MLK and the Three Questions for Speech Impact

There are three questions I always ask to make sure a speech has impact. That so few even know how to answer them explains why 90% of all speeches fail to move and create change.

· What is your persuasive intent?

· What is your delight strategy?

· What is your dynamic content?

The first question is by far the most important, because the point of a speech is to move people, not merely inform them. It’s the first noble truth of great communication: Don’t just say something; do something to the hearer!

The simplest way to understand this is to fill out of the following sentence:

Learn from the masters on this. Sensing the crowd wearying, Martin Luther King Jnr parachuted a three hundred-and-one word module into a prepared speech he was delivering on the Washington Mall on August 20th, 1963.

So powerful was its impact it became known by its recurring phrase, or in rhetorical terms, its anaphora, the I have a dream speech.

He repeated the phrase eight - 8 ! - times, building to a crescendo.

The power of it was due to his persuasive intent. He wanted to take the crowd from a fearful group of activists to a confident group who believed that change for the better was surely going to come.

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA

He was there to turn fear into hope

There is more to it as we will see in future blogs as we answer the other two questions. But the point to get is that MLK was out to do something to his listeners.

Take a peek at one of the eight “I have a dream” sentences:

It is personal. He is speaking of his own children. He’s talking of a better world for future generations, and of course tragically the assassins bullet meant he was not to see his children grow up. With the alliteration (notice the three “k” sounds in colour, content, character) he drives up the hope, and taps into the deepest desires of a grieving race that had lived a lifetime being typecast and dismissed because of the colour of their skin, and not their human personality. See how deep he dug in a single sentence?

I watched a failure of this yesterday. It was at a Party-Political Conference in the UK. The speaker had the goods, started well, but then forgot that the point of a speech at the conference is this:

to convince the party faithful that these leaders are the ones that can be trusted to win an election!

They should be trying to turn uncertainty into certainty, a wavering confidence into enthusiastic support, the kind of transformation that will boost thousands of activists to hit the pavements and knock-on doors with a belief that their Party can return to power. Really! The job of a speech at any Party conference is to make the faithful believe again!

For five minutes, the speaker got it right. The speaker started off with class war, and attacked the sleaze, waste and lies of the current government. The new government would be different, and the words and images lined up to make the point: “Partygate, Wallpapergate, too many gates, too little, too late, mate.” But then, turning away from a crescendo, the speaker gummed on about a five-point National Procurement plan, NHS budgets, a two-tier code for pay and conditions, and trotted out tired political bromides promising to “unleash power to drive up standards.”

The audience thinned. The applause – when it came – was dutiful.

No dream. Just ideas.

Everyone was informed.

Few were moved.

I am not saying content does not belong in a speech that moves. As we will see later, the I have a dream speech section is chock full of resonance and ideas.

But it has been well noted that if Martin Luther King that famous summer’s day in 1963 had said eight times, “I have an idea,” the Black civil rights movement would not have been so triumphant a year later. And few would date their dedicated activism to that day when they stood taller and believed.

Words straightened their spine.

Words tuned hate into love.

Words transformed fear into hope.

Of course, not everyone was changed. King was under pressure from the more radical Malcolm X, who advocated violence against the white elite. Malcolm said, “You know, this dream of King’s is going to be a nightmare before it’s over.” King had even got used to being booed by young Black men. Some of the hearers on the day expressed disgust: “I sat on the grass and listened to the speakers to discover we had ‘dreamers’ instead of leaders leading us.”

Another of the noble truths of excellent communication: Relax, you are never everyone’s cup of tea.

Sure, most will never have the rhetorical skills - to say nothing of the voice and intonation - of another MLK. But this is somethign all of us can aspire to: Our listeners went on their way stronger.

We can all learn how to make an impact, if we remember the point of a speech is never to merely inform, but to make a difference…in the timescale of the speech itself!

Next time you must give a speech, for God’s sake ask first what you need to do to this audience. Ask second – and only second - what do you need to say to them.

And the best results will surely follow.