Of speeches and the delivery thereof
A confident and charming spokesperson is a media delight. Sadly, that was not the story of Nigeria’s minister of defence, Major General Bashir Magashi, at the weekend.
Major General Magashi trended for his wrong word choices and mispronunciations while delivering his speech at the funeral ceremony of Lt General Ibrahim Attahiru, the chief of army staff, and others who died in a military plane crash last Friday.
As I watched an analysis of the Minister speech on one of the news networks this morning, the presenters each had different opinions. The presenter who raised the topic believed that the speechwriter could have used simpler words, the second presenter disagreed. He said the words were simple enough but that the goof was due to a lack of preparedness, stating that the Minister ought to have rehearsed the speech. Another presenter said it showed a lack of empathy and said that the Minister was eloquent when he said Nigerians should not be “cowards” when attacked by bandits and suggested that he could have spoken by heart.
The presenters all made valid points, yet I agree with the first presenter’s position, and here’s why.
I once worked with a company spokesperson who had stage fright. Before the first press conference that I organised for the company, I emailed the agenda and speech days ahead and asked for a meeting to discuss the speech. We agreed to 48 hours before the event.
At the meeting, the spokesperson asked me if it was compulsory to read the speech verbatim. When I said no and stressed that that was the point of the meeting, the spokesperson was relieved and admitted to fumbling in the past for being made to read speeches verbatim. I was surprised that any public relations pro would do that.
I advised the spokesperson to read the speech and replace words that the spokesperson was uncomfortable with or rephrase sentences that did not reflect the spokesperson’s style of speaking or personality. Thereafter, I converted the speech to talking points which the spokesperson took to the event. We followed the same process in prepping for all media engagements. It worked. Months later, this spokesperson became a very confident speaker.
The idea behind speechwriting is not to foist the content on the speaker but to organise thoughts logically, ensure that key messages are delivered and avoid goofs when it is necessary to control the narrative. At the end of the day, the job of the PR pro is to make the spokesperson the best version of himself or herself.
You can read more about speechmaking in my post titled, There’s a place for well-thought-out speeches and for being “cool”.
