12 How to Sell Yourself
the transfer of information from one mind to another mind, or to
a group of other minds.” In this age of high-tech healthcare, I call
communication an information transplant. The communicator’s
job is to perform information surgery on the listener. The same
holds true for all the other communication forms I mentioned:
written, spoken, drawn, physical (such as movement, gesture,
dance, and sign language). If you have nothing to communicate,
don’t. The trick is to make the message immediately understood.
The written word and the spoken word take on multiple duties.
The meaning must be clear instantaneously. The feeling must be
clear. The sub-text has to be clear. One advantage the written
word has over the spoken word is that the eye can go back over
what the mind didn’t understand. When you’re distracted by a
hair on the page, you can reread. When you come across an unfa-
miliar word, you can look it up. More often than not, the spoken
word gets only one chance. No one interrupts the State of the
Union address and shouts, “Would you repeat that?” or, “What
do you mean by that?” The same is true of most speeches.
These days good written communication is as hard to come by
as good spoken communication. Many of the principles in this
book that cover speech will also work for writing. But not all great
writing lends itself to being spoken. Lincoln’s opening words at
Gettysburg (“Fourscore and seven years ago...”) wouldn’t work
for today’s audience. By the time we figured out he meant 87 years,
he’d be into “...shall not perish from the earth.” I question whether
any speech other than a presidential inaugural could have gotten
away with, “Ask not what your country can do for you.”
To repeat, communication is about instant understanding. It’s
about the audience, your listeners, going away with the message
you intended for them.
Too many speechwriters are writing for posterity. They hope
to create great literature. They either don’t know or have forgot-
ten that the speech should be written for the speaker’s style and
for the audience’s ear.
The spoken word is what this book is about, and it can be
very tricky. You can have the best message in the world, but if
you don’t present that message the way you intended it, you’re
probably communicating the wrong message. I remember my
father’s way of praising my mother’s cooking. Somewhere mid-meal