Speaking as Hospitality

A central premise in my forthcoming book is that speaking is a covenant of hospitality. I maintain the connection between audience and speaker is the key to effective speech.

That covenant is held together by readiness. An audience is ready and they show up to hear, but the effective speaker will be more ready and they will invite connection and will prepare the place and the atmosphere.

I have come to think of emotional, intellectual, and hospitality quotients as the “quotients of readiness.” These quotients enable the speaker to open up meaningful communication. And it may be surprising to hear, but I think a speaker’s hospitality quotient is the factor multiplier. Without it, even good information can fall flat. With it, a speech becomes more than a talk . . . it becomes an offering.

What does hospitality have to do with public speaking?

Every speech begins with a covenant long before the first sentence is delivered.

By showing up to speak, the most effective speakers have already made implicit promises to the room: I will be fully present and will meet you with sincerity. I will not waste your attention. I will come prepared. I will recognize your presence as part of the event itself.

Speaking, then, is the first act of hospitality, an invitation into the emotional, intellectual, and hospitable space that the speaker has prepared.

The speaker is host.

The audience is guest.

The room is a table.

The words are interpersonal care offered by the speaker who also prepares the room and prepares themselves so that others can receive, listen, think, and respond. That kind of speaking requires more than technique. It requires character, attention, and care.

My family has owned a small rustic cabin in the Northwoods of Wisconsin since 1975. That cabin has become a place where I reflect on life and learning.

Why must an audience be prepared before it can listen?

In the summer, when I am alone there, I listen to the crackling wood fire. When I get water, I listen to the squeak of the old hand pump. Later in the day, I listen to the call of loons in the night and when it turns dark, the hooting of owls.

It was there, in long reflection about teaching, that I unlocked a new way of thinking about speech, learning, and student readiness.

The cabin was built as a hunting shack in 1958. When my parents bought it, it had no running water. It still doesn’t. If you want water, you draw it up from the ground with a hand pump just outside the door.

But the pump does not work immediately. Before clear water rises, it must be primed.

To prepare for my cabin visits, I carried water in a thermos or jug. I poured a small amount into the top of the pump while working the red handle up and down. At first there was only effort, breath, and an aggravating squeak. Then the sound slowly changed. Suction took hold. The pump began delivering cool, clear, fresh northern Wisconsin water from below and the sound of water splashing in the bucket was the sound of preparation for a cool drink.

You cannot force the water. Effort alone does nothing. But you can prepare the conditions to get water. It happens by priming the pump, working the handle, remaining patient, and trusting that water is on the way.

That red-handled water pump taught me something about teaching and speaking. Before I could expect anything from my students, I had to prime the pump. I had to help them move from inattention to attention, from bad stress to useful stress, from resistance to readiness. I had to be patient too.

They were like that pump. If I pushed too hard, something could blow. If I ignored the preparation, nothing came up. But if I created the right conditions, something living began to rise.

How does hospitality multiply readiness?

Hospitality is built through preparation.

A host prepares the table before the guest arrives. A teacher prepares the conditions before asking students to speak. A speaker prepares the room before asking an audience to listen.

That is how hospitality becomes the factor multiplier in the quotients of readiness. Information alone does not create readiness. Expertise alone isn’t  connection. A polished delivery alone isn’t trust. But hospitality as a first act multiplies the effects of information, experience, and practice.

Hospitality addresses the emotional quotient of the room by lowering anxiety and threat. It takes the intellectual quotient and opens a path for understanding. It takes the speaker’s preparation, emotional quotient, and turns it toward service.

In this sense, a good speech is not something forced upon an audience. It is something drawn up from deeper ground.

But the speaker first primes the pump.

Can a speech feel like Grandma Grace’s table?

When I think about hospitality, I think about my grandmother’s table.

As a teen, when my family visited Grandma Grace and Grandpa Harry, they were always home. They welcomed us inside, and we sat at a simple table in the kitchen. Grandma served cookies and milk every single time.

Cookies and milk are hospitality gold, and even now, decades later, I remember the taste of Grandma Grace’s ginger cookies. I remember the feeling of being received, and the fun when grandpa Harry’s Norwegian dialect came out as he used the word nieven, a form of “no,” most likely a regional dialect he learned when growing up in a place in Wisconsin called, “The Norwegian Gap.”

Grandma Grace and Grandpa Harry did not judge us. They did not raise their voices, ever. In the kitchen, Grandma did not force us to eat, and neither did she act put out by our visit. Her hospitality was consistent with her name, Grace. She was pure grace.

When you give a speech, you may not actually offer milk and cookies to your audience. But you might want to, or you can create the feeling of sitting at Grandma Grace’s table by your centered presence.

You can quench their thirst by being the host. You can offer sincerity, honesty, integrity, and attention. You can prepare the conditions in the room in which listening becomes possible.

That is the covenant.

Performance first, no; persuasion first, no; display first, no. Water first, milk and cookies first, hospitality first, yes!

Because when a host is truly present, people know they have not been spoken at; rather, they have been received at the table and spoken with.