the experiences of other delegates – both men and women – on this topic.  We were from diverse backgrounds and all at different points in our careers, and the session was a safe space in which to discuss our experiences.

[source: condenast.com]

We started by discussing women’s voices in the public sphere.  We spoke about Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenager who spoke out about girls’ education and was shot in the head by the Taliban. 

More recently, Anita Sarkeesian, a media critic and blogger, cancelled a speech at Utah State University after death threats.  

In both cases, the violence was directly related to the women speaking out.  The fear of a girl with a mouth. 

There seems to be an unconscious bias against women’s public voice, from both men and women, although we also agreed that there is a conscious bias against women’s speech too. 

Women are far less likely to ask for salary negotiations or agree to give keynote speeches, and we discussed the reasons for this.  Female speakers have always been the “other”.  Although women are now more likely to be accepted as public speakers, they still have to deal with the likability-and-competence conundrum.  For a speaker to be accepted, they have to be both likable (approachable and engaging) and competent (showing expertise and authority). 

Women, it appears, cannot have both.

A real eye-opener came when Denise handed out the ‘Female Conference Speaker bingo sheet’, a tongue-in-cheek but pertinent review of some real reasons men have given for not inviting women to speak at conferences.  For example:

• Women need to act more like men
• Trying to get more female speakers is sexist
• You have to be bold; people aren’t just going to invite you to present

So what practical steps can women take? 

Firstly: what doesn’t work. 

Denise, who has spent hours reading research and so-called “self-help” books on the topic, has found that tips like ‘dress more like a man’ or ‘lower your voice’ don't work, either for the speaker or the attendees.  One delegate, a high-ranking EU policy director, had actually been told to wear fake glasses so that she would look more intellectual.

Denise directed us to TEDtalks like Amy Cuddy’s Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are.

She also introduced us to the Message Wardrobe, a way of introducing yourself when speaking or networking.  Academic qualifications are actually the least important thing when introducing yourself; what matters is the thing that makes you interesting and authoritative in your area.  Your Message Wardrobe is a short paragraph that can be deployed on all occasions.  You'll never be caught short again. 

We also spoke more generally about the structure of speeches, including Monroe’s motivated sequence and the power of storytelling. 

The only thing that would have bettered the training session would have been to make it longer!  We had a full day, but we only scratched the surface.  And we all left more knowledgable, informed and empowered.

De Burcht, the oldest trade union building in the Netherlands, stands newly renovated in the Plantage, an area of museums and parks to the east of the city.  At the end of the street, gibbons hoot from Artis, Amsterdam's zoo. 

This was once the city’s Jewish quarter: a decommissioned synagogue around the corner houses the Dutch Resistance Museum; at the tram stop, the Hollandsche Schouwburg stands as the national memorial to the 104,000 Jews murdered in the Second World War. 

Henri Polak, longtime president of the Diamond Workers’ Union – owners of de Burcht – was himself arrested by the Nazis but died before he could be deported.  He’s remembered around the building, in the name of the street, and even in the wifi passcode. 

The warmth of international friendship seems even more precious in this place.

Dr. Julia De Clerck-Sachsse wants to find a new way to explain the EU to the world.  Screwing up the text of her prepared speech, she launched into the story of her mother’s birth amid the ruins of Europe, her grandmother’s life almost certainly saved by an unknown British soldier. 

 

Today, with antisemitism again on the rise, and people drowning as they struggle to get in, how can speechwriters help to demonstrate that Europe’s values are universal? 

It will be hard to find a compelling narrative if we’re not convinced ourselves.

[Julia's speech is available as a podcast here.]

Ryan Heath took the conversation beyond Europe – where he still works – and into the Cloud.  Speeches live both in the room and outside it.  Soundbites will be tweeted even as they’re spoken.   How do we adapt?

Twitter, Ryan suggested, is like a gym for speechwriters, promoting critical and focussed thinking.  We should specialise less and offer more: our speeches can feed letters, videos, and the PR machine, television and radio – as well as YouTube and Instagram.  Awareness of the new media makes us work harder.  And nobody knows what will trend next.  We need somehow to stay alert and use as many of the new channels as possible, without going insane. 

[Ryan's speech as a podcast here.]

One thing I really like about ESN is its openness to different forms of public communication.  Dr Lucy Rogers, for example, is no policy wonk.  In fact, I suspect that her most burning ambition is to go to Mars.  In the meantime, she turns science into plain English.

At the heart of her breakout session, Lucy offered four key principles.

• Your facts don’t have to be 100% accurate.  (But don’t mislead.) 
• All audiences are intelligent but they probably have different knowledge bases.  (And different values, probably, too.)
• Use imagery.  (How would you picture the force of 10 Newtons?)
• Tell a story.  Involve, not just the head, but also the heart.  (And even the loins, if you can manage it.)

Alexei Kapterev did what he does best: putting the Russian cat among the pigeons.  Alexei actually likes PowerPoint slides.  Even the ones with words.  In fact, especially the ones with words.  But they need to be well structured.  Too much text with no visual structure is a no-no. 

 

Alexei fires off ideas with the trigger-happy enthusiasm of a student in Chekhov.  We need, he explained excitably, to consider four things when we design our slides:

 

• the size of the audience;
• the proficiency of the audience;
• the audience’s need for handouts; and
• how much preparation time we have.

And yes, his slides were magnificent.  (You can see one of his brilliant presentations here.)

[Alexei's speech as a podcast here.]

Two of our speakers explored that other visual element of any speech: body language.  Richard Newman reminded us that our words need a speaker.  He had us leaping up and down like demented jack-in-a-boxes in his eagerness to find a middle way between the denial position –

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and the vigorous fight position –

 

 

 

 

 

A good solution is the BBC Presenter Position:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s not a matter of finding a single style, Richard told us.  The key is congruency: when words, body and voice align, everything resonates – and the much-misquoted Mehrabian statistics become irrelevant.  (He’s written a good piece in the Huffington Post on all this.)

[Richard's speech as a podcast here.]

Andreas Kluth took this part of the conversation still further.  His talk was a real high point for me, so I'm going to blog about it separately.

“The magical decree is implicit in all language,” wrote Kenneth Burke.  Marcus Webb, in his inspiring keynote speech, asked how that magic works.

Marcus, TEDMED’s Chief Storytelling Officer, began by reciting the openings of some famous speeches, including Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech.  He went on to explain that what's important is the electric connections between speaker and audience, the collective memory and shared experience that binds audience to speaker. 

This connection is deep.  Lincoln called it the ‘mystic chords of memory’. 

Most people in a close relationship know this bond, and between audience and speaker there is a kind of collective tuning-in.  The good news is that human beings are wired from emotional connection and empathy.  

A speaker’s task, said Marcus, is not to convince but to intrigue.  He disagreed with Peggy Noonan, who believed that a speaker must give an argument that respects the audience’s intelligence.  Not so.  Instead, a speech should be the journey of a story. 

A story works on the unconscious, and a memory of something in the speech may bubble up days, weeks or even months after it was spoken.  This doesn't mean inserting one or two maudlin anecdotes; a speech can have a narrative even if it contains no story.  King’s famous speech, for example, includes no stories but does have a narrative arc.  It's in three acts, running from past, to present, to future:

• A promise was made ‘five score years ago’;
• 100 years later that promise has been broken;
• ‘One day,’ we must redeem that promise.

Marcus used the pertinent musical metaphor of the symphony to describe a speech in four acts: 

1.  Main theme, excitement (the issue)
2.  Variations on the theme (list of facts)
3.  Battle or storm (intense, short, a promise of action)
4.  Reprise the main theme: triumph (take us to the future)

And a coda: affection for and confidence in the audience.

[Appropriately, Marcus illustrated his points with Rimsky's music about that great storyteller, Sheherezade.]

A speaker’s task is to encourage, using the root of the word coeur meaning 'heart' in French.  This requires radical vulnerability: it takes time and can be a painful process.  We have to show sides of ourselves that are unpleasant, opening ourselves up to judgment and criticism.  

But we owe it to our audience to do that.  People appreciate honesty, on a public or personal level.  Marcus’ own story about winning a speechwriting competition as a teenager by writing an emotionally wrought but hollow speech - and his subsequent juvenile smugness - was a brilliant example of radical vulnerability without sentimentality.  It was honest, funny and sensitive. 

He directed us to another speech: Peter Attia’s TEDMED speech about obesity and diabetes, in which he reveals that, as a young surgeon, he felt contempt for a diabetes patient.  This funny and subversive speech shows again how radical vulnerability needn’t be a saccharine recipe for disaster.

[Marcus's speech as a podcast here.]

Where, then, do we find our true voice?  And the authentic voice of the speaker for whom we write?  We wandered out into the leafy streets of Amsterdam, thinking back to the very first presentation of the day. 

Jan Sonneveld had told us how speechwriting had transformed his cynicism into hope.  He assured us that we can transcend cheap opinions, quick anger and fear.  (Read the full text of his inspirational speech here.  The podcast is here.)

Jan directed our attention to the building in which we were sitting. 

"We too can make it happen," he said, "if our words, as the Dutch poet Henriëtte Roland Holst wrote on the walls of this room (beside her husband’s murals), ‘…bear the hope in our hearts / that makes the dark world light’.

Find out more about the European Speechwriter Network here.