The Question

From a reader · introduced by Rebecca Tully

A reader, the chief executive of a charity, has to give an all-staff next Thursday announcing a restructure that will reduce the headcount by thirty percent. She has been working with a communications consultant. She has draft slides. She has a draft script. She has not yet written the first sentence. How much should the first sentence carry?

The Answer

By Rebecca Tully

All of it. The first sentence is what your colleagues will remember. They will remember the cadence, they will remember whether you sounded like yourself, they will remember whether the sentence acknowledged what it was about to ask of them. The rest is supporting material. Three rules for it. First: write it last, after the body of the talk. You cannot honestly write a first sentence for a speech you have not yet drafted. Second: read it aloud. Read it aloud quietly. If it sounds like you, it is closer to right. If it sounds like a press release, start again. Third: the sentence should announce that you know what you are about to say is hard. It should not announce that it is necessary. The audience already knows it is necessary. They need to know you know it is hard. An example, since reading abstract advice on speechwriting is its own punishment: ‘I want to start by telling you what this meeting is about, because most of you have already guessed and I would rather you heard it from me before the questions start.’

The Margin

By Joel Akande

Two further notes. The first: in an all-staff for a restructure, the questions you take are part of the speech, not separate from it. Allow more time for them than feels comfortable. Forty minutes. People who have just received hard news are not ready to ask their real questions for the first twenty. The second: the all-staff is not the moment for warmth that you have not earned. If your colleagues do not know you well, this is not the day you become known. Be plain. Plain is its own form of care.

The Week

• The Guardian’s profile of Helena Morrissey on Saturday is worth the half-hour. The line about her being asked to ‘stop being so confident’ in her first board meeting is the line.
• Two of you wrote in about the question of whether to have a chief of staff. Our position, drily: most chiefs of staff are good chiefs of staff. Most CEOs are not yet good chiefs of staff users. Investigate the user first.
• A reader has been asked to give the eulogy at her predecessor’s memorial. The predecessor was twenty-three years older than her and they did not always agree. Our advice: speak about the work, not about the person. The person was loved by people who knew them. The work is the thing only you can speak to.

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