Times Ascent :: Under the section “Success Sutras”
Author: Dr. Debashis Chatterjee, Professor at IIM Lucknow
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 a 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 siliencer. But once they start, it’s 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 simpley 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”
Management