Famous Speech Friday: Virginia Woolf's 1931 "Professions for Women"

British author Virginia Woolf has always been a muse of mine. As a woman writer, her A Room of One's Own provided me with inspiration and courage, as well as a sense of the barriers women face. And, just as that book was based on speeches, its intended sequel, "Professions for Women" began as a speech to a women's group, which invited her to speak about her profession.

To describe the struggles of her profession--that is, how difficult it is for a woman writer to express opinions in a world dominated by men--she chose a metaphoric character. Woolf describes her intent to write a book review of a male author's book, and says:

I discovered that if I were going to review books I should need to do battle with a certain phantom. And the phantom was a woman, and when I came to know her better I called her after the heroine of a famous poem, The Angel in the House. It was she who used to come between me and my paper when I was writing reviews. It was she who bothered me and wasted my time and so tormented me that at last I killed her....She was intensely sympathetic. She was immensely charming. She was utterly unselfish. She excelled in the difficult arts of family life. She sacrificed herself daily. If there was chicken, she took the leg; if there was a draught she sat in it--in short she was so constituted that she never had a mind or a wish of her own, but preferred to sympathize always with the minds and wishes of others. Above all--I need not say it---she was pure. Her purity was supposed to be her chief beauty--her blushes, her great grace. In those days--the last of Queen Victoria--every house had its Angel. And when I came to write I encountered her with the very first words. The shadow of her wings fell on my page; I heard the rustling of her skirts in the room. Directly, that is to say, I took my pen in my hand to review that novel by a famous man, she slipped behind me and whispered: "My dear, you are a young woman. You are writing about a book that has been written by a man. Be sympathetic; be tender; flatter; deceive; use all the arts and wiles of our sex. Never let anybody guess that you have a mind of your own. Above all, be pure." And she made as if to guide my pen....Had I not killed her she would have killed me. She would have plucked the heart out of my writing.

Strong words, but they reflected perfectly Woolf's own experience. She was born in the Victorian era in 1882, growing up in a male-dominated household. Her first novel had been published 16 years before this speech, which followed the liberating era of the 1920s, and took place in the run-up to World War II. It was a time of change, and she gave voice to that change.

What can you learn from this famous speech?

• Have a strong point of view: Too often, speakers--and women speakers--have as their goal not to offend anyone. They purge opinion from their speeches, and the results are pale, boring groupings of platitudes. Woolf not only embraces her viewpoint, but makes it violent and memorable. To her, this was the ultimate struggle, and you can tell.
• Get your audience to see something in their mind's eye: Part of the speech asks the audience to imagine the writer, pen in hand, and describes the scene so that her hearers can get a mental picture of what her work is like...and the conditions under which she has to battle the angel. The images you put in your audience members' minds will always be more memorable than any slide or photograph. It's a great technique to build audience engagement.
• Use metaphor to create a character or personality: I don't see enough speakers turning the forces they are describing into metaphoric characters, real personalities the audience can picture and relate to. But it's an effective tactic here, allowing Woolf to describe the Angel of the House as a person, making it more recognizable and familiar.

You can read the text of the speech here; it is an abbreviated version of what she delivered to a chapter of the National Society for Women’s Service on January 21, 1931. And now, this powerful speech also has inspired an illustration that excerpts parts of it. Signature first published this illustration in Nathan Gelgud's It's Time to Re-read Virginia Woolf's 1931 'Professions for Women' Speech, and kindly provided permission for me to reproduce it here for you. Enjoy!

Get involved in more conversations on public speaking with The Eloquent Woman. Follow our Facebook page, read great quotes from eloquent woman on Pinterest, follow me as @dontgetcaught on Twitter or track when others tweet about the lack of women speakers on programs via @NoWomenSpeakers. Learn how to be a better panel moderator with The Eloquent Woman's Guide to Moderating Panels.

Trends in shorter talks, from TED talks to your next talk

Lots of people assume that all TED talks are the famous 18 minutes long, and think that's plenty short enough. But in reality, the lengths of popular talks in this style are getting shorter and shorter.

At least one TEDGlobal speaker I've worked with tells me that 14, rather than 18, minutes is the limit under discussion. But far shorter are the two-minute talks given by innovators featured in TEDMED's The Hive, bringing them to the main stage. And in my coaching outside of proper TED conferences, many clients are asking for me to work with speakers to develop five-minute TED-style talks.

Why the shorter times? I can think of a few reasons:

1. Conference organizers can get more content included and more speakers featured--and better speaker engagement. At TEDMED, the two-minute talks served as short introductions to these entrepreneurs and innovators, who would be spending most of their conference time in The Hive, a space for meals, discussion, side events, and exhibits. And the short talks did the trick, encouraging participants to meet and mingle with these entrepreneurs. The shorter talks were early in the program, to encourage interaction over the course of the conference.
2. Audience attention spans are getting shorter and shorter. After six years of coaching at TEDMED, I find my foot tapping impatiently 15 minutes into any talk, even a good one. TED and TEDMED helped bring our talk-attention-span to 18 minutes, but they've always included a range of talk lengths, because the variety matters to the audience. And those short talks are some of the most popular in the TED portfolio.
3. Speakers get a high-impact opportunity that's more likely to be heard--and listened to--in a wide variety of settings. If you think of talks as your introduction to the audience, rather than a catalog of everything you know, the shorter talk makes a lot of sense. A short talk can have just enough in it to get those donors, investors, supporters, and fans seeking you out for more after the session. And if you have a well-learned five-minute talk in your back pocket, you can speak at a moment's notice, at a wide range of events. Use a two- or five-minute talk to open a Q&A session or town hall; speak at a reception; introduce a day of conference talks with a theme; and more.

Trying to fathom what's in a two- or five-minute talk? Use the speechwriting standard of 120 words per minute for a well-paced talk. That means two minutes equals 240 words, and five minutes equals 600--just a page of text, double-spaced.

The trick is to work that script until it's polished like a jewel. Then you'll see just how much you can fit in that compact space. Need some good role models for these shorter talks? Go here and click on 2016 Talks to see the full collection of TEDMED's two-minute talks from entrepreneurs in The Hive. Check out this post with links to the work of clients of mine who've asked me to coach short five-minute TED-style talks. And go to TED.com, where you can check out this collection of talks that are 6 minutes long...or less.

And if you need to coach to guide your speakers toward shorter talks in this style, email me at eloquentwoman AT gmail DOT com.

(TEDMED photo)

Get involved in more conversations on public speaking with The Eloquent Woman. Follow our Facebook page, read great quotes from eloquent woman on Pinterest, follow me as @dontgetcaught on Twitter or track when others tweet about the lack of women speakers on programs via @NoWomenSpeakers. Learn how to be a better panel moderator with The Eloquent Woman's Guide to Moderating Panels.

The Eloquent Woman's weekly speaker toolkit

Savvy speakers keep up with my wide-ranging reading list on women and public speaking by following The Eloquent Woman on Facebook, where these links and articles appear first. I always collect them here for you on Mondays as well. It's a great way to expand your public speaking knowledge:

• Enunciate! Dame Julie Andrews showed late-night host Stephen Colbert what it's like to practice one of the enunciation exercises from "My Fair Lady" in this video.
• Speeches of Note is a new blog from Shaun Usher, author of the popular Letters of Note books and blog. I'm happy to say women speakers are well-represented in his offerings.
• Did you miss? This week, the blog looked at why speaker coaches think you should spend more time preparing, and Famous Speech Friday shared thoughts from Patti Smith on the artist's journey.
• About the quote: Some courage for speakers, via Brené Brown. Find more quotes like this one on our Pinterest board of great quotes by eloquent women.

Get involved in more conversations on public speaking with The Eloquent Woman. Follow our Facebook page, read great quotes from eloquent woman on Pinterest, follow me as @dontgetcaught on Twitter or track when others tweet about the lack of women speakers on programs via @NoWomenSpeakers. Learn how to be a better panel moderator with The Eloquent Woman's Guide to Moderating Panels.

Famous Speech Friday: Patti Smith on the artist's journey

Whenever you answer a question in a live event, you can think of the answer as a small speech. Just such a speech came fully formed in an answer from Patti Smith, a singer, songwriter, poet and visual artist, who is sometimes called the "punk poet laureate."

Recently, at a live event recorded on the Here's the Thing podcast with Alec Baldwin, Smith was interviewed and then took questions. Near the end of the podcast, you can hear this questioner and the response that, to my ear, is a great small speech about the artist's journey. I've had it transcribed for you in full, question and answer:

Audience Member: Ms. Smith it’s an honor to speak with you. As an artist and art educator I’ve used Just Kids in my classroom to basically talk about an artist's journey and discovering your path. You always do advice to a young artist, what ammunition would you have to help stockpile that we can continue to encourage positivity, creativity, and individuality?  

Patti Smith: Well, you know, the advice that I have is always very simple if you want to pursue life as an artist. I could go all the way back to when we first started talking about Robert Mapplethorpe. He wanted to be an artist and he had to sacrifice a lot to make that choice. He sacrificed all his comforts, the support of his family, his scholarship--he sacrificed all of that because he knew what he wanted. He had a vision, he felt he had a calling, and when you have that and feel that, you can’t live without pursuing it. 

Then you have to do everything you can to magnify the gift that you have, and it’s going to cost you. You have to be willing to sacrifice. You have to be willing to work really hard, you have to be willing to perhaps go years, or quite a lot of time, without recognition, without acknowledgment. And you have to, in the face of all of that, maintain your vision as vision. 

Being a real artist, and maybe in some old-fashioned sense, the way I look at art, it is a sacred quest and it doesn’t have anything to do with fame and fortune. You can achieve fame and fortune in the pursuit of it because perhaps the stars are aligned, but that can’t be your prime directive. Your prime directive has to be to do something new, to give something new to the canon of art, to give something new to the people, to do something great, enduring, inspiring, something that will take people somewhere they’ve never been taken and you have to remember why you want to create. 

And so, I just say, simply, hard work and sacrifice. Happily. Because if you can’t sacrifice with joy, then it’s meaningless. And if you sacrifice and you maintain your joy and enthusiasm and curiosity and your ability to work hard, you’ll achieve something. So that’s what I’ve got.

What can you learn from this famous speech?

• Be declarative: Too many speakers hedge, hem, and haw when it comes to expressing opinions, but if you have a point of view, declaring it clearly makes for a strong, vivid speech. Read Smith's answer aloud to see just how powerful a statement it is.
• Be authentic: There's not a shred of advice in this answer that does not reflect Smith's own experience. She speaks movingly in the interview of not seeking great fortune, and instead building an independent way for herself as an artist, with a modest life and income. So this advice doesn't ring hollow at all.
• Be thorough: It would be easy to give a pat answer here, but Smith takes the time to develop the thought. She starts with an example, using it to illustrate motivation. Then, in each successive paragraph, she builds on it with what the artist has to do, what her prime directive should be, and finally, sums it up simply.

I don't have video of the live event on which the podcast is based, but there's audio at the podcast link, above, and I can share Smith in performance at the Nobel Prize ceremony, performing Bob Dylan's "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall." She talks about this performance and how Dylan impacted her work in the podcast. At the two-minute mark in the video, she falters, apologizes, and asks to start a verse again, confessing to the audience, "I'm so nervous." And the black-tie audience applauds her.


Get involved in more conversations on public speaking with The Eloquent Woman. Follow our Facebook page, read great quotes from eloquent woman on Pinterest, follow me as @dontgetcaught on Twitter or track when others tweet about the lack of women speakers on programs via @NoWomenSpeakers. Learn how to be a better panel moderator with The Eloquent Woman's Guide to Moderating Panels.

Why speaker coaches think you should spend more time preparing

Any speaker coach worth her salt will tell you that the one thing her speakers don't do enough of is practice. It's not at all unusual for me to suggest a two- to-three month horizon to prep for a major talk, only to have the speaker exclaim, "But I've never spent more than two days getting ready!"

If I had a nickel for every time a client said that, I could quit coaching and live quite comfortably.

But that's not enough of a reason for you, is it? You might, then, want to know some of the many reasons coaches urge practice before you dismiss it out of hand. First and foremost, practice gives you room to make mistakes and correct them, without an audience present. I like to say, "If you're going to screw up, wouldn't you rather do that privately with me than in front of the audience?"

More than that, practice lets you take something from good to great, from tentative to polished. You can find out where you stumble and stutter, and come up with workarounds. You can learn whether that move you want to make across the stage works in real life. You will find out which parts of your script or slides just don't stick in your memory bank, and adjust them. You can try out a gesture, how you will handle a prop, volume, vocalizing, and every other aspect of delivery--not just once, but several ways, so you can choose from the most successful options for you. And you'll go into the talk knowing why you chose *not* to do certain things, its own form of comfort. You'll get used to the sound of your own voice, and how it feels to give the talk out loud, as opposed to just silently narrating your slides as you review them; that kinetic memory will build as you practice, giving you that much more confidence.

Practice also affords you the time and space to learn your talk inside out, so you are less flummoxed by a last-minute or unforeseen interruption or snafu. It means that, when you panic at the sight of the lights and the crowd, what you wanted to say will come out of your mouth, anyway, and get you started. Practice gives you the chance to decide that you don't need all those slides, anyway, before the audience's eyes start to glaze over, and the chance to practice without the slides, without having to speed up. And it's great insurance against the bane of public speakers: That moment when you come off the stage and realize you forgot to include your main point.

When considering your practice time, it helps to remember the great irony of public speaking. It's the speakers who look most natural, conversational, genuine, and spontaneously smooth who have practiced the most. Everyone else just looks like they haven't practiced. Audiences appreciate the difference.

For me, the proof lies in what I hear after coaching clients, who love to call me to report, "I did all the preparation you told me to do, and it worked!" Yes, indeed. How can you reform your speaking practice?

(Creative Commons licensed photo by TEDxBrussels)

Get involved in more conversations on public speaking with The Eloquent Woman. Follow our Facebook page, read great quotes from eloquent woman on Pinterest, follow me as @dontgetcaught on Twitter or track when others tweet about the lack of women speakers on programs via @NoWomenSpeakers. Learn how to be a better panel moderator with The Eloquent Woman's Guide to Moderating Panels.

The Eloquent Woman's weekly speaker toolkit

Savvy speakers keep up with my wide-ranging reading list on women and public speaking by following The Eloquent Woman on Facebook, where these links and articles appear first. I always collect them here for you on Mondays as well. It's a great way to expand your public speaking knowledge:

• Fluent women: When it comes to proficiency in English, women around the world speak it better than do men, across most industry sectors. Check out the places where English proficiency is high and low, and how women compare to men, in this video based on a huge survey.
• Discomfort zone? "For example, I have a history of being uncomfortable with public speaking. In graduate school I took a public speaking class and the professor had us deliver speeches — using notes — every class. Then, after the third or fourth class, we were told to hand over our notes and to speak extemporaneously. I was terrified, as was everyone else in the course, but you know what? It actually worked. I did just fine, and so did everyone else. In fact, speaking without notes ended up being much more effective, making my speaking more natural and authentic. But without this mechanism of forcing me into action, I might never have taken the plunge." From If you're not outside your comfort zone, you won't learn anything.
• Did you miss? This week, the blog looked at appearance v. content and which one wins the most attention for women speakers; in the wake of all the coverage, some sensible guidelines for journalists followed. Both posts were especially popular on Facebook this week. Famous Speech Friday shared classicist Mary Beard's lecture on women in power. A must-read, must-watch.
• Join me in London April 3 for my one-day workshop, Creating a TED-Quality Talk. It works for speakers, speechwriters, and anyone who wants to elevate their presenting in this way. We have some seats left, and we're just waiting for you!
• About the quote: A good example for eloquent women, from Madonna. Find more quotes like this one on our Pinterest board of great quotes by eloquent women.

Get involved in more conversations on public speaking with The Eloquent Woman. Follow our Facebook page, read great quotes from eloquent woman on Pinterest, follow me as @dontgetcaught on Twitter or track when others tweet about the lack of women speakers on programs via @NoWomenSpeakers. Learn how to be a better panel moderator with The Eloquent Woman's Guide to Moderating Panels.

Famous Speech Friday: Mary Beard on "Women in Power"

If you've ever seen a production of the ancient Greek plays with strong and powerful women--Medea, Antigone, and the like--you may have thought, "Wow, how enlightened the Greeks were to feature such strong women in their plays." But it's smarter to see these as cautionary tales about women in power, says classics scholar Mary Beard. Consider them early markers that women are to be culturally excluded from power in ways that we are still fighting today.

Beard addressed women in power in a lecture of the same name two weeks ago in London, putting her knowledge of the ancient cultures and her modern-day focus on women's issues together. Beard's lecture on the public voice of women is an important entry in The Eloquent Woman Index of Famous Speeches by Women, and taken together, this pair of lectures is as good a primer as you will find--really, must-reads, both of them--on why women today struggle with finding their voices and claiming their power. The societal barriers to doing so go back centuries, and Beard's the right guide to our unfortunate history. If you think the classics are dull, she's the right guide again--so much so that she was featured in a series of interviews on these Greek heroines on BBC's Woman's Hour radio program in the week prior to the lecture, which was quickly published along with audio and video versions.

For those not sure that ancient Greek women-bashing drama has any impact on women in power today, Beard uses the image of Medusa, whose image--with snakes for her hair--was said to be able to turn people into stone. Medusa was slain by Perseus, who cut off her head and used it to turn his enemies to stone, captured in a famous portrait by Caravaggio. From Beard's lecture:

What’s extraordinary is that this beheading remains even now a cultural symbol of opposition to women’s power. Angela Merkel’s features have again and again been superimposed on Caravaggio’s image. In one of the more silly outbursts in this vein, a column in the magazine of the Police Federation called Theresa May the ‘Medusa of Maidenhead’ during her time as home secretary. ‘The Medusa comparison might be a bit strong,’ the Daily Express responded: ‘We all know that Mrs May has beautifully coiffed hair.’ But May got off lightly compared with Dilma Rousseff, who had to open a major Caravaggio show in São Paolo. The Medusa was naturally in it, and Rousseff standing in front of the very painting proved an irresistible photo opportunity.

But it’s with Hillary Clinton that we see the Medusa theme at its starkest and nastiest. Predictably Trump’s supporters produced a great number of images showing her with snaky locks. But the most horribly memorable of them adapted Cellini’s bronze, a much better fit than the Caravaggio because it wasn’t just a head: it also included the heroic male adversary and killer. All you needed to do was superimpose Trump’s face on that of Perseus, and give Clinton’s features to the severed head.... 

This scene of Perseus-Trump brandishing the dripping, oozing head of Medusa-Clinton was very much part of the everyday, domestic American decorative world: you could buy it on T-shirts and tank tops, on coffee mugs, on laptop sleeves and tote bags (sometimes with the logo TRIUMPH, sometimes TRUMP). It may take a moment or two to take in that normalisation of gendered violence, but if you were ever doubtful about the extent to which the exclusion of women from power is culturally embedded or unsure of the continued strength of classical ways of formulating and justifying it – well, I give you Trump and Clinton, Perseus and Medusa, and rest my case.

Beard also goes on to say that our ideas of power are the kinds of power that elites can claim, but that every woman--not just those trying to run for prime minister or president--needs and wants some form of power. But how should women view her insights? She says:

...the big issues I’ve been trying to confront aren’t solved by tips on how to exploit the status quo. And I don’t think patience is likely to be the answer either, though gradual change very likely will take place. In fact, given that women in this country have only had the vote for a hundred years, we shouldn’t forget to congratulate ourselves for the revolution that we have all, women and men, brought about. That said, if the deep cultural structures legitimating women’s exclusion are as I have argued, gradualism is likely to take too long for me, thank you very much. We have to be more reflective about what power is, what it is for, and how it is measured. To put it another way, if women aren’t perceived to be fully within the structures of power, isn’t it power that we need to redefine rather than women?

What can you learn from this famous speech?

• It's smart to remind us of our history: Beard's research lies completely in the past, although she certainly keeps a weather eye on trends in the present that hark back to historic days. Sometimes, your speech or presentation will benefit from a similar comparison, whether it's to remind the audience how far we've come, or, as here, how much further we have to go.
• Tell us a story from your viewpoint: History repeats itself, but if you weren't around in the era of ancient Greece, you might not see the comparison. So Beard retells the old tales and brings them into our world with the images online and on tote bags. How can you retell a story from your viewpoint?
• Speak plainly: Beard does not shy from her topic. The misogyny is clearly and unflinchingly described, and in doing so, she lets us see it. No sugar-coating, muffling, or euphemizing here. Instead, there's brilliant clarity, just what every audience wants.

You can watch the video here or below, and the full text of the lecture is here.

LRB · Mary Beard · Video: Women in Power

Get involved in more conversations on public speaking with The Eloquent Woman. Follow our Facebook page, read great quotes from eloquent woman on Pinterest, follow me as @dontgetcaught on Twitter or track when others tweet about the lack of women speakers on programs via @NoWomenSpeakers. Learn how to be a better panel moderator with The Eloquent Woman's Guide to Moderating Panels.