Break the Teacups
Freeing and Freshening Your Language for Impact
Thanks for reading Unbound! This is for the time when you need to capture your audience’s attention—and imagination.
I was once recruited to work with an exceptionally talented, if challenging leader. But the true challenge was his team.
So there I was, in one of those big review meetings, filled with the powers-that-be. My speaker did his table read to nods of approval.
But then…a week later, when I returned for the second run-through, his team had completely changed the speech without telling me. The speechwriter had toiled on the revision—that was clear. Yet the leader now sounded like an audio book narrator for a marketing brochure: bland, dry, tired.
Of course, he did. No life in the speech, no passion in the speaker.
This time, the powers-that-be stared at me: what happened? I’ll tell you what happened. Corporate-speak happened! People got scared by the storytelling, that’s what happened!
I spoke the truth: “That speech needs to be more inspirational. It’s got to sound like him.”
The room went silent. I looked around the long table.
All the yes-people were nodding their yes-es at him, assuring the leader, “The speech is fine.”
Let me tell you: there is a world of difference between a fine speech and a fantastic speech that people remembered. That people quoted.
Afterward, as I was processing this meeting with my mentor, I told her, “I literally was the bull in the tea shop. It was like my very breath was breaking the teacups.”
She shot back at me, “Break the teacups. That’s why they hired you.”
A new aphorism was born: Break the teacups. A shorthand and memorable adage to say: be brave; speak the unpopular, unacceptable, hard truth.
(Reader, I broke more teacups. We rewrote the speech, not using the first draft or the second. Instead, we blended the two. Amped up the language. Filled it with stories. Killed the platitudes, freshened with new aphorisms. The leader scored his highest rating of any speech in his career.)
What new catchphrase can you create to deliver wisdom in a fresh and resonant way?