What Makes a Speech Great? Add These Overlooked "Elements of Awesome"
Being a professional at something others treat as a passion means you can ruin your own passion.
In 2008, I was a PR intern at ESPN, and I had the chance to interview my baseball writing hero, Buster Olney, as part of a marketing campaign. Buster was gracious and warm and patient and everything you want a creative hero to be. He even recommended a few books about baseball for me to read. (I'd told him about my senior thesis: The Use of Baseball in 20th-Century American Literature.)
Partway through the interview, I said to him, "You used to be a Yankees fan, but now you cover the sport professionally. How has your relationship to baseball changed?"
He said, "I no longer root for specific teams. I care about stories. I love the sport more than any one franchise."
I always understood what he meant intellectually. Today, I understand it emotionally too. Instead of baseball, my chosen game is public speaking. Now that I've done it professionally for many years and also spent a couple years coaching and consulting others on theirs, my relationship to the field and the craft has changed. When you do something at a high level and/or start to really analyze it, you can never see it quite the same way you did when you were just a fan, just a consumer.
In baseball, Buster stopped rooting for any one team and started appreciating storylines and trends and the sport at large.
In speaking, I've stopped being able to simply watch a speech or revere a speaker, and I've started to appreciate the techniques, the bits, the structure, and the moment a speaker performs something to the utmost of their (or anyone's) ability.
You start as a fan, then see it on a deeper level, then start appreciating it on that deeper level too. You see the code of the Matrix, if you will—all the little parts and pieces that make up the whole. This changes your perspective forever, but it also feels wildly empowering to understand something that deeply.
I share all this because I've been on a bit of a tirade lately about the frustratingly low bar for speeches in the business world. The thing is, nobody WANTS to give a mediocre talk in a webinar or from the stage. The speaker AND the audience have the same goal, the same hope:
Please be awesome.
But unless you see speaking on a deeper level, it's hard to see the "elements of awesome." So that's all you get: hope.
Maybe we can stop hoping and start doing.
Maybe it's time we considered the elements that make a talk truly awesome.
Grab a little sugar, my friend. The medicine might not go down easy.
* * *
Better speeches don't come from better experts. To be clear, world-class experts can give exceptional speeches, but the reason a talk is so memorable, so valuable, so useful, is not actually because the speaker had more expertise than the rest.
When giving a speech, we're trying to (1) share our expertise and (2) get buy-in for our ideas. That's a given. But we often don't give (heh) much thought to how to share expertise and get buy-in in a speech.
A speech isn't a video or a podcast or an interview or a coffee meeting or a pitch in a boardroom or an article, but we seem to forget that. As a result, most talks feel like blog posts with a runtime, not an experience to stir hearts and engage minds.
Again, we're trying to (1) share expertise and (2) get buy-in, but we do so WITHOUT (1) the emotional stakes to ensure others actually care about your expertise and (2) the logical argument to ensure you actually secure their buy-in and kickstart a relationship.
In future essays, I'll dive deeper into #2. For now, let's focus on the first: adding emotional stakes to your advice to ensure they truly, deeply, consistently care—and remember you as a result.
I'm convinced that if you did nothing else BUT add these elements into your talk, you'd immediately become a top-5% speaker in your space. If you take an average talk and add emotional stakes, you'd leap over the very low bar for public speakers in business.
Adding Emotional Stakes
Most people start developing their talks from a diminished place. They start by thinking, "How do I ensure this isn't bad?"
I get it. Speeches come with stakes and pressure and nerves and lots of moving parts and infinite ways to execute them. You also have to be somewhat delusional to think you can step in front of a big group of people and hold their attention for 10, 20, 45, 60, 90 minutes or more. (I chuckle whenever marketers scream that attention spans have gotten shorter, because really, the need to tolerate mediocrity is lower. If you get over the—typically very low—bar, you're fine.)
Anyway, it's delusional to do the public speaking thing, and standing out can feel scary. You could get eaten. As a species, we learned being delulu is bad juju.
Except there is no tiger, and yet we still start from a place of trying NOT to die.
I'm asking you to switch your starting point.
Most speakers start by asking, "How can I avoid being bad?" The best start by wondering, "What would make this awesome?" Whereas most people develop a talk by first thinking about the advice they're going to share to make it sound and even safe, the strongest speakers think about how they're going to bring their advice TO LIFE.
These are not the same things.
The parts you think about when trying to avoid being bad are different than the parts you think about when trying to make something awesome. It's the difference between the stuff you could share just about anywhere and the things which uniquely apply to a speech.
I can share tips and steps and blueprints and even frameworks and methodologies anywhere. But what transforms all that raw thinking into an actual speech? What brings the advice to life?
1. Openers and Closers
Adding a stronger opener and closer to your next talk would mean you've made more progress in one speech than most peers make in years of speaking. Openers and closers are just THAT important.
It's not just my opinion (he says, adjusting his tie, clearing his throat, and smiling smugly to deliver that cliché line). It's science.
According to the primacy and recency effects, people most recall the first and last moments with something or someone. In other words, if you want to be memorable and create a positive perception, the first things and the last things you say to them need to be the strongest.
This is why filler words at the start of a talk can kill you. It's also why ending with a CTA or a quick "Welp, that's my time! Questions?" can hurt your cause. Exceptional communicators invest meaningful time nailing their opener and closer. That's as true of comedians, who talk excitedly about what jokes they put in those all-important spots of their act, and it's true of business speakers too.
I hope this doesn't spoil my essays, but there's a reason I try to end with a dramatic flourish every time I write to you. In fact, when I start to wind down the draft of an essay or speech or script, I start actively hunting the drama. I'm seeking a memorable final moment. I want the dramatic flourish.
Invest more time than you feel is rational into your opener and closer. Maybe YOU aren't going to use a dramatic flourish, but whatever you do, find a way to start strong and end strong.
2. The Re-frame
What you talk about (your topic) isn't differentiated or unique. Your ideas might be. Your perspective can be. HOW you talk about your topic is where you separate. This begins inside your mind, but it needs to spill out into the world, giving your talk (which is about a topic others speak about) greater emotional stakes.
As you build your speech, think about your topic, then ask yourself:
How should we understand this?
How should we think about this?
Then deliver them a simple idea to re-frame their thinking. It will help your words land with greater power.
When James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, wants to speak about developing habits, he effectively says, "Hey, think of it THIS way..." and gives the world a re-frame: "You don't rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems."
When Scott Monty speaks to Fortune 500 executives about leadership, he's helping re-frame leadership by asserting that the best modern leaders rely on the most timeless historical lessons. This informs his speaking (and yes, his entire platform of impact).
When Ann Handley wants to teach writing, she necessarily asserts the very name of her book: Everybody Writes.
When Michelle Warner teaches business model design or marketing strategy, she rejects the need to find pristine playbooks and instead re-frames it for us: "You don't need a strategy. You need a sequence. Knowing the next right move to make matters more than knowing all the moves."
These are profound to the audience because they imbue your words with tension. DON'T settle, DON'T think of it this old way. Think of it this way. Embrace this change. Understand it NOT like THIS, but like THIS.
Their minds will be blown, their hearts will feel full, and you will feel beloved.
Don't be the best. Be their favorite.
Re-frame.
3. Signature Story
A signature story isn't just a story you tell often. It's a story you can sign your name to. You execute the story your way, carefully crafting the flow and bringing out the right details and moments of tension for the protagonist, all to stick the landing on some kind of insight relevant to your speech, which doubles the emotional stakes once more. "That's the thing about public speaking. If you want to be great at speaking, you have to consider the elements that actually make something a SPEECH."
In my experience, it's better to share a story about other people to illustrate your re-frame and your advice in-action, rather than make the story about you. Making yourself the hero, the model, the blueprint comes with all kinds of problems, not least of which is the idea that you haven't taken the time to see if your ideas hold up in other situations aside from your own. That means your ideas are likely less valuable to others than you might think.
Regardless, sharing a signature story to illustrate a key point or your overall premise of the talk can turn you from flat speaker to inspiring leader. Imagine arriving to that big moment, that dramatic flourish, where you share your re-frame for the audience. Then you can deftly slide over to the story with a simple, "Let me SHOW you what this looks like..."
Meet (person).
(Person) is (details of who they are and what they do, ideally with some quirks or vivid details to bring them to life).
A few years ago, (person) was (a sequence of actions resembling the audience's same situation or actions).
One day, (arrive at a problem resembling the audience's).
(Here, resist the urge to say to your audience, "But then they did this thing, and everything worked out great!" That's what I call "magic bean" storytelling. You have a goal but encounter a problem, but wait a sec! You remember you had this magic bean in your pocket, which you plant and climb up to the sky. Instead of doing that, once the character arrives at the problem, send them deeper into it. They get more confused, they struggle more, they stress out more, and the stakes get ever higher.)
(Arrive at a turning point, where they decide to or they feel forced to see your topic the way you've reframed it to the audience in your speech.)
(And here's what happened after...)
(And here's what we can learn...)
* * *
What makes something awesome? Not how grand or newsworthy it is, and certainly not how deeply you understand your topic. With apologies to our egos, that's not what makes people feel gripped and moved. It's also not why they remember you, trust you, love yuo, refer you.
Don't just share your advice. Give it emotional stakes.
(Re-frame.)
Most of your peers won't consider that. They start out from a diminished place. "How can I avoid being bad?" Let them lower their gaze. Keep yours raised. We don't have a magic bean to get up there, but we can see the tiny elements of this craft. We can appreciate it on a deeper level than fans and consumers.
Look, in sharing this stuff, I'm asking something of you. I'm asking you to try and be awesome. I'm asking you to be ... how can I put this?
I'm asking to be delusion.
In his speaking and writing, author AJ Jacobs asserts that a creative person's most useful tool is a constructive form of self-delusion. He says, "Self-delusion strategically employed is one of the greatest inventions in human history. It's right up there with the wheel, the lightbulb, the waffle maker."
I agree (and suddenly want brunch).
So much of the work I'm asking you to do requires a healthy dose of delusion on your part. Because anyone can give "a talk." I'm asking you to deliver a speech.
Focus on the missing pieces, the elements of awesome. Don't just think about the advice you're going to share. Think about how you'll bring your advice to life.
That's your edge.
Hold yourself in higher regard.
Expect nothing but awesome. Visualize it. Cackle as you think about it. This is gonna be awesome.
To be more awesome, you don't need more experience or fancier logos on your LinkedIn. You need to imbue your advice with emotional stakes. Stronger closers, openers, re-frames, and stories. These are the things that real pros think about, which anyone can master and too few consider.
But you need some useful self-delusion.
As a friend likes to say, "Your delulu is your solulu."
Dramatic flourish.