Winston Churchill was hugely accomplished as a statesman, an historian, and a writer. But when people think of Churchill, it's his speeches that are remembered.

Winston didn't fit easily into the standard educa­tional system. From the first, it was obvious he had tremendous talent - his power of memory was rath­er amazing. But he was very stubborn. He learned what he wanted to learn, and resisted anything else. He didn't care about learning other languag­es, for example. He wanted to learn English.

By the time Churchill was only twenty-six years old, he was about to enter Parliament, where his voice would be heard for the first time - and once Churchill's voice was heard, it could never be forgotten.

In our schools today, not much attention is paid to speaking skills. There really isn't a focus on the ability to express yourself effectively in front of a group of people - or even one person. The strange thing is this was a fundamental element of educa­tion throughout the history of Western civilization.

As a professional speaker myself, it's amazing to discover the detail and care that was given to the spoken word. The Greeks and Romans con­sidered speaking - which they called rhetoric - to be a branch of philosophy. It was an art that de­manded talent and practice, and it was also a science that had be studied carefully and system­atically. Churchill certainly knew these principles backwards and forwards; and in order to model Churchill's communication genius, you should know them also.

There were basically four general categories of communication - and a genius was someone who could excel in all these areas. The categories were invention, arrangement, style, and memory. They're still very applicable today, and they're understood explicitly or intuitively by every communication genius.

Invention really means having something to say. You can't be a great communicator if you don't have anything to communicate. In order to dis­cover your genius as a communicator, ask yourself where you are on this spectrum. Are you someone who feels the need to talk for talking's own sake - whether or not your given the opportunity? Or do you back away from communicating even when ev­eryone would benefit from your doing so? Try to be ruthlessly honest about this. It's not easy, because we're often amazingly unaware of our true nature as communicators.

The second principle of speaking was arrange­ment – which today we would call organization. This is just the tactics and tools of communica­tion. The organization of a good speech comprised six parts: the introduction; the statement of facts; the discussion of facts; the proof of facts; the refutation of possible objections, and the con­clusion. The trick, of course, was to blend these parts seamlessly together so that the whole thing seemed effortless and intuitive. It's amazing, though, how good speaking can be broken down into parts to be approached logically and scientifically.

After organization, the third principle of commu­nication was style. Organization is about what you're saying - style is about how you say it. Today, this is probably more important than any other element of spoken communication, but it's crucial to develop a style that fits you and fits your audience. Churchill was obviously a master of style. In my opinion, he was really the last great communicator in the classical tradition. Martin Luther King was also a great communicator, and he could move his listeners just as deeply as Churchill. But his· style of speaking came from the tradition of African American preaching rather than classical oratory.

The fourth principle of speaking was memory. Until relatively recently, it would have been un­thinkable for a communicator to read a speech, much less use a Teleprompter to make it seem like he knew it by heart. Memory was equated with intelligence. Today we think a person who can do science or math is at the highest level of intellectual power, but in the past it was how much you had memorized. For a modern man, Churchill was surely very accomplished in this regard. For example, he probably knew much of Shakespeare by heart. But in the old days, it was taken for granted that an educated person knew the Bible nearly word for word.

Churchill had been a public communicator since he entered Parliament in his early twenties. And this brings us back to a point that was so perfect­ly expressed by Edison: "Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration." The more you do something, the more you work at it, the more you experience it, the better you'll get at it; before you know it, everybody will be calling you a communication genius!

© Tony Alessandra. All Rights Reserved.