7 Lessons from a 7-Minute Speech — Part 4
Here’s the truth: whatever your message, someone has said it before. And someone will say it again.
“The smallest act of kindness can change a life.”
“You don’t have to be perfect to make a difference.”
“What you do matters more than what you say.”
“The only thing permanent is change.”
You’ve heard these a hundred times. So have I. So has everyone in your audience.
But when you say it — with your story, your memories, your feelings — that’s when it becomes unforgettable.
Nobody remembers generic.
This is the final installment of a four-part series on public speaking lessons I learned during my 2025 Toastmasters contest journey.
Part 1 covered why every communication must serve the audience above all else.
Part 2 was about why every word earns its place and how to curate truth for impact.
Part 3 showed us how practicing aloud and rehearsing with real people transforms delivery.
Today’s two lessons bring it all together. They’re about what makes your communication yours — and why the whole journey should feel less like an exam and more like play.
Lesson 6: Show Yourself
My speech, “One Life, Fully Lived,” was about three lessons: embrace the present, spice it up, and forgive everyone.
None of those ideas is original. Not one. Anyone can give a speech about all of those lessons. ChatGPT can write one in thirty seconds.
But ChatGPT can’t write my speech.
Because my speech was about how I learned those lessons by watching my wife, Uzma, live them during her final years. My stories. My memories. My pain. My gratitude.
That’s what made the speech mine.
When I talked about “embrace the present,” I wasn’t quoting a self-help book. I was describing Uzma trying parasailing for the first time while living with stage 4 cancer.
When I said “spice it up,” I was thinking of how she turned ordinary days into adventures.
When I talked about forgiveness, I was sharing something deeply personal.
The audience had heard these ideas before. But they hadn’t heard them through my experience. That made all the difference.
Why Authenticity Isn’t a Buzzword
I know “be authentic” has become one of those phrases that gets thrown around so much it’s lost its meaning. Every leadership book tells you to be authentic. Every keynote speaker says, “Just be yourself.”
What they don’t tell you is that being yourself in front of an audience is actually quite hard.
It requires vulnerability. Sharing parts of your story that are messy, unfinished, or painful. It requires confidence. Trusting that your experience is worth hearing, even though it’s just your experience. And it requires craft. Knowing how to shape your personal story so that it serves the audience (Lesson 1) without unnecessary detail (Lessons 2 and 3).
Authenticity isn’t about dumping your life story on people. It’s about choosing the specific moments from your life that illuminate a universal truth. And that’s a skill. One you develop over time. With practice and rehearsal (Lessons 4 and 5).
What This Means For Healthcare Leaders
In healthcare leadership, we tend to hide behind data, processes, and protocols. We present the evidence. We cite the guidelines. We share the metrics. All necessary. But rarely memorable.
The talks that change how people think? They have a person in them.
When I was the Chief Medical Officer at a hospital, I heard the Chief Quality Officer give a report to the leadership team every month. But I remember only one of those meetings — when she opened her presentation with a story.
She described a near-miss that happened early in her career. A medication error that almost harmed a child. She talked about the sick feeling in her stomach when she realized what had almost happened. She talked about the system failures that made the error possible and how no one person was to blame.
Then she said, “That moment is why I do this work.”
After that, every data point she shared had weight. Because the audience understood why it mattered to her. The data was the evidence. Her story was the reason.
You have stories like that. Every healthcare leader does. The patient who changed how you practice. The mentor who said the thing you still carry. The failure that taught you something no textbook could.
Those stories are your superpower.
When you weave your actual experience into your communication — not as self-indulgence, but as a bridge to your audience — you become impossible to ignore. And impossible to forget.
The Fear Behind Hiding
So why don’t more leaders do this?
Fear.
Fear of being seen as unprofessional. Fear of showing emotion in a culture that prizes clinical detachment. Fear that personal stories will be dismissed as “soft” or “anecdotal” in a world that worships data and evidence.
I get it. Medicine trains us to separate ourselves from the work. The patient is the patient. The data is the data. We are the objective observers.
But leadership isn’t objective observation. Leadership is persuasion. And persuasion is deeply personal. The physician leader who shares a carefully chosen story about why they care isn’t being unprofessional. They’re being human. And humans are persuaded by other humans, not by slide decks.
You don’t have to share everything. You shouldn’t. But find the one story that connects you to the message you’re delivering. The one that says, “This isn’t abstract for me. This is personal.”
That’s showing yourself. And it’s what separates leaders who inform from leaders who move.
Lesson 7: Have Fun
I quoted John F. Kennedy earlier in this series: The only reason to give a speech is to change the world.
With all due respect to President Kennedy, I disagree slightly. We can change the world by donating or volunteering. We don’t need a stage for that.
But one of life’s greatest joys is simply being understood. Every time we step in front of an audience, we get a chance to play. Play with words. Play with timing. Play with connection. It’s a playground, not an exam.
Have you ever watched a kid who just learned to walk? They wobble, fall, get up, and walk again. Nervous and excited at the same time. Same thing when they learn to ride a bike. Same thing when you learned to drive.
That mix of fear, nervousness, and thrill? That’s the spirit we should bring every time we communicate.
A sense of play rather than one of perfectionism or dread allows us to adjust and grow through our stumbles.
And when it all clicks — when a room full of people understands what you were trying to say — that is fun.
JFK is still right, but his quote is incomplete. It should be: The only reason to give a speech is to change the world, but only if you enjoy changing the world by using your powers of persuasion.
Why Fun Matters For Healthcare Leaders
Healthcare is heavy. The stakes are high. People’s lives are in your hands — literally or through the systems and teams you lead.
It’s easy for communication to feel like another burden. Another task on the list. Another thing to stress about. But if you approach every presentation, every meeting, every conversation as a chance to connect rather than a chance to dump information, something shifts.
You relax. Your audience relaxes. The message flows more naturally. You’re more responsive, more present, more human.
The best leaders I’ve worked with, the ones people genuinely want to follow, share one thing: they seem to enjoy what they’re doing. Even when the topic is serious. Even when the news is bad.
It’s not that they’re making light of things. It’s that they’re engaged. Present. Alive to the moment. That energy is contagious. When a leader communicates with genuine engagement, the whole room feels it.
Fun Isn’t a Separate Lesson
Looking back at all seven lessons, I realize that fun isn’t really a standalone idea. It’s woven into all of them.
Serving the audience (Lesson 1) is fun when you focus on impact rather than impressing people. Making every word earn its place (Lesson 2) is fun in the way that editing a good piece of writing is satisfying. Curating truth (Lesson 3) is fun when you find the one perfect line. Practicing aloud (Lesson 4) is fun when you feel the speech getting sharper each time. Rehearsing with people (Lesson 5) is fun when their feedback reveals something you hadn’t seen. And showing yourself (Lesson 6) is fun when the audience connects with your story in a real way.
The whole process is play — if you let it be.
Bringing It All Together
These started as lessons from a 7-minute-long contest speech. But they’re really about any moment when you stand up and try to move someone. A board presentation. A team huddle. A tough conversation. A keynote. An email that matters.
If you learn to enjoy every step of preparing and delivering a message — from the first messy draft to the final delivery — you’ll become the kind of communicator who moves hearts, minds, and maybe even mountains.
And if you’re a physician stepping into leadership, that skill matters more than almost anything else you’ll learn — besides medicine, of course!
Because the healthcare system needs more than slide decks.
It needs voices that move.
This is Part 4, the final installment in the series: 7 Lessons from a 7-Minute Speech. It is based on a 25-minute interactive presentation with the same title that I have given in multiple settings, including at District 30 (Chicago Region) Toastmasters Leadership Institute in December 2025. In that presentation, I share the lessons I learned while reaching the semifinals of the 2025 World Championship of Public Speaking. Leave a comment if you would like to explore whether it could be a good presentation for your team.