Why do too many public speakers fail to engage their audiences?
By JUDY MONTAGUjudy montagu 88(photo credit: )
Driving home one evening from a public lecture, I had to admit that while the subject had been a draw, the experience itself had been less than scintillating. I had fidgeted and glanced several times at my watch.
The speaker had read, rather than spoken, barely raising his head from his sheaf of papers. One might as well have been listening to a talk on the radio.
It put me in mind of the symposium at which a speaker droned on and on, causing people to drift away - until there was just one man left sitting in the auditorium.
The droner couldn't contain his curiosity.
"Everyone else has gone," he addressed the man. "Why did you stay?"
Came the reply: "I'm the last speaker."
I've been to a few brilliant lectures and some worthwhile ones; but, alas, too many where I wished I was somewhere else. And that got me thinking about the whole phenomenon of public speaking - about why, with so many obviously good intentions on the part of lecturers and those who go to hear them, so few talks achieve their potential: a rapt audience hanging onto the speaker's every word, delighted to accompany him (or her) to wherever he or she chooses to take them.
I BEGAN with this basic question: Why do people go to advertised talks and sit for an hour or more on not very comfortable seats? Is it because they want to learn something new?
Well, that's always good; after all, knowledge is power. But I'm sure the answer lies elsewhere. We go because we want to be entertained.
Someone once said: "Three things matter in a speech: Who says it, how he says it and what he says. And of the three, the last matters least."
Now, clearly, any speaker - whether he's aiming to inform or persuade, even if he's just giving a toast at a simcha or a vote of thanks - must have something worthwhile to say. But it's the delivery that makes the speech memorable.
When I said we want to be entertained, I wasn't thinking of the contemporary meaning of the word, but of its semantic origin.
Our English "entertain" comes from the Old French entretenir, where entre conveys the idea of mutuality, as in "interview" and "interact"; and where tenir, like in modern French, means "to hold." An entertaining speaker is thus one who can hold an audience - in the palm of his hand - and be mutually involved with it.
I'VE FOUND that the riskiest lectures in terms of success are those where an expert has been invited to talk about his field. There is a trap that is easy for experts to fall into.
When someone gets up to speak about a specialized subject - say, "A historical look at events leading up to the destruction of the Second Temple" - it's a pretty safe bet that he knows far more about the topic than anyone in the audience. This can engender complacency and the conviction that simply imparting some of this knowledge is enough. But it isn't: An expert also needs to entertain. This applies no less to captive listeners in school classrooms and universities.
An audience, sitting there silently, might appear to be a passive entity, a sort of collective receptor; it is anything but. The current that flows back and forth between it and the speaker is key.
"If there be one hair binding me to my fellowmen," said Mu'awiyah, a noteworthy caliph of the Umayyad dynasty (661-750), "I do not let it break. When they pull, I loosen; and if they loosen, I pull."
Substitute "audience" for "fellowmen," and you get the idea of this subtle but dynamic connection.
GREAT SPEECHES in history have a way of resounding down the generations. When Abraham Lincoln said at Gettysburg:
"We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom..."; or when Winston Churchill called in May 1940 for "victory at all costs... in spite of all terrors... however hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival," they could be speaking to us in Israel, here and now.
That timeless oratory, in fact, led me to a place where we might expect some good speechifying: the Knesset.
Sadly, no. An acquaintance of mine who has worked there as a researcher for several decades and is a close observer of the house told me: "It's hard to find a good orator in the Knesset."
Why? I asked her.
"Well," she said, "one of the problems is that people aren't really listening to each other. The Knesset is full of media people, and too many MKs are looking for sound bites that make headlines." Since 1968, she noted, the average sound bite has shrunk from 42 to just nine seconds.
She did cite Aryeh Deri in his early years as "an impressive speaker with presence and personality," and noted that Binyamin Netanyahu "puts his ideas across in a clear way." President Shimon Peres, that super-veteran of the house, has, like a certain composer, "brilliant moments and dull quarters of an hour," while the Arab MKs "speak well, though their subject matter is more likely to evoke uproar than appreciation."
For real political oratory, one probably has to go back to Menachem Begin, "a learned man with a powerful message and a charismatic delivery, who could win over many people from a different background." Abba Eban's oratory was admired largely abroad.
SOME OF the best talks I've heard have been by women. I think, firstly, that's because despite huge strides in equality, women still need to prove they are as good as, or better than men in "traditional" roles - which means they put in the necessary preparation.
Secondly, women are excellent communicators, empathetic and looking for a response. They tend to be practical and are more likely to stick to the point. So provided they can exercise discipline and have something to say, they are natural speakers.
Why are there no outstanding women speakers in the Knesset? I asked my source.
"Despite some very talented women in politics," she said, citing Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik, "it's still a man's world. The Knesset is a rough-and-tumble place, and it takes all women's energy to stand their ground.
"Besides," she added, "women can't stand not being listened to."
About Tzipi Livni, she mused, "there's something not quite Israeli - almost British, in fact. She never gets excited, and is highly respectable and respected. Definitely a presence." But no orator.
THE LONGEST speech ever made, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, was delivered at a teachers training college in Harare by a Zimbabwean called Errol Muzawazi, 22, and lasted 102 hours. He began speaking on August 28, 2006 and ended on September 2.
A less loquacious countryman, John Mungoshi, had, three years earlier, spoken for a mere 26 hours in a darkened theater in the capital. Sitting cross-legged on a table, he delivered an inspirational speech entitled "None But Ourselves."
I couldn't help thinking that if he'd been Jewish, he could have saved himself 25 hours, 59 minutes and 55 seconds by simply asking his audience: Im ein ani li, mi li? Veim lo ahshav, eimatai? - If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if not now, when?
I couldn't find a record of the shortest speech ever, but the late Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek would likely be in the running.
"I am known for my long speeches," he once said. "Welcome!" he concluded.
Then there's a story about the Recorder of London which made the rounds of the legal community in the mid-1900s. Invited to deliver an after-dinner speech, this senior Old Bailey judge got up and said:
"I am often asked what a recorder is. It is a musical instrument with a hole at each end.
"I am going to close one, and sit upon the other."
That's entertainment.
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