After dis­cov­er­ing that he was to share a dou­ble bill with the “famously good” pub­lic speaker Mal­colm Glad­well, Gideon Rach­man decided to use the expe­ri­ence to learn how to improve his own speak­ing abilities.

In his write-up of the expe­ri­ence, Rach­man dis­cusses the lessons he learnt from Mal­colm Gladwell’s ‘pub­lic speak­ing secrets’:

The first les­son came from sim­ply look­ing at the pro­gramme. The photo of me was unex­cep­tional […] Gladwell’s photo was very dif­fer­ent. It was taken from a dis­tance and showed off his mag­nif­i­cent Einstein-like Afro — it said, here is a mad genius. […] But there are other things he does that might be eas­ier to emulate.

First, he is a mas­ter of the “look no hands” style of speak­ing. He just stands up there, with a but­ton mike and talks — and it all sounds very spon­ta­neous, with lit­tle asides and jokes, and mes­sages tai­lored to his […] audi­ence. Sec­ond, he tells sto­ries — there are the­o­ries attached to the sto­ries — but the bulk of the talk is made up of charm­ing anec­dotes to illus­trate rather sim­ple themes. […]

So how does Glad­well do it? […] He answered — “I know it may not look like this. But it’s all scripted. I write down every word and then I learn it off by heart. I do that with all my talks and I’ve got lots of them”.

It occurred to me after­wards that Gladwell’s suc­cess as a speaker illus­trates one of his home­spun themes — hard work pays off. But he has also made an impor­tant real­i­sa­tion. He is not giv­ing a speech or a lec­ture — he is giv­ing a per­for­mance. And like any good actor, he knows that you have to learn your lines.