As a volunteer speechwriter at the 2004 Democratic convention in Boston, I’d heard rumors that the keynote speaker—a state senator from Illinois I’d never heard of—was going to be good. So I made sure I was down on the convention floor when it was time, surrounded by a sea of delegates in red, white, and blue.

Barack Obama took the stage—smiling, clapping, waving to the crowd— adjusted the mic, and began to speak, introducing himself to those of us in the hall and millions watching at home.

My father was a foreign student, born and raised in a small village in Kenya. He grew up herding goats, went to school in a tin- roof shack… While studying [in America], my father met my mother. She was born in a town on the other side of the world, in Kansas… They would give me an African name, Barack, or “blessed,” believing that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success.

All around me, the crowd roared.

“I stand here today, grateful for the diversity of my heritage,” he continued. “I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a debt to all of those who came before me, and that, in no other country on earth, is my story even possible.”

I didn’t realize it at the time, but over the next sixteen minutes, it was all there—every lesson about public speaking that Obama had learned over the years. He told the stories of the people he’d listened to back home in Illinois. At certain moments, he spoke with the rhythm of the preachers he’d heard at the pulpit. He didn’t speak at those of us in the audience, but with us—a dialogue, a conversation. Instead of ticking off wonkish talking points and factoids, he told a bigger story—his voice rising as he neared the end of his speech—about who we were as a country, our values, where we came from, and where we’re going:

Yet even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us… Well, I say to them tonight, there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America; there’s the United States of America. There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America.

I’d never heard anyone speak like this—someone who so un abashedly saw our diversity as a people not as a weakness to be exploited for political gain, but as a strength to be celebrated and nurtured; someone who didn’t just give voice to that diversity, but who embodied it, calling himself “a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him too.”

“There’s no question,” his adviser David Axelrod told me years later, that “Obama couldn’t have given that speech if he hadn’t thought deeply about his own identity over many years. He knew who he was, and he understood how his story shaped him.”

He was an effective speaker because he knew who he was. …

“Your Imperfections Are Your Gifts”

On a summer day in 2020, thirteen-year-old Brayden Harrington got a phone call he couldn’t believe.

He was invited to give a speech. On national television. With millions of people watching. …

Speaking to a nationally televised audience would have been nerve-racking for anyone. And Brayden was just a kid. “I still didn’t have a lot of confidence in myself,” he remembered. For him, there was an added challenge. Brayden has a speech impediment.

In fact, that’s how the invitation—from the organizers of that summer’s Democratic convention—came about. Months earlier, Brayden had met Joe Biden as he campaigned for president in New Hampshire. Video of their encounter—two people with a stutter bonding over their shared challenge— went viral. …

Over the next few days, Brayden debated what to do. And the more he thought it over, the more he began to think, “I might inspire a lot of people.”

He decided to speak.

Over the next few weeks, Brayden and his family worked on his speech, and a speechwriter at the convention helped him edit it. When his little sister, Annabelle, suggested a line—“We all want the world to feel better”—Brayden added it in. He practiced reading it out loud, one day more than twenty times. But as the day of the speech approached, the pressure became too much.

“I just couldn’t get the words out,” he recalled. “I broke down crying.”

Brayden’s parents said he didn’t have to speak. But he was determined. “I wanted other kids who have a speech impediment like I do to believe in themselves.” ….

“Hi. My name is Brayden Harrington, and I’m thirteen years old,” he began, his braces sparkling as he smiled. Casual in a pink T- shirt, with his desk and schoolbooks behind him, he talked about how he’d met Biden, who had told him they were both “members of the same club.”

“We … ” Brayden said, pausing to take a deep breath, looking down at the speech in his hands. But the next word wouldn’t come out.

Brayden looked off camera. He made the s sound and closed his eyes, as if to pull the word from his mouth. But still nothing. He took another breath.

Finally, the word arrived.

“… stutter.”

Every few sentences, a word got stuck in his throat. But every time, Brayden pushed through. “We all want the world to feel better,” he said, as Annabelle smiled proudly from across the room. “We all need the world to feel better.”

Brayden’s speech was only about two hundred words. He spoke for less than two minutes. But “it was the scariest thing I’d done in my life,” he told me when I interviewed him a few years later to learn how he did it. He found the courage to speak, he said, by remembering what his mom always told him: “Your imperfections are your gifts.”

Extracted from 'Say It Well' by Terry Szuplat. Published by Ebury Edge on 19 September 2024 at £16.99. Copyright Terry Szuplat 2024.

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• Read The Gist | Insights from the book ‘Say It Well’ by Terry Szuplat, Barack Obama’s speechwriter
• Watch ‘Meet the Author’ | The Art of Powerful Communication: The conversation between Terry Szuplat and D Shivakumar + 7 Takeaways from their discussion