I got to tour Emily Dickinson’s house recently. It’s a museum now, in Amherst, Massachusetts. Our tour guide had worked at the museum for seven years, and let me tell you, she LOVES what she does.
I had the idea for this blog post about 20 minutes into the tour, when we were in the “poetry room.” The guide was telling us a bit about what makes Dickinson’s poetry unique, and she recited a poem as an example. Her passion, enthusiasm, and knowledge about the poetry and the writer were all evident, and very moving. I thought, “That is how everyone should give their speeches—with this sense that, more than anything, they want us, the audience, to get it and to feel like they do.”
But then I realized that the analogy is so much more useful. In order to take us through the house, the guide has to know the content and ideally to care about it, but they also have to choose what they’re going to share. A house is a big thing that contains lots of objects and stories—they have to curate the path through the house, what rooms we see and in what order, what anecdotes and facts they will tell us, how long we will spend in each place.
They have to choose how to begin, what to say when it’s time to move on, and how to end the tour.
This is what great speakers do.
Great speakers are very clear about the experience they want to create for the audience. They answer the question: “What do I want them thinking about when this is over? What do I hope they tell other people about what I said? What do I hope they do when they leave here?” The answers are concrete. In the case of the Emily Dickinson house, I bet the guide hopes we read more of her poetry, and we tell people a few things we learned on the tour that we didn’t know before. I bet she hopes we felt surprised and delighted by something we heard or saw.
In order for us to feel, think, and do those things, she’s got to choose what and how she’s going to share the story of Emily Dickinson and her home with us. Will she read from notecards? Will she memorize some factoids and move us efficiently from room to room? Or will she connect with us as people, sharing her own love of this poet?
I remember more of what she said because she cared. And because she cared, she made great eye contact, her body language was welcoming, and we never felt rushed (even when another tour group was coming up behind us). It felt like this tour was the most important thing she could be doing at that moment.
When you think about your speech or presentation, imagine you’re guiding the audience through a house. Where do you start? What rooms will you show? And most important, what do you hope they leave with?
