Please Say a Few Words

Public speaking tells a story with a beginning, middle, and an end, ultimately asking for action. Good remarks will emphasize what you stand for and remind people who you are as you are running for office. Since you are an authentic candidate running to make things better, you want listeners to conclude that you would be the right person for this position. In this episode we will discuss speech writing, public speaking, and connecting with voters. 

Learn more about Organizing to Win: The Art & Science of Running for Office - including free downloadable guides - by visiting OrganizingtoWin.com.

Transcript

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You're listening to the audio version of Jimmy Tickey's book Organizing to Win: The Art and Science of Running for Office. This book will teach you how to enter the political arena, manage a campaign, and run for office.

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Please say a few words. People mostly fear snakes, heights, and public speaking. Yet, in order to run for office, you must be able to speak with confidence. As a local candidate, you are not expected to give one of the soaring speeches that leaders of the free world once delivered. You do, however, need to be authentic and accessible in delivering thoughts without lofty pomp and circumstance. Before you deliver remarks, picture your audience engaged, hanging on to your every word. Visualize that when you finish your remarks, audience members walk up to you as if there was a magnet between you and them, and you will be at the center of the crowd meeting people. So often the candidate will feel like they are repeating themselves again and again. From emails to phone conversations and speeches, you will share the same stories, and it can boggle your mind. Remember though that voters may be hearing you for the first time, and if a voter has heard you several times, realize that while you may feel like a broken record repeating yourself, that repetition is golden from a voter's perspective so your message can break through. Voters are busy and they need you to pierce through all that noise with your campaign message. Public speaking tells a story with a beginning, middle, and end, ultimately asking for action. Good remarks will emphasize what you stand for and remind people who you are, your why. Since you are an authentic candidate running to make things better, you want listeners to conclude that you would be the right person for this position, knowledgeable about the district with a vision for the future, whether you are running for school board, county commissioner, mayor, or state legislature. If you're still nervous, let's break it down so you can tackle this step by step. First, be yourself by telling a story or using humor to connect with the audience. Next, you need to know the purpose of your remarks. Are you informing the audience? Are you asking for action like having them contribute or vote for you? Are you telling them about a problem and how you would fix it? Or perhaps you are motivating them to care more about local issues. You need to decide this so you can lay out your remarks properly, choosing rhetoric that moves them to action. You can approach groups and ask them to address them, and other times organizations will request you come and speak, whether it's a panel, formal speech, or casual talk. Let's prepare for speeches, brief remarks, and those everyday conversations on the doorstep about your candidacy. Know your audience. Understand who your audience is and what they want to hear. There's a big difference between sitting around a table with a senior citizen group at a senior center and standing at a podium at a Chamber of Commerce breakfast, so prepare accordingly. Just knowing the audience will allow you to visualize how this will unfold, and suddenly it's not so scary. For example, if you are speaking at the senior center and they have had a roof leak over the winter, then you may want to discuss support for public buildings so seniors have the confidence to know their senior center will be properly taken care of. If you are talking to transportation advocates, then prepare your plan for transit-oriented developments with investments in rail, bus, and bike routes to alleviate the congestion of cars on the roads. There are countless topics you could talk about, so ask the group what they want to hear in advance. Gardeners working on community beautification efforts may want to hear about your plans for pollinator gardens. A group of small business owners may want to hear about your plans to improve downtown sidewalks to enhance their businesses, and home builder association members will want to hear about your plans for home growth in the area. Prepare an outline. You'll want to know the format, meaning who speaks before you and after you, and how long you are expected to speak. Are you standing or sitting? Is there a mic? If awards or recognitions are being given, be sure to acknowledge the recipients. Your team can help, and you may even have a member of your kitchen cabinet that is involved in that very group. For example, having a small business owner on your cabinet can help put together your points for the business community. Your remarks should have an overall message. What do you want your audience to know? Break your remarks down in these ways. Who are you? What are you talking about today? Why is this important? How will you make it better? What is the action? Be sure you bring facts and figures with you. If you are talking about a project in town, bring notes on the development timeline, budget, and benchmarks so that should you need it, you can pull relevant figures. You do not always need to share all of these details in your prepared remarks, but have them ready for the question and answer period. It will be more impressive to the audience that you are sharing new information even while answering questions. Be sure to also incorporate personal stories when they connect to a topic. If someone asks you a question that you have heard before, cite a person who raised a similar issue, such as, I was in the east side of town yesterday and heard the same thing from a family member there. This way, you will show the audience you remember voters and the issues they are facing. Once you have your remarks drafted, practice using the exact format of the event. For example, if you are expected to be at a podium addressing a group, then practice your talk while standing. Keep in mind a format that is sitting around a table makes for a more conversational experience where you may welcome interjections from the audience, while a podium event may lead itself to a formal speech. Practicing with your kitchen cabinet allows others to hear the presentation and offer feedback. If practicing alone, consider rehearsing with soft music in the background. This will get you used to speaking with some background noise, which undoubtedly will happen in real life. Make it personal. Bring an outline of your remarks, so if you need reassurance, you can look down and be reminded of your points. Hydrate beforehand and take a deep breath. And remember, the people there want to hear from you. Being a little nervous is exciting, but do not be so nervous that it hampers your speech. Connecting with the audience will help cultivate a better experience for everyone, so make eye contact, see what phrases are resonating, and be humorous when appropriate. Never be so rigid that you can't expound on your remarks if the audience is engaged. When speaking, appeal to both the head and the heart. I say this because in order to persuade, to earn that vote, you need to evoke emotion. Simply providing a rational argument is not enough to move someone to care to join you. Similarly, getting teary-eyed over every issue is not going to move an audience. Find your balance of heart and head, rational and caring in a way that feels right to you. Using personal stories is helpful as it will humanize you to the audience. You can open up with a personal story that connects to the subject matter you are speaking about, whether it's an entrepreneur speaking to a business group or an immigrant speaking to a local refugee group. In politics, there are a lot of acronyms. Those collections of letters that stand for a long title. Think FAFSFA, free application for federal student aid. If you use a local or state acronym, tell the audience what it stands for. Otherwise, you will sound like you are speaking in robotic terms, and you may lose the audience if you are using terms they do not know. Always keep your notes after a talk, whether printed or electronic, and file them away. There's a good chance you will speak to a similar group again on this topic, and you can reuse parts of these remarks. Watch yourself. You can record yourself giving a speech, which can be helpful not only to hear, but also to see how you present. It can be uncomfortable watching yourself at first, but you'll learn the pace at which you spoke, about mannerisms and facial expressions you didn't know you had, and your physicality for future reference. When speaking, sometimes you may not know what to do with your hands. Don't put them in your pocket and don't let them just swing by your sides. Use your arms and hands to make appropriate gestures and then bring them back to the center resting place, clasped but not stuck together for the entire speech. Your gestures should not be so dramatic, but using them in conjunction with your words can actually make your content more memorable. You also should pay attention to your voice inflections and cadence. A brief pause or a softening of your voice at an important part of your talk can make all the difference in the story you are telling. It's important not to race through your remarks, breathe in between sentences, and take a beat in between ideas so the audience can process what you are sharing. Ask for action. Your remark should introduce yourself and give insight into your priorities with particular attention to the nature of the group you are addressing. Your remark should conclude by asking for action. You might be asking for a donation, a vote, or for them to support you in some way. If you did not start with a personal story, then ending with one may bring your presentation together with a forward-looking vision. Once you give a few talks about your candidacy, you'll learn how you can add new dimensions to your content based on the audience and gain confidence in your ability to convey thoughts and ask for action. Give real answers. Never hesitate to pause once you hear a question so you can think where you want to take the answer. You may have gotten the question many times before and you know your response, but you'll be asked for questions in new ways and may be stumped from time to time. When in doubt, use the tried and true acting method of yes and. In other words, agree with the point the questioner made and then riff off that as you think about the question and how it connects to your candidacy. There will be times when you are asked a specific question you simply don't know the answer to, and that's okay. In those instances, don't make up a response. You can start with your top line message of your campaign as you process the answer, and then be honest by saying you aren't as familiar with the specific issue and would like to learn more. You can say, I appreciate that perspective and I'd like to think more about it. I find authentic candidates can admit when they don't know, and voters appreciate their willingness to learn, so long as they don't give a non-answer on every issue. When answering questions, you may want to be so cautious as to not offend anyone with your stances. In doing that, you may not offend, but you also may not inspire either. Answering a question directly may turn some off, but others will appreciate your stance and offer you a base of support. Being vague all the time can signal a lack of an authentic candidate. You ran on ideas, so run on those ideas. You must trust your why, know your values, and be clear in your positions. Should you be asked a question that is critical of your record or antagonistic, don't be defensive. Rather find strength in your position. First, thank them for asking their question and giving you an opportunity to respond. Second, address their question, or at least a part of it, finding common ground. Then, bridge to what you want to talk about. Stay positive in these moments and keep connecting to the audience. If you are standing without a podium, you can physically move, working the room and making eye contact with others as you continue to have a conversation with the audience. Should someone become disruptive, you can offer to talk with them after, demonstrating to the audience you are willing to talk to those who disagree with you. This may calm the disruptor, but if it doesn't, perhaps it's a repeat disruptor, it's reasonable to ask them to stop out of respect for others who are there and want to hear the program. We'll talk more about hecklers later. Other times, you will get a question that is not a question at all, but a comment from an audience member. Thank them for their idea, and then you can remark on their suggestion and then move on to other questions. When public speaking, be ready for anything.

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