Media Training Worldwide

What You Can Learn From Honest Abe

Abe Lincoln is still getting good press for his Gettysburg Address; can the same be said of your most recent board meeting presentation?

You might not be keeping the United States together as one Civil Union, as Lincoln did, but that doesn’t mean you can’t borrow some of Lincoln’s skills, as demonstrated in Gettysburg, for your own next business or civic presentation.

Here are seven key tips you can take away from Lincoln’s most well-known address:

1. Be a little different.
“Four score and seven years ago,” is just a fancy way of saying “87 years ago.” Every now and then, if you state a familiar fact in a slightly different way, you can seem less ordinary and more memorable. (But if you do it too often, you will seem like a pompous eccentric.)

2. Speak to a larger purpose.
“We are engaged in a great civil war…” Always try to couch the arguments in your presentation in terms of what is good for your entire company or organization, not what is good just for you.

3. Don’t be afraid to be repetitive.
“We can not dedicate – we can not consecrate – we can not hollow,” is pretty repetitive, but it works in a speech. If you don’t want employees to park in the visitor parking space at your office, you may wish to repeat this message several times.

4. Humility works-even if it isn’t warranted.
“The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here…” Lincoln was sure off the mark on that prediction. Still, being humble plays well with most audiences.

5. Add emotion.
The whole subject of honoring the dead, as Lincoln was doing at Gettysburg is inherently emotional. But strong communicators like Lincoln understand that in order to communicate, you must engage the head and the heart. The intellect alone will not persuade.

6. Have a strong ending.
“Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” Please note that Lincoln did not end his speech by saying “That’s it, any questions?” End your presentations forcefully by re-emphasizing one key point, even if it is “never leave leftover food in the office refrigerator over the weekend or it will be thrown away!”

7. Be brief.
Lincoln’s speech was a couple of minutes long. The guy introducing him spoke for two hours. Who do we remember?

Full Text of Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.