What makes a good speech

Hi, I‘m Ahmed Mahbub. I‘m a counselor for White Hart Lane, which is in the London Borough of Haringay.

So I think if you look through, I guess, British politics, the best speakers actually have come from kind of religious backgrounds.

If you look at Gordon Brown, who was the previous Prime Minister, and someone who taught Tony Blair actually how to make speeches. Because his dad was some a father in a church he drew inspiration from the kind of sermons that his father did.

He tried to incorporate them (skills from his fathers sermons) into his speech. And I guess what the sermons try to do is firstly provoke some sort of emotion or some sort of passion, and also to try kind of facilitate a little bit of, you know, audience interaction.

I guess the person that does audience attraction the best is probably David Lammy. If you see his speeches, you‘d see that he tries to get you to chant along with him, with his ‘Yes’, or, you know, just to invoke some emotion.

Other good people are actually Boris Johnson, when he made a short phrase of ‘bring back Britain’, which is a short phrase that people can just repeat and invoke people to kind of repeat it with them.

I guess the other best thing about that makes the best speeches is kind of the length of it. You‘ll notice that, you know, most speeches that are memorable have short snippets that are really eye catching. They‘re not very long winded.

So if you think about Tony Blair, if you think about his speeches. He‘s made some great speeches in the past, but the one that stand out is the way he says, ‘education, education, education’. Where he‘s talking about making sure that everyone has access to good quality education, but having that and that snippet just makes it really memorable.

Having little bits that makes it memorable, not making it too long winded, and just invoking emotion.

I think the best speeches are always when you‘re doing a speech, you‘d be acting in a way that tries to evoke highs and lows. You‘re trying to make it a performance in itself.

So a bad speech is subjective. But I guess a bad speech you could say is something that doesn‘t evoke emotion. You‘ll see a lot of speakers who get up to speak, and they‘ll say words, but if you say words without being some sort of, you know, being animated or or doing certain things, it just feels like you have no passion for it.

In fact, probably the worst speeches are the ones that people (speakers) repeat multiple times. Because the best speeches you usually have kind of you‘re butterflies in your stomach. You‘re shaking with the and that really brings out the adrenaline where you‘re making a great speech.

But if you said it five or six times, you generally stop caring about the subject unless you can keep invoking some sort of emotion. But I‘d say that‘s probably the worst type of speech are when you can‘t get anything from the audience, because the audience is the people.

I think a very mediocre speech is hard because a mediocre speech is the majority of speeches, if you think about it. Normally speeches bomb, but normally speeches are, you know, inspirational, and make it through history.

If you think about,- Nelson Mandela, he has one speech that everyone talks about, but he probably has a million other speeches that people don‘t speak about. I think something that makes a speech mediocre is that you don‘t evoke some sort of passion. You don‘t capitalize on what the audience are feeling.

So for example, if I go to an audience and speak about, you know, the the loss of a baby‘s life, they might get teary. But if that audience is for young people, young 14 year olds who have never had a child, I‘m sure they‘ll be sad. But it won‘t, be something that they‘ll take away from that speech. They won‘t think about that speech when they go home.
But if you deliver that to you know a set of parents who have unfortunately lost their child, that speech can be really powerful.

So I think it‘s about knowing your audience. That‘s one of the main things. But yeah, I think not following the steps of evoking emotion, or not evoking enough emotion, is what makes a speech mediocre.

And I think the biggest thing that people do is that they say things, but they don‘t put ittle snippets in the speech that people can remember. Like I mentioned in the previous example ‘education, education, education’ piece. If he didn‘t say that. I think that speech would have been mediocre.

If I‘m honest, good speech’s have little phrases that people could repeat. You need snippets that people can remember. Same with ‘bring back Britain‘, if you remember Boris Johnson. His speeches were mostly him just talking about things, but you know, that little phrase put to life a little bit. So yeah, those little snippets really help as well.

I haven’t been in the game for 10 years. I can‘t comment on 10 years. But for the last five years I’ve seen develop more. I think there is a bigger thing about getting your speech onto social media.

So the way that happens with most speeches is, you write a speech, you send it to you know, whoever’s working in your team, whoever‘s in charge of social media, they will take out portions that they will think will get applauds.

So for example, if you‘re, I don‘t know, speaking at a animal rights convention, and you’re like; ‘we must stop the hunting of so and so’, and expect people to applaud and say things like, ‘Yeah, this is great’.

So they‘ll take that and they‘ll wait for you to say it more then put in the drafts they‘re tweeting, and then they‘ll tweet it out.

But that means you really have to emphasize all those points that they’re about to tweet about, which adds a different dimension, because it’s about how you how you seem to your online audience, as well as your physical audience in front of you. How much you know you think those phrases can get likes and retweets.

So it does add a sense of complexity sometimes. I’ve done it myself. I‘ve seen people, do speeches and speaking on on Instagram Live, which just seems really weird to me when you when you speak in front of a camera.

In fact, actually during my selection for becoming a counsellor I had to do a speech on Zoom. And it was slightly different, because you can never actually understand the atmosphere in the room. Because you might have people there that are, you know, falling asleep, they might be having their lunch. They might be, you know, you never know. But most of the time their cameras are off, so you don‘t know they‘re feeling you just kind of have to hope for the best and go forward with it. And you kind of think you‘ve done enough background research to understand.

So I think social media, especially when you‘re delivering it from home, it makes it a lot harder. I think that speeches have changed in in the light of the new technology that we have.

Yeah, yeah, I‘d say for the best speeches, I guess, it‘s about rinsing and repeating. Really watch old speeches and try to incorporate some of them into your own speech. So it’s about a kind of flow.

It‘s about listening to how the voice changes when you know certain politicians are talking about sad subjects, how they‘ll become quieter and the words will become longer, and it would just, it would take a long time for you know, the emotion to absorb.

Whereas, if you have a upbeat subject, for example, you’ll know what people are talking about. For example, if you go to rallies, they‘ll be upbeat, and they‘ll want to do chants, and they‘ll speak a lot faster and a lot louder. And they‘ll really try to get you motivated and ready to stand up and fight against this, you know, this beast that they‘re fighting against.

So really listen to that, that tonality and speed changes, and try to incorporate that. But the biggest thing is, I think if you want to write a good speech, practice, keep practicing.

Yeah, eventually one will land without you even knowing, really, because I don’t think anyone plans to do a good a great speech. But, like every speech has to be a great speech. But none of them live up to it. It‘s just at one point, everything aligns and you go, ‘okay, cool’.