Left Brain, Right Brain

The best speeches appeal to both sides of the brain. That is, they appeal to the creative, emotional aspect of the human mind as well as the factual and logical side.

This point was brought home to me recently when I watched the 1991 film Other People’s Money starring Gregory Peck and Danny DeVito. Only in this movie, Gregory Peck addresses his audience’s right-brain sensitivities with appeals to their humanity; DeVito uses left-brain facts to sell his point of view.

It’s worth watching these speeches. They are instructive on not only how to make different appeals, they also show how to handle a hostile audience and win them over.

Peck plays the role of the head of a New England wire and cable manufacturing company that is losing money, and DeVito plays a corporate raider who buys dying companies and liquidates them. The scene is a stockholders meeting, which is being held to determine who will take control of the company.

Peck speaks first and makes an emotional appeal to the audience, many of whom are his employees and neighbors.

“A business is worth more than the price of its stock,” he says. “It is the place where we earn our living, where we meet our friends and dream our dreams. It is in every sense the very fabric that binds out society together.”

Then DeVito, who just came into town in his limousine from the big city, takes the microphone and lays out a logical argument for voting his way. He tells them the company is dead and nothing can revive it.

“You know why? Fiber optics. New technologies. Obsolescence.”

His appeal to the audience’s self-interest won in this battle of speeches, which are excellent examples of how to effectively appeal to both sides of the human brain.

In a Tizzie Over Teleprompters

President Obama has taken a lot of flack for using a teleprompter when he speaks, but I suspect there are many good reasons that he relies on them. For one thing, he is keenly aware that every word he utters will be analyzed, repeated and re-broadcast dozens, perhaps hundreds of times. He wants to choose his words carefully and stay on message, and a teleprompter helps him achieve that goal.

Teleprompters are also effective when addressing large audiences, as the President does almost every time he speaks. With rare exceptions, his speeches are broadcast on television and beamed across the country and often across the globe. Teleprompters are made for such large audiences because the viewers/listeners can’t really see the prompter itself. Likewise, they are a distraction to smaller audiences and people in the same room with the speaker.

One thing that many may not realize about these speech tools – also known as autocues -- is that they are difficult to use. It takes a tremendous amount of practice – both as a speaker and with the prompter – to deliver a speech effectively while looking at rolling text.

Speakers who use this equipment need to know their speech very well, rehearse it often and use short sentences, since only a few lines of a speech appear on the prompter.

Obama isn’t the only President to earn notoriety for his use of a teleprompter. Bill Clinton had a heart-stopping experience with one during a 1993 address to a joint session of Congress. He was to unveil his plan for health care reform, and he had revised and rewritten the speech until the moment he left for the capitol. In fact, he continued revising it on the ride down Pennsylvania Avenue. He arrived late for his speech and in the ensuing confusion the wrong version began rolling on the glass plates.

Before he began speaking and while members of the House and Senate were giving him a long ovation, he told Al Gore, who was sitting behind him on the dais, that the wrong speech was on the prompter. Luckily, Clinton knew essentially what he wanted to say and was able to speak extemporaneously for seven minutes before the correct speech began rolling.