Creating an impact with your speech: Tips from Obama's speech writer- Terry Szuplat

Terry Suplatt, one of President Barack Obama's longest-serving speechwriters, joins us to discuss his book "Say it Well" and shares powerful insights on finding your authentic voice and inspiring any audience. Through personal stories and White House experiences, Terry reveals the techniques that made Obama's speeches memorable while offering practical advice for everyone from business executives to everyday communicators.

• Finding your authentic voice rather than imitating other speakers
• The power of brevity – memorable speeches don't require length 
• The 50-25-25 rule for efficient speech preparation
• The "Barbecue Rule" – communicating complex ideas in accessible language
• Using AI as a research partner but never as your voice
• Discovering and sharing your "sacred story"
• The importance of executive involvement in the communication process
• How to recognize when a speech or presentation has truly connected

"This is a skill and we all have to be good at it... I've tried to make it for young people when they're just starting out their career, mid-career professionals, folks at the top of their game who want to get better."

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Chapters

• 0:00 Meeting Terry Suplatt, Obama's Speechwriter
• 2:43 Finding Your Authentic Voice
• 6:47 The Power of Concise Communication
• 12:29 The 50-25-25 Rule for Speech Preparation
• 17:41 Talk Like a Human: The Barbecue Rule
• 31:09 AI's Role in Speechwriting
• 37:28 Speeches That Changed Everything
• 45:44 Everyone Has a Sacred Story to Tell

Transcript

Dr. Tanvi Gautam: 0:31

And I would pronounce your name as Terry Suplatt.

Terry Suplatz: 0:34

Perfect yes.

Dr. Tanvi Gautam: 0:36

Wonderful. Hello everyone and welcome. Today I have the absolute honor and pleasure to be talking to Terry Suplatt, and I found Terry through his book Say it Well, find your Voice, speak your mind, inspire any audience, and Terry was one of President Barack Obama's longest serving speech writers. This book is an amazing book that we shall be discussing and you will have so much to learn as we go through this conversation. So welcome Terry.

Terry Suplatz: 1:11

Thanks so much for having me. It's great to be with you.

Dr. Tanvi Gautam: 1:14

You know, as an author myself, I'm always looking to find out how the readers felt when they were going through the book, and I have been doing keynote speaking for close to 27 years now, and I still found amazing things in this book that I feel that I could use in my own keynotes and with my clients with whom I do programs on strategic storytelling.

Terry Suplatz: 1:41

Wonderful.

Dr. Tanvi Gautam: 1:42

And three things happened as I was reading the book. One, as I wrote to you, I got goosebumps several times because some of the passages you quoted the actual excerpts from the speeches. They were so impactful and powerful, just in a small paragraph. I also got a great sense of a backstage tour of President Barack Obama's thinking how he actually gave feedback, how he asked for changes, which is, I think, it's a book in its own right. You know, leaders learning to give feedback when they want changes, or how he thought about getting his ideas through. And the third, which was really incredible, was your own journey of, you know, getting to be more comfortable from a speech writer to a speech giver. So there are so many layers with which one could read this book. It is such a rich book. So you know. Again, thank you for writing it.

Terry Suplatz: 2:39

Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. I appreciate that you yeah, I tried very much to make this a book, a book for everybody, whether you're a communicator, a leader or just someone looking to find your own voice and communicate what you believe more effectively. And that's something we all have to do and I'll have to learn.

Dr. Tanvi Gautam: 2:56

Right. So you know we have all been so inspired with President Barack Obama's speeches and his style and his presence, and a lot of people, when they are early in their journey, even later, will listen to leaders and try to decode and deconstruct. You know how does he speak, how does he pause, how can I bring that more of, how to channel more of Barack Obama in what I'm doing? And yet in the book you almost plead with us saying please do not try to copy him, don't try to be. You know, speak the way he speaks. Can you share a little bit more about what you were trying to say through that? Sure?

Terry Suplatz: 3:37

Yeah. So I realize a lot of people do that, and I've met a lot of people over the years who've told me that, especially if English is not their first language, they've learned English by listening to speeches by Barack Obama, or they've watched his speeches and studied them to try to become better communicators themselves, and that's useful. I wouldn't say to anyone don't do that. But I think one of the mistakes that so many people make is when we are learning to become public speakers and communicators ourselves, we sometimes make the mistake of trying to emulate too much other people. And so you have people trying to sound like Barack Obama or John F Kennedy or Ronald Reagan or whoever you're, whatever leader you admire, and the problem is is you know that style works for them because that was their natural style.

Terry Suplatz: 4:22

And when an audience gives you an opportunity to speak, whether it's at work or in your community or in your family, or to speak up at a memorial for someone that you love, they're inviting you because they want to hear you. They don't want to hear you try to mimic or impersonate somebody else. So I say that because that's actually pretty easy to do. Everyone's really good at being themselves. Of course, people get nervous, they get anxious. We can talk about that later but we're all pretty good at being who we are, and so I think one of the lessons that I hope people take away from the book is you don't have to be anybody else, you don't have to sound like anybody else. You have a rhythm and a cadence and a style and a way that's all your own, and all you have to do and all your audience wants is you, and so it's actually easier than people think.

Dr. Tanvi Gautam: 5:13

I agree, you know, one has to be so dialed in.

Dr. Tanvi Gautam: 5:15

One of the things you say in the book is you know what's the story that you have the right to tell Because it's your story. And it's really got me reflecting, because I share a lot of stories in my own keynotes and there's a lot of thinking about which story and you know how to share it, and so I agree it. Lot of thinking about which story and you know how to share it, and so I agree it's. It's, you know, that personal essence that you bring and it can't be, it can't be changed because, well, you're unique.

Dr. Tanvi Gautam: 5:42

So, you know, one of the things that my my audiences in my storytelling program, the leaders, they always struggle with is they have these big, complex ideas which they're supposed to distill down and, you know, deliver it in a manner that's sticky and that gets the point across. And they tend to struggle with it a lot and they always, you know, say like, oh, I don't think I have the time to tell that story, or I don't think they have the time to listen to the story because you know oh, I'm talking to the C-suite, they're very busy, et cetera.

Dr. Tanvi Gautam: 6:20

I mean, in the book I found these amazing statistics, which was like, you know, that Ronald Reagan's speech after the space challenger disaster was only four minutes. Or the fact that Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was 270 words, which is just incredible when you think about it. You don't have to be speaking long to be speaking impactful. In fact, in the programs I tell them, I said what if you could do it in 30 seconds or less? Which they're shocked about. And of course it's a different, it's a strategy, you know, it's a strategy that I share there. But I would love to hear what is your thought process? And because that famous story, right where Obama comes to you and he goes, you know, reduce this by a page. And the plane is about to land and you know he's about to give the speech, oh my God, I can't even imagine that pressure. But what's your advice to you know, the leaders who come and say you know I don't have time for storytelling or my ideas are too complex, I don't know how to simplify it.

Terry Suplatz: 7:21

Yeah, well, I think number one. I think a lot of leaders, particularly in business, make the mistake of thinking that the audiences only want to hear, you know, just technical information about the product, the service, the benefit, the features, and of course, that's all important. You still have to talk about that. You can't just gloss over the attributes of your product or why your product or company or service is better. I think the mistake that a lot of leaders make is that they think that that's the only thing people want. And you know, we're all human, you know we all. You know you might be speaking to an engineering conference and you think, oh well, all they want to hear is about the technical aspects of engineering. Well, engineers are people too. Engineers go to movies, they read books, they go to plays.

Terry Suplatz: 8:06

We're all drawn to stories and narrative, and so just because we're in our work setting doesn't mean we're not receptive to stories. And again, it's not storytelling for storytelling's sake. It's storytelling because we know from all sorts of research that I talk about in the book that stories make lessons and messages more memorable. That's how they're more likely to remember what you say, they're more likely to be inspired by what you have to say they're more likely to actually act on what you're saying if it's presented in a way that creates a human connection. So in the book I try to lay out all sorts of different ways that you can tell your story about yourself, your company, your organization, what have you. It actually brings up one of the sort of there's so much bad public speaking advice out there I'm sure you hear a lot of it as well.

Terry Suplatz: 8:51

And one of the ones I talk about in the book the ones I really don't like, but one of the ones I really can't stand because I just think it's so misleading is when people say you know, it's not about you, it's about the audience, as if they're, as if. What a false choice. It's about both, of course. It's about both. You know you have to think deeply about your audience and what they need in that moment and what their values are and their interests and that, but also what you can bring to that moment.

Terry Suplatz: 9:18

You are the speaker. You are going to be on that stage or at that podium for 5, 10, 15, 30 minutes and you do have to deliver something. And so you have to deliver something unique, especially if you're speaking at a conference or you're part of a panel and you're the fifth person to speak. You know people don't want to hear the same thing, the same generic presentations that they've heard. They want something that's true and unique to you, and so that's where we can really bring. You know, if you're not comfortable opening up or sharing stories about yourself or your work or why you do the work you do, you know you're really missing an opportunity to connect with and inspire your audience.

Dr. Tanvi Gautam: 9:57

I remember I was the closing speaker at a conference and by the time the crowd got to me they had heard everything there was to have been said on the topic and I was literally standing between them and the happy hour.

Terry Suplatz: 10:15

So I actually just Good time to give a good time to give a 90 minute presentation.

Dr. Tanvi Gautam: 10:18

That's right. So of course I threw out my speech, I said it's pointless and I said you know we, you know you've heard this. I don't want to tell you the same thing over and over again. So why don't I just tell you three stories that actually bring to life why it's so important the work we are doing at this conference? And they heard the three stories, and they heard with greater energy than they would have heard any presentation. And so I think that the power of stories people don't realize how powerful it is till they actually try it right. So let's go back. Let's go back to that moment, right, the plane is landing and President Obama comes to you and casually hands you the speech and says let me just reduce this by an entire page, what might be a good strategy that some of us could use to actually be more. I can tell you, I can struggle with that sometimes myself.

Dr. Tanvi Gautam: 11:11

I have so much to say and so little time.

Terry Suplatz: 11:14

Right. I think, again, one of the challenges, mistakes a lot of us make is, you know, we want to say and we have so much to say, so much on our minds, there's so much that our organizations are doing and we have a tendency to want to say everything everywhere we go, to everybody we meet, and we don't, you know, uh, tighten it up to its, to its bare essence. So the story that you're alluding to there is a story I tell in the book where we'd worked on, we were, I think we were flying into Santiago, chile, and we'd president was going to. President Obama was going to give a big foreign policy address and we'd been working on it for weeks and you know, all across the government, across the white House, folks were giving us, you know, all sorts of inputs. You know he must say this and he must say it just this way, and if he doesn't say it this way, he'll unsettle, you know, hemispheric relations and there'll be a diplomatic crisis, and just over and over again.

Terry Suplatz: 12:00

So we end up with this speech, this speech was good, but then we're on our way, we're on Air Force One, or maybe an hour or two away from landing and going, having him give the speech and the president sort of nonchalantly comes back and looks at me and said you know, this is a good six page speech. And I'm thinking, all right, excellent, I'm done, you know he likes it. He said but it would be a great five page speech. And I thought he was sort of just kidding around, messing around. And he said see if you can shave a page off this speech. And I couldn't believe it. I mean, we're like an hour or two away from the speech. We've been working on this thing for weeks. So I look, I'm thinking, well, I'm sure he's offered some advice, hadn't offered a single edit of what to cut. Just he felt it was too long, why don't you try to cut a page off of it? And he just gives me the speech and walks away.

Terry Suplatz: 12:46

So the next hour or so was just absolutely chaotic. We're just, you know, hacking away, just pulling out all this stuff. We got there, we got there, we were able to do it. He gave the speech, the speech was received well, it was fine, and cutting about one page off of a six page speech is, you know, roughly 15%. And this is something that he would do often. We'd be behind the stage, you know, backstage, before a speech, you know you all remember, you know there's an empty podium waiting for the president to come out. Well, backstage he's sitting there saying let's see if we can shave a few paragraphs off of this, let's see if we can maybe cut this down by half a page. So just you know chaos and just you know panicked as we're trying to do this.

Terry Suplatz: 13:26

What he was doing was forcing us, you know, to think always, even until the very end, the difference between what's necessary to have in a presentation and what's nice to have. Right, there's so many things that we we think they are nice, they're a nice story or a nice anecdote or a nice lesson, but that doesn't mean it's necessary and it doesn't mean it's necessary every time you speak. So you know, cutting 15% is a rule that I share in the book. You know you've written a speech, you've developed a presentation, maybe you've made a slide deck, you think you're done. Why don't you just put it down, put it aside, come back to it a few hours later or a day or so later with fresh eyes and just cut? 15% worked for President Obama, it works for us. I do it now. I help my clients do it.

Terry Suplatz: 14:10

It's hard because you know, when we're creators, we love every word, we think every idea, every sentence that we come up with is sacred. Or, if you can't do it, give it to a colleague. Or give it to your husband, your wife, your partner, they'll do it. They'll always tell you when you're being too you know, using too many words. So, yeah, I think and I do this I teach speech writing at American University in Washington. We do an exercise where I have them write a 500 word speech about an issue they care about and they they're wonderful speeches. And then they bring in the class says all right, the Gettysburg Address was 272 words. Cut your speech down to 272 words and, my God, all this stuff that they thought they couldn't live without they're suddenly having to live without. And then we do that and we say hey, you know, sometimes, sometimes you only have a minute to speak. Why don't you cut it down to I don't know 130 words? And they, you know, go through this process again so you can do it.

Dr. Tanvi Gautam: 15:02

It's hard, but you know, the bottom line is you don't have to speak a lot to say a lot. Oh, I love it. You don't have to speak a lot to say a lot. And there is that story in the book about Ted Sorensen, who was a speech writer for John F Kennedy, and I'm not going to share that story because I want people to read the book, but that is an amazing example of how you might be able to cut things down. I really like that, that story.

Dr. Tanvi Gautam: 15:32

go look for the fish story when you get the that's right, the fish story, the fish story, word fish, keyword fish um, so this is about you know, being pithy and delivering it, um, in a concise and most valuable, uh, you know, manner. But there's a rule which you shared, which was interesting, which was 50-25-25, which is all the work that goes on, you know, backstage, before you actually come and share it with others. What is the 50-25-25 rule for spending your time?

Terry Suplatz: 16:05

Sure. So I think another one of the big mistakes that a lot of us make where we're preparing a presentation, building a slide deck, is you know, it's scary, it's. The blank page can be very terrifying, and so our first instinct is just start creating, start writing, start designing slides and then you at least have something. The problem with that is that when you start creating before you've really done your deep thinking, you're inevitably going to hit some sort of a brick wall, and I've worked with clients where there's 100 slides to the deck and everyone's happy and I ask a question okay, in one sentence, what is this presentation about? And either there's silence or they just start talking for 10-15 minutes to explain their hundred slides, because no one sat down to actually plan it out, think it out. So the 50, 25, 25 rule is just my rule of thumb for how I think can be helpful or how you use your time. So, whether you have a month to get ready, a few weeks, one week, a few days, even just a few hours, I suggest to people that you just, number one, don't start creating, don't start writing yet, just set aside the first I don't know 50% of your time to think and create and walk around with your idea and talk to other people and interview people and do research and outline and play with stories, and just you don't have to create and write anything, you don't have to be perfect. And then, when you have all this material, only then do you have to sit down and start writing.

Terry Suplatz: 17:33

So I'm called a speechwriter. I spend most of my time not writing speeches. I spend most of my time researching, learning, getting smart about the issues I write about. Because you do all that work, you have so much material, the writing comes so much easier. And then the third part of it is and again I think a lot of leaders, especially in business, forget this part is building in time, maybe 25% of your time for sharing it with others, getting feedback, doing rewrites, practicing, rehearsing. If the CEO has to give a speech at a six o'clock on a Friday night and no one has, it's four o'clock and no one has seen the speech.

Dr. Tanvi Gautam: 18:13

That's that's a problem.

Terry Suplatz: 18:14

No, it doesn't always happen, but sometimes it does, and so I think what I recommend is is people you know and I teach this rule to my students, I think it takes a lot of it gives what might be an unwieldy, terrifying, overwhelming process for people some structure, and it also, again, gives us a little bit of a breather. You don't have to start writing and creating the perfect words, the perfect sentences right now. That's later, and we can all tell people speakers, you know they're full of passion but they're not saying anything. They might have great body language and great stage presence, but they actually aren't saying anything of substance. It's all just, it's vapid, it's meaningless, it's clich the work you put into it leading up to that moment. That's why I try to lay out in the book all the different things that we can do as communicators to be better that way.

Dr. Tanvi Gautam: 19:17

Yeah, I love that part in the book where you talk about you know how, when President Obama used to speak, he would very often like quote many of the historic figures who had something to say about this topic before him. And I love what you wrote in the book, that it was kind of like he was in conversation with everybody who had had something to say about this topic in the past and he was bringing them, you know, with himself. And I loved it because it's kind of like tapping into, you know, a body of work or consciousness, almost to take it further which is so important. And I know that some people might listen to this and say, oh my God, that's a lot of work. You know, maybe we can just hire Terry, he can do the work.

Dr. Tanvi Gautam: 19:59

But I tell them in my storytelling program. You know a lot of the stories, you know. You may be the CEO, you may be the vice president, whatever. There's some, some things that you have to say over and over again and sometimes to different audiences, and if you can just pick a couple of signature stories, as I call them, and really dial them in, it's one of the highest return on investment activities you will ever do, because and some of the stories are so good Like I have had people in the audience say can you tell that story again, because we just love hearing it. It's just like a journey of you know going through that story. But yeah, there is. You know that anything worth doing requires, you know, some effort.

Terry Suplatz: 20:43

So Can I just say, too, like you. So you know I hear this a lot from leaders of organizations, nonprofits, business. You know I hear this a lot from leaders of organizations, nonprofits, business. You know politicians, anyone who runs an organization. And they'll say I just, I'm sorry, I just don't have time to meet with my communications team or my speech writing team or my staff to talk about what I want to say. It's their job to know what I want to say and that's true to a point that is. That is their, is their job to listen to you and to pay attention to what you're saying and make sure they're turning in scripts and speeches and presentations that reflect what you're really thinking and saying.

Terry Suplatz: 21:19

But speech writers aren't mind readers and President Obama always made time for the really big speeches to have us up, sit there in the Oval Office to talk through what he wanted to say. And I always tell people, if the President of the United States, with everything on his plate, could make time for his speechwriters and his communications team to make sure that we understood what the boss wanted, then there's no excuse for anybody anywhere to say they don't have time. And this is really important. This is part of being a leader is is communicating your vision and your values and your agenda to your organization. Uh, people can't. Just, you know they're not mind readers, and so, um, building in time to really do this deep thinking and planning, um, you will be. I mean, it's not charity, it's not something you do, uh, for your staff, it's something you do for yourself. You will be a better, more effective leader if you build in this time and put time on your schedule for this deep thinking to get ready for your next big presentation.

Dr. Tanvi Gautam: 22:22

You know it's interesting. You say that because one of my clients it was the communications team that got me to do the storytelling program with the leaders, and their thinking was no matter how good we are in the communications team, if these leaders can't find a way to communicate that to us and share with us the stories that they want us to amplify, we can't create their stories for them. They are the ones who have to find it and share it. So they did this whole cascade across, you know, many, many different countries, etc. And I thought that was a very smart thing. It was an investment in their own ability to produce things that you know. It is how it is, like I remember I, if I reflect back to some of my clients saying you know, this is how you could say that, and they're like I like how you said it. I said that's because I just used your word, that's why you like it.

Terry Suplatz: 23:09

Yeah, one of the best compliments you can get as a speechwriter and I realize that most people out there never have to write a speech for somebody else, but for those of us who've done it, yeah, the best compliment you can get is oh, that sounds just like me, and that's usually because you listen very closely and you gave them a script that really truly was their words and you know we talk about the three Vs their voice, their vision, their values. If you can grab all of that, you know we all have our own voice, we all have our own values, we all have our own vision and it's your job. Whether you know, whether you're the speaker yourself and you want to write for yourself.

Dr. Tanvi Gautam: 23:44

You need to understand you need to understand what you stand for. Oh, I love it, I just love it. Uh, if we can just infuse these three things and it's not top of mind, I find my executives start running for the the you know, creating the deck, and I always tell them I said I have done. I've asked this question across continents to a variety of audiences and I always tell them I said if you had a choice, if I told you just now that you can listen to an 80 slide presentation or I can tell you one story, which one would you take? It's always the same answer. So don't start running to your deck, start running to your stories.

Terry Suplatz: 24:23

Right, right Right.

Dr. Tanvi Gautam: 24:25

And one of my favorite favorite chapters in the book is called Talk Like a Human. And one of my favorite favorite chapters in the book is called Talk Like a Human. And I just want to quote from that because there's no way I could pull this off if I just tried to say it. But there's that paragraph about financial experts often speak a language all their own. It's a tricky problem. Alan Greenspan reportedly said when he was chair of the President's Council of Economic Advisers the President's Council of Economic Advisers, to find the particular calibration in timing that would be appropriate to stem the acceleration of risk premiums created by falling incomes without prematurely aborting the decline in the inflation-generated risk premium.

Terry Suplatz: 25:02

Aspiring stuff. Huh, yeah, you know if anyone out there understands what that means. We've been looking for decades now. No, I don't think anyone's raised their hand, but I mean that's an extreme example, right, and that's why I put in the book but and but. People talk like that every day, especially in the audience, don't know what you know, it's that curse of knowledge, and we think that this jargon. I mean, yeah, you have to speak clearly for the widest possible people, even when you're talking about technical subjects. So hats off to you for reading that out loud. I've actually never heard that except the audio book, right? No one's ever dared to. It's a hard sentence to say.

Dr. Tanvi Gautam: 25:51

It is and I don't know if you noticed, but I had to stop myself from you know the pausing and the emotions and all of that which would have made me made it a little bit more accessible because leaders always don't pause.

Dr. Tanvi Gautam: 26:02

They don't always give it breathing room, as we say. Like you know, give people time. Let the words hang there for a bit, but you know the solution that you offered in the book the barbecue rule. I really like that rule Because if, honestly, if they forget everything we're talking about and they just even remember this one barbecue rule, they would have gotten so much value from the book. So why don't you share with us what was that barbecue rule?

Terry Suplatz: 26:28

Sure, so yeah, so the barbecue rule is just an answer to to all of this jargon and bureaucratic speak and that's so many speakers fall victim to, which is, you know. Imagine you are at a barbecue or at a party with your, with your family, and you know, and you have people of all ages and all backgrounds there. You might have your, your, your grandmother, you might have your uncle, you might have your you know 13 or 14 year old niece or nephew, and you know, if they ask you what you're doing, what are you doing at work these days, you would not. You would not say things like well, you know, we're harnessing leverage and we're harnessing and leveraging innovation to create synergies for positive outcome. I mean the sort of garbage and jargon that that we hear in business and government all the time. You know you would never talk like that to your family. I mean I hope you wouldn't. I mean they're just going to walk away if you start talking to people like that. So so just talk like you would talk to your family and your friends.

Terry Suplatz: 27:28

I did that as a speechwriter every day because I wasn't a subject matter expert. I was always trying to write these speeches for the president in a way that I hope my family and friends back home would understand, who are like me, not experts, you're being a compelling speaker is are you, you know, just absolutely immersed in all this jargon that no one understands and actually doesn't mean anything, or these buzzwords that we think mean something but that actually don't? You know? Or are we just speaking clearly and plainly to people? And, by the way, when I say 13 or 14 year old niece or nephew, I do that deliberately, because that's in the United States. That's about at the eighth grade level and, for better or worse, that's about what the average reading level is in this country. That's kind of where most people are, and so if you want to reach people, speak to where they are right.

Terry Suplatz: 28:23

We say that all the time. Meet people where they are. What does that mean? Well, it means speak to them in language they can understand. There are universities that will often take presidential speeches, like the State of the Union Address, and put them through a machine and sort of grade them, and a lot of the State of Union Addresses come back as around the eighth grade level, and that's not something we did intentionally at the White House. We weren't saying well, this sentence is more at the 10th grade level. We need to simplify, but we were not doing that. But what we were doing was every sentence trying to make it as clear as possible to the widest number of people, and that's something we can all do.

Dr. Tanvi Gautam: 29:03

Yeah, you know, I feel that communication, whether it's one-on-one, one too many, one too like town hall, um, it's always with the way you communicate you either connect with people or you repel people, and it's, it's an opportunity you leave them completely indifferent to you yeah.

Dr. Tanvi Gautam: 29:24

So it's just an opportunity to create like it's. It's a. I find it's a lost opportunity for so many leaders. You stand there, you're talking to your people for 45 minutes. The company is at a standstill. They're listening to you for 45 minutes and ask them to recall one thing of what you said after you finished. Just do that, just try it once, and it's going to be a very humbling exercise, I have to say you know, but it's interesting when you talk about, you know, the eighth grade level.

Dr. Tanvi Gautam: 29:53

And I want to talk a little bit about AI, because everybody's now talking about AI, and what sort of a podcaster will I be if I don't talk about AI, right? So I found this one which you kind of put in your thing and it says do you want to bring this down to the fourth grade level? Do you want to bring this down to grad school level? Do you want to? And it was interesting because when I played with it I could just see the variation that would end up happening when you chose a different algorithm. At what level do you want to play with this?

Dr. Tanvi Gautam: 30:25

So it would be interesting, I think, for our listeners to just maybe throw a paragraph of what you might have normally said, or just speak. You know the way you would give your speech and ask them to just say well, what level do you think it is? And then use AI to bring it to a level that may be easier to connect with. But just, you know, on that topic of AI, I know you you have very, in almost every chapter you've had a thought about. You know where to use AI, when not to use AI. So do you have any good rule of thumb where you feel like, listen, you don't, really don't want to use AI over there?

Terry Suplatz: 31:03

Right, yeah, no, I think as far as I was just sort of the first public speaking book, communications book to come out sort of in the AI, in the AI era, here in the chat GPT era. I'm not an AI expert number one I want to be careful about that but I think we're talking here about how you communicate with human beings. So I basically have two big roles around AI and I'd be curious what you and your listeners think. But number one is as a research tool, as a partner. Absolutely, it's a wonderful tool. You just gave one example. Make this more sophisticated, make this more accessible. Take these thousand words and reduce it to 500 words. It's going to be choppy and messy and you probably won't want to use it. But get your, get your thoughts going on on what might you, where you might be able to trim. Find me 10 quotes by Martin Luther King, give me anecdotes. You know so.

Terry Suplatz: 31:59

As a research partner, it's as an editing partner, as a thought partner. You truly don't know what to say to a group. You're coming, you're struggling to come up with a theme or a topic. You know, maybe you brainstorm with AI. So all that you know, great it's. You know, this is all the things we normally do with our colleagues or, you know, alone, and it's just an incredible time saver. So that's you know, as a partner, as a research partner, think partner, sure, but number two, when it comes time to actually write what you want to say, produce your script, your content. Don't ever use a bot, and my reasoning is this when you are giving a presentation or a speech of any kind, anywhere, work, home, life, what have you?

Terry Suplatz: 32:42

Community, people are coming together to hear from other human beings. And so you get up, you're a human being and you're standing in front of other human beings. And so you get up. You're a human being and you're standing in front of other human beings, and they want a human connection, they want human stories, they want to hear what's in your heart, what's in your soul. They're not looking for you to get up and read a white paper, they're not looking for you to read a script written by a machine. And people still want that.

Terry Suplatz: 33:07

In fact, I'm hoping that, as AI takes over more and more parts of our life, that we will, when we come together as human beings, that the hunger for a human connection is only going to grow. And so you know, you're standing up in front of your colleagues, your company, your community, your church, your temple, your synagogue, whatever You're getting up to honor a work colleague on their retirement, you're eulogizing someone you admire. Don't ever turn these moments over to a machine. Our voices and our stories and what we have to say, what comes from our heart, are the most powerful, unique things we have in this world, and I just hope people never give that over to a machine. So you know, don't ever give your voice over to a machine.

Dr. Tanvi Gautam: 33:58

Yeah, I feel like as AI becomes cheaper, the human voice becomes more valuable, and I think the moments of connection are the moments of our humanity. You know, I sometimes have people say oh, you know, if I don't know if I can tell a good story, English is not my first language you know what? If it doesn't land, I'm like you know, you would be so much more enduring in that messiness of yours. Yes and yes you know what if?

Terry Suplatz: 34:23

I stumble over a word I said. The moment you stumble over the world, that audience is going to wrap itself around you and they want to lift you up and they want you to succeed and they want to go. You know, and it's, it's OK, it's OK. It's not just OK, it's great value our humanity.

Dr. Tanvi Gautam: 34:46

You know much as AI is tempting and you know, in the work that I do on storytelling, I'm actually creating like a GPT right now which will help some of the leaders who've been through the program reflect, as you know, whatever they bring. But I don't give them access to the programs over. You need to actually learn what this is about, because that's when you're able to to even give prompts that actually make sense. But you know, learn the thing first. And I think it's that co-pilot concept right, it's a co-pilot, let's use it as that. And you know the one that I love, just on that concept of speaking human was that thing about acronyms. And you know how Wisconsin Tourism Federation should not be using an acronym.

Terry Suplatz: 35:27

We'll let your listeners process that the Wisconsin Trade Federation turned itself into an acronym and you can imagine what that sounded like. Yeah.

Dr. Tanvi Gautam: 35:38

So, as we move towards kind of wrapping this up, I wanted to ask you if there is a speech that changed everything, maybe a speech that you wrote and that made you feel like this is why I do what I do, because you've written so many and I know it's hard to choose, because a good speech doesn't sometimes change the audience. It also changes the speaker, right, and in this case, in your case, the writer as well. So if I had to say that, if you had to pick at least, if not the most favorite, one of your most favorite such speeches, which one would that be that I had worked on as a speech writer yeah, so you used a phrase there.

Terry Suplatz: 36:25

You know this is why I do this, and you know we were. I was lucky to be part of a team of five or six writers, so we worked on, you know, over 3000 speeches for President Obama during the course of his presidency, and at the end of the presidency, we were all asked by the White House what speech is your favorite? And so any of your listeners and viewers can go online and you know Obama's speechwriters' favorite speeches, and what's interesting about it is that most of them are ones you've probably never heard of. Right? The question was what speech meant the most to you? And so the speeches that meant the most to us were usually ones that had special meaning for us in some way, and so the speeches that meant the most to us were usually ones that had special meaning for us in some way, and so, for me, the speech that I chose was the speech that the president gave after the bombing of the Boston Marathon, which happened in the United States.

Terry Suplatz: 37:18

Because I was born in Boston, I grew up in Massachusetts, I had a lot of family and friend who were there. I knew how important this moment, this race, was to that state, to my home state, and I asked if I could be the speechwriter that helped the president with it and you know, as always he made a lot of edits. He put my community get through a very difficult time by helping a president find the right words that would resonate with that community meant a lot to me. So, again, I'm not sure that not many people have ever heard of it who are listening, but it's one that I was very grateful to be a part of because I saw the impact that it had on people and the impact that the president had at that moment. So, yeah, I think you know, sometimes you think, oh, yeah, maybe everything you've learned has kind of prepared you for this kind of a moment, and so to be able to step up and contribute, make a contribution at a time like that meant a lot that meant a lot.

Dr. Tanvi Gautam: 38:29

You know, I hadn't thought about this up until this moment, but if that's the metric of what speeches matter and I have given so many keynotes etc, and I'm just thinking, I was just recounting if I had been asked you know, the one of the ones that meant most to me was when I was the president of the Asia Professional Speakers Association and it was the peak of the pandemic, and in the middle of that we actually lost one of the members of my team to the pandemic and she was a young woman with young kids, and it was the first time when I gathered the community to to hold a sort of like, um, you know, a gathering to process what we were experiencing because we had become a very tight-knit team and just to hold space for people and what do I say which honors this person, honors how I'm feeling as a leader and honors these people who, who are shocked with what?

Dr. Tanvi Gautam: 39:23

Because it moved very quickly. Um, I think it was one of the hardest things I have ever done, but it was also one of the most important things I've ever done Because, to your point, it was bringing the community together and we keep talking about the human-centric enterprise. What is the human-centric work culture? What is the human-centric workplace? It is this, it is these moments that allow you to create that human-centric conversation and community through the way you speak as a leader. So thank you for that.

Terry Suplatz: 39:54

Actually, asking you this question made me you know, think it's a good question for all your viewers and listeners, which is you know what speech, which presentation has meant the most to you? Do you think it? Do you think your audience would agree? You know, um, I think you know people. One of the things people are always asking me is how do you know whether a speech or a presentation has worked? And I think you know there's two big ways to know. One is, of course, in the moment. You just know whether the audience is with you or not, or they do you know they're drifting off, not paying attention? No, they're drifting off, not paying attention. No, they're not with you, but if they're, they're hanging on your every word. They're leaning forward in their seat, they're they're nodding. When you say something, you know maybe they're clapping or they're cheering because they're just so, they're so um, they, they see, they feel so much Um, and there's in such agreement with what you're saying that just sitting there and nodding isn't enough. They have to somehow express themselves. They have to clap, they have to cheer. That's why applause and cheers are so important. It's not because you know you necessarily want it. It's a sign that your audience is truly with you. You're really connecting with them. So you know that as a speaker and you know that when you're in the audience you feel it. You literally feel it.

Terry Suplatz: 41:08

And I talk about in the book all the different, the science, all this human communication and connection. But then also, I think the real test of a great presentation is what comes after the next day, the next week, the next month, years from now. Does anybody remember it? Does it? Has it changed the way that they think, the way they act, what they believe, how they live?

Terry Suplatz: 41:23

You know I still have people come up to me and you me, and tell me their favorite Barack Obama speech and maybe I had something to do with it, maybe I didn't. He always did, because he's the one who actually delivered it. But they can tell you how it made them feel and how they still. They go back to it and reread it years later. That's a sign of a great presentation and I'm sure your listeners and viewers, if they've had successful presentations, people come up to them long afterwards to say you remember you gave that speech in such and such a place. You know I've always remembered that it really stuck with me, right? People say it stuck with me, carry it with them. That's how you know you did your job.

Dr. Tanvi Gautam: 42:01

I agree, you know on that, that response moment I to share. This is the problem with being a storyteller you have a story for everything that you're talking about. But I remember I was in Europe and I had finished a keynote and it was my first time speaking in Europe and I finished and there was no response in the room. I think it was like a five, six second silence, but to me it felt like it was a 20 minute silence and I said, okay, I have just completely bombed my first speech in Europe.

Dr. Tanvi Gautam: 42:31

And then, actually that was when I also got my life's first standing ovation. And I realized in that moment that that pause where they didn't react was not because they didn't like me. That pause where they didn't react was not because they didn't like me, but just the gravity of what I had been saying had just sunk in. That the response was not an immediate I want to jump on my feet and start start clapping. It was like okay, and then, and so that was an interesting thing for me. After that I realized that sometimes the response can be very different from what you thought, but the impact was, you know so anyway, let's put out one final question.

Dr. Tanvi Gautam: 43:15

You know storytelling the. The leaders often come to me and they dismiss their own story oh, my story is not interesting enough. Oh, no one wants to hear my story, etc. Do you, do you have any? You know, have you ever had a situation where you work with someone who didn't see the power of their own story? But when they shared it is when they realized oh my God, you know, this has the power.

Terry Suplatz: 43:37

Yeah, and I hear this all the time. You know, I'll sit down with a client or someone and they say, well, my life is boring, I'm not interesting, I don't have anything to do with the show, I'm like, well, they just haven't really spent much time thinking about. I mean, we all, you know, we all have a unique story, we all. One of the one of the one of the things that President Obama said to me once they include in the book is you know, we all have a, we all have a sacred story. And the first chapter of the book is called Love, your Sacred Story, that story that only you have, those experiences that only you've had, that you've felt and carried with you through your life. So, you know, I offer in the book all sorts of questions that you can ask yourself to kind of better understand your own story. Because, again, if you don't understand who you are, how can you possibly expect to get up in front of an audience and expect them to believe in you? You know and understand you. To get up in front of an audience and expect them to believe in you, you know and understand you. So, knowing yourself, know thyself, you know, is really one of the big first steps in being an effective public speaker and communicator.

Terry Suplatz: 44:35

But yeah, I had a client once who had been a very successful leader in international finance. He was making a move to a different sector and he kind of is going from behind the scenes to being a public speaker for the first time in his life and just really didn't enjoy getting too personal, didn't like doing that too often and it was really hard to pull him out. But when I started talking to him, asking just about his life where did you grow up? What did you do? It turns out, you know, he had an incredible sort of classic American dream story. He had been, he had been grown up overseas, he had immigrated with his family. They had started with nothing, you know, they just really worked their way up. He worked, he worked so much, so hard in his life to get everything that he had earned.

Terry Suplatz: 45:22

And when he told that story it completely transformed the way people saw him and the way people viewed him. And I wonder too, and maybe on some level, the way he viewed himself. Uh, he had never, uh, previously really talked much about his story, his immigrants, uh, his rags to riches story, and then something that he was more comfortable with um at once. He told it once and saw that the reception that it got and again, not because, you know, look at me, my story is so great, look at me, I'm wonderful it was because by sharing that story, he was connecting with his audience, so many of whom had the same story. So in him sharing his story, they were sort of hearing their own story and in him saw themselves.

Terry Suplatz: 46:00

That's why we do this. We don't do this just to you know, to to look good and to show off. We do this because that's what, what lets us communicate with each other and that's what lets our audiences feel heard and seen through your story. So so, yeah, everyone you're out there listening thinking, oh well, I don't have an interesting story. I lay out all the questions you can ask yourself and I guarantee you every, everybody's got a story to tell. And one of my hopes in this book is that, you know, more people find the confidence and the courage to find their voice and go out there and tell their story and try to create the sort of progress and change that they want in their family, in their community, in their company, in the country.

Dr. Tanvi Gautam: 46:44

Oh, I love it. Thank you so much. I mean this idea of in you. They say their own story is so important and you know, I know it's time for us to wrap up this session, this podcast, but I haven't even talked about 20% of the book. That's what. That's how rich this book is Because you know, wherever you may be in that journey, and you know you may be in that journey and you know you may not be ready to to tell that sacred story because you know you're new to storytelling or whatever. But there's so many like that chapter on make it sing and I'm like it's a talk.

Dr. Tanvi Gautam: 47:16

This book is about speech giving. What's this thing about? Make it sing, and I can tell you, forget storytelling, just the delivery that you do is going to change dramatically if you go back and you read this one chapter on Make it Sing. And of course, there is Terry's own story, which was I found it really, really touching about. You know when you actually went on stage and what it was like.

Dr. Tanvi Gautam: 47:42

Another thing that I loved about the book was you know you openly shared where you know things didn't go according to plan, right? You know that speech where President Obama was speaking and he was tearing this whole thing down, this budget down, and the person who was in charge of it was in the audience. No one knew he wasn't there. I mean things happen, so I mean there's. That is to say that this book and believe, believe me, as someone who does keynote speaking for a living, I have read many, many books and this is just such um, you know, it's a treasure trove of things and I think I'm going to be reading it again and again and many, many times okay you know it's.

Dr. Tanvi Gautam: 48:20

I really really appreciate, uh, that you wrote this book. I really really appreciate that you found the time. Um, we'll, of course, make sure that you know people link to you wrote this book. I really really appreciate that you found the time. We'll, of course, make sure that you know people link to you and your book in the show notes as well, but I'm truly grateful that this book is out here. So, thank you so much.

Terry Suplatz: 48:37

Thank you so much. Thanks. I'm thrilled you found it useful. I've always envisioned it as a workbook, as a handbook. I tell people, if I see you in five years and you show me a book that looks brand new, I'm going to be so sad. I want people to mark it up, I want people to underline, I want people to study it and I want people to come back to it as people progress throughout their career. I think this is a book. I've tried to make it for young people when they're just starting out their career, mid-career professionals, folks at the top of their game who want to get better, because, again, this is a skill and we all have to be good at it.

Dr. Tanvi Gautam: 49:12

And I'm thrilled that you found it so useful and thanks so much for having me on. Thank you so much.