George P. Shultz served as President Ronald Reagan’s secretary of state for almost seven years. In the foreword to Reagan in His Own Hand , a compilation of Reagan’s personal essays, letters, and radio addresses, Secretary Shultz recalls:
I was always struck by [Reagan's] ability to work an issue in his mind and to find its essence, and by the depth of his conviction… I [remember] his intense interest and fondness for the spoken word, for caring very deeply about how to convey his thoughts and ideas to people – not only to the American people, but to people living all over the world.
I recall once incident very vividly. I was to deliver the Reagan administration’s position on an important foreign policy issue. I brought the text of my proposed speech with me to our private meeting and asked him to look it over… He nodded, took the speech draft, read it through carefully, then looked up at me and pronounced it to be “perfectly satisfactory.”
Then there was a slight pause and he said, “Of course, if I were giving that speech, it would be different.”
That got my attention. I asked, what did he mean?
“Well,” he said, “you’ve written this so it can be read. It can be reprinted in the New York Times or in your State Department Bulletin that goes around the world. That’s perfectly appropriate. But I talk to people – when they are in front of me, or at the other end of a television camera or a radio microphone – and that’s different.”
“I’ll show you what I mean.”
He took the text of my speech, flipped it open at random, took out a pen and quickly began to edit the page. He made four or five edits and put a caret in the margin and wrote “story.” Then he handed it back to me.
As I read what he had done, I saw that he had changed the tone of my speech completely… Somehow he always seemed to know what to say.
President Reagan knew how to take his ideas and translate them into words anyone could understand. Reflecting on some of his most important speeches as governor and president, he wrote:
Speechmaking has played a major role in my life. Some of my critics over the years have said that I became president because I was an actor who knew how to give a good speech. I suppose that’s not too far wrong. Because and actor knows two important things – to be honest in what he’s doing and to be in touch with the audience. That’s not bad advice for a politician either. My actor’s instinct simply told me to speak the truth as I saw it and felt it.
I don’t believe my speeches took me as far as they did merely because of my rhetoric or delivery, but because they were certain basic truths in them that the average American citizen recognized. When I first began speaking of political things, I could feel that people were as frustrated about the government as I was. What I said simply made sense to the guy on the street, and it’s the guy on the street who elects presidents of the United States.
President Reagan understood an essential element of communication: before you ever start to write, whether it is a letter, speech, book, or just an informal note, stop and consider your audience. How will they hear your words? What biases do they have, either for you or against you? What do they expect to hear? What do they want to hear? How are your words different from everything else they have heard? Will you convince them that you are different?
Think. Ponder. Seek to know & understand.
You’ll be off to a great start.
