Knowing how to brief a keynote speaker is turning into a capability worth developing. The Australian business events industry generates 36 billion dollars in direct economic benefit and employs around 229,000 people, and convention centres alone recently hosted 3,700 events for 4.35 million delegates.
Bringing in an outside speaker to offer a fresh perspective, to inspire, to create some distance from the day job or to put a recognisable name on the programme has become ordinary practice, including in small businesses.
I still take calls from professionals who have no idea how to work with an external speaker. Organisers with a list of subjects longer than the agenda, who assume that handing me the full complexity of their environment will somehow simplify my task, or who tell me ten times that they want something interactive because of a talk they sat through a decade ago.
| The problem | The reason | The solution |
|---|---|---|
| How to brief a keynote speakerOrganisers book an external speaker and then discover the session did not do what they hoped. The talk was competent, and it answered a question nobody had agreed on internally. | The brief carried the complexity rather than the decisionA long list of subjects handed to a speaker transfers the organiser’s uncertainty rather than resolving it. A professional will narrow it, and anybody who accepts the whole list without comment is about to read a catalogue on stage. | Seven decisions, made before the callObjective, subject, format, breadth, customisation, audience and logistics. Each one is a decision the organiser owns, and settling them takes less time than the disappointment costs. |
Why briefing a speaker goes wrong
A brief fails for one of two reasons. Either the objective was never agreed inside the organisation, so the session cannot satisfy everybody in the room, or the request was so broad that the speaker had to choose the subject themselves. Both are fixable before anybody signs anything.
What organisers actually send
I recently received a request from an HR director looking for somebody to help understand the expectations of newer generations, identify engagement levers for talent retention, and shed light on the evolution of work from a forward-looking perspective, taking into account the subsidiarity, agility and ecosystem logics required by consulting work.
That is a single sentence from a real brief, and it is not a joke. Reading it, I could not tell you what the audience was supposed to leave with.
The other recurring pattern is the interactive request. Somebody sat through a session years ago with so many bullet points that they have been considering joining the Anti-PowerPoint Party, which is a real Swiss political party, ever since. Interactive then arrives in the brief without anybody defining what it means.
What a speaker can and cannot fix
A confused brief leaves the speaker two options, and which one applies depends on how much authority you hold over the content.
If you hold that authority, the speaker will help you choose among the subjects and narrow the field. A professional handles this request every week and it costs a phone call.
If you do not, because you are acting for somebody else, a boss or a client, the speaker may decline. They can tell you are looking for a catalogue rather than a talk, and reading a catalogue on stage is not a keynote. Be wary of anybody who accepts the whole list without a word.
The seven steps
Seven decisions cover a complete brief, whether the speaker is me or anybody else. None of them takes long, and each one removes a specific category of disappointment.
Step 1: be clear about what you expect
What exactly do you want from this session? To carry a message, present a view of the future, inspire the room, provide a read on trends, or simply entertain an audience that has just sat through a presentation on your workforce coverage ratios?
Not only what you personally want, if you are organising this alone. Is that objective shared internally, including by the audience the session is intended for?
Settle this before you call anybody. It prevents the large disappointment that arrives when a session fails to meet expectations nobody had written down. If you are imposing the objective on your people, tell them, so they are not waiting for something else.
One related point worth adding to the brief: tell the speaker how far your audience is willing to have things questioned, so nobody goes further than your culture will carry. In short, agree the objective internally before you call anybody.
Step 2: be precise about the subject
Precision here means naming one thing the audience should leave with, rather than listing everything the session could conceivably touch. A long list transfers your uncertainty to somebody who has less information than you do.
Write the subject as a sentence a member of the audience would recognise. If you cannot, the internal conversation from step one has not finished.
In short, be precise about the theme and you avoid the problem.
Step 3: do not confuse a keynote, a workshop, training and consulting
If you want a session that develops collaboration inside your team, promotes collaborative behaviour and strengthens teamwork, and if on top of that you expect concrete examples and tools your audience can use afterwards, what you need is a workshop or a training session rather than an hour-long keynote.
There is a variant where the client expects the speaker to answer a long list of questions. A speaker’s expertise can genuinely move your thinking forward, and a keynote is still not free consulting.
Choosing the right format means balancing how much the subject matters against how much time you can give it, which leaves three possibilities.
- Choose a keynote and lower your ambitions, telling the speaker which single issue matters most.
- Add one or more breakout workshops after the keynote, run by the speaker or by other facilitators.
- Work with somebody who can adapt the format to your need and offer several levels on the same subject: the keynote, the workshop or the engagement.
In short, calibrate the format and the duration against what you are actually trying to achieve.
Step 4: specify breadth or depth
This step is a choice between the width and the depth of the session. Do you want something broad that opens a conversation across the organisation, or something detailed that helps a specific group put the subject into practice?
This is why a good speaker needs to be as competent at staging their expertise as they are at holding it, which is the lesson every good conference talk teaches.
Specifying the level of detail helps the speaker adapt the session and choose which examples to bring. In my own VUCA sessions, the broad version walks through the concepts behind each letter with examples and quizzes, and the deep version applies the frame to a commercial and management strategy built on Amazon’s Day One thinking.
In short, decide the depth and the width, so nobody guesses.
Step 5: state the level of customisation you want
One simple question sits here. Do you want a standard session or one adapted to your culture and your challenges? Adapted to your culture and your challenges, note, rather than to your industry and your sector, because a speaker should inspire you rather than help you copy.
Choosing a standard session is legitimate for at least three reasons. Standard sessions usually cost less. The subject may carry no immediate stakes for you. And you may want something built for impact, a set polished to the millimetre that works as much as performance as it does as a talk.
If you want a session that resonates with a live challenge, precision engineering is the wrong tool. You want your feet on the ground and a willingness to build the session together.
Customisation can be as simple as briefing your culture and recent events in the life of the organisation. It can go considerably further, including phone conversations between your people and the speaker, so they absorb the internal vocabulary and can illustrate their points with situations the room has lived through. In short, avoid the copy and paste by commissioning something built for you.
Step 6: describe the audience and the timeslot
Tell the speaker who will be in the room and when the session runs. Both change what they prepare, and neither costs you anything to supply.
On the audience, describe its composition so the speaker can adapt vocabulary and examples. This matters most where the room holds several functions and several levels of seniority at once.
On the timing, a speaker needs to know whether they are on straight after lunch. That slot calls for energisers and a more physical delivery to keep the room awake, and any experienced speaker will plan differently for it.
In short, avoid a flat room by telling the speaker who they are speaking to.
Step 7: settle deliverables and technical requirements
Slides and technical setup belong together, because clients frequently ask for the speaker’s deck before or after the session. Raise it during preparation rather than on the day.
Some speakers will send you their slides or leave them behind happily. Others, myself included, decline. My reason is that my slides are inseparable from the session, because they illustrate what I am saying rather than the other way round. Leaving them behind would leave you the images and video I use to illustrate a talk, which serves no purpose without the sound.
On the technical side, tell the speaker the presentation conditions as early as you can. A speaker is not simply somebody filling a slot in your run sheet, and their requirements around microphone, room to move and access to their own laptop are part of the delivery.
In my own case, having my laptop on stage matters. Audiences now expect moments of interaction through live polls and quizzes, and running those is very difficult with your machine in the control room and a two-button clicker in your hand. In short, think through every parameter, including the speaker’s own working conditions.
Field note
The brief that arrived from three people at once
An organisation booked me for a leadership day and the brief came through their events coordinator. It was clear, well written and specific. On the preparation call there were three of them on the line, and within ten minutes it emerged that each one wanted a different session.
The HR director wanted the room challenged. The general manager wanted them reassured after a difficult year. The events coordinator wanted them awake after lunch. None of those three objectives is wrong and no single session delivers all three, which is why the written brief had read so smoothly: it had been assembled by taking one line from each of them.
We spent the rest of that call choosing, which is work they should have done before contacting anybody. They picked challenge, told their people in advance that the session would be uncomfortable, and it went well.
If more than one person is briefing, get them on the same call before you approach a speaker. A brief that reads smoothly and was written by committee is the most expensive kind, because nobody discovers the disagreement until the room does.
Keynote, workshop or engagement, which one you are buying
Three formats get confused during procurement, and the confusion costs more than the fee difference. Each one changes something different, and the deciding factor is what you expect people to do the following week.
Three formats compared
Read this by the outcome you need rather than by the budget you hold. A keynote bought where a workshop was needed will be judged a failure for doing its job correctly.
| Format | What it changes | What it cannot do | Buy it when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Keynote, 45 to 60 minutes | How a room frames a subject, and the vocabulary it uses afterwards | Deliver tools, practice or individual answers | You need a shared starting point across a large group |
| Workshop, half or full day | Practice in a small group, working on the participants’ own cases | Reach a large population or change conditions outside the room | People already agree on the subject and need to apply it |
| Engagement, several sessions | Conditions, processes and decisions in the organisation | Produce a result inside one quarter | The constraint sits in how the work is organised |
Signals that you have specified the wrong format
Four signals appear during the briefing conversation, well before anybody is booked. Each one points at a different format from the one on the purchase order.
- You expect participants to leave with tools they can apply, which describes a workshop.
- You have a list of questions you want answered, which describes consulting.
- You want behaviour to change across the organisation, which describes an engagement.
- You want the room to think differently about something by lunchtime, which is the one thing a keynote does better than anything else.
Choose the speaker before you write the brief
A brief only works once you know who it is going to. Read my criteria for choosing an innovation speaker and shortlist against something firmer than a showreel.
How I can help you prepare your session
I run keynotes, workshops and longer engagements on innovation, curiosity, managerial transformation and the future of work, and I build the preparation into every booking rather than charging for it separately.
Preparation calls and customisation
Every session starts with a call that works through the seven steps above, and it usually takes forty minutes. Where the stakes justify it, I add conversations with your own people so the examples come from inside the organisation.
Where the brief has been written by several people, we settle the disagreement on that call rather than in the room.
Keynotes, workshops and engagements
I offer several levels on the same subject, so a conversation that starts as a keynote can become a workshop or an engagement once we have worked out what you actually need. That flexibility exists precisely because of step three.
If you want to see the range before you call, my speaking topics set out what each subject looks like as a keynote and as a workshop.
Conclusion: how to brief a keynote speaker without disappointing anybody
Most disappointing sessions were briefed poorly rather than delivered poorly. The talk answered a question, and the question had never been agreed by the people who would be sitting in the room.
Settle the objective internally, name one subject, choose the right format, decide between breadth and depth, state how much customisation you want, describe the audience and the timeslot, and agree deliverables and technical needs.
Seven decisions, most of them yours rather than the speaker’s. Knowing how to brief a keynote speaker is mostly the discipline of making those decisions before you pick up the phone.
Frequently asked questions about briefing a keynote speaker
What information does a keynote speaker need before an event?
The agreed objective, one named subject, the format and duration, whether you want breadth or depth, how much customisation you expect, the composition of the audience, the timeslot, and the technical setup. Seven decisions, and most of them belong to you rather than the speaker.
Should a keynote speaker give you their slides?
Practice varies and it is worth agreeing during preparation. Some speakers share their deck freely. Others decline, because slides that illustrate a talk rather than carry it are close to meaningless without the delivery, and a keynote is neither a training course nor a consulting report.
What is the difference between a keynote and a workshop?
A keynote changes how a room frames a subject and the vocabulary it uses afterwards. A workshop has people practise on their own cases in a small group. If you expect participants to leave with tools they can apply, you need a workshop regardless of what the budget line says.
How long before the event should you brief the speaker?
Early enough to run a preparation call, and earlier still if you want customisation involving conversations with your own people. The technical conditions should be confirmed as soon as they are known, since microphone, staging and laptop access all affect what a speaker can deliver.
