Dear Speechwriting Clients: I Don’t Have Time to Play Tiddlywinks With Your Ego

I’m starting a new series here called, “I don’t have time to play tiddlywinks with your ego.”

(I once had a funny colleague who said that, jokingly. I’m not saying it jokingly.)

To wit:

If you are an important enough person to hire a professional speechwriter, you are important enough to listen to that speechwriter’s advice.

Which usually boils down to: Please use every speaking opportunity to reveal yourself to all the people who have traveled and disrupted their schedules and sat quietly and still to watch you step up on a stage and say things. If they have done all that, it’s because they see this occasion as a chance to learn what’s so great about you, and also that you’re a decent human being. All the speechwriter wants to do is help you get those two things across.

So:

If your speechwriter wants to sit down and talk to you about what you want to say, then sit the down and talk to them—if necessary, at length. (Because how can you justify the expense of paying a professional speechwriter but not investing the time to talk to that person?)

If your speechwriter wants you to tell a story about yourself, tell the story, or come up with another one that you do want to tell. Oh, you don’t like to talk about yourself because you’re too humble? Sorry, Honey, you’re the CEO of Chevron. We don’t pay you $26 million to be humble. We pay you that much to lead. Which requires letting people know who you are and what you think (at minimum).

If your speechwriter wants you to share your vision for the future of the organization, industry, society that is affording you an amazingly good income, share your vision (in the most imaginative and compelling terms). And if you don’t have a vision? Your speechwriter can help you with that too, but it’s going to cost more.

If your speechwriter suggests that you utter language that the audience might actually remember, or make an argument that someone could potentially disagree with, or issue marching orders that might actually make a difference in the world? Assume that’s good advice and if you quibble, do so in a collaborative and not contumacious way. Yes, contumacious. Look it up.

And finally, when you and your speechwriter finally agree on what you are going to say, say it! With the same language both of you worked hard to come up with. Don’t shamble off the script to tell an aside. This isn’t happy hour. It’s a speech, which is Latin for: the robbery of the precious time of dozens or hundreds or thousands of other people, who have consented to this out of a belief that something civically useful might occur.

Your speechwriter only wants to honor those people by making that thing occur. Help your speechwriter, and help yourself.