We coddle our audiences too much.  The only reason to give a speech is to change the world.  To change the world means to change the minds of the audience so that they are motivated to act differently.  To accomplish that, you need to shake the audience loose from its status quo, something that audiences are naturally reluctant to do in most cases.  That means challenging them, not pandering to them.

Early on in my political speechwriting career, a mentor instructed me on the difference between a real proposal and mere rhetoric.  Mere rhetoric, he noted, was involved when you said something that no one could seriously take the opposite point of view against.  So, if you said, “I want to keep America strong,” that was (empty) rhetoric because no one in the political realm would seriously argue that “making America weaker” was a winning platform.  An astonishing amount of political rhetoric falls into this category.

On the other hand, if you argued that “America should continue to honor its peace treaties with Russia,” that was a real point of view, because one could imagine someone arguing that we should back out of those treaties and assume a more bellicose stance against Russia.

Understand, I’m not saying rhetoric is a bad thing.  It is the elegant clothing that arguments are dressed up in, in order to catch the imagination of the listener.  I am saying that rhetoric in the service of purveying unarguable platitudes is empty, and beneath the dignity of a great speaker and thought leader.

Further, the current pressure speakers are experiencing to lighten up and add comedy to their discussions of AI, or climate change, or leadership, is similarly a waste of everyone’s time.  Not that there is anything wrong with humor.  A speaker who is skilled at conveying complicated subjects with wit and even belly laughs is a wonderful gift to audiences everywhere.  The world is serious enough.

But to tell a speaker with real expertise that “our audience just needs an hour of relaxation; they’re so stressed out with everything that’s going on in our industry” is to be hiring the wrong speaker.  If the audience is that overstretched, then wouldn’t a meditation coach or a guided stress reduction seminar be more to the point?  Or just send them home for Netflix and ice cream.

Some kind of mental stress must precede changing minds.  If we think one way, we are going to hang on to that way of thinking until you have argued, with passion and logic, that we should think some other way.  There are many shades of argument and depths of conviction, to be sure, and the speaker needs to gauge her arguments against a deep understanding of what the audience believes, how strongly it believes it, and what is required to shake it loose from that way of thinking.

I saw a study recently that confirmed this point of view.  If students struggle with an argument, the study found, as opposed to having the new idea laid out clearly and simply, then the bewilderment they experience leads them to work harder and remember the new idea better.  It’s because we want to resolve confusion and apparent contradiction in thinking presented to us.  And because the students were more involved when they had to sort out a thorny problem rather than just consuming it.  If we have mental skin in the game, we are more likely to spend the time really straightening out the implications, in order to sharpen our own clear understanding of what we believe.

Confusion is healthy at the beginning of the process of assimilating a new idea.  Challenge your audiences, don’t let them off the intellectual hook.  The only reason to give a speech is to change the world.