journalist I’m also a wife and a mother
of five children my husband John who you
heard from earlier he and I had two sets
of twins we had four children in less
than three years and then nine years
later we had a little surprise we named
him ajax ajax is sitting right here
today he’s seven now now you’ve probably
heard the word Ajax before maybe you’ve
heard it as the name of a cleansing
powder when you give your child the same
name as a cleaning product that was
introduced around the time your parents
were children yeah you’re kind of asking
for a reaction let me say so so our
parents um
reacted my mother-in-law John’s mother
she was a very talkative lady and she
just gasped when we said we’re naming
our son Ajax she she had five children
herself and she probably went through
many many cans of Ajax cleaning up after
them and I’m guessing she didn’t really
have the most fond associations with the
word Ajax my mother-in-law Nancy
recently passed away and she was a real
force of nature and that but that was
the one time I ever saw her speechless
so she was a little alarmed by the
choice of name my father he can’t quite
bring himself to say his grandson’s name
so he has taken to calling him mr.
Jack’s which I’m not sure Ajax likes
very much my own mother’s response was
Ajax all anyone is going to think of
when they hear that name is that jingle
from the TV commercial and I just
thought what are you talking about what
jingle what TV commercials so of course
I googled it you can search and you can
find these ads from the 50s and 60s on
YouTube um apparently there were Ajax
commercials like a couple of times a day
on TV in the 50s and 60s so my parents
and Jon’s parents would have remembered
them you if you if you look for them on
Google on YouTube they are the most
ridiculous ads you
ever seen it what happens is there’s a
man dressed as a white knight on a white
horse galloping through the streets of
some town and he’s got a long staff with
a flag on it and in one AD he comes
galloping up to this um this guy who
looks like a short-order cook he’s
wearing a very stained apron happens to
be standing outside for some unknown
reason and this white knight comes and
just sort of goes presto and his whole
apron goes from a giant mess of tomato
sauce to sparkling white and in another
one there’s some kids playing on a
suburban street and they’re complete
mess they’ve been playing in mud and
this white knight comes along and just
boom all of a sudden they’re sparkling
clean which makes the kids in this
commercial really happy which I just
highly doubt it right wouldn’t you
rather be messy than like sparkling
white and there’s a jingle with this ad
and it goes something like this
Ajax stronger than dirt which is you
know pretty hilarious
so my Ajax is much stronger than dirt so
but in fact long before Ajax was the
name of foaming cleanser he was the
great hero of the Trojan War and of
Homer’s The Iliad and I’m not sure I
know you guys have been reading The
Odyssey I’m not sure if you’ve read The
Iliad but you may know a little bit
about him
Ajax was a towering figure a very large
man he was full of integrity loyalty
courage and he was the strongest of all
the Achaean warriors it way stronger
than dirt let’s just put it that way in
one battle he defeated the Trojan army
single-handedly kept them at bay he put
himself in great danger again to rescue
the body of his fallen comrade Achilles
according to the Ajax product website by
the way he was quote also known for
marching into battle with the cleanest
uniform on the Adriatic Peninsula yeah
do you buy that because I’m not buying
it I mean I’m not a homer scholar but
and I maybe I missed that in the Iliad
but I highly doubt that when the war
comes to an end
both Ajax and Odysseus who we all know
very well they’re vying for the great
honour of keeping
the armor that had belonged to Achilles
this was a great armor a great honor at
the end of the war and though Ajax could
rightfully claim to have been the
greater warrior the stronger one the
real hero of the war action he wasn’t
much of a public speaker so Odysseus
with his great oratorical skills he was
much more persuasive in making his case
that he should keep the armor and get to
be the real hero of that war and in fact
the Greek Kings awarded that honor to
Odysseus and not Ajax now Ajax for Ajax
this was what we call an epic fail ah
Leggett epic fail for an epic poem right
and of course that resulted in an epic
tragedy Ajax went mad and he killed
himself
sorry Ajax he secured his sword upon the
ground pointed it upward and threw
himself upon it now our theme here today
is muthos the greek word for public
authoritative speaking which has the
power to affect change
so Ajax did not have or experienced
muthos in that moment now in this poem
that is among many other things an
example in a celebration of humans great
tradition and ability to engage in
storytelling Ajax’s powers of
communication completely failed him now
how many of us have experienced an AJAX
moment can you raise your hand have you
ever needed to say something speak make
your case and you couldn’t write we all
have okay so you say something you don’t
mean your words come out mangled you
know and you say to yourself oh I just
want to kill myself
like Ajax did right we all have these
moments in the heat of argument our
words tend to fail us during moments of
pressure as Ajax was undoubtedly feeling
our words often fail us when we’re put
on the spot we’re asked a question that
we don’t expect we get called on in
class or a meeting when we’re not
prepared our words do fail us now a lot
of my work is actually in writing
and editing the written word sometimes I
work in print or online but even in
radio and podcasting and television even
though it sounds like their spoken words
they’re actually usually written ahead
of time as my presentation today in
writing my meaning can usually be really
clear zobelle and probably a lot of you
are this way you take your time you know
like like me you may enjoy crafting a
lovely sentence fitting it into a well
argued paragraph that slows him to just
a whole arc of an essay or an article
choosing what comes at the beginning and
the middle on the end when to add detail
when to pull back when to move things
along these are all to me just among the
great joys of writing and as a I’m a
writer but I’m also an editor and as an
editor my job is to help other people’s
words on the page come across as
elegantly and persuasively as possible
and that’s a collaborative process this
is so different from the way we speak
spontaneously right our ideas are coming
as fast as the words they’re coming at
the same time almost and once the words
are spoken we can’t rearrange them or
edit them or make a change in the
structure of a sentence so about two
years ago I started a new job in a field
I was pretty I was completely new too so
it was still journalism I had done
television and print and now I was in
podcasting and I was going to be in a
position that I had to invent as I went
along most of other jobs I had had
before I either knew the people I was
going to be working with so they knew
what I was good at and what I wasn’t
there was a clear hierarchy so I knew
sort of where I fit in the organization
I learned from the people around me
people above me and people below me and
and often I was working you know with
people who knew me pretty well now in
this new job I had to stake my claim to
Authority on my own I had to be
persuasive
I had to communicate well I had to do a
couple of things authoritative Lee that
I didn’t really have experience doing
and so before I started I thought really
hard about how I wanted to convey a
strength of intellect and authority and
we’re talking about speaking
authoritative lis today what I really
want to do is find ways to avoid those
Ajax moments where the words just don’t
come out right so if you’re like me and
you’re you’re not a person who speaks in
complete sentences and who never falls
back on like and you know and um and
these little verbal crutches to keep us
going you probably aren’t really going
to become such a person without a lot of
practice
now there’s value in speaking
colloquially with UNH’s and likes it can
suggest friendliness and warmth it can
break down barriers between people it
can convey the message that anyone is
welcome to chime in but I knew that I
wanted to change some things about the
way I communicated to be more
authoritative and I wanted to try and
put the same care and thoughtfulness
into speaking as I put into writing what
I settled on that I was going to try and
no longer equivocate now what I’m
talking about is this is something a lot
of young people do and this is something
a lot of women tend to do will preface
our statement with you might not agree
but and then we tell our idea or this is
just off the top of my head but da da da
or I’m not really sure this is such a
good idea
so I want to talk about some of these
things I think probably a lot of you in
this room will do that before you
actually say the thing that you really
the point you want to get across you do
this it equivocation so let’s take this
one you might not agree but well of
course the people around you might not
agree get rid of that don’t say that
that is the point of conversing you’re
sharing ideas that you may or may not
agree with so let’s not say that anymore
another thing that a lot of people say
is well this is just off the top of my
head but you don’t need that either
most of what we say is off the top of my
head you don’t come into a conversation
with a written cheat sheet of what
you’re gonna say ahead of time we are
always reacting to something someone
else said and we almost have never had
more than a few seconds to process that
so you don’t need to say this is just
the top of your head one of the worst
ones is I’m not sure this is a good idea
but okay this undermines the speaker
before the idea has even communicated of
course you don’t know it’s a good idea
it might be it might not part of what
you’re gonna find out by communicating
with others is if it’s a good idea so
what I discovered I try worked really
hard at this actually I was very
deliberate about trying to get rid of
these little I think of them as a throat
clearing before the actual thing I want
to say um and if you try this it’s it’s
it’s actually a little hard to do and
you have to be pretty deliberate about
it and it takes a while but you will
probably find as I did that it gives you
more confidence more authority and that
in turn makes others feel that you are
more authoritative so try it now once I
knew the verbal tics that I wanted to
avoid these little throat clearings um
then I felt I needed to summon the
courage to believe that I actually had
the authority to speak without
equivocation that what I had to say was
very valuable and didn’t need any of
these little disclaimers so what gives
us the authority to speak well there are
the basics we are human we have brains
we have opinions we have ideas and we
can vocalize them but I realize I
thought long and hard about this and I
realized that what gave me the greatest
authority to speak what gives everybody
the greatest authority to speak is our
experiences in particular it’s our
experiences our experiences listening to
other voices so I’m going to share a
couple of examples from my career in
journalism that that gave me some
authority to speak about topics in
conversation so quite a long time ago
this was about 20 years now before John
and I were married we were we were
colleagues at ABC News and we did a few
stories together one of them we went out
to the heartland of America to do a
story about a rise in teenagers having
babies there was a sudden spike in this
and the trend was generating a lot of
news coverage and a lot of hand-wringing
in the country now
babies born to unwed teen mothers are
significantly more
likely to be poor to be behind in school
to get into drugs and crime to suffer a
whole host of disadvantages that will
make it harder for them as they get
older and we thought we’d go to a place
where the unwed teen birthrate was about
the national average at this time was
about a third of all babies in this
particular in in the country were being
born to unwed teen mothers and we
thought will will hold the grown-ups
feet to the fire in this town will
really demand to know what’s going on
what is being done about it what’s
behind this trend we found ourselves in
Sioux City Iowa and we had set up
interviews ahead of time with a wide
variety of people in town the first
person we interviewed was a juvenile
court judge very thoughtful soft-spoken
guy who’d been in his job for a little
about 16 or 17 years and he was starting
to see teenagers in his courtroom who
were getting into trouble and those kids
in his courtroom were the children of
teenagers he had seen in juvenile court
early in his career and he was noticing
something very clear which is and this
was clear from the statistics but he saw
it in his courtroom and that was that
many troubled teens eventually wind up
having their own troubled teens and he
spoke at length about an idea he had to
resolve this and he thought that people
should not be able to enter into
parenting lightly and that you should
have to get a license just like you have
to get a driver’s license that you’d
have to take classes pass a test and you
couldn’t have a kid unless you had a
license to do so and it’s not very
practical but he was very persuasive it
was a compelling argument and I think he
was genuinely heartbroken to see this
next generation of problems and then we
met with a political leader who argued
that it was government financial support
for poor young parents that was
providing an incentive for teenagers to
become parents before they were ready to
support them and he too made a very
compelling argument and then we started
meeting with the young mothers these
were girls between the ages of 14 and 16
all with newborns or toddlers not
married to the father of the children
they were not the most sophisticated
talkers they knew they were being
interviewed for a national
television program they were not well
versed in this particular controversy
they didn’t understand it was a trend
they weren’t even aware of the
statistics that we’re going likely to
have the deck stacked against their own
children and John was the interviewer
and when he asked them why they decided
to have a baby not a single one of them
had a well-crafted well-thought-out
answer every single one of them though
had something very important and very
illuminating to say they had not had
these babies because of the financial
incentives nor had they entered into the
decision lightly we were very surprised
that they had made a deliberate decision
to have a baby and here’s why their own
families had been chaotic torn apart by
one or more usually more of the
following divorce substance abuse
violence parental abandonment having a
baby for them was their way to create a
loving lasting relationship something
they craved desperately now this
surprised me and astonished me and was
absolutely not what I was expecting not
a single one of the adults we had spoken
to the judge the politicians some
teachers we spoke to had understood this
important point either they never
mentioned it now as I said these girls
were not persuasive speakers most of
them in the interviews we would call
them Ajax moments what they were having
really not persuasive but and you know
they couldn’t explain the main crux of
this which is why they were having
children so young so none of them
explicitly said they had deliberately
had a baby but they but we listened to
them talk about their backgrounds their
hopes for their children their desire to
be good parents the the chaos in their
own families and we were able to piece
things together to hear their persuasion
by listening to them it turned out that
every single one of the girls we
interviewed had been the child of teen
parents they were born at a time when
there was a lot of pressure to get
married so they had parents who had
married young but then had divorced they
were doing exactly what their parents
had done only a generation later it was
okay to not get married
so now there were other dynamics at work
but um but this was sort of the main the
main point was that they wanted to have
babies we we went back to ABC News and
[Music]
reported on this story and it was the
first time nationally that they that
this issue had been raised that this
this made perfect sense to a
fifteen-year-old to have a baby on their
own to fill a need now talk about
persuasive now that’s not at all to
endorse this position the reality was
very it was it was very very important
to the public
discussion but it was also important to
understanding this cry from how for help
from some people who were persuasive but
not articulate about it now it was very
important to me as a journalist and a
believer in persuasion that we need to
recognize these Ajax moments I’m going
to give you another example and another
story John and I worked on together we
were covering the civil war in
Afghanistan a little bit before the
radical Taliban took over that country
we spent an hour – in a Children’s
Hospital in the capital of Kabul and we
had been told that the bombing of the
neighborhood that the hospital was in
usually began in the late afternoon that
day so we were trying to finish up our
filming because we did not want to we
did not want to experience that violence
we had one more interview a boy about 12
or 13 in maybe 14 years old and John
asked him a few questions about the war
how long had been going on if he could
remember a time before it he had lost an
arm and he asked about that and the boy
had very little to say and as a lot of
young people do he just didn’t know
quite how to articulate what he was
experienced at one point he just kind of
shrugged his shoulders and said I don’t
know that’s the way it’s always been
at that very moment a missile whistled
through the air it really made a
whistling sound and it landed probably a
block from this hospital that we were in
this Children’s Ward full of children
and it was it was terrifying and it’s
terrifying for me just a loud piercing
whistle and it sounded as if it were
headed straight toward us and
instinctively I just
on the floor in complete fear and this
shell landed and after a moment I got up
and I was shaking and all the kids in
the ward were laughing now perhaps it
seems silly to them that an adult would
just dive when a missile was coming
perhaps it seemed cartoonish the way I
do have on the floor maybe just this
person whose life is so safe and secure
diving on the floor when these kids had
lived through what they had lived to
just was so absurd that they couldn’t
help laughs they didn’t say much with
words but I will never forget that
laughter because it said so much more
than they probably could have said with
words it spoke of heartbreak cruelty
absurdity violence and mostly resilience
they could laugh and move on so I would
encourage you all to go out and have
experiences that will give you the
authority to be persuasive by listening
to others listening to persuasive voices
of others even if they don’t sound like
the classic muthos you don’t have to
travel too far filling places you can
read I loved hearing from I think Sophia
previous speaker who talked about going
out to a restaurant and conversing with
her grandpa conversing with somebody
whose name is unusual and finding out
about that person’s background so go to
that restaurant try foods that are
unfamiliar to you travel if you can do
things that make you feel a little bit
uncomfortable and listen to other people
now I want to bring this back to Ajax as
I wrap it up not HX the foaming cleanser
and not Ajax the Greek warrior but my
Ajax right here
when Ajax was young he he didn’t talk
much he most kids start talking around a
year old by the time they’re 18 months
they have quite a few words Ajax just
had none he didn’t say much and the
doctors started getting worried and I
wasn’t really worried because I could
see that he was communicating he
understood everything that was going on
he responded he had a great look in his
eye and just as we were about to start
ordering some tests
to see if there was some issue that we
needed to address with him Ajax just
opened up his mouth one day and said one
complete sentence and it was astonishing
and all siblings were around him we just
happened to be here and this little
quiet man who had a prolonged Ajax
moment just spoke and everyone listened
thank you [Applause]