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May and June are
important months on public speaking calendar. It’s graduation time
and that means that many of us are treated to that long-standing
public speaking staple, the commencement address.
Here’s how we judge
a good commencement speech: It has a high "story-to-advice
ratio". If a commencement address has lots of stories and a few
pearls of wisdom, chances are that it’s pretty good. If it has lots
of “life advice” and few if any stories, chances are that it’s a
snoozer.
Why do more stories
and less advice make for a better speech? Frankly, most of the
advice is mundane. "Follow your bliss", "Be a giver, not a taker,"
etc. While this advice is important, it's not very interesting
unless it's accompanied by well-told stories. Aesop taught us
this years ago.
If you’re lucky,
the commencement speech
you’ll hear will be as good as the one that Apple CEO Steve
Jobs delivered in 2005 to the graduates at Stanford (To
see the speech click here). It’s one of the best we’ve
ever heard (and we’ve featured it in our newsletter before). The
entire speech consisted of three great stories wrapped around a few key
tidbits of “life advice.”
Lots of stories. A
little advice. We love it.
More likely,
however, you’re going to hear a speech like the many that you can
see when you call up
“graduation speeches” on You Tube.
Many of these consist of homemade videos by proud parents of class
valedictorians. Some of them are cute. But most are horrendously
boring (and terribly videotaped).
Lots of life
lessons but few if any stories. Yuck.
We did find one
very good commencement address by a high school student (To
see it click here.).
The speaker was Matt Lum at Brazosport High School in Freeport,
Texas. The 1995
speech was only four minutes long. More importantly, however, it
consisted almost entirely of a single, funny, self-effacing story about a
lesson he learned in gym class. Matt stood up, told his story, made
his simple point and then sat down.
Great "story-to-advice" ratio.
His speech reminds
us of one of our favorite quotes from Franklyn D. Roosevelt about
the secret to giving a great speech. He said, “Be sincere. Be
brief. Be seated.”
At Speechworks we
help our clients learn how to communicate in a way that connects and
persuades. If you’re interested in becoming a great communicator
give us a call at 404-266-0888 or check out our website at
www.speechworks.net. |
