Chapter 26 Chapter 5 How Famous Speakers Prepare Their Speeches

At the New York Rotary Club I was once at a potluck during which a distinguished government official was to give us an important speech. Because of his prominent position, this virtually endows him with high prestige, so we look forward to listening to his speech and sharing this joy.Before that, he had promised to tell us about the day-to-day activities of his department, which is exactly what the New York business community is interested in. He already knew the subject of the speech well.He did not, however, plan his speeches; he did not select and organize his accumulated material into an orderly structure.So, with only the courage of a newborn calf, he began to speak casually and blindly.He himself didn't know how it would end, so he just let the horse go.

All in all, his brain was a hodgepodge, and no doubt, so is the spiritual meal it offers us.It's like eating ice cream first, followed by soup, and then fish and dried fruit.And, what's more, there is soup, ice cream, and red herring all mixed in.Never before, anywhere, have I met such a bewildering speaker.He wanted to give an impromptu speech, but was unable to finish it, so he took out a volume of notes from his pocket and confessed that his secretary had compiled it for him-this did not arouse the slightest suspicion in the audience.It is very obvious that these notes are as messy as scrap iron in a flatbed cart.

He kept flipping through these notes, sorting out the internal connections nervously, trying to organize them, like a lost person eagerly looking for a way out in the wilderness.But all this is so impossible.He kept apologizing, asking the staff to add some tea, shaking his hand holding the cup, speaking incoherently, repeating over and over again, and finally buried his head in his manuscript again, one minute, two minutes passed with difficulty, he Feeling increasingly helpless, confused and embarrassed.Nervous sweat covered his forehead, and when he wiped the sweat with the back of his hand, even his hands trembled.Those of us in the audience who sat there watching the disastrous failure of the speech felt both compassion and torture—a torture of being embarrassed by someone else.

But the speaker persisted unwisely and stubbornly.He struggled, studied his notes from time to time, kept apologizing and drinking water, only he himself did not realize that the scene had quickly fallen into a catastrophic situation.When he finished speaking and sat down, we all breathed a sigh of relief and felt relieved.The audience of this speech was the most unfortunate and the speaker the most humiliating of all the speeches I have ever experienced.His speech is just like Rousseau's description of love letters: he doesn't know where to start, and he doesn't know what to say.The moral of this story is the one that Albert Spencer once said: "When a man's knowledge is in disorder, the more he knows, the more confused his mind is."

A wise person will "make a decision before acting", but the speaker above acted recklessly without the most basic outline, how could it not lead to failure? Speaking is like sailing with a purpose, it needs to be followed by a plan.A person who doesn't know where he is usually doesn't know where he ends up.Napoleon once said: "The art of war is a science. In war, if you do not calculate and think accurately in advance, you will not win any victory." One foot above the doorway where public speaking students will pass.