Speaking with purpose: using speech to change the world

Climate crisis: some climate activism is non-verbal: but powerful speeches can inspire people to act (image redit: Extinction Rebellion)

I've written recently about the experiences of some of my clients (here, and here) and I want to tell you about another one of them. 

He's a very brave young man. With very important things to say. So important that people's lives and liberty depend on his words.  

In order to protect his privacy I'll call him R.  

R is in his mid-20s and is a full time climate-crisis activist. I first met him in 2019 when he was deeply involved in Extinction Rebellion, the then newly-founded organisation whose aim is to kickstart meaningful action on the global climate and nature crises. 

He has now dedicated his life to activism, and is gearing up for a new round of direct action across the UK and the rest of Europe – because, as we know to our dismay, in the last five years the climate crisis has got worse, not better. 

R is due to speak very soon at the site of a major blockade of a planned new motorway, somewhere in the EU. 

Whatever your views on the tactics of groups like Just Stop Oil, which are deliberately controversial and expressly designed to upset people, it takes extraordinary courage to put yourself, non-violently, in harm's way for the sake of a cause; to face arrest, police brutality, and lengthy imprisonment in order to draw attention to it.  

A great deal is riding on R's forthcoming speech to activists who will be preparing to undertake this sort of action. 

What do you say to people in this position? 

First we discussed his objectives. 

What is this 4-minute speech designed to do? 

Speeches tend to fall flat without a clear objective, or purpose.  

The objective needs to be expressed in terms of active verbs: 'doing' words: 

• To reassure: R wants to calm nerves and remind activists that what they are doing is not futile – they are part of a long tradition of effective non-violent direct action, going back to Martin Luther King Jr and Gandhi; 

• To warn: at the same time, R wants to be honest with activists about the gravity of their actions. Governments around the world are cracking down hard on peaceful protest, and they will face intense pressure to give up; 

• To encourage: one protest on one day is not going to effect change. R needs activists commit for the long term, to come back repeatedly to carry out similar protests until they are successful, and to not lose heart. 

Saying 'I want to talk about the climate crisis' is not an objective. 'Talking about' is too vague. Vagueness leads to rambling, rambling makes the listeners work hard ('where's he going with all this?') and if you make even supportive committed listeners work too hard they will tune out. 

Owning our emotions; staying in the here-and-now

I suggested to R that he minimise the fiery rhetoric about how terrible the climate crisis, and how awful it is that governments are not doing enough: his audience knows this already, it's why they're here. 

Instead, focus on the here and now: this group of listeners, in this place, needs him to speak to what's actually happening right now. 

Following on from that, I invited R to bring himself and his own feelings into it.  

It's easy, and less scary, to talk in the abstract.  

'Activists like you in the UK are serving long prison sentences'.  

Yes. This is a fact. But it's just a fact, so anyone could say this. 

What can you, the speaker, say? That no-one else can say? 

I urged R to talk in terms of his own experiences, his own insights, his own relationships. Several of those imprisoned activists are his close friends. 

I wanted him to speak about and be driven by his own emotions. To own them, as he speaks about the things that fuel his lifelong commitment to his values.  

Many of us drop the habit of owning our emotions very early in life. In much of British culture, and in the professional sphere that so many of my clients inhabit, displays of emotion are actively discouraged. Jason R. Waller has a good piece on this on Medium (paywall). 

But emotion fuels everything. It's intimately connected to the physical act of speaking  So when it comes to unlocking these emotions so R can really connect on a human level with his audience, he can talk explicitly about them. 

 More on 'doing the listeners' work' 

My final piece of advice for R was very similar to the advice I give to most speakers, and something we cover in detail in the free 1hr taster session that I offer to potential clients: make sure you don't make the listener work too hard 

To be specific: pause more. 

Like a lot of speakers, when R gets into his stride, a sense of momentum takes over, and his thoughts come cascading out –not incoherently, but quickly. Possibly too quickly for the true value of them to be appreciated easily. 

An important thing to remember about the pause, though: it's for the listener. It's there to allow the listener to work less hard, to take each thought in.  

The pause is not there 'for effect'. It's not there to be dramatic, or to pad out the speech and make lines sound more bombastic.  

R observed that, especially in the direct-action movement , there is a deep distrust of leaders, of the notion of 'leadership', and the corrupting influence of tradition power structures with 'leaders' and 'followers'. So activists frequently eschew behaviours associated with 'leadership': like standing up and making speeches.  

The problem is, even leaderless movements are made up of flesh-and-blood human beings, who are capable of – who have a visceral human need for – emotional connection. And sometimes this requires a spokesperson, a single voice, to be heard above the collective.  

As soon as I repositioned pausing as something speakers do for the listener, not for themselves, R was more comfortable allowing himself to pause, and let the value of his words sink in for the listener. 

(For a topical example, look at the US presidential campaign debate on Tuesday. Watch this clip (or see the video below) at around 1:03: Harris says to Trump, ' they say you're a disgrace'. And then she pauses – just to let Trump and the rest of the world sit with that idea for a minute before she moves on. That word 'disgrace' will ring in a lot of ears for a long time.) 

If we don't do the listeners' work, it is SO EASY for them to tune out.  

Especially at a high-stakes protest like the one he's doing. 

Consider all the thoughts, feelings and stimuli competing for the participants' attention: fear and anxiety at facing off with police and angry motorists, anger at feeling compelled to make such an extreme stand, worry about what will happen to friends and colleagues... in the midst of this, R is not going to be able to hold their attention unless he does ALL THE WORK to make listening to him easy. 

Whatever your views about the climate crisis, and the actions of people like R, I hope you'll sympathise. I think the work he's doing is vital, and I consider it a privilege to help him to undertake it. 

Even if you're not being called upon to rally a movement, to inspire courage in the hearts of activists in the face of daunting odds... if just getting up in a meeting to deliver a project update to the board of directors makes you feel like you're about to sit down in the middle of a motorway... I hope you'll find this guidance relevant and useful.  

You know how to reach me if you want my help with the sort of speaking challenges that R is facing on a personal level. Thanks for reading.