Leadership Notes #63
Interview with the Presidential Speech Coach Michael Sheehan
Michael Sheehan has been training corporate CEOs, policy makers and political leaders for more than thirty years. One of America’s leading communications trainers and strategists, his expertise embraces every format and every forum whether media interview, major speech or high-stakes Q&A. His ability to help people communicate at the highest possible level was dubbed by New York Magazine as “the Sheehan effect.”
He prepares CEOs, CFOs and senior executives to step into and withstand the media/public affairs spotlight. Nationally known for his skill in message development and spokesperson training, he has been called upon to help in critical business situations such as IPOs, shareholder meetings, media interviews, government/regulatory hearings, hostile takeovers and much more.
Michael has coached more Presidents, Vice Presidents, First Ladies, Cabinet Secretaries, Governors, Mayors and Members of Congress than anyone else in the country. From 1988-2020, Michael has been called upon to coach every Presidential and Vice-Presidential debate series as well as the principal speakers at the Democratic National Conventions. For the Obama and Clinton administrations alike, he has coached Inaugural Addresses, States of the Union, prime time addresses, and press conferences.
Even media channels retain Michael’s services. Four different national publications have retained him to prepare their journalists for television interviews and commentary. He’s been brought in to help coach best-selling authors, Hollywood stars, professional athletes and others for the widest possible range of interviews and speeches.
Michael regularly guest lectures at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Yale University, and Northwestern University. He has received the Individual Achievement award from the American Speech, Language and Hearing Association, and the Freeing Voices/Changing Lives award from the American Institute for Stuttering. Michael earned his BSFS from Georgetown University and his MFA from the Yale School of Drama.
A condensed transcript of PGLF Virtual Author Series at CIED, Georgetown
Potolicchio: Your all-time favorite client is no longer with us: JFK Jr. This is written by one of his classmates at Brown University: “What was it like to be iconic, historically engraved upon the nation's memory? John's physique was so classically ideal, he might have been throwing a discus instead of a frisbee and been carved out of stone. You looked for the defect in him and you couldn't find it. There had to be something wrong somewhere, but it would take a magnifying glass to detect he inspired fealty. You have to reach back for a feudal term like that to describe the effect he had on people, and especially men. On the morning of graduation, I was standing with John, this is at Brown and a group of guys as we waited in our caps and gowns for the signal to start marching. Someone passed a joint at that moment from every direction, photographers appeared. They'd left John alone during his time at Brown for the most part, but they weren't about to forgo getting a picture of him on graduation day. As they streamed toward him with cameras raised, John did something I'd never seen before. He looked embarrassed. He hung his big, handsome head, defenseless against the approach of the paparazzi, all at once, though, as if by instinct, the rest of us clustered around him, turning our backs to the photographers as we spread our gowns and tilted our mortar boards to shield our prince from view. I've never seen anything like it. The sense of duty, of fidelity, I might have been kneeling before John and calling out my liege, someone who made the best first impression.”
If we do not have the physique of John Kennedy or that dynastic family lineage, what is something that we can learn about making a good first impression? And what do you look for when you choose to work with a CEO or a political candidate?
Sheehan: I have to see and hear somebody who looks and sounds like they want to be there and want to tell me something. If I don't see and hear that, I instantly go on visual and mental mute.
Potolicchio: When you visit Washington, DC, you usually see an ego wall of everybody having pictures with very famous people. But when you walk into Michael Sheehan's office, it's actually an effect wall. All of the Presidents, Vice Presidents, Secretaries of Treasury, and CEOs of Goldman Sachs who have written in their memoirs that you have completely transformed the way that they communicate, from being potentially wooden to somebody who is comfortable being up there.
You said that JFK Jr. was not comfortable initially. How do you make people more comfortable? What's one immediate thing that we can add to our own repertoire to be more comfortable when speaking publicly?
Sheehan: You communicate in terms of your physical and vocal animation, not just presence. In golf and tennis, there's this idea that you have to swing through the ball. You don't stop upon contact, but you follow through. That idea almost pertains to communicating, particularly in speaking. You have to talk through the listener; it cannot be just tentative.
Effective communication isn't a gift that comes from above, and you either have it or not. It's a technique. Just like any other sport, you can break it down to its elements and work on them, one at a time, and thus improve the performance.
You need to have a feel of what you're doing, because you can't pause, step outside yourself, rewind the tape, and then take it over again. In front of the audience, you need to feel like you’re doing the right thing, both in terms of physical and vocal animation. If you don't have that feel, it's going to go erratically.
Potolicchio: You have a life story that might be more ridiculous than the movie “The King's Speech.” You were an august graduate of the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, before you went to the Yale School of Drama, where you ended up as a classmate of both Sigourney Weaver and Meryl Streep. There were 25 Oscar nominations in your class, but you might have the biggest effect on intonations and facial expressions in our pop culture.
You had a stutter as a child and maybe this is one of the reasons you got into acting. Then, about 23 years ago, you had a debilitating stroke where you had to regain your speech.
Can you tell us a bit about how your background and some of the setbacks that you've had in your life have informed the way that you coach CEOs and the presidents of the United States?
Sheehan: Empathy aside, that is, I know what it feels like to have a difficulty that you have to deal with, I always think of Kierkegaard saying that “life can only be understood looking backwards, [the tragedy is that] it must be lived going forward.” When people talk about my career, they say I must have plotted this out step by step, and nothing could be further from the truth.
As you mentioned, when I was a young boy, I had a debilitating stutter, and when I got to high school, I thought I had to put an end to it, or I was never going to have a social life. I joined speech and debate clubs, and I started with the trick that every stutterer learns at the beginning, but then has to unlearn, so one can then learn how to speak the right way: I spoke in a fake voice. I was very successful in speech and debate.
Then, I went into drama, loved that, and pursued it, particularly at Georgetown, where I was the head of Masks, which I think still exists to this day. Somehow, I ended up with the fellowship at the Old School of Drama, then at the Folger Theater, which is a professional theater. While I was there, most of my friends either were in the theater or worked in the Congress, which was literally three blocks away. I started to get requests: “My boss has to give a speech, and he or she's not very comfortable with speaking publicly. You must know something about this, you do Shakespeare.” That is how I started coaching a couple of members of Congress and it took off.
As for a defining moment, the Folger Theater has a Shakespeare's Globe Theater, which means the audience is almost in a U-shape. During the previews of the show that I was directing, I was able to sit on the side so I could almost simultaneously watch both the actor on stage and see the audience's facial and body reactions. I would go back and forth and note if the person did something physically or said something in a certain way, it would elicit a certain response that I could watch on the audience.
It made sense that it came together. You have the words, you see them move a certain way, and it elicits the reaction from the audience that you're seeking. Once you break it down, it's not magic. There's actually a strategy, a mechanism and more importantly, a pattern; it's consistent.
Potolicchio: You've been the master of preparation for the Democratic National Convention since 1981. Of the presidents that you were counselor to, President Obama in his book, “The Promised Land”, credits that the speech he gave in 2004, which you could argue, launched his eventual presidential victory, to your ability to get him to speak effectively with the convention hall microphone, and project not just to who's in the room, but to the people that would be watching at home.
Are there other things that you have learned in your acting background that you think would be really important for us to start to institute in our own communications?
Sheehan: It starts with the content. We're at a very strange point in civilization, where everyone is under this pressure to express more in less time. I used to get very worried about this, until a couple of years ago, when I was fortunate enough to listen to an interview on NPR radio with then Pope Francis' director of communication. Pope Francis actually had two Twitter accounts, one in the native language and one in Latin.
I was curious about the question that inevitably had to be asked: “How is the Holy Father addressing questions that have existed since the beginning of time, ‘Who am I? Why am I here? Is there a God? Is there a life after death?’ in 80 characters?” The Pope's representative said that the Holy Father has discovered Twitter inclines one to be both concise and precise.
Once I heard those two words, “concise and precise”, it all started to come together for me. The way that I work with people who have to give speeches is everyone comes in with either bullet points or an outline, and I throw those out because they forget what I call “audience golf.” You, the speaker, know what you're going to say; you've gone through it several times. But you're about to say it once to someone who has never heard it before and that's why there has to be a structure to it.
I hate talking points and outlines. What I like is a storyline, a plot summary, no fewer than four sentences, no more than six.” Let me prove to you with three quick examples of how this can be done. Since we talked about Shakespeare before, his longest five full acts, uncut, on stage, are four hours and forty-five minutes: Hamlet's really depressed because his father died and his mother married his uncle, who's now the king. The ghost of his father shows up and says, “I didn't die, I was killed by your uncle, and you have to take revenge.” Hamlet doesn't know what to do, driving a whole bunch of people crazy, including himself. Hamlet decides to take revenge and gets a whole bunch of people killed, including himself. That is how I just gave you Hamlet in four sentences.
The speech that propelled President Obama to prominence was his keynote address from the 2024 convention. Let me show you what the speech really was: “I traveled an unusual path here, possible only in America. We have more to do to help the people that I've met along the way. John Kerry is the one to lead us in this effort. We're all in this together. We're not blue states and red states, but the United States. I hope and believe we can do it.” That's it.
It's easier for the audience to follow a storyline because they're hearing what you think for the first time. It's also easier for you to remember where you were when you get interrupted by a question. I severely urge people not to go further until they've written those four to six sentences.
I'll add one more point to this. I ask all the people I work with a question, and to be honest, they all lie to me. I ask people, “Do you rehearse?” They all go, “Yes!” Some people say, “I practice in front of a mirror”, which has never made sense and never will make sense to me, because the person looking back at you is you. You already agree with yourself, so why are you practicing in front of someone who agrees with you?
One of the most practical pieces of advice I can leave with you today is that on your iPhone or the equivalent, there is the voice memo. What I suggest people do is record themselves delivering their speech out loud, from beginning to end, standing if they're going to give the presentation standing, sitting if they're going to deliver it seated. When you’ve finished, listen to it.
You will be fascinated by the result if you start editing with your ear as opposed to your eye, since nobody's going to read your speech; they're going to listen to it. The first time you try this, you'll be amazed by how it doesn't sound the way you thought it would, neither in terms of style nor in terms of content.
Potolicchio: Rehearsal for the unexpected. In addition to State of the Union and convention speeches, you're helping presidential and vice presidential candidates prepare for debates and Fortune 50 CEOs for difficult press conferences and interviews. How can we learn to think on our feet when we're getting unexpected questions or when there may be a degree of hostility?
Sheehan: Let’s tackle the unexpected. It helps if leaders have a thematic triangle, which is what holds your philosophy together. I first discovered and developed this when I worked with Bill Clinton, back in 1992, when he ran for president. This was his thematic triangle: We need change. We need to put people first. I believe in “invest and grow” economics versus the frail. Don't forget health care. I can take almost any specific question and use one of these phrases as the beginning, the middle, or the end of my answer.
In the year 2000, there was another person running for the presidency, George Bush, and this was his thematic triangle: I'm a uniter, not a divider. I'm a compassionate conservative. I trust the people, not the government or Washington, and I bring dignity and respect back to the White House again.
Let me go back to then Senator Obama when he ran for the presidency, and his thematic triangle: The change we need, judgment, middle class, and we can't afford four more years, because he was portraying Senator McCain as simply a continuation of the Bush policies.
Notice that those aren't answers, they're primary colors, red, yellow, blue and we can get any color by mixing and matching those three.
If you've got those three themes, you'll have the beginning or something to say, no matter what question is asked.
Karl Sepp: Nowadays, people are trying to project a lot of power through presenting in a way that would make one think they know everything. There are different schools of thought on this, but I'm just wondering, do you see a shift happening over the years in trying to present perfection?
Sheehan: The example I'm going to use is former President Joe Biden. If you remember, in the 2020 campaign, it was the quality of empathy that helped him break through. People don't really understand what empathy is, and I think it's important for people in the corporate world to make sense of it.
Let us say that you develop a pain in your knee, and you go to the first doctor, and he or she examines you and says, “Obviously, what you have is a contusion of the third polyethylene. What we'll have to do is to do a seismic restructuring.” Then, you go to a second doctor for a second opinion, and that doctor examines you, and they will do something like this: “It hurts more in the morning than in the afternoon, right?” You confirm. Then, they will say, “I bet it hurts more when you go downstairs than when you go upstairs. Is that right?” And you confirm again.
Everyone will pick the second doctor. The first doctor said, “I know more!”, but the second doctor showed they know what it feels like. That connection creates a bond that, if I can be hard-headed, is strategically advantageous, because they know what we're going through.
There's an interesting book by Tony Schwartz called “The Responsive Chord.” He says that similarity bonds. If you can get that audience to react, “Oh, he or she understands this, knows what it feels like, knows what I'm going through!”, you have a tremendous advantage in whatever situation or matter that's being raised.
That's what empathy is. It isn't feeling sorry, it's understanding. On the basis of understanding, I can address, help, or solve. That is empathy.
Julia Chu: How can you optimize your messaging if you're a co-presenter or if you're on a panel? How can you optimize your presence?
Sheehan: This is Michael's rule of panels. If there's more than one speaker, you'll go last. Someone ahead of you will take more time than they were allotted, leaving you with less time than you have been told. Someone will take your best line, best illustration, and say part of what you were going to say. That's why, first, you've got to have a strategy.
If you think about it, there are really only two strategies you can have in a panel. One is differentiation; you have to stand out. When I do political debates, particularly primaries, the most important thing the candidate that I'm working with is going to say that night is things such as “I'm the only one on this stage who has ever balanced a budget, or I'm the only one on this stage who's ever run a business.”
Another way is to take the other side. Sometimes, you have to be slightly contrarian with your colleagues, asking: “What if it's B? Let's take a look at B”.
Now, if you do agree with what other people are saying, you have to say it more interestingly than anyone else does on stage, craft it as memorably as possible.
That's the best rule of the panel. Are you going to be contrarian, or are you simply going to say what everyone else is thinking, but in the most interesting way possible?
Isabela Constantin: How can you project confidence when speaking while being nervous, even in lower-stakes scenarios?
Sheehan: Everybody has stage fright. I like to relate the one-liner that was once used by a famous American comic by the name of Bob Hope, a legend in the United States entertainment. He was asked by a young reporter, “Mr. Hope, you've been in the show business for decades, do you still get butterflies?” He said, “Yes, I do, but now they fly in formation.” The principle there is, first, you have to have a little edge. If you don't have a little bit of an edge, of that adrenaline running through, you're probably going to be flat and boring.
The basic reaction you're having is good if you know how to manage it. Let me give you three quick tips. One is a content point. If there's anything you know by heart are your first 30 seconds. If you get off to a good start, everything else that follows is much easier. Even if you do them a little mechanically, at least you're off to a start.
There are things you can do beforehand. Stage fright is an excessive production of adrenaline. The fastest way to get rid of it is with an isometric exercise. The easiest one I know of is palm to palm press until you start to tremble, hold it for about the count of 10, relax, and then maybe do it two more times. What you want to do is make yourself slightly physically fatigued. If you think back, you've never been nervous and tired at the same time. Those are different edges of the spectrum.
When you start speaking, speak to the back of the room. I almost want to speak to the back wall, because I'm not making myself nervous seeing all these people looking at me. If you speak to the back wall, it looks to the audience like you're looking at them.
Vladislav Palfy: How does one prepare to win a debate, especially now, when people are getting dragged into defending common sense? As they say, wrestle with kids, and you will lose, because they are more experienced, and they actually enjoy being in the mud.
How does one prepare so as not to get his message completely lost in these nonsensical debates that happen nowadays?
Sheehan: When somebody is yelling at you, your temptation is to match their volume, get louder, and shout them down. That is exactly the wrong thing to do. When someone gets louder and faster, you almost want to get a little softer and slower because, remember, your concern is the people in the audience. This one individual, since they are yelling at you, I'm not sure what the odds are that you can change their mind, but in that audience, people haven't made up their minds yet. If you go a little bit more deliberately, not as loudly, and make your point, you may be appealing more to the audience. The temptation is to make it a one-on-one fight.
The other one is disarming them by finding something they say that you can agree with or concede that they have a point. Start with some form of agreement and just then cite the difference. Those are probably the two tips that work on a regular basis.
Sometimes you can do a Trump response, but I'm not a big fan of those. There was a famous baseball coach in America, by the name of Casey Stengel, who was once asked, “What's the secret of being a successful manager?” He said, “It's keeping the five players who hate you away from the 20 who haven't made up their mind.” The idea is to have an appealing argumentation and tone for the people who are watching and listening.
Keisha Patrick: In a company setting or interview, how do you translate the storyline and the triangle without sounding “salesy”?
Sheehan: The storyline described is the same as the elevator pitch. Any question I get asked will have one or more of those points in the answer.
The second part of your answer is another important point. Once you know what it is, you need about five or six different ways to talk about it. When you go back to the point, because repetition is part of it, you can’t sound like a broken record.
The person who taught me this is Bill Clinton. He'd have a different way to illustrate the same point every day. The way to prove your point is to be able to stay on it for an extended length of time and not sound like a broken record.
Mahdi Lakhdher: What's your advice for long presentations that we can’t memorize but need to seem natural?
Sheehan: First, the audience is not going to remember everything you say. Think of your speech as dots that can be connected; the audience will fill in the rest. That's why there's Q&A, if there's something missing.
Second, we tend to overexplain. One of the biggest things I have to take out of the CEO and politicians’ heads is the fact that they don’t have to answer the follow-up question until they're asked the follow-up question. If you overload information, you're inviting sidelines.
Now, how do you have a script and not sound like you're reading one? Both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama would simply paraphrase what's written in front of them. When you paraphrase, you usually add a couple of words, little parentheticals, which make it sound much more spontaneous.
Don't be a prisoner of what's on the script; use it like a fake book, add to it. Put the three key words down, so you don't lose your place, but express them in six or seven words.
Violetta Vedeneeva: You mentioned there is a decline in the lengths of speeches. What are the criteria we need to have in mind when considering whether to give complete answers when delivering a speech or in a social media post?
Sheehan: There is a famous line that has been attributed to many people. The most common one attributed to is Abraham Lincoln, who wrote to his friend, “Forgive the length of this answer, I didn't have time to write a short one!” It's hard to be concise and easy to be long-winded.
From all the famous speeches, whether of Barack Obama or John F. Kennedy, we remember one or two lines. Why people think more is better is beyond me.
Besides the ones that I've mentioned, another model of mine is probably Winston Churchill, and not just for the conciseness of expression. He believed that one-syllable words were more powerful than multi-syllable words, while nowadays, everyone goes out of their way trying to use florid language. John Kennedy was also a great admirer of Churchill. In that famous address, 71% of the words are one-syllable words. Always remember, you're going to speak for 15 minutes, but they're going to remember maybe 15 words.
Potolicchio: Who do you think will be your next client in the White House? Who do you think will be President in 2029?
Sheehan: There is a tendency to think the most well-spoken person is the most effective communicator, but that is not always true. Ross Perot ran for the presidency, independently, in 1992. He had this unique ability of speaking very plainly and simply but sounding straightforward. The more straightforward and understandable you are, the more you're going to attract broad-based support.
The advantage is to the most plainspoken, not boring. Whoever's going to sound more like Ross Perot will be better.
Potolicchio: What's our homework assignment as we leave, particularly for those of us who may want to be your client one day? What should we do?
Sheehan: One of the things that I challenge people to do is to go online and read the impromptu eulogy that Robert Kennedy Sr. gave the evening that Martin Luther King was assassinated. If you read it, which I want you to do first, it's rather nonsensical. It sounds very jagged and disorganized. After you read it, go online and play the speech and listen to it. You will be moved to tears. I use that as the example of the difference between writing something to be read and saying something to be listened to.
This is what I will have you do to improve yourself as a speaker. Go online, look for TED Talks, pick a topic that looks interesting, and listen to the speech three different ways.
First, watch it so you see and hear the person, but then hit the mute button and just watch the person. What are they doing that's effective or not effective? What are they doing with gestures and movement? Then, turn the sound back on. Put the picture out or turn away from it and just listen to it. What does it sound like? What are they doing with their pacing?
Encounter the speech three ways: Sight and sound, just sight, then just sound, and you will start to learn things. That's your homework assignment.