175. Mastering Toasts and Tributes: Making Your Words Count

[00:00:00] Matt Abrahams: We have all suffered through a bad toast, be it at a work event, a holiday party, or a wedding. We must avoid giving tributes that put us and our honorees in a bad light. 

[00:00:11] I'm Matt Abrahams, and I teach Strategic Communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to Think Fast, Talk Smart the podcast. Toasts and tributes are some of the most frequent public speaking events most of us are called upon to deliver. To help us all feel and do better in these situations, I'd like to share the audio chapter from my latest book, Think Faster, Talk Smarter, where I provide guidance on how to deliver toasts that tantalize and tributes that treat our honorees well. 

[00:00:45] Key insight. Toasts, tributes, and introductions are some of the most common instances of spontaneous speaking out there. Whether it's at product launches, panels, weddings, quinceañeras, funerals, or luncheons, we often must speak up to mark life events, celebrate accomplishments, and introduce others.

[00:01:05] Almost reflexively, most of us focus in the moment on how others are perceiving us. Yet these situations aren't about us at all. The whole point of these public moments is to say something meaningful about others. Whether they're individuals, teams, or organizations. To help break our habit of focusing on our own worries and needs, we can think of toasts, tributes, and introductions as gifts we bestow on our audience and the people or groups we are acknowledging.

[00:01:36] Just as we consider what kinds of tangible gifts people might like, want, or need, something similar holds for our spoken gifts. Our focus on our recipients leads us to consider the best way to package our gift, and that in turn prompts us to think about structure. After all, we want others to access our gifts without much effort. We want them to enjoy our verbal offerings and to remember them. By deploying a structure, we can make our toasts, tributes, and introductions more focused, clear, and concise. So that those we're acknowledging enjoy what they're hearing and feel like they've gotten their due. 

[00:02:16] Why it matters. Celebratory comments often feel obligatory or even a necessary evil, but they actually can serve an array of important functions. In the course of honoring and recognizing a person, team, or organization that matters to us, we can demonstrate the respect, caring, sense of connection, and understanding we have for them. We also can set the tone for the larger event at which we're speaking, focusing the audience and calibrating their expectations for other speakers who might follow us. We can build closer bonds with honorees while enhancing our audience's sense of collegiality and immediacy. And with a structure to fall back on, these occasions may turn out to be less daunting than we presume. 

[00:03:06] Craft your content. A useful structure to invoke if someone asks you to offer up celebratory or commemorative remarks is a four part formula that I call WHAT. W H A T. W. Why are we here? First, identify the context for the gathering. For instance, we might have convened to celebrate the life of the deceased, to honor a team's strong efforts, and so on. H. How are you connected? Let the audience know who you are and why you are speaking. A. Anecdotes or learnings. Offer the audience some stories and or lessons you learned that relate to the person, group, or event you're commemorating. Make these stories or lessons relatable, appropriate, and concise. T. Thank. Express gratitude and offer well wishes to the person, group, or event that you're commemorating. Let's take a closer look at each of these steps. 

[00:04:17] Step number one. Why are we here? Clarify the purpose of the event as you see it. Doing so helps others focus and sets expectations for what is to come. Defining the event for your audience also allows you to express emotion. Convey the event's importance and begin to celebrate the subjects of your communication. Examples. Because of her many professional accomplishments, I am super excited to hear Chandra speak today about the entertainment business and her inspiring career as a recording artist who is also on the Broadway stage. This wedding brings together two of the most caring and special people I know.

[00:05:01] Step number two. How are you connected? Often some of your listeners won't know who you are or what your role in the event is. Take a moment to share the nature of your relationship to those whom you're commemorating. Doing so can also allow you to slip in some background information about the subject of your talk and perhaps even a bit of humor.. Examples. Chandra and I studied voice together at Juilliard for six pivotal months and eventually recorded our first album together way back in 1994. Not only have I known both of the soon to be newlyweds for over a decade, but I was the one who introduced them at, of all places, a Star Trek convention. Who knew that a Klingon and a Romulan would fall in love and get married? 

[00:05:52] Step number three. Anecdotes or learnings. Now you share the bulk of your engaging content, including humor, emotion, and lessons learned. In line with advice given earlier in this audiobook, make sure your stories have structure, are appropriate, have a clear point, and aren't too long. When it comes to length, think a few minutes, not tens of minutes. Examples I am continuously amazed at how Chandra can take a jazz standard that we've all heard a hundred times before and breathe new life into it. I've learned many things from her, but perhaps the most important is how a great song, sung from the heart and with real intelligence, can instantly transport you. The first time these two met, they each asked me separately to interrupt their conversation about how many tribbles can fit on the Starship Enterprise so they could go home early. Although they're both diehard Trekkies, they were not having a good time. It's a good thing I ignored them both.

[00:07:00] Step number four. Thank. Conclude by expressing gratitude to the audience and or to those you're commemorating. Again, you might find an opportunity to slip in additional background information about those whom you're commemorating. Examples. I want to thank Chandra for being a great collaborator and friend. I know you will learn a lot from her. Please welcome two time Grammy Award winner Chandra Delacorte to the stage. Thank you for being such amazing friends to me and all of us here. We all wish you the best as you boldly go into this new phase of your relationship and life.

[00:07:42] Refine your remarks. We've all suffered through bad toasts, tributes, and introductions. Not only can they dampen the mood, they also can denigrate and damage the reputation of everyone involved. We can't always anticipate how others will receive what we say. Still, by leveraging the following guidelines we can improve the odds that our comments will have the positive impact we desire.

[00:08:09] Tip number one. Be brief and to the point. Long toasts, tributes, or introductions are usually bad ones. Trying to cover too many topics reduces the impact of your remarks. When you're one of many speakers, think about your remarks in context of the event as a whole. The audience will become restless if each speaker takes up too much time. Gives remarks that feel unfocused or too broad. Or repeats the same material. I have yet to hear someone complain that a commemoration of someone else was too short. Share only enough information to appropriately honor those involved, given the context in which you're speaking. A good tribute succinctly and memorably acknowledges what makes the subject of the tribute special. And that's all it does.

[00:08:59] Tip number two. Prepare to be emotional. In many cases, toasts, tributes, and introductions elicit strong emotions, both positive, in the case of weddings, graduations, bar mitzvahs, or quinceañeras, and negative, divorces, funerals, retirements. Consider how you might respond in these situations if your emotions begin to flow. If you anticipate losing control, make a plan ahead of time with someone who might step in should you need them. Alternatively, be prepared yourself to jump to a closing line so you can step aside. While tempting, reading from notes on paper or a phone can often make things worse when you're highly emotional. It is easy to get distracted and it can cause you to disconnect from your audience. 

[00:09:47] Think, too, about your audience's emotional state and tailor your remarks to them as best you can. If you're at a wedding and you're expected to channel love for the newly betrothed, will other emotions peek through in a story you might think to tell? Similarly, is now the time to chime in with some salty humor that might turn off some audience members? Be mindful about appropriate ways you might express emotion publicly, given your relationship to the person or people being celebrated and the breadth of guests who will be in attendance. Audiences at a corporate event celebrating a product launch will usually expect a project manager to show more emotion than a senior leader. After all, the project manager was much more intimately involved with the team that did the work. A senior leader who seemed overly moved might come across as inauthentic or even a bit odd. Reflect for a quick moment on what you mean to the person being celebrated, and what audiences expect you to mean to them. Be sure to stay in bounds. 

[00:10:51] Tip number three. Be vigilant about shining the spotlight away from you. When you're telling a story about the person you're commemorating, keep details about yourself and your own involvement to a minimum. Refrain from saying too much about what you think. A good way to assess how you're doing in this respect is to notice whether you're using the word I a lot in your remarks. If you are, then see if you might turn the focus to the subject of your communication. 

[00:11:21] Tip number four. Make your anecdotes accessible and appropriate. No one likes to feel left out. Avoid stories that only a few people in the audience will understand and appreciate. Make sure the content of your stories and any curse words you use are appropriate for your audience. If you feel it necessary or desirable to use a piece of jargon or an acronym, briefly explain the term to your audience by way of background.

[00:11:51] Tip number five. Strive for unity. The world is increasingly polarized, and many people hold passionate views. Since you likely seek to forge deeper relationships and connections, public remarks meant to honor another person or group are a time to seek out common ground. Offer commentary that everyone in your audience can support without compromising your own values. This might seem challenging, but it's my experience that middle ground almost always exists when you search earnestly for it. Suppose you find yourself celebrating a team's successful merger. If this team is led by a manager whose approach and political beliefs run counter to yours, you can focus on how this team reflected your corporate values rather than the manager's personal ones.

[00:12:41] This speech might not be the right opportunity to needle that manager for their approach or beliefs. If you simply cannot avoid it, or would feel disingenuous giving a speech that did not address the differences, then perhaps you should suggest that someone else give the remarks. But if you can, use this opportunity to create a bridge to discuss the corporate values and priorities you want to see adopted by the newly merged team. This might, in turn, create an opening for a more intimate and honest conversation with this manager or team down the line. 

[00:13:14] Tip number six. Set others up for success. Think of yourself as the opening act for whoever follows you, the next speaker, the person you introduce, and so forth. Try your best to set them up for success. I often refer to this as clearing the runway so those who follow you can enjoy a smooth and timely takeoff, provide logistics, agenda, and housekeeping information. End your comments on a positive note, leaving people engaged and excited for what is next. Imagine how you would like someone to introduce you and do the same. You might say, in advance of formally introducing the next speaker, Juana has lots of interesting things to say. Before I introduce her, I wanted to let you know that we will be providing notes of what she discusses after the talk, and we'll have some drinks and light snacks in the bar area tonight after we conclude 

[00:14:07] Thank you for joining us for another episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. This episode was produced by me, Matt Abrahams, with help from Podium Podcast Company. The audio excerpt is courtesy of Simon & Schuster Audio from Think Faster, Talk Smarter by me, Matt Abrahams, read by me. Copyright 2023. Used with permission by Simon & Schuster Inc.

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