Bill Clinton's Democratic Convention speech - 7 Lessons for Any Public Speaker

Former President Bill Clinton addressed the nation at the 2016 Democratic Convention. What are the seven key lessons that all public speakers can learn from his address?

Speaking the show about effective speaking in public to the media, at work and in life. Speaking with TJ Walker.

All fair minded observers, I believe, would characterize Bill Clinton as a great public speaker. You might love him, you might hate his policies, but in the same way people say that Ronald Reagan was a great speaker, Winston Churchill was a great speaker, Bill Clinton was a great speaker. Let's analyze exactly what he did in the recent speech at the 2016 Convention and Figure out what are the lessons for all speakers. Number one, he focused on one goal and had really just one message to make that goal accomplished. His goal was to get people to not see his wife as the cartoon, as the caricature, and instead he wanted them to focus on his own experience with them as a human being, as someone who has a lifetime commitment of helping other people through the political process. He focused on just that one thing. He didn't focus on rebutting every single charge and going through Benghazi and everything else. He had tremendous focus. Big mistake so many speakers make, whether it's in politics or business, they try to cover way, way, way too many points. Second thing, he did extremely well that most people at conventions don't. He didn't yell. You see it again and again and again. Republican convention with Rudy Giuliani, Democratic convention with Senator Amy, and forgive me, I forget how to pronounce her last name. Cornblower from Minnesota. She yelled the whole time. So it's a bipartisan problem of speakers who yell. Bill Clinton didn't yell in his speech. He used a conversational tone throughout. So that's the second big lesson that people need to learn, especially if they're going to address a big convention. When you're in front of so many people at a distance, the human tendency is to yell. Third big thing he did well, he opened with a story. It wasn't Madam Chairwoman, my fellow delegates, blah, blah, blah. It wasn't this pomp and circumstance and boring opening that so many people feel the need to do. He just said, it was the spring of 1971 and I met a girl. It was different. It was interesting. You could visualize it. And that's something you could do for any. I don't care if it's a speech to the board of directors on finance. If you start with a story, it pulls people in. It's more engaging, it's more interesting. The fourth big lesson from Clinton's speech is. He didn't just start with a story. He told story after story after story. He realized that for every data point he wanted to convey, for every message he would weave in another story. A speech is really an opportunity to weave in the story throughout the entire fabric of the speech. Some people say, oh, yeah, I love stories. I start with a story and then I get down to the nitty gritty of the speech. No, the nitty gritty of a great speech is you have story after story after story to amplify your points. Bill Clinton did that with his Democratic Convention. The next thing he did. Some of you are going to disagree with this. He took as much time as he needed. Conventional wisdom is that, oh, shorter speeches are always better. Don't go on. Don't go too long. No, he took a long time. He took about an hour. But guess what? People listened. People watched, and it was a huge, huge audience. The ratings were fantastic. So it's a huge myth out there that shorter is always better. Now take as much time as you need to cover the ground you want to to accomplish the goal. He really wanted to spend a lot of time helping people understand from his perspective what Hillary was like her whole life. His whole life, or at least for the last 45 years. And he needed time to do it. He took that. Too often people say, well, Abraham Lincoln spoke for two and a half minutes at Gettysburg. Therefore, you have to always speak shorter. Of course, they always forget that Abraham Lincoln would often speak for 90 minutes, two hours at Lincoln, Douglas debates and other places, too. So it's about figuring out what your goal is and using as much time as you need. Big, big lesson. So that's the fifth takeaway. The sixth thing that he did well is you've got to be flexible. People think of Bill Clinton. They think of someone who's the policy wonk, who's going to go really into detail about so many different policies. They think of the guy who, four years ago, who successfully rebutted all the main charges Republicans had against Democrats. He didn't do that this time. This was a personal speech. It, of course, talked about public policy, but he wasn't talking about himself. He wasn't defending his administration. He wasn't saying, vote for Hillary and she'll do these 10 things that I did such a great job of in my administration. He was flexible in that he did a completely different type of speech, a speech that's different from what people associate him with and that's important for great speakers. Just because you get good feedback from one type of speech. Don't just continue doing the same speech. You have to look at every single speaking opportunity from the standpoint of what are my real goals here and then work your way back from that. Clinton did that. Finally, the thing that Clinton does well, this speech and all speech, is he doesn't give speeches. As one of his top political aides who worked with him a quarter of a century ago commented on cnn, Paul Begalla. He said, bill Clinton doesn't talk about my speech. He doesn't say, let's get together and work on my speech, my presentation, my oration, my keynote. He said, I don't know. Bill Clinton would always say, okay, in my talk, let's prepare my talk. He refers to his speeches as talks because once you do that, you take away the stuffiness. You tend to yell a lot less because you're just talking to someone. Now, Bill Clinton is a great speaker, but guess what? All seven of those things that were such strengths of his, anybody can do it, including you. I'm T.J. walker. Thanks for joining me. As always, may all of your presentations in life be a huge success.

Speaking with TJ Walker is the number one rated daily streaming TV and radio show devoted to all aspects of speaking and communication. If you received value from this show, then please subscribe to it at meet mediatraining worldwide.com Please review the show, leave comments and share it with your friends and colleagues Today.