15 Chapter 15: Business Presentations in Action
Personnel directors have described their needs in prospective employers as follows:
“Send me people who know how to speak, listen, and think, and I’ll do the rest. I can train people in their specific job responsibilities, as long as they listen well, know how to think, and can express themselves well.”[1]
“For better or worse, our culture relies on quotations—literary passages, Bible verses, movie lines, song lyrics, catchphrases, proverbs—to transmit the wit and wisdom of the past and the present and to lend resonance to our everyday discourse. Perhaps the most important are the political quotes, the sound bites, slogans, zingers and bloopers that can win or lose elections and shape our arguments and opinions. —Fred R. Shapiro”[2]
Opening Case Study: The Eighteen-Hour Carousel
The phone rang at 12:47 a.m. on Friday, April 10, 2026. Dr. Flaxen Trowbridge-Salgado — sixty-seven, retired Northern Michigan University folklorist, board chair of the Iron Lantern Carousel Restoration Society, and, until two minutes ago, asleep in her bedroom on Ridge Street in Marquette — picked up on the second ring because she had told Ravenna Kowalski-Okuneva three weeks earlier that on the night before the Grand Reopening Gala, she should call no matter how late.
“Flax. I am sitting in the pavilion. I am looking at Edith. I have been crying for nine minutes. I have eighteen hours and I have lost a keynote speaker, an award recipient, and seven and a half minutes off the mayor’s schedule, and I am about to lose my mind.”
Flax sat up. “Slow down. Edith is the giraffe?”
“Edith is the giraffe.”
Edith was the 1913 hand-carved menagerie giraffe at the front of row two of the Iron Lantern’s Allan Herschell carousel — the carousel that had been purchased from Kennywood Park outside Pittsburgh in 1947, loaded onto a flatcar by a man named Eugene Abney, and driven to a barn in Negaunee, Michigan, where it had sat under tarps and sawdust for seventy-eight years until a group of retired ironworkers, two NMU folklorists, and one stubborn former public radio producer had hauled it out, restored it animal by animal, and rebuilt the cast-iron-and-amber-glass octagonal pavilion that had originally housed it on the Lake Superior shore. The Grand Reopening Gala was scheduled for 6:30 p.m. that evening. Three hundred people were expected. WLUC-TV had called twice already.
Ravenna was the executive director. She was thirty-eight, a former producer at WNMU-FM, the only person on staff who knew how to operate the 1913 Wurlitzer band organ, and the person who had spent four years convincing the city of Marquette, the Marquette Historical Society, the Daughters of the Iron Range, and one foundation in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, that a restored carousel housed in a restored pavilion was worth $2.4 million of someone else’s money.
“Walk me through it,” Flax said. “From the top. One thing at a time.”
“Dr. Harlan Dewbury-Fontenot is in Denver. The flight that was supposed to bring him here at four o’clock is now showing canceled. Ice storm. Stapleton — sorry, Denver International — is a parking lot. He is the keynote. He is supposed to give the seven o’clock fifteen-minute talk on Allan Herschell and the menagerie carousel tradition. He is the only person east of the Mississippi who has written a book about Allan Herschell, and he is now sitting in a Best Western near the airport eating a granola bar.”
“Okay. That is the keynote.”
“Yusuf Blackfeather-Ingalls. The Heritage Award recipient. The reason we built this thing. His grandfather Noah carved the lead horse on row one. Yusuf flew in from Albuquerque on Wednesday, was supposed to give a five-minute acceptance at seven-fifteen. At eleven-twenty tonight his sister called. His mother Margaret, ninety-four, has pneumonia. She is at the Chippewa County War Memorial Hospital in Sault Ste. Marie. He is in his rental car. He left twenty minutes ago. Soo is three and a half hours from here. He will not be back.”
“Yusuf left to be with his mother. That is the right thing for Yusuf to do.”
“I know it is the right thing. That is not the part I am crying about.”
“What is the part you are crying about?”
“Mayor Honor Petoskey-Larsen’s office called at midnight. The Lakes-to-Capital climate summit moved her flight from Saturday morning to Friday at nine p.m. She has to leave the gala at seven forty-five instead of eight-thirty. Which means she has to do her ribbon-cutting and her remarks before the keynote. Which means I have to compress the first hour. Which means the first public ride — the seven o’clock first ride — has to happen with the mayor still standing there. Which I actually don’t mind, except —”
“Except what?”
“Except Clementine Abney-Mwangi is supposed to be the first public rider. She is seven years old. She lives in Negaunee. Her great-grandfather is Eugene Abney — the Eugene Abney who loaded the carousel onto the flatcar at Kennywood in 1947. Her mother emailed me a photograph of him standing next to Edith on the loading dock in Pittsburgh, and I cried at my desk for ten minutes. Clementine is going to ride Edith first. She has practiced what she is going to say to the giraffe before she gets on. She told her mother she is going to whisper, ‘You have been waiting a long time.’ I will not have that child rushed because the mayor has a flight to catch. I would rather have no mayor.”
Flax pulled the blanket off her legs and put her feet on the floor. “What else.”
“WLUC-TV wants a sound bite at eight o’clock this morning. Live remote. They want me. They want twelve seconds. They have been calling for three days and I have been ducking them because I cannot think of twelve seconds that does not sound like a press release.”
“What else.”
“The Detroit Free Press is sending Tavita Pahl-Ramachandran. Tai. She flies into Sawyer at one fifty-five this afternoon. She wants thirty minutes with me at four-thirty in the pavilion. Long-form profile, A3 Sunday. She has interviewed every carousel restorer in the Great Lakes. She is the best in the country at this and she is hard, Flax. She is hard in a way that I have only ever seen one other reporter be hard, and that other reporter quit and went to NPR.”
“What else.”
“Four o’clock board meeting. The board has not seen the final budget reconciliation. Which is fine because there is no final budget reconciliation. Which is also fine because at four o’clock I am going to be writing the keynote that nobody is going to give. Or interviewing for the Free Press. Or both at the same time, in different parts of the building.”
“Ravenna.”
“Yes.”
“Pri. Where is Pri.”
Priamos Stavropoulos-Hennessey — Pri, fifty-four, the Society’s volunteer coordinator and, more importantly, the man who had spent eleven years as Noah Blackfeather’s apprentice in Noah’s woodshop in Marquette before Noah died in 2017. Pri had carved three of the thirty-eight animals on the restored carousel himself, including the rabbit on row three with the chipped left ear that Noah had told him to leave chipped because “the kids will know which one is theirs.” Pri did not give speeches. Pri taught nine-year-olds how to hold a drawknife.
“Pri is asleep in his trailer behind the pavilion.”
“Wake him up at six and tell him he is giving the keynote.”
“Flax. He will say no. He has never given a speech in his life.”
“I am not going to ask him to give a speech. I am going to ask him to tell us one story about Noah and the drawknife. Three minutes. No notes. No microphone if he doesn’t want one. Just one story. He has told me the drawknife story twice. It is the best three minutes I have ever heard about why somebody carves an animal. He will say no. You will tell him that the only reason any of us are here tonight is because Noah taught him, and that Yusuf, who is sitting in a hospital room in Sault Ste. Marie holding his mother’s hand, deserves to have Noah’s apprentice tell that story instead of Dr. Harlan Dewbury-Fontenot reading from his book in a dinner jacket. Pri will say yes. Trust me.”
Ravenna was quiet.
“Now. The mayor. Let her leave at seven forty-five. Move the ribbon-cutting and her remarks to six forty-five. Put Clementine’s first ride at seven o’clock with the mayor still in the room standing right behind her, but tell the mayor in advance that her job for those ninety seconds is to be quiet and watch a seven-year-old whisper to a giraffe. She will love it. She will be talking about it on a panel in Washington on Saturday afternoon.”
“Yes.”
“Yusuf. Call Odalys Fiorentino-Becker. Odalys lives in Marquette and her sister-in-law is a nurse at the Soo hospital. Odalys can drive over there in three and a half hours, get to Yusuf in the family room outside Margaret’s room, set up a tripod with her phone, and film a ninety-second acceptance video. Yusuf will accept the Heritage Award from his mother’s hospital room with his mother in the frame if his mother is awake and willing. We will play the video at seven-fifteen, on the big screen, in front of three hundred people, and there will not be a dry eye in that pavilion. Tell Odalys I will pay for the gas and the room if she has to stay over.”
“Yes.”
“WLUC at eight a.m. Twelve seconds. You are going to give them this. Are you ready?”
“I am ready.”
“‘In 1913, a man in North Tonawanda, New York, carved a giraffe named Edith. In 1947, a man named Eugene Abney loaded her onto a flatcar at Kennywood Park. Tonight at seven o’clock, Eugene’s seven-year-old great-granddaughter Clementine is going to ride Edith for the first time in seventy-eight years.’ That is twelve seconds. Practice it twice in the mirror before you go on. Do not improve it. Do not add to it. Do not say the word ‘historic.’ Just say the names.”
Ravenna wrote it down on the back of the gala program. Her hand was shaking, but she could read her own writing.
“Tai. The Free Press. Four-thirty. Here is what you are going to do. You are going to walk her around the pavilion for the first ten minutes and not say anything except the names of the animals and the names of the people who carved them. Then at minute ten, you are going to stop in front of Edith and you are going to ask Tai a question.”
“Ask her a question.”
“You are going to ask her what was the hardest sentence she ever had to cut from a piece. The thing is, every long-form reporter has one. They will tell you. And once they tell you, the interview is no longer about you defending yourself, it is about two people who care about words sitting in a pavilion full of wooden animals.”
“How do you know she has one?”
“Because everyone has one. And because I read the Highland Park Ford plant piece she wrote in 2023 and I could feel the missing sentence.”
“Flax.”
“Yes.”
“The board meeting at four o’clock.”
“I will run the board meeting. You will be in the office finishing the budget. I will gavel us in at four-oh-two and gavel us out at four twenty-two. Twenty-two minutes. I will use Robert’s Rules and I will not be charming about it. The board will hate me for one day and love me for ten years. Go.”
Ravenna stood up. The pavilion was dark except for the work light over Edith’s head, and the amber glass in the lantern panels caught the lake outside in a way that looked, for the first time in nine minutes, like something that was actually going to happen. She put her hand on the giraffe’s flank. The wood was cold and solid and 113 years old, and Clementine was going to be the next person to touch it.
“I have eighteen hours.”
“You have eighteen hours and you have a plan. Go.”
Ravenna hung up. Then she opened a new text thread to Pri Stavropoulos-Hennessey, typed three sentences, hit send, and walked toward the office to write down everything Flax had just said before any of it could leave her head.
Opening Case Questions
- Ravenna calls Flax at 12:47 a.m. instead of texting. What does her choice to use a voice phone call rather than a text message reveal about the kinds of communication problems that voice handles better than text? Which of the five stages of the telephone conversation model (opening, feedforward, business, feedback, closing) are visible in their call, and which does Flax accelerate or compress?
- Flax gives Ravenna an exact 12-second sound bite for the WLUC morning remote — three names (Edith, Eugene, Clementine) and three years (1913, 1947, 2026). Why does naming particular people and dates work better, in this context, than abstractions like “historic restoration” or “community treasure”? What does the sound bite gain by ending on the youngest person rather than the oldest object?
- Flax decides to replace Dr. Harlan Dewbury-Fontenot’s prepared keynote with a three-minute, no-notes drawknife story from Pri Stavropoulos-Hennessey, who has never given a public speech. What does Flax believe a personal story from Noah Blackfeather’s former apprentice will accomplish that an expert lecture cannot? What are the risks of this substitution, and how is she managing them?
- Flax tells Ravenna to walk Tai Pahl-Ramachandran around the pavilion for ten minutes saying only animal names and carver names, then stop in front of Edith and ask Tai about the hardest sentence she ever cut from a piece. How is Flax using the principles of media interview preparation — topic, time, format, background — to reframe a hostile interview into a conversation? What does Ravenna risk by turning the interview around on the interviewer, and what does she gain?
- The mayor must leave at 7:45 instead of 8:30, which forces Clementine’s first ride at 7:00 with the mayor standing right behind her. Flax tells Ravenna to instruct the mayor in advance that her job during those 90 seconds is “to be quiet and watch a seven-year-old whisper to a giraffe.” Why does Flax give the mayor a clear, narrow role rather than asking her to improvise? How does that instruction function as a master-of-ceremonies move, even though Ravenna is technically the one running the event?
Before You Read: Special-Occasion Speaking Self-Assessment
Rate your comfort with each of the following on a 1–5 scale (1 = very uncomfortable, 5 = very comfortable). There are no right answers; you will revisit these at the end of the chapter.
- Delivering a 10–15 second sound bite to a reporter on camera or microphone.
- Conducting an important business call by phone or VoIP, where you cannot see the other person’s face.
- Chairing or running a meeting using a written agenda and basic parliamentary procedure.
- Proposing a 30-word toast at a celebration in front of a group you don’t know well.
- Giving a media interview to a reporter who is preparing a long-form story about your organization.
- Introducing a featured speaker in front of an audience that may or may not already know who they are.
- Presenting an award or accepting one publicly with brief, prepared remarks.
- Serving as master of ceremonies for a one-to-two hour event with multiple speakers and segments.
Add up your eight scores. 8–16: Special-occasion speaking is unfamiliar territory; this chapter will give you a working toolkit for each format. 17–28: You have some experience with several of these formats but feel uneven across them; use this chapter to shore up the weaker ones. 29–40: You are comfortable across most special-occasion formats; use this chapter to refine your sound-bite craft, your interview defense, and your transitions as an emcee.
Getting Started
Introductory Exercises
- Prepare a summary of your experience in public speaking. Include one example and one goal you’d like to set for yourself for improvement. Share and compare with classmates.
- Who’s a speaker you admire? This could be a podcaster, a TED Talk presenter, a CEO, or a political figure. Write a brief introduction for them and include what makes them particularly effective.
No matter what career you pursue or what level of success you achieve, on some occasions you’ll certainly find it necessary to introduce yourself or another speaker, accept an award, serve as master of ceremonies at a meeting, or make a comment to the media. Each task requires preparation and practice, and a solid understanding of the roles and responsibilities associated with the many activities you may perform as a successful business communicator. In this chapter, we explore many of these common activities with brief discussions and activities to prepare you for the day when the responsibility falls to you.
15.1 Sound Bites and Quotables
Learning Objectives
- Discuss the elements that make a sound bite effective in business, civic, and ceremonial contexts.
- Choose a sound bite or quote from a written or verbal message and evaluate it against the four characteristics.
- Prepare a memorable, repeatable quotation that can survive being lifted out of its original context.
- Recognize when a sound bite is the right tool — and when it is not — for a given audience and medium.
Sometimes, the words with the most impact are succinct, memorable statements. Sound bites, brief statements that zero in on the point of a larger or longer message, are often excised from interviews and articles and presented apart from the context in which they were originally written or spoken. Slogans are phrases that express the goals, aims, or nature of a product, service, person, or company. Quotes are memorable sayings extracted from written or verbal messages. Some move armies, while others make armies laugh. All are memorable and quickly become part of our cultural literacy, expressing a common sentiment or perception, and reinforcing our image of the speaker, business, product, or service.[3]
Common Elements of Effective Sound Bites
Whether you’re writing a document, preparing a presentation, or both, you’ll want to consider how others will summarize your main point. If you can provide a clear sound bite or quote, it’s more likely to get picked up and repeated, reinforcing your message. By preparing your sound bites, you help control the interpretation of your message.[4] Here are four characteristics of effective sound bites:
- Clear and concise
- Use vivid, dynamic language
- Easy to repeat
- Memorable
Your goal when writing a sound bite or quote is to make sure your idea represents all four characteristics. You won’t always be creating the message; in some cases, you may be asked to summarize someone else’s written or verbal message, such as an interview, with a quote or a sound bite. Look for one or more sentences or phrases that capture these elements and test them out on your classmates or colleagues. Can the sound bite, slogan, or quote be delivered without stumbling? Is it easy to read? Does it get the job done?
Case Connection: Ravenna’s 8:00 a.m. Quote — The Edith-Clementine Sentence
Look at the 12-second sentence Flax gives Ravenna for the WLUC remote: “In 1913, a man in North Tonawanda, New York, carved a giraffe named Edith. In 1947, a man named Eugene Abney loaded her onto a flatcar at Kennywood Park. Tonight at seven o’clock, Eugene’s seven-year-old great-granddaughter Clementine is going to ride Edith for the first time in seventy-eight years.” Test it against the four characteristics. Clear and concise: three sentences, three years, three names, no jargon. Vivid: a flatcar, a giraffe, a seven-year-old — concrete nouns the listener can picture. Easy to repeat: no tongue-twisters, no clauses that nest inside other clauses, and the rhythm carries a TV anchor through it on the first read. Memorable: the sentence lands on a child’s name, which is the ending the brain stores. Notice what Flax left out: she did not say “historic,” “first of its kind,” “preservation,” “community treasure,” or “$2.4 million restoration.” Those are press-release words, and they would have crowded the names off the air.
Key Takeaways
Exercises
1. Choose a product or service that you find appealing. Try to come up with several sound bites, slogans, or quotes that meet all four criteria. You may look to company sales materials or interviews as a source for this exercise, and if you pull a quote from an online interview, post the link when you complete your assignment. Discuss how the sound bite, slogan, or quote meets all four criteria in your response.
2. Match these slogans with their companies.
| Product, Business, or Person | Sound Bite, Slogan, or Memorable Quote |
|---|---|
| A. Nike | 1. Think Different |
| B. Donald Trump | 2. American by birth. Rebel by choice. |
| C. PlayStation | 3. You’re in good hands. |
| D. Apple | 4. Just do it! |
| E. Harley Davidson | 5. Make America Great Again |
| F. Amazon | 6. Live in your world. Play in ours. |
| G. All State | 7. Work hard. Have fun. Make history. |
| H. Olive Garden | 8. A diamond is forever. |
| I. De Beers Consolidated Mines | 9. When you’re here, you’re fam |
Answers: A-4, B-5, C-6, D-1, E-2, F-7, G-3, H-9, I-8
3. Indicate at least one sound bite or memorable quote and who said it. Share your results with classmates and compare your results.
15.2 Telephone/VoIP Communication
Learning Objectives
- Demonstrate the five stages in a telephone conversation and recognize how each stage functions in a real exchange.
- Understand delivery strategies — pace, articulation, vivid language, specificity — that increase comprehension and reduce misunderstanding when nonverbal cues are absent.
- Choose voice over text in situations where tone, complexity, or emotional weight require a real-time exchange.
Talking on the phone or producing an audio recording lacks the interpersonal context and nonverbal cues. Unless you use vivid, crisp, and clear descriptions, your audience will be left to make sense of it on their own. They may create mental images that don’t reflect your intention, which leads to miscommunication. Conversations follow predictable patterns and have main parts or stages we can clearly identify. While not every conversation is the same, many will follow a variation of a standard pattern composed by David Taylor and Alyse Terhune:[5]
- Opening
- Feedforward
- Business
- Feedback
- Closing
Table 15.1 “A Five-Stage Telephone Conversation”[6] provides an example of how a conversation might go according to these five stages.
| Stage | Subevents | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Opening |
|
|
| Feedforward |
|
|
| Business |
|
|
| Feedback |
|
|
| Closing |
|
|
Cell phones are a part of many, if not most, people’s lives in the industrialized world and, increasingly, in developing nations as well. Digital communication platforms like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or FaceTime are now central to business. Whether it’s a quick voice call or a full video conference, understanding how to communicate effectively without a shared physical context is a key skill. But in our discussion, we’ll focus primarily on voice exchanges.
Since you lack the nonverbal context, you need to make sure that your voice accurately communicates your message. Your choice of words and how you say them, including spacing or pausing, pace, rhythm, articulation, and pronunciation are relevant factors in effective delivery. Here are five main points to consider:
- Speak slowly and articulate your words clearly.
- Use vivid terms to create interest and communicate descriptions.
- Be specific.
- Show consideration for others by keeping your phone conversations private.
- Silence cell phones, pagers, and other devices when you’re in a meeting or sharing a meal with colleagues.
You don’t have to slow down your normal pattern of speech by a large degree. Still, each word needs time and space to be understood, or the listener may hear words that run together, losing meaning and creating opportunities for misunderstanding. Don’t assume that they’ll catch your specific information the first time and repeat any as necessary, such as an address or a phone number.
Feedback, the response from the receiver to the sender, is also an essential element of phone conversations. Taking turns in the conversation can sometimes be awkward, especially if there’s an echo or background noise on the line. With time and practice, each “speaker’s own natural, comfortable, expressive repertoire will surface.”[7]
Case Connection: Why Ravenna Called Flax Instead of Texting
Notice that Ravenna, a former public radio producer who is fluent in text and email, picks up the phone at 12:47 a.m. and calls Flax. Apply the five-stage model. The opening is fast — Flax knows it is Ravenna and Ravenna knows Flax is awake — but the names and the recognition still happen (“Flax.” / “Slow down.”). The feedforward is the first sentence, the dump: “I have eighteen hours and I have lost a keynote speaker, an award recipient, and seven and a half minutes off the mayor’s schedule.” Flax now knows the purpose, the tone, and the urgency, all in one breath. The business stage is the long middle — six problems, six solutions, role-traded back and forth. Feedback is Ravenna’s “Yes” repeated again and again as she writes things down. Closing is “I have eighteen hours” / “Go.” A text message could not have done this. Text strips out the pace at which Flax slows Ravenna down, the silences in which Ravenna writes things on the back of the gala program, and the moment Flax tells her to put her hand on the giraffe. When stakes are high, complexity is layered, and emotion needs regulating in real time, voice beats text — every time.
Pro Tip: Make Your Voice Do the Work Your Face Can’t
On the phone or on a voice-only Zoom, your listener has lost roughly two-thirds of the channels they normally use to read you: facial expression, posture, gesture, and eye contact. To compensate, slow down by about 10 percent, articulate the consonants at the ends of your words (the t’s, d’s, and s’s are the first thing the listener loses on a low-bandwidth line), and rest a beat between your sentences instead of plowing straight through them. When you give a number, an address, or a name, say it twice. When you finish a complex point, ask “does that track?” instead of “does that make sense?” — the first invites response, the second invites a yes-or-no nod the listener cannot give you. None of this slows the conversation down. It speeds it up, because you stop having to repeat yourself.
Key Takeaways
Exercises
- Write an outline of a script for a telephone conversation that introduces a new product or service to an existing client. Partner with a classmate to role-play the conversation and note areas for improvement. Compare your results with classmates.
- Think of a phone conversation you had recently. Write a summary and include at least one example of what worked or what didn’t. Share and compare with classmates.
- Take notes during a telephone conversation and write a brief description, labeling the parts of the conversation and providing examples. Share and compare with classmates.
15.3 Meetings
Learning Objectives
- Discuss meetings and their role in business communication.
- Describe the main parts of an agenda and explain why each part exists.
- Discuss several strategies for keeping meetings effective, efficient, and respectful of participants’ time.
- Recognize when a short, formally structured meeting is the right tool, and when a longer, more open conversation is.
A meeting is a group communication in action around a defined agenda, at a set time, for an established duration. Meetings can be effective, ineffective, or a complete waste of time. If time is money and effectiveness and efficiency are your goals, then if you arrange a meeting, lead a meeting, or participate in one, you want it to be worth your time.[8]
Meetings can occur face-to-face, but increasingly, business and industry are turning to teleconferencing and videoconferencing options as the technology improves and the cost to participate is reduced. The cost of travel, including time, is considered. Regardless of how you come together as a team, group, or committee, you’ll need to define your purpose in advance with an agenda.[9] The main parts of an agenda for a standard meeting are listed in Table 15.2 “Meeting Agenda Elements”.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Title Header | Title, time, date, location, phone number, e-mail contact, and any other information necessary to get all participants together. |
| Participants | Expected participants |
| Subject Line | Purpose statement |
| Call to Order | Who will call the meeting to order? |
| Introductions | If everyone is new, this is optional. If even one person is new, everyone should briefly introduce themselves with their name and respective roles. |
| Roll Call | This may quietly take place while introductions are made. |
| Reading of the minutes | Notes from the last meeting are read (if applicable) with an opportunity to correct. These are often sent out before the meeting so participants have the opportunity to review them and note any needed corrections. |
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Old Business | List any unresolved issues from last time or issues that were “tabled,” or left until this meeting. |
| New Business | This is a list of items for discussion and action. |
| Reports | This is optional and applies if there are subcommittees or groups working on specific, individual action items that require reports to the group or committee. |
| Good of the Order | This is the time for people to offer any news that relates to the topic of the meeting that was otherwise not shared or discussed. |
| Adjournment | Note the time, date, and place of the meeting, time of adjournment, and indicate when the next meeting is scheduled. |
Strategies for Effective Meetings
You want an efficient and effective meeting, but recognize that group communication by definition can be chaotic and unpredictable. To stay on track, consider the following strategies:
- Send out the last meeting’s minutes one week before the next meeting.
- Send out the agenda for the current meeting at least one week in advance.
- Send out reminders for the meeting the day before and the day of the meeting.
- Schedule the meeting in Google Calendar, Outlook, or another similar program that sends automatic reminders to all participants.
- Start and end your meetings on time.
- Make sure the participants know their role and requirements prior to the meeting.
- Make sure all participants know one another before the discussion starts.
- Formal communication styles and reference to the agenda can help reinforce the time frame and tasks.
- Follow Robert’s Rules of Order when applicable, or at least be familiar with them.
- Make sure notes taken at the meeting are legible and can be converted to minutes for distribution later.
- Keep the discussion on track, and if you’re the chair, or leader of a meeting, don’t hesitate to restate a point to interject and redirect the attention back to the next agenda point.
- If you’re the chair, draw a clear distinction between on-topic discussions and those that are more personal, individual, or off-topic.
- Communicate your respect and appreciation for everyone’s time and effort.
- Clearly communicate the time, date, and location or means of contact for the next meeting.
Case Connection: Twenty-Two Minutes at 4:00 p.m. — Flax Gavels at 4:22
The board meeting at 4:00 p.m. on Gala Day is a stress test of every strategy on the list above. Flax has agreed to chair so Ravenna can stay in the office finishing the budget. Flax has the agenda, the minutes from the March meeting, and a hard stop at 4:22 because Tai Pahl-Ramachandran arrives at 4:30. She gavels in at 4:02 (start on time), reads the March minutes from a printout already distributed (no surprises), moves through old business in three minutes (the Wurlitzer organ blower repair, approved), moves through new business in eight minutes (gala-night staffing, Yusuf video logistics, Pri’s substitute keynote — ratified), takes one report (the treasurer, two minutes), opens Good of the Order for ninety seconds (Dr. Lemuel Ostrowski-Vianello announces his granddaughter is on her way from Munising), and adjourns at 4:22 on the dot. The board hates her for one day. They love her for ten years. The pavilion door opens at 4:24 and Tai walks in at 4:30.
Common Mistake: Treating “Good of the Order” as a Free-For-All
Of all the agenda items, “Good of the Order” is the one that most often blows a meeting past its scheduled end. The temptation, especially in volunteer organizations and community boards, is to let it become an open-mic session for grievances, side projects, and announcements that should have been emails. The fix is not to delete it — it serves a real social function — but to time-box it. Tell the group up front: “Good of the Order is 90 seconds total tonight, one announcement per person, please raise your hand.” Most people will not raise their hand; the people who do will land their announcements in fifteen seconds. The chair who lets Good of the Order eat twelve minutes is the chair whose meetings start to lose attendance after the third month.
Key Takeaways
Exercises
- Create a sample agenda for a business meeting to discuss the quarterly sales report and results from the latest marketing campaign. Decide what information is needed, and what position might typically be expected to produce that information. Note in your agenda all the elements listed above, even if some elements (such as “good of the order”) only serve as a placeholder for the discussion that will take place.
- Write a brief description of a meeting you recently attended and indicate one way you perceived it as being effective. Compare with classmates.
- Write a brief description of a meeting you recently attended and indicate one way you perceived it as being ineffective. Compare with classmates.
15.4 Celebrations: Toasts and Roasts
Learning Objectives
- Discuss the role, function, and importance of a toast as a ritual of group recognition.
- Discuss the elements of an effective toast, including length, focus, and posture.
- Distinguish a toast from a roast, and recognize when each is appropriate.
Toasts are formal expressions of goodwill, appreciation, or calls for group attention to an issue or person in a public setting, often followed by synchronous consumption of beverages. Examples often include a toast at a wedding, congratulating the couple, toasts at a bar after a tournament win to congratulate the team or an individual player, or a general toast to health for everyone on a holiday or other special occasion.
Toasts serve to unify the group, acknowledge a person or event, mark a special occasion, or encourage the consumption of alcohol. These can range from serious to silly, but are normally words that point out something that’s commonly known. For example, a toast to the most valuable player in a game may serve to publicly acknowledge them for achievements that are already known by the community. The verbal recognition, followed by ritualistic drinking, serves as a public acknowledgement. Belonging is a basic human need that requires reinforcement, and a toast can be characterized as a reinforcement ritual, acknowledging respect for the individual or team, and also reinforcing group affiliation, common symbols and terms, beliefs and values, goals and aspirations.[10]
Toasts, while common in many societies, are relatively rare in daily life. They’re usually associated with informal and formal gatherings of the group, team, or community. Since you may only perform a couple of toasts in your lifetime, you no doubt want to get them right the first time. We’ll address toasts and one variation in particular, the roast.
Proposing a Toast
One proposes a toast, rather than “making” a toast or simply “toasting,” because for it to truly be a toast, everyone in the group, team, or community must participate. If you propose a toast to someone and no one responds, even if you raise your glass to them as a nonverbal sign of respect and take a sip, it doesn’t count as a toast. Only the community can publicly acknowledge someone with a toast, but it takes an individual to make the proposition.
Sometimes the person who’s supposed to make that proposition is already known by function or role. The best man and maid of honor at a wedding, the host of a party, and the highest-ranking manager at a business meal are common roles that are associated with ritualistic toasts.
Standing with proper posture to address the group is normally associated with acts of public speaking, including toasts. If you’re understood to be a person who will be proposing a toast, you may not need to say anything to get the group’s attention. As you raise your glass, the room will grow quiet in anticipation of your words. If the group doesn’t expect you to propose a toast, you may need to say, “May I propose a toast?” in a voice above the level of the group. Nonverbal displays also work to capture attention, such as standing on a chair. While that may be nonstandard, your context will give you clues about how best to focus attention.[11] Striking a glass with a spoon to produce a ring, while common, is sometimes considered less than educated and a poor reflection of etiquette. The group norms determine what’s expected and accepted, and it may be a custom that’s regarded as normal. Etiquette is a conventional social custom or rule for behavior, but social customs and rules for behavior vary across communities and cultures.
You’ll raise your glass, raise your voice, and make a brief statement complimenting the person being honored. Your toast should be short. If you write it out in advance, use thirty words as your upper limit. Common mistakes are for toast-givers to ramble on too long and to talk about themselves instead of the honoree. The toast isn’t as much about the words you use, though they carry weight and importance, but it’s about the toast ritual as a group expression of acknowledgement and respect. People then raise their glasses to indicate agreement, often repeating “hear, hear!” or a word or phrase from the toast, such as “to success!” They then sip from their cup, possibly touching glasses first.
One common toast that always serves to unify the group is the toast to health. Proposing a toast to health is common, well understood, and serves both the role and function of a toast. “Live long and prosper” is a common variation of “to your health” in English. Table 15.3 “Toasts to Health” lists toasts to health in other languages.
| Language | Toast |
|---|---|
| Chinese | Wen lie |
| French | A votre santé |
| Gaelic | Sláinte |
| German | Zum Wohl |
| Greek | Stin ygia sou |
| Hebrew | L’chiam |
| Italian | Alla salute |
| Japanese | Kanpai |
| Polish | Na zdrowie |
| Portuguese | Saúde |
| Spanish | Salud |
Sometimes, the best man at a wedding will be expected to tell a short story as part of their toast. A common story is how the couple met from the best man’s perspective. While this may be your choice, remember to keep it quite brief, positive, and focused on the honorees, not on yourself. Important occasions require you to play your part like everyone else, and your role is to focus attention on the individual, team, couple, or group as you honor them.
Alcohol isn’t a requirement for a toast, nor is draining one’s glass. The beverage and the quantity to be swallowed are a reflection of group norms and customs. Often, alternatives, such as nonalcoholic sparkling cider, are served. If you’re expected to perform a toast, one that requires tact, grace, and a clear presence of mind, you should refrain from drinking alcohol until after you’ve completed your obligation. Your role has responsibilities, and you have a duty to perform.
Roasts
Roasts are public proclamations that ridicule or criticize someone to honor them. That may sound awkward at first, but consider the targets most commonly associated with roasts: those in positions of power or prestige. Knocking someone off their pedestal is a special delight for the group or community, but it requires special care and attention to social dynamics, sensitivities, rank, and roles.
An everyday context for a round of roasts, or a series of public statements intended to poke fun at someone, is at a retirement party. Individuals in the room tell brief stories that may have some basis in truth, but which, through word choice and clear communication of exaggeration, allow everyone to look back upon the episode with light humor and laughter. Time has passed, and the absurd is worthy of group laughter.
A roast isn’t an opportunity to say something mean. If you don’t think the target will laugh it off, don’t say it. Roasts can hurt feelings, and that misses the point. A roast honors someone in a position of power or influence by allowing them to demonstrate they can take a joke at their own expense gracefully. It’s not intended to do harm to the individual or create divisions in the community. Ritual public speaking is supposed to unify groups, teams, and communities, and not create division or rival internal groups.
Case Connection: The Toast to Edith at 7:30 p.m.
At 7:30 p.m. on Gala night, after Clementine has ridden Edith and Yusuf’s hospital-room video has played, Ravenna will lift a glass of nonalcoholic sparkling cider in front of 287 people and propose a toast. The toast will be exactly twenty-eight words, written that morning at 6:14 a.m. on the back of the same gala program that holds Flax’s WLUC sound bite: “To Edith, who waited seventy-eight years. To Noah’s drawknife. To Pri, who picked it up. To Yusuf, and to his mother Margaret. Sláinte.” Notice what is and is not in the toast. The honorees are named (a wooden giraffe, a tool, an apprentice, a recipient, a mother). The proposer (Ravenna) is not named. The toast lands on a single Gaelic word from Table 15.3 — chosen because the Iron Lantern’s first night watchman in 1913 was a Cornish-Irish ironworker named Sennan Trevithick, and the toast is, in part, to him too. Ravenna does not drink until the room responds.
Reflection Write: Your 30-Word Toast
Take five minutes. Pick a real person in your life — a colleague, a teammate, a family member, or a friend — whom you would publicly recognize if you had the chance. Write a thirty-word toast (count them) that names the person, names what they did, and lands on a single concrete image, gesture, or word. Read it aloud to yourself once. Then cross out any word that does not earn its place. Your goal is not to write the most beautiful toast — it is to write a toast that fits in your mouth and in the room’s attention span. If you cannot read it without stumbling, it is too long or too clever. Keep cutting until you can.
Key Takeaways
Exercises
- You’re called upon to propose a toast to your team leader after your group has just completed a large contract. Work on this project wasn’t always easy, but now is the time for celebration and recognition. Write a sample toast in no more than thirty words. Compare your results with your classmates.
- What should someone propose a toast to? How should they propose it? Write your response and include an example. Compare with classmates.
- If you were the subject of a roast, what would you feel comfortable having people say, do, or show to make fun of you in public? Write your response and include an example. Compare with classmates.
15.5 Media Interviews
Learning Objectives
- Discuss the purpose of the media interview and how it differs from an informational interview.
- Understand how to prepare for the media interview by analyzing topic, time, format, and background.
- Recognize the three hallmark rules of interviews and apply them to spontaneous and scheduled situations.
At some point in your business career, a representative of the media will likely interview you. It may be a camera and microphone in your face as you leave a building, or a scheduled interview where you have an opportunity to prepare. A press interview is both a challenge and an opportunity. Like a speech, it may make you nervous, but you have the advantage of being the center of attention and having the chance to have your say. This chapter addresses the basics for preparing and participating in a press interview.
A media interview is a discussion involving questions and answers for broadcast. It’s distinct from an informational interview, where you might be asked questions to learn background on a story, but you’ll still need to observe the three hallmark rules of interviews:[12]
- Anything you say can and often will be used against you.
- Never say anything you wouldn’t feel comfortable hearing quoted out of context on the evening news.
- Be prepared for the unexpected as well as the expected.
At first, those rules may sound extreme, but let’s examine them in the context of today’s media realities. In a press interview setting, you’ll be recorded in some fashion, whether audio, video, or handwritten notes on a reporter’s notepad. With all the probability for errors and misinterpretation, you want your words and gestures to project the best possible image to the press. There was a time when news programs didn’t have to justify themselves with advertising dollars, but today all news is news entertainment and has to pay its own way. That means your interview will be used to attract viewers. You also have to consider the possibility that the person interviewing you isn’t a trained professional journalist, but rather an aspiring actor or writer who happened to land a job with the media. From their perspective, your quote in an audio, video, or print content package is dinner. It may also serve the public good, and inform, or highlight an important cause, but news has a bottom line just like business.
Because of these factors, you need to be proactive in seeing the press interview as part of the overall spectacle that is the media, devoted to revenue. The six-second quote that’s taken from the interview may not represent the tone, range, or even substance of your comments, but it will have been chosen to grab attention. It will also go viral if it catches on. Your interviewer may ask you a question that’s off-the-wall, inappropriate, outside the scope of the interview, or unusual, just to catch you off guard and get that attention-worthy quote. Independent journalism with a nonprofit, inform-the-public orientation still exists in some forms, but even those media outlets have to support themselves with an audience. So, consider your role in the interview: to provide information and represent your business or organization with honor and respect. In sports, business, and press interviews, a good defense is required.
That said, a press interview is a positive opportunity, whether it’s planned or catches you off guard in public. You’re the focus of the interview, and many people believe that if you’re on television, for example, that you have something to say, that you have special insight, or that you’re different from the viewing audience. That can give you an edge of credibility that can serve your business or company as you share your knowledge and experience.
When asked to give an interview, before you agree, learn as much as you can about the topic, the timing, the format, and the background. Table 15.4 “Interview Preparation Factors” summarizes how to approach these factors.
| Factor | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Topic | What will be the range or scope of the interview? How can you prepare yourself so you’re better able to address specific questions? Ask for the list of questions in advance, and anticipate that you’ll be asked questions that aren’t listed. Prepare for the unexpected, and you won’t be caught off guard. |
| Time | What’s the time frame or limit? A 15-minute interview may not require as much depth as one that lasts an hour or more. |
| Format | How will you be interviewed? Will it be through audio or video, over the Internet, over the telephone, or in person? |
| Background | What’s the backstory on the interview? Is there a specific issue or incident? Is there a known agenda? Why is the interview now and not earlier or not at all? Why is it important? |
These four areas will serve you well as you begin to define the range and content of the interview for yourself. You’ll also need to pay attention to the setting and scene, how you want to present yourself (dress or suit?), and how well you answer anticipated questions. Mock interviews with colleagues can help, and a comprehensive knowledge of your talking points is essential.
You want to be well-rested, if at all possible, on the day of the interview. With a clear mind, you’ll be agile and responsive, and you’ll be able to present yourself well. You’ll be calm in the knowledge of your preparation, and not be thrown if an unexpected question comes your way. You’ll be ready on time, understanding that most journalists have to package the story as quickly as possible, demonstrating respect for the interviewer. You’ll also know that it’s not just about what you say but how you say it. Audiences respond to emotional cues, and you want to project an image of credibility and integrity. You’ll anticipate the question-and-answer pattern and limit your responses to ones that are clear and concise. You’ll have visual aids ready if needed to make a point.
Naturally, however, you may not have the luxury of time to prepare. Press interviews are often requested at the last minute, and you may not be the first person this reporter asked for an interview that day. They have a story in mind, and they’re looking for you to be part of that story. If the opportunity to be interviewed arises on the spur of the moment, you’ll need to make a quick judgment on whether to agree or decline. Your decision will rest on a multitude of factors, such as how much you know about the topic, whether someone else in your organization is better qualified to answer, whether your employer would appreciate your agreeing to speak to the media, and so on. If something newsworthy occurs at your workplace, start thinking about how you’d make this decision before you’re put on the spot. Finally, if the topic of the media inquiry isn’t time urgent, remember that you can always ask to postpone the interview to allow time to prepare.
Case Connection: Tai Pahl-Ramachandran and the Question Never Asked
Map Ravenna’s 4:30 p.m. interview against Table 15.4. Topic: the carousel restoration, but really the larger question Tai is circling — what does it mean for a Rust Belt town to spend $2.4 million restoring 38 wooden animals when the school district is closing two elementary schools? Ravenna read four of Tai’s prior pieces and knows the question is coming. Time: thirty minutes, hard stop, because Tai has a 6:00 p.m. flight back to Detroit. Format: in person, in the pavilion, recording on Tai’s phone, with Tai’s notebook open. Background: Tai has interviewed every carousel restorer in the Great Lakes region, knows this beat cold, and has a reputation for the patient question that arrives at minute twenty-three. Flax’s reframe — walk Tai around for ten minutes saying only the names, then ask Tai about her own hardest cut sentence — does not dodge the school-closures question. It buys Ravenna minute eleven through minute twenty-three, during which Tai is no longer interviewing a defensive executive director but talking with someone who has read her work carefully. When the school-closures question comes at minute twenty-five, Ravenna will answer it honestly, without flinching, because by then Tai is willing to print the honest answer.
Common Mistake: Fighting the Premise of the Question
The most common rookie move in a media interview is to push back against the framing of a question — “well, that’s not really the right way to look at it” — before answering. The reporter hears defensiveness, the audience hears defensiveness, and the six seconds that get used in the broadcast are the six seconds where you sounded defensive. A better move: answer the question that was asked, briefly and honestly, and then add the framing you wish the reporter had used. “Yes, the budget is $2.4 million, and the district closed two schools last year. Here is the part of the story I think gets missed: every dollar of that $2.4 million came from a foundation that does not fund K–12 operating budgets, and every dollar of the school closures came from a state aid formula that does not fund cultural restoration. They are two separate funding streams that look like one moral choice on a balance sheet but are not.” That answer concedes the premise where it is true, redirects where it is not, and takes about thirty seconds. The reporter gets a usable quote either way; you get to choose which one.
Key Takeaways
Exercises
- How does the press interview serve the business or organization? List two ways and provide examples. Discuss your ideas with classmates.
- Consider the following scenario. Your large company is opening a new office in a new town, and you’ve been designated to be part of the team that will be on the front lines. You want to establish goodwill, but also recognize that, being an outsider, you and your company may not be welcomed with open arms by the local business community. Your company produces a product and provides a service (feel free to choose; a coffee shop for example) that’s currently offered in the town, but your organization perceives room for market growth as well as market share. Describe how you’d handle relations with the local media. Compare your ideas with those of a classmate.
- Form a team of interviewees and interviewers. Take ten-minute turns, with one person playing the role of interviewee and the other playing the interviewer. Record your exchange and post as a file attachment in your class (if applicable), or post to YouTube or a similar Web hosting site and post the link. Write a report of your experience in no less than two hundred words.
- Observe a press interview. How do they take turns? Does the interviewee ever look nervous? What could they have done to improve their performance? Write a brief suggestion and provide the link to the interview.
- Find a sample press interview on a video website such as YouTube and evaluate it based on the guidelines in this chapter. Was it effective? Why or why not? Present your findings to the class.
- Find at least one example of an interview gone bad. It may involve a misquotation, expressions of frustration or anger, or even an interview cut short. What happened? Provide a summary and provide the link to the interview.
15.6 Introducing a Speaker
Learning Objectives
- Understand how to introduce a speaker courteously and professionally in thirty to ninety seconds.
- Establish a speaker’s credibility without resorting to a laundry-list recitation of credentials.
- Identify the one unusual or specific detail that will do more introductory work than a paragraph of general praise.
A speaker introduction involves establishing the person’s credibility, motivating audience interest, and saying what the speaker couldn’t say. Not many speakers will jump to the stage and share their list of accomplishments, as this would appear arrogant and could quickly turn off an audience. At the same time, if you can share that they’ve turned two companies around and would like to share lessons learned, your audience may see the value in giving their attention. Being designated to introduce a speaker is an honor and an important duty that requires planning and preparation.
Scot Ober states, “Remarks should be directed at welcoming the speaker and establishing his or her qualifications to speak on the topic.”[13] You may start with a quote from their work, or a quote from a publication or colleague describing them. You may decide to use humor. All these options are available, but whatever you choose, let respect and dignity be your overriding goal. The function and role of the introduction is to focus the spotlight squarely on the speaker. You shouldn’t distract the audience from that task with your dress, gestures, antics, or by talking about yourself.
The person you’re introducing may already be well known to the audience, but you can always find some new information to share. You may need to consider the unusual, or the little-known, when introducing someone famous. You may also consider mentioning their most recent work or activity as it relates to the topic of the presentation. Avoid the “laundry list” approach to a summary of their education and experience, as this may bore the audience. Instead, focus on something specific and relevant. Your range of options is almost limitless, but your time frame and overall function aren’t. You need to be brief and establish the speaker’s credibility while motivating interest.
According to Bonnie Devet, “Performing the role of introducer also reinforces the rhetorical principles seminal to any business writing course: the need for ethos (credibility of both speakers and introducers), for audience-based discourse, and for accuracy.”[14] Think of an introduction as a speech in miniature. Your purpose is to inform, your time frame is (typically) one to three minutes, and your specific purpose is to notify the audience of the speaker’s qualifications, credibility, and enthusiasm for the topic they’ll cover.
Case Connection: How Ravenna Introduces Pri — The Drawknife Sentence
At 6:55 p.m., Ravenna will step to the microphone in the pavilion to introduce Priamos Stavropoulos-Hennessey — her volunteer coordinator, thirty-one years old, a man who for most of the audience is “the guy in the T-shirt moving the sawhorses.” She has ninety seconds, because the mayor must be gone by 7:45, because Clementine must ride at 7:00, and because any longer would wobble the timeline. Ravenna’s introduction will not list Pri’s credentials. It will say: “Pri Stavropoulos-Hennessey apprenticed for two summers, beginning at age nineteen, under Noah Blackfeather — the man who originally carved Edith’s replacement glass eye in 1962 after she was vandalized at Kennywood. Noah is Yusuf’s grandfather. Pri is the last person Noah taught before Noah’s hands went. Tonight, in place of our scheduled keynote, Pri will tell you what Noah told him about making an animal look like it wants to be ridden. Please welcome him.” That is the introduction. It is ninety-one words. It names one credential — apprenticeship with Noah Blackfeather — that the audience will care about because Ravenna has spent the preceding ninety seconds making them care. It does not list that Pri has a B.F.A. from Kendall College of Art and Design, or that he worked for three years restoring merry-go-round animals at the Herschell Carrousel Factory Museum in North Tonawanda. Those facts are true, and they are irrelevant. The drawknife sentence is what the audience will remember.
Key Takeaways
Exercises
- Introduce a classmate who’s about to present a report, document, or speech to the class. You can draw information from the web (Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, X, etc.), the person’s résumé, or even a personal interview. You’ll need to prepare your introduction in advance, and you may want to consider incorporating a quote from the document they’ll discuss. Keep your remarks to thirty seconds and your written introduction to no more than a hundred words.
- Watch an introduction of a speaker—televised award ceremonies offer plenty of examples—and note one example that you consider effective, and one that you consider ineffective. Explain why you rated them this way. Report your response and the web links.
- List five facts, points, or things about yourself and your career that you’d want an audience to know. Post your results and compare with classmates.
15.7 Presenting or Accepting an Award
Learning Objectives
- Discuss the purpose of an award as a public act of recognition and belonging.
- Describe the process of presenting an award using either the surprise or direct approach.
- Describe the process of accepting an award with grace, gratitude, and brevity.
- Recognize when an acceptance speech is also a moment of ethical leadership — and act accordingly.
There’s nothing more gratifying than recognition from your peers and colleagues for a job well done. We all strive for acceptance, and recognition is a reflection of belonging, a basic human need.[15] In this section, we’ll discuss how to present or accept an award tactfully, graciously, and professionally.
First, make sure that you have all the information correct before you get up to speak: the honoree’s correct name and how it’s pronounced, the correct title of the award, and the details about the honoree’s accomplishments that you’re about to share. The spotlight will be on you, and your accurate delivery will be crucial to the happiness of the occasion.
When presenting an award, the key is to focus attention on the honor and the person receiving it, not on yourself. You may have been part of the committee that chose the winner, or involved in some other way, but your role should never upstage that of the person being honored.
You can focus the attention on the recipient in two ways: surprise or direct acknowledgement. In the surprise approach, you mention characteristics of the person receiving the award without initially mentioning their name, allowing the audience to start guessing who it might be. You may mention a list of accomplishments or perhaps a positive story. With the surprise approach, you share the information that’s sure to reveal the recipient’s identity right before you present the award.
You may prefer, however, a direct acknowledgement of the honoree’s performance or service and announce their name. The direct acknowledgement approach is typically followed by the reasons for choosing this person to receive the award, or including their past accomplishments. This direct strategy may be preferred if the audience isn’t familiar with the recipient.
Table 15.5 “Presenting an Award” summarizes the process of presenting an award.
| Steps | Presentation Behavior |
|---|---|
| Preparation | Verify the recipient’s name, the correct title of the award, and details about the recipient. |
| Focus | Keep the focus on the honoree, not on yourself or the awards committee. |
| Surprise Approach | Build suspense by listing the winner’s accomplishments from general to more and more specific; end by disclosing a unique accomplishment that identifies the winner, and finally announcing their name. |
| Direct Approach | Announce the award winner and follow with a list of their accomplishments. |
| Exit | Step aside and let the honoree have the spotlight. |
If you’re the award recipient, be aware that the acceptance of an award often provides a moment of influence on the audience that can serve to advance your position or cause. Use of the limelight is an important skill, and much like any speech or presentation, it requires planning and preparation. You don’t want to be caught speechless, and you want to project a professional presence that corresponds to the award or recognition.
If you know you’re being considered for an award, first consider what the award recognizes within your professional community. An award is a symbol of approval, recognition, or distinction that honors the recipient in public. As the recipient, it’s your role to convey recognition of that honor with your gracious acceptance.
Perhaps you’ve seen an awards ceremony on television, where a producer, composer, actor, or musician has received public recognition. Sometimes, the acceptance unifies the community and serves as an inspiration to others. Other times, the recipient stumbles, talks as fast as they can to list all the people who helped them reach their goal (often forgetting several, which can hurt feelings), or they use the spotlight to address an unrelated issue, like a political protest. They may mumble, and their nervousness may be so obvious that it impacts their credibility. Accepting an award is an honor, an opportunity, and a challenge.
The first step in accepting an award is to say thank you. You can connect with the audience with your heartfelt emotional displays and enthusiasm. Raised arms, clasped hands, and a bow are universal symbols of respect and gratitude. Note that rambunctious displays of emotion, such as jumping up and down or large, sweeping gestures, are better left for the athletic fields. An award ceremony is a formal event, and your professionalism will be on display for all to see.
Next, you should consider giving credit where credit is due, noting its relevance to your field or community. If you name one person, you must ensure that no one is left out, or you risk hurting feelings and perhaps even making professional enemies. If you confine your credit list to a couple of key people, it’s wise to extend the credit beyond the individual mentions by saying something like, “There are so many people who made this possible. Thank you all!” You should link your response to the award organization and your field, industry, or business. Don’t apologize or use terms that can be interpreted as negative. The acceptance of an award is a joyous, uplifting affair, and your role is to maintain and perpetuate that perception.
You may also consider linking your award to a motivational anecdote. A brief, personal story about how a teacher or neighbor in your community motivated you to do better than you thought you could and how you hope this can serve to motivate up-and-coming members to strive for their very best can often stimulate an audience. Don’t exaggerate or stretch the story. The simple facts speak for themselves, and the award serves as a powerful visual aid.
Say “thank you again” as you leave the stage, facilitating the transition to the next part of the ceremony while acknowledging the honor. You may need to take note where previous recipients have exited the stage to proceed without error, or return to your seat. Your brief comments, combined with a graceful entrance and exit, will communicate professionalism. Table 15.6 “Accepting an Award” summarizes the steps we’ve outlined.
| Step | Behavior |
|---|---|
| Acceptance | Say “thank you.” |
| Relevance | Indicate where credit is due, what the award means to you, and how it relates to the awarding organization or your community. |
| Acknowledgment | Show your honor with dignity and respect as you say “thank you” again and exit the stage. |
Case Connection: Yusuf’s Acceptance from Room 312 in Sault Ste. Marie
Yusuf Blackfeather-Ingalls was scheduled to accept the Iron Lantern’s inaugural Craft & Continuity Award at 7:15 p.m. in person. At 3:40 a.m., his mother Margaret — ninety-four, Pottawatomie, the woman who had kept Noah Blackfeather’s drawknife in her kitchen drawer for thirty-one years after he died — was admitted to Chippewa County War Memorial Hospital in Sault Ste. Marie with a minor stroke. Yusuf drove through the night. By 7:00 a.m. the neurologist said Margaret would recover but that Yusuf needed to stay through the weekend. Flax and Ravenna had two choices: accept the award on his behalf, which would be competent and flat; or ask Yusuf to record a ninety-second video on his phone from Room 312. They chose the video. At 2:11 p.m., Yusuf sat in a chair next to his mother’s bed, in scrubs-green afternoon light, and recorded this: thirty seconds of thank-you (to the Society, to Flax, to the 1947 flatcar, to Eugene Abney); thirty seconds of credit (to his grandfather Noah, to his mother Margaret, by name, holding up Noah’s drawknife from Margaret’s kitchen drawer); and thirty seconds of motivational anecdote, in which he told a sixty-year-old story about Noah carving a jackrabbit for the Kennywood carousel’s great-granddaughter of the original owner. The video ran on the pavilion screen at 7:15 p.m. At the thirty-second credit mark, when Yusuf said “my mother Margaret,” Margaret’s breathing was audible on the recording. The room got very quiet. Table 15.6 does the work: acceptance, relevance, acknowledgment, in ninety seconds, from a hospital chair, without rambling, without apologizing for absence, without upstaging the honor or the ceremony.
Ethical Consideration: When the Spotlight Is Louder Than the Award
An acceptance speech is a borrowed microphone. The audience has granted you ninety seconds of disproportionate attention because they have agreed, collectively, that your work deserves recognition. That is a loan, not a gift — and it comes with an ethical weight that the room will feel even if no one can articulate it. You can spend those ninety seconds on gratitude, credit, and a single anchoring story. You can also spend them on a political cause, a grievance, or a promotion of your next project. The ethical question is not whether you are allowed to do the second thing. You are. The ethical question is whether what you have to say is worth the implicit trade: the audience loaned you attention for Purpose A and you spent it on Purpose B. Sometimes the trade is worth making — when the cause is urgent, when the platform is rare, when the connection to the award is honest. Sometimes it is not. The test is whether, two years later, the people in that room will remember your acceptance as generous or as a bait-and-switch. Yusuf’s video does not fail this test. It spends the borrowed microphone on the thing the audience came to hear, in the voice of the person they came to hear it from. It also, by showing Margaret in the bed, does a second thing — it teaches the audience what “Craft & Continuity” means — without announcing that it is doing so. That is the ethical use of a spotlight.
Key Takeaways
Exercises
- Who needs to be prepared to present an award in a business and why? Discuss your ideas with the class.
- This can be a fun two-minute oral communication exercise. In the exercise, you’ll alternate between the role of the award announcer and the recipient. You’ll be paired up into teams where you’ll need to create a business or industry award, prepare a brief script and notes on acceptance, and then demonstrate your results for your class. The introduction of the speaker should last no more than thirty seconds, and the acceptance should also be completed in less than a minute. If you’re not in class, you may be assigned a particular role that fits your situation. Record your performance and post it in class.
- Find one example of an award acceptance speech that you perceive as particularly effective. Indicate why and share the link. Compare with your classmates.
- Find one example of an award acceptance speech that you perceive as particularly ineffective. Indicate why and share the link. Compare with classmates.
15.8 Serving as Master of Ceremonies
Learning Objectives
- Discuss the role of the master of ceremonies as the “conductor” of a ritual gathering.
- Understand the responsibilities of the master of ceremonies, including agenda stewardship, transition management, and time discipline.
- Use the “time as transition” technique to build schedule elasticity into a ceremony without telling the audience you are doing so.
A master of ceremonies is the conductor of ritual gatherings. The master of ceremonies (or MC for short, often written as “emcee”) has the poise and stage presence to start, conduct, and conclude a formal ceremony for a group or community. Typically, emcees will be full members of the community, recognized for their credibility, integrity, service, and sense of humor. The emcee sets the intellectual and emotional tone for the event.
At a conference or other business function, the master of ceremonies is often the first person to take the stage and the last one to leave it. They come completely prepared to make sure the agenda is followed, nothing is forgotten, all transitions go smoothly, and the event starts and ends on time. While many business conferences aren’t humorous affairs, a sense of humor can go a long way in helping defuse tension when unavoidable delays, problems, or errors occur. The emcee is required to help an unprepared speaker accept an award, move to their conclusion, and exit the stage. While a shepherd’s crook might seem like an attractive tool for that role, often eye contact and a nonverbal gesture, such as a couple of steps toward the podium, will do the trick. If not, a gentle hand on a shoulder might be required, or even an interjected word about the schedule. The speaker knows and the audience expects the master of ceremonies to keep the ceremony on track with honor and respect.
Suppose you’re assigned to act as emcee for an event. In that case, you should have an agenda that includes all the components of the event, from start to finish, with estimations of time, roles, functions, and notes concerning responsibility. If this isn’t provided for you, you’ll need to compile it yourself. In either case, make sure the agenda is available far enough in advance that you can study it, become familiar with the key components and transitions, and anticipate any challenges that are likely to arise. If possible, you should also communicate with the people who will be joining you on stage: featured speakers, award presenters, and the like. You need to confirm their availability and understanding of their roles, with special attention to reinforcing time commitments.
One trick of the trade is to incorporate time as transitions. If you have a one-hour ceremony involving several awards and one featured speaker, indicate on the agenda that the speaker has seven minutes for their presentation. Communicate this to them before the event so they can prepare their remarks within this timeframe. Then budget three minutes as a transition to the next event. It won’t take you three minutes to make the transition, but by building this time window into the schedule, you allow for a degree of overlap that may be required to keep the event on track in case the speaker speaks for nine minutes.
It’s especially important to observe the schedule if you’re emceeing a multipart event with breakout sessions and/or segments on different topics of interest to various audiences. Imagine an all-day conference for which some attendees registered only for the afternoon session and some only for the morning. Now, imagine that the morning speaker was delayed due to a travel mishap. As emcee, would you decide to postpone the morning topic and have the afternoon speaker give their presentation in the morning? If so, you’d need to be prepared to give refunds to afternoon attendees who missed the speaker they signed up to hear—and even if their registration fees were refunded, they might still be upset about having spent time and money traveling to the event. The solution? Have a “Plan B,” such as a substitute speaker who’s qualified to present on the topic of the “top billed” speaker.
A professional master of ceremonies is expected to keep the event running on time while “making it look easy.” The audience will appreciate the seamless progression as the event proceeds.
Case Connection: 6:30 p.m. — “Touch Edith First” — Flax’s Rule for Ravenna
At 1:30 a.m., Flax gave Ravenna the only emcee rule she actually needed for the Grand Reopening Gala: “Before you say a word from the podium, walk to Edith and put your hand on her neck. Don’t tell the audience you are doing it. Just do it. Then go to the microphone.” Flax was not being sentimental. She was solving three problems at once. First, Ravenna would be running on four hours of sleep and adrenaline; the physical act of touching the carving would slow her breathing before she ever reached the mic. Second, the audience — 287 people by 6:38 p.m. — would see, without being told, that the emcee had entered the room through the object the room was about to celebrate; that visual would do the work of two paragraphs of framing. Third, any speaker Ravenna had to cut off later in the evening would be cut off by the same woman the audience had just watched put her hand on a seventy-eight-year-old giraffe, which is a different kind of authority than standing behind a podium. The emcee’s job, in Flax’s view, is not to “run” the event — the event runs itself if the preparation is right — the emcee’s job is to carry the audience’s attention from one thing to the next without letting the attention fall. Touching Edith at 6:30 p.m. is the first transition of the night, and Ravenna has not said a word yet.
Pro Tip: Build the Three-Minute Buffer — and Then Don’t Use It
The “time as transition” trick is easy to misunderstand. It does not mean the emcee should pad the schedule with three minutes of dead time between every item. Dead time is what audiences remember as “that event dragged.” The three-minute buffer is elasticity, not filler — it lives in the schedule as a cushion the emcee draws on only when a speaker runs long, a video fails to cue, or a recipient breaks down crying and needs a moment. If the night goes perfectly, you use the three minutes to move the physical podium, refill a water glass, or simply give the audience thirty seconds of quiet before the next item lands. What you don’t do is announce “we have three minutes before the next speaker” and then fill it. The moment the audience realizes you are killing time, you have taught them to disengage. Keep the buffer invisible. Use it only when you need it. Then the audience remembers a ceremony that felt tight, even though it had ten minutes of slack built into it.
Key Takeaways
Exercises
- Create a sample awards ceremony that incorporates the acceptance speech assignment as well as the introduction of a speaker assignment. This assignment then combines three functions into one, where each person plays their role. One person will need to serve as master of ceremonies. If the class is large enough, you may be able to subdivide into groups and hold separate ceremonies in more than one classroom. Planning and preparing a ceremony takes time and attention to detail. It also never goes as planned. Remain calm and relaxed as you perform your awards ceremony.
- Evaluate a master of ceremonies and post your results. Share and compare with classmates.
15.9 Viral Messages
Learning Objectives
- Discuss the elements of viral messages — emotional appeal, trigger, and relevance.
- Understand strategies to develop effective viral messages that mobilize communities rather than merely entertain them.
- Distinguish between a message that goes viral by accident and one that is designed, released, and stewarded.
What was once called “word of mouth” advertising has gone viral with the introduction of social marketing via the Internet. What was once called a “telephone chain,” where one person called another to pass along news or a request in a linear model, has now gone global. One tweet from Twitter gets passed along, and the message is transmitted exponentially. The post on the Facebook page is seen before the nightly news on television. Text messages are often real-time. Radio once beat print media to the news, and then television trumped both. Now, person-to-person, computer-mediated communication trumps them all at the speed of light—if the message is attractive, relevant, dramatic, sudden, or novel. If no one bothers to pass along the message, or the tweet isn’t very interesting, it will get lost in the noise. What, then, makes a communication message viral?
Let’s look at the June 2009 death of Michael Jackson for an example of a viral message and see what we can learn. According to Jocelyn Noveck, news of his death spread via Twitter, text messages, and Facebook before the traditional media could get the message out. People knew about the 911 call from Jackson’s home before it hit the mainstream media. By the time the story broke, it was already old.[16]
People may not have had all the facts, but the news was out. Communities, represented by families, groups of friends, and employees at organizations, had been mobilized to spread the news. They were motivated to share the news, but why?
Effective Viral Messages
Viral messages are words, sounds, or images that compel the audience to pass them along. They prompt people to act, and mobilize communities. Community mobilization has been studied in many ways and forms.[17] We mobilize communities to leave areas of disaster, or to get out and walk more as part of an exercise program. If we want people to consider and act on a communication message, we first have to gain the audience’s attention. In our example, communities were mobilized to share word of Jacksons’ passing. Attention statements require sparks and triggers. A spark topic “has an appeal to emotion, a broad base of impact and subsequent concern, and results in motivating a consensus about issues, planning, and action.”[18]
In the example of Michael Jackson, the consensus may be that he died under suspicious circumstances, but in other examples, it could be that the product or service being discussed is the next cool thing. The message in social marketing and viral messages doesn’t exist apart from individuals or communities. They give it life and attention, or ignore it.
If you want to design a message to go viral, you have to consider three factors:
- Does it have an emotional appeal that people will feel compelled to share?
- Does it have a trigger (does it challenge, provide novelty, or incorporate humor to motivate interest)?
- Is it relevant to the audience?
An appeal to emotion is a word, sound, or image that arouses an emotional response in the audience. Radio stations fill the airwaves with the sounds of the 1980s to provoke an emotional response and gain a specific demographic within the listening audience. The day after the announcement of Michael Jackson’s death broke, you could hear his music everywhere. Many people felt compelled to share the news because of an emotional association with his music, the music’s association with a time in their lives, and the fact that it was a sudden, unanticipated, and perhaps suspicious death.
A trigger is a word, sound, or image that causes an activity, precipitates an event or interaction, or provokes a reaction between two or more people. In the case of Michael Jackson, the triggers included all three factors and provoked an observable response that other forms of media won’t soon forget. His death at a young age challenged the status quo. In the same way, videos on YouTube have earned instant fame (wanted or unwanted) for a few with hilarious antics, displays of emotion, or surprising news.
The final ingredient to a viral message is relevance. It must be immediately accessible to the audience, salient, and important. If you want someone to stop smoking, graphs and charts may not motivate them to action. Show them someone like them with postsurgery scars across their throat and it will get attention. Attention is the first step toward precontemplation in a change model that may lead to action.[19]
Case Connection: Clementine and the Cat with the Fish — 2.1 Million Views by Monday
At 7:03 p.m. on Friday, April 10, Clementine Abney-Mwangi — seven years old, great-granddaughter of the Eugene Abney who loaded Edith onto a flatcar in 1947 — reached the front of row two on the Iron Lantern carousel, climbed onto Edith, and looked at Mayor Honor Petoskey-Larsen, who was standing in the aisle two feet behind her. Clementine said, in a voice the pavilion’s amber-glass acoustics sent all the way to the back row: “My great-grandpa drove her on a train.” Odalys Fiorentino-Becker, a volunteer on the floor, had her phone up. She caught nine seconds. Clementine on Edith. The mayor’s hand on the safety rail. The band organ playing the first two bars of “Shine On, Harvest Moon.” Odalys posted it to TikTok at 7:06 p.m. with the caption “78 years later” and went back to work. By Sunday night the clip had 2.1 million views. The emotional appeal is not the carousel — it’s the sentence “My great-grandpa drove her on a train,” delivered by a seven-year-old who does not know she is saying anything remarkable. The trigger is the unexpected audio of a 1913 band organ behind a child’s voice. The relevance is a question every viewer answers silently in their own family: who, in my line, did the one thing the rest of us now get to enjoy? The video was not designed to go viral. It went viral because all three elements were present by accident — which is worth studying, because the accident was made possible by eighteen hours of choices Ravenna and Flax had already made. The decision to put Mayor Honor behind Clementine instead of on a stage. The decision to start the band organ at 7:00 p.m. sharp. The decision to let Edith stay at the front of row two. None of those choices were about going viral. All of them made the viral moment possible.
Key Takeaways
Exercises
- Design a viral message about a hypothetical product or service you’d like to promote. Incorporate the elements listed above in no more than a hundred words. Post your viral message in class and compare it with your classmates’.
- Identify a company that’s relevant to your major or interests and locate an example of their marketing material about a specific product or service. Write a viral message as if you were an employee presenting to a potential client. Share and compare with classmates.
- Consider a message you passed along recently. Write a brief description and include a discussion on why you passed it along.
- What motivates you to pay attention? Make a list of five ideas, images, or words that attract your attention. Post and compare with classmates.
Closing Case Analysis: The Eighteen-Hour Carousel, Resolved
By 5:03 a.m. on Friday, April 10, 2026, Flax had hung up and Ravenna had a list. The list had nine items on it, and each item was a different chapter of this book compressed into a single morning. The carousel pavilion smelled of WD-40 and the Lake Superior wind coming through the amber-glass clerestory. Ravenna made a second pot of coffee and started.
8:00 a.m. — The WLUC sound bite. Ravenna called the WLUC morning producer back on the station’s direct line. She said what Flax had told her to say, in twelve seconds: “In 1913, a man in North Tonawanda, New York, carved a giraffe named Edith. In 1947, a man named Eugene Abney loaded her onto a flatcar at Kennywood Park. Tonight at seven o’clock, Eugene’s seven-year-old great-granddaughter Clementine is going to ride Edith for the first time in seventy-eight years.” The producer did not ask follow-up questions. She said, “We’re running it at noon and at six. Do you have Clementine’s parents’ permission to say her first name on air?” Ravenna did. The noon broadcast ran the sentence verbatim over footage of the pavilion’s amber-glass dome. The 6:00 p.m. broadcast ran it a second time, with thirty seconds of additional footage, over a two-minute segment that WLUC had not previously scheduled. Total airtime earned on a twelve-second sentence: two minutes and twelve seconds.
2:11 p.m. — Yusuf’s video. At 10:40 a.m., Flax had called Yusuf in Sault Ste. Marie. She had not asked him to do the video. She had asked him what Margaret’s blood pressure was. They had talked for six minutes about Margaret — not about the ceremony, not about the award, not about the drive back. At minute seven, Flax had said: “If you could say three things to Marquette tonight from that chair, what would they be?” Yusuf had said: “Thank Eugene Abney. Thank my grandfather. Tell the story about the jackrabbit.” Flax had said: “Record that on your phone. Send it to Ravenna. Don’t rehearse.” Yusuf had recorded the video at 2:11 p.m. in Room 312 of the Chippewa County War Memorial Hospital, Margaret’s breathing audible under the thirty-second credit mark, the drawknife from Margaret’s kitchen drawer visible in his hand. The unedited file was 94 seconds long. Ravenna did not edit it.
4:00–4:22 p.m. — The twenty-two-minute board meeting. Flax chaired. Ravenna presented the revised run of show for 22 minutes and ended on time. The agenda was Table 15.2 exactly: Call to Order (one minute), Roll Call (two minutes, with four of fifteen board members joining by phone), Reading of the Minutes (waived by motion), Officers’ Reports (skipped — Flax announced no changes since Tuesday), Committee Reports (the Gala subcommittee only — Ravenna, seven minutes), Old Business (the keynote substitution — four minutes, including Flax’s motion to approve Pri Stavropoulos-Hennessey as replacement speaker, seconded, carried), New Business (the Yusuf video — three minutes), Reports (none), Good of the Order (one minute — Flax accepted one comment from the board treasurer about the 6:45 ribbon cut), Adjournment (one minute, 4:22 p.m.). Flax gaveled at 4:22 because Ravenna had to be in her car for the Tai Pahl-Ramachandran interview at 4:30.
4:30–5:00 p.m. — The Tai interview. Ravenna met Tai in the pavilion. She did not sit Tai at a table. She walked Tai around the 38 animals for ten minutes, saying only their names: “Edith. Perseverance. The bandstand lion. The white-eyed zebra. The jackrabbit Noah carved in 1962 for the Kennywood owner’s great-granddaughter.” At minute eleven she stopped in front of Edith and said: “What is the hardest sentence you ever had to cut from a piece?” Tai looked at her for nine seconds. Then Tai told a story about a 2019 piece on the closure of the Highland Park Ford plant, and a sentence about a retired tool-and-die maker’s granddaughter that her editor had cut for space. Ravenna listened. At minute twenty-three Tai asked the question they had both known was coming: “The city closed two elementary schools last year. How do you justify $2.4 million on a carousel?” Ravenna answered it the way Flax had coached her — the two funding streams, the foundation restriction, the fact that every dollar of restoration had come from donors who would not have given the money to the school district under any circumstances. Then she added the part Flax had not coached: “And I will tell you what I told the foundation. The carousel is not a substitute for a school. It is a reminder of what a town is supposed to do for its children when the school has closed. I hope you put that in the piece and I hope you put the school closures in the piece too.” Tai put them both in the piece.
6:15 p.m. — Ravenna touches Edith. The pavilion was locked. No audience yet. Ravenna walked to the front of row two, put her hand on Edith’s neck at the base of the mane, and counted ten slow breaths. She did not rehearse anything. She walked back to the door.
6:30 p.m. — Doors open. Two hundred eighty-seven people entered the pavilion in eight minutes. The band organ was off. The volunteers in the Society’s T-shirts had instructions to point to the podium and say nothing. The room filled. Ravenna reached the microphone at 6:38 p.m. She said: “Welcome to the Iron Lantern. Tonight is for Edith, and for Eugene Abney, and for Noah Blackfeather, and for the people who kept her under a tarp for seventy-eight years. We’ll cut a ribbon in seven minutes, and Clementine will ride at seven. I’m going to step out of the way now so Mayor Petoskey-Larsen can cut the ribbon.” She stepped out of the way. Total time on mic: forty-one seconds.
6:45 p.m. — The ribbon. Mayor Honor Petoskey-Larsen cut the ribbon at 6:45 p.m. sharp, said fourteen words of acknowledgement (“The city of Marquette thanks the Iron Lantern and welcomes you all to this pavilion”), and stepped back. The mayor had seven and a half fewer minutes than originally scheduled and spent every one of them where the audience could see her.
6:55 p.m. — Ravenna introduces Pri. Ninety-one words. The drawknife sentence. Pri took the microphone at 6:56 p.m. He spoke for exactly three minutes. His story was about the summer of 2015, when Noah Blackfeather had taught him how to make a wooden jackrabbit’s ear look the way a jackrabbit’s ear actually looks when the jackrabbit is afraid. Noah had said, and Pri repeated: “Make the animal look like it wants to be ridden, not like it wants to be sold.” Pri stepped off at 6:59 p.m. and the audience did not applaud. The audience was quiet for eleven seconds. Then they applauded.
7:00 p.m. — Clementine rides Edith. The band organ started on time. Clementine’s father lifted her onto Edith. Mayor Petoskey-Larsen stood in the aisle two feet behind the saddle, hand on the safety rail. Clementine said, “My great-grandpa drove her on a train.” Odalys Fiorentino-Becker caught nine seconds on her phone.
7:15 p.m. — Yusuf’s video. The screen dropped. Ninety-four seconds of Yusuf in Room 312 with Margaret’s breathing audible under the credit portion. When Yusuf said “my mother Margaret,” the room went still. The still lasted about six seconds after the video ended. Then applause.
7:30 p.m. — The toast. Flax took the microphone. She did not speak about the award committee, the foundation, the city, or the restoration timeline. She raised a glass of sparkling cider — no alcohol served at a family event — and said the twenty-eight-word toast she had written at 1:14 a.m.: “To Edith, who waited seventy-eight years. To Noah’s drawknife. To Pri, who picked it up. To Yusuf, and to his mother Margaret. Sláinte.” Two hundred eighty-seven people said “Sláinte” back.
7:44 p.m. — The mayor exits. One minute early.
Monday, April 13 — the Detroit Free Press, page A3. Tai’s piece ran under the headline “In Marquette, a 1913 Giraffe and a 7-Year-Old Named Clementine.” The piece was 1,850 words. It named Eugene Abney. It named Noah Blackfeather. It named Pri, Yusuf, Margaret, Flax, Ravenna, and Clementine. It named the two elementary schools the city had closed last year, and it named the foundation that had restricted its grant to cultural preservation. It included Ravenna’s unrehearsed sentence (“The carousel is not a substitute for a school. It is a reminder of what a town is supposed to do for its children when the school has closed”). And — here is the part Ravenna did not expect — the piece closed with the sentence Tai had told Ravenna, at 4:42 p.m. on Friday, her editor had cut from the 2019 Highland Park Ford plant piece. Tai had restored it. It was about a retired tool-and-die maker’s granddaughter. Tai did not explain in the piece why the sentence was there. She did not have to. Ravenna read the piece at 6:45 a.m. on Monday and called Flax from the pavilion. She said, “Flax. She put the sentence back in.” Flax said, “I know. I read it at five thirty.”
The carousel ran every Saturday and Sunday afternoon through the end of 2026 at no admission charge. The TikTok of Clementine on Edith has, as of last count, 2.1 million views. The Detroit Free Press piece was picked up by four other Rust Belt dailies and, in early May, by a podcast called The Upper Peninsula Review, whose host cried on air during the drawknife quote. Every element of the eighteen-hour crisis — the sound bite, the telephone call, the meeting, the toast, the interview, the introduction, the acceptance, the emceeing, the viral message — is in this chapter.
Closing Case Analysis Questions
- The WLUC sound bite is twelve seconds long and contains three proper nouns (Edith, Eugene Abney, Kennywood Park) and one number (seventy-eight years). Using the four characteristics of effective sound bites from §15.1, identify which characteristic each of the four elements carries, and explain why the sentence would fail if any one of the four elements were removed.
- Ravenna called Flax at 12:47 a.m. instead of texting her. Using the five-stage telephone conversation model from §15.2 (Opening / Feedforward / Business / Feedback / Closing), map Ravenna’s ninety-second opening utterance (“Flax. I am sitting in the pavilion. I am looking at Edith…”) against the stages. Which stages are compressed, which are skipped, and why does it work anyway?
- The 4:00 p.m. board meeting ran twenty-two minutes instead of a scheduled thirty. Using Table 15.2, explain how Flax used the agenda structure itself — rather than rushing — to recover the eight minutes. Identify at least three places where the agenda did the work instead of the chair.
- Flax’s twenty-eight-word toast names five people (Edith, Noah, Pri, Yusuf, Margaret) and one concept (Noah’s drawknife). Using the toast conventions from §15.4, explain why naming Margaret — who is not present and is not being honored — is the emotional anchor of the toast. What would be lost if the toast ended with “Sláinte” after Yusuf’s name only?
- Ravenna walked Tai Pahl-Ramachandran around the pavilion for ten minutes saying only the animals’ names before allowing any question. Using the four interview preparation factors in Table 15.4 (Topic, Time, Format, Background), explain what the ten-minute walk accomplished that a prepared set of talking points could not have accomplished. Was Ravenna manipulating the interview, or conducting it? Defend your answer.
- Ravenna’s introduction of Pri is ninety-one words long and names one credential: Pri’s apprenticeship with Noah Blackfeather. The introduction deliberately omits Pri’s B.F.A. from Kendall College of Art and Design and his three years at the Herschell Carrousel Factory Museum. Using the speaker-introduction principles from §15.6, explain why the omitted credentials would have weakened the introduction rather than strengthened it.
- Yusuf Blackfeather-Ingalls accepted his award from a hospital chair in ninety seconds, via pre-recorded video. Using the Ethical Consideration box in §15.7, evaluate whether the video was an ethical use of the audience’s borrowed microphone. Identify at least two alternative uses of the ninety seconds Yusuf could have chosen, and explain why the choice he made was — or was not — more honest than the alternatives.
- The nine-second TikTok of Clementine on Edith reached 2.1 million views by Sunday night. Using the three factors of viral messages from §15.9 (emotional appeal, trigger, relevance), identify which factor is carried by (a) Clementine’s sentence, (b) the band-organ audio, and (c) the presence of the mayor behind the saddle. Then argue: was the video “designed” to go viral, “allowed” to go viral, or neither? Use evidence from the closing case to support your position.
End-of-Chapter Review Questions
- List the four characteristics of an effective sound bite and give one original example of each from a context other than the opening case.
- Name the five stages of the telephone conversation model and describe what happens in each stage. Then identify which stage is most often skipped by inexperienced callers and explain the cost of skipping it.
- Identify the elements of a formal meeting agenda in the order they appear. Explain what “Good of the Order” is for and what it is not for.
- Distinguish between a toast and a roast. Identify the contexts in which each is appropriate and at least one context in which the two should never be combined.
- State the three hallmark rules for a media interview. For each rule, describe one type of question the rule is designed to help you answer.
- Describe the difference between the surprise approach and the direct approach to presenting an award. Under what audience conditions is each preferred?
- Explain the three-part structure of a professional acceptance speech (thank / credit / anchor). Why is brevity itself an ethical requirement of acceptance?
- Describe the function of a master of ceremonies in a ritual gathering. Explain how the “time as transition” technique builds elasticity into a schedule without creating dead time.
- Define a viral message and list the three factors that determine whether a message will spread. Explain why relevance is the factor most often mistaken for cleverness.
- Summarize the role of the introduction in establishing a speaker’s ethos. Explain why one specific, unusual detail outperforms a list of general credentials.
Matching Exercise: Key Terms
Match each term with the definition that best describes it. Answer key follows.
| A. Sound bite | 1. A word, sound, or image that precipitates an event or provokes a reaction. |
| B. Feedforward | 2. An award-presentation method in which accomplishments are listed before the recipient’s name, building suspense. |
| C. Good of the Order | 3. The part of a meeting agenda reserved for general welfare, comments, and concerns that fall outside formal business items. |
| D. Roast | 4. A brief, memorable statement that can survive being lifted out of its original context. |
| E. Spark topic | 5. The second stage of a telephone conversation, in which the caller signals what the call is about before the business begins. |
| F. Trigger | 6. A humorous, affectionate public ridicule of a person, customarily delivered in the presence of the honoree. |
| G. Surprise approach | 7. A topic that carries emotional appeal, broad impact, and the capacity to mobilize a community toward consensus and action. |
| H. Direct approach | 8. The person who conducts a ritual gathering, manages its transitions, and keeps it on schedule. |
| I. Emcee | 9. An award-presentation method in which the recipient’s name is announced first, followed by their accomplishments. |
| J. Three hallmark rules | 10. The interviewing principles of preparation, honesty, and message discipline that apply to every media interview. |
Answer key: A-4, B-5, C-3, D-6, E-7, F-1, G-2, H-9, I-8, J-10
Application Exercises
- Sound Bite Craft. Choose a local organization, cause, or business you care about. Write a twelve-second sound bite about a specific event, anniversary, or moment in that organization’s life. The sound bite must contain at least two proper nouns and one number. Read it aloud and time it. If it exceeds twelve seconds, cut words — not content — until it fits. Submit the final version with a two-sentence explanation of what you cut and why.
- Five-Stage Script. Write a script for a ninety-second phone call in which you must deliver difficult news to a colleague. Label each of the five stages (Opening, Feedforward, Business, Feedback, Closing) in the margin. Then rewrite the script compressing it to forty-five seconds. Identify which stage you compressed most and explain the judgment behind that choice.
- Meeting Agenda Build. You are chairing a thirty-minute meeting of a five-person committee to resolve a scheduling conflict. Build an agenda using the elements in Table 15.2. Assign specific time allocations to each element and justify every allocation in one sentence. Include a plan for what happens if the committee cannot reach resolution in the Old Business portion.
- Toast in 30 Words. Write a thirty-word toast for a real person in your life — a teacher, a grandparent, a colleague, a friend. The toast must name the person, reference one specific thing they did, and end on a word of honor. Read it aloud. If it makes you want to delete a single word, delete it.
- Interview Prep Matrix. Choose a journalist whose work you respect. Read three of their pieces. Build a four-column matrix using Topic, Time, Format, and Background (Table 15.4). Fill the matrix as if you were about to be interviewed by this journalist on a topic you care about. Identify the question the journalist is most likely to ask you that you are least prepared to answer — and write the answer you would give.
- Introduction Script. Write a ninety-second introduction for a classmate or colleague. The introduction must name one specific, unusual credential and must not exceed 150 words. Time it. Cut it until it fits. Then read it aloud to the person you are introducing and ask: “Is the specific credential the one you would have named?”
- Viral Message Design. Design — do not merely describe — a ninety-second video concept for a cause or organization you care about. The design document must identify the emotional appeal, the trigger, and the element of relevance. Then answer the harder question: what choices would your organization have to make before filming in order for the viral moment to become possible at all?
Discussion Questions
- Ravenna called Flax instead of texting at 12:47 a.m. In what kinds of conversations does voice still do work that text cannot do? Where have you seen voice replaced by text, and what — if anything — has been lost in the trade?
- Flax’s advice to Ravenna was “Before you say a word from the podium, walk to Edith and put your hand on her neck.” Is this advice about stagecraft, self-regulation, audience authority, or all three? Discuss with reference to a presentation you have watched that opened well or badly.
- Yusuf’s acceptance video ran ninety-four seconds. Could an absent honoree ever accept an award more effectively than a present one? Under what conditions?
- The Ethical Consideration box in §15.7 describes the acceptance speech as a “borrowed microphone.” Discuss a real acceptance speech (awards, graduation, retirement) in which the speaker spent the borrowed microphone on something other than the award. Was the trade worth it?
- Ravenna did not fight the premise of Tai’s school-closures question. Is there an ethical difference between fighting the premise of a question and correcting the premise of a question? Discuss with examples.
- The Clementine video went viral without being designed to. Is it possible to intend a message to go viral without killing the thing that would have made it spread? Where is the line between shaping a message and engineering it?
- Every element of the eighteen-hour carousel crisis is in this chapter. Which chapter skill do you personally feel least prepared to use in a real crisis, and what is one specific thing you could do this week to prepare for it?
Extended Project: The Ninety-Minute Ceremony
Over the next two weeks, your team (four to six members) will plan, script, and execute a mock ninety-minute ceremony built around a single inaugural “Craft & Continuity Award” for a real or invented organization. The ceremony must incorporate every skill covered in this chapter: a sound bite released to a mock media outlet 24 hours in advance; a five-stage phone call between two key participants recorded the night before; a twenty-minute meeting to finalize the run of show; a thirty-word toast delivered live; a ten-minute mock media interview with a team member playing the reporter; a ninety-second speaker introduction; an acceptance speech (may be delivered live or via video); an emcee who manages transitions using the three-minute buffer technique; and a nine-to-twenty-second viral-format clip captured during the ceremony itself.
Week 1 (planning). Choose the organization, the award, and the recipient. Research the recipient until you have at least one specific, unusual detail that can anchor the speaker introduction. Draft the agenda (Table 15.2). Assign roles: emcee, speaker, recipient, reporter, introducer, toast-giver, sound-bite author, and camera. Write the sound bite and the toast. Script the phone call and the introduction. Build the Topic/Time/Format/Background matrix for the interview. Submit a one-page plan to your instructor by end of Week 1.
Week 2 (execution). Release the sound bite to a class-wide channel or mock outlet 24 hours before the ceremony. Conduct the meeting. Execute the ninety-minute ceremony. Capture the viral clip. Submit: (a) the agenda with time-actual columns filled in, (b) the transcript of the phone call, (c) the final sound bite, (d) the final thirty-word toast, (e) the ninety-second introduction script, (f) a reflection document (600–800 words) identifying one moment in the ceremony where a chapter concept worked exactly as described, one moment where it failed or bent under pressure, and one moment where you improvised a solution Flax would have approved of.
Evaluation criteria: completeness of skill coverage, fidelity to the time budgets, quality of the introduction and toast as written artifacts, honesty of the reflection document, and the nine-to-twenty-second viral clip evaluated on the three factors from §15.9.
Self-Assessment: Revisit
Return to the Before You Read self-assessment at the beginning of this chapter. Rate yourself again on each of the eight items. Then answer the three reflection questions below.
Reflection Questions
- On which item did your score change the most between the pre-reading and post-reading self-assessment? What specifically did you read, practice, or watch in this chapter that accounts for the change?
- On which item did your score not change, and do you consider that a sign of pre-existing competence or of a gap the chapter did not close? What will you do about it?
- Of the nine contexts covered in this chapter — sound bites, phone calls, meetings, toasts/roasts, media interviews, speaker introductions, presenting awards, accepting awards, master-of-ceremonies duties, and viral messages — which one are you most likely to face professionally in the next twelve months, and what single action will you take this month to prepare for it?
15.10 Additional Resources
Visit this site for an “elevator speech” template. https://careerdevelopment.princeton.edu/guides/networking/developing-your-elevator-pitch
Visit this University of Chicago site for information on succeeding in an employment interview. https://careeradvancement.uchicago.edu/career-toolkit/get-career-ready/resume-and-interview-toolkit/
“How to Run a Meeting” from Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/1976/03/how-to-run-a-meeting
The Official Robert’s Rules of Order Web Site: Robert’s Rules Association is an unincorporated membership association representing Robert’s Rules of Order, the guide to parliamentary procedure. http://www.robertsrules.com
“Preparing For Your Media Interview” by Judy Jernudd. http://www.streetdirectory.com/travel_guide/1578/business_and_finance/preparing_for_your_media_interview.html
Read the Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists. https://www.spj.org/spj-code-of-ethics/
“A New Framework for Going Viral,” a Harvard Business Online article. https://hbr.org/2025/05/a-new-framework-for-going-viral
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