Why’d You Say That: The Importance of Versatile Leadership Communication
A few weeks ago, I sat down with a former PR professional who told me that speechwriting jobs are dying out. Three days later, I spoke with Felicity Barber, a renowned speechwriter and communications professional, who told me that I was entering “an exploding field.” I sat with these two contradictory statements, trying to reconcile them, trying to, as the band Tool once sang, “make the pieces fit.” It wasn’t until a few days ago that the tension between these two statements burst into a catharsis.
I was having lunch with a good friend, and we were partaking in some mundane chit chat. My friend asked me how I spent that morning, and I told him I spent a half hour watching President Joe Biden give a speech honoring the late John McCain (aren’t I just the coolest). He leaned forward, put his hands on the table, and said in an almost guttural tone, “you spent a whole half hour watching a speech!?”
And that’s when the pieces clicked together.
Public oratory is no longer the only way leaders communicate to mass audiences. It isn’t even the primary way. While it may seem like there is less of a need for them, speechwriters didn’t sulk away, drowned in the tide of emerging technologies. They evolved. Evolved into Executive Communications Directors, into Vice Presidents of Leadership Communications. The job titles are more complex than before, but that is only because the job is more complex than before.
In an era where attention spans are dwindling, speechwriters must have more than long-form oratory in their repertoire. More people will see an Instagram clip of a speech than the speech itself, and a single Tweet (or X post) from a leader can have consequences that reverberate well outside of the platform.
While the modes of communication have evolved, the fundamentals of speechwriting are still present, and arguably, more important than ever. To condense a complicated issue or argument into a few hundred characters requires a rhetorical sleight of hand that speechwriters of old didn’t need in their back pocket.
For leaders to make a name for themselves in a claustrophobically crowded digital space, they need master communicators behind them to keep their mythos alive. Attention is a finite resource, and leaders who are able to gobble it up can control the market.
Sprout Social found that 70% of consumers feel more connected to a brand when the CEO is active on social media. People are much easier to connect to than brands. Brands are just abstract ideas, collective illusions that we decide have substance. People are concrete beings that make those brands seem real. Would Apple have such a mystique if Steve Jobs didn’t communicate in such a masterful way as to make consumers feel enthralled by his genius?
The power of leadership communication transcends brands. Political groups, social movements, even religious groups, all must have leaders that can communicate and make arguments effectively in an increasingly packed marketplace of ideas, and those skilled with language have the power to elevate a leader from just another voice to the voice.
So yes, in a way, the former PR professional was right. There is not much of a need left for pure speechwriters. But there is an exploding need for people with skills in storytelling and SEO, with skills in prose and posts.
One of the crucial steps of my speechwriting journey will be to master not just the public presentation aspect of the job, but the plethora of other ways to get a strategic win on the communications battlefield.
