I was asked recently what advice I would give to someone wanting to choose the right keynote speaker for a conference.
It’s not an easy question to answer, partly because I have an obvious vested interest. As a keynote speaker myself, I’m hardly a neutral observer. But it also made me realise that, over the past fifteen years, I’ve seen the decision from both sides. I’ve spoken at conferences in more than twenty countries, but I’ve also spent many hours sitting in conference halls as an ordinary delegate, listening to other speakers. Some have been world-famous names, others almost unknown. Some have been technically brilliant. Others have been unforgettable for reasons that had very little to do with the polish of the presentation.
The more conferences I attend, the less convinced I am that choosing a keynote speaker is really about choosing a speaker at all.
I think it’s about choosing the sort of conversation you want your conference to have.
That may sound rather abstract, but let me explain.
When people look back on a conference a few months later, they rarely remember the running order. They probably can’t recall the menu, the colour of the stage lighting, or even every session they attended. What they do remember are the conversations. The discussion over coffee after the keynote. The story that kept coming up over dinner. The phrase that became shorthand for an idea the leadership team wanted to keep alive. A good keynote has a curious way of giving a conference a common language.
That, I suspect, is why the decision matters more than people sometimes realise.
Perhaps the first question conference organisers ask themselves is the wrong one. We often begin by asking, “Who would be a good speaker?” It seems a perfectly sensible place to start, but I wonder whether a better question would be, “What do we want people to think differently about when they leave?” Once that becomes clear, the search for a speaker becomes much easier.
I’ve noticed that organisers are often drawn to extraordinary achievements. That’s entirely understandable. Human beings are naturally fascinated by people who have done unusual things. Climbed Everest. Won Olympic medals. Built remarkable businesses. Rowed oceans. Crossed deserts. There is something compelling about those stories.
The difficulty is that an extraordinary life doesn’t automatically make for an extraordinary keynote.
I’ve heard fascinating stories that never really became relevant to the audience sitting in front of them. Equally, I’ve seen relatively modest stories become deeply moving because the speaker somehow helped the audience see their own challenges reflected in them.
As an adventure speaker, this is something I think about a great deal. The adventure itself is never really the point. Very few people in my audiences have any desire to cycle across Siberia or spend seventy-one days walking alone across the Taklamakan Desert. Nor should they. Those journeys simply provide a rather unusual setting in which ordinary human questions become impossible to ignore. What do we do when the plan falls apart? How do we keep going when progress is painfully slow? How do we decide what really matters when circumstances change? How do we cope when we discover we can’t solve a problem on our own?
Those are not adventure questions. They are leadership questions. Team questions. Family questions. Human questions.
Perhaps that is why I have become slightly wary of conference organisers who tell me they are looking for an “inspirational speaker”. Of course they are, and I know exactly what they mean. But inspiration, by itself, has quite a short half-life. We’ve all experienced the phenomenon of leaving a conference determined to change our lives, only to find ourselves back in the same routines by the middle of the following week.
The best keynote speakers, it seems to me, do something a little different. Rather than simply lifting people’s emotions, they quietly alter the way people see familiar situations. If someone leaves thinking, “I hadn’t looked at it like that before,” then the keynote has achieved something that may last rather longer than the initial burst of enthusiasm.
Another thing I’ve gradually come to appreciate is that keynote speaking is, in some ways, a surprisingly collaborative exercise. From the audience’s perspective, it may look as though the speaker simply walks onto the stage and delivers a polished performance. In reality, the really important work often begins weeks beforehand.
Whenever I’m preparing for a conference, I find myself asking organisers an endless stream of questions. Why are you holding this conference now? What has the past year been like? What conversations are already happening inside the business? What are people excited about? What are they worried about? What do you hope they’ll be talking about on the journey home?
Sometimes I worry that I’m asking too many questions.
Then I remind myself that the keynote isn’t really about me at all.
It’s about them.
I’ve occasionally been asked whether I have spoken in a particular industry before. It’s a perfectly reasonable question, although I suspect there is another one that matters even more. Is this someone who is genuinely curious about our audience?
I would probably choose curiosity over industry experience every time.
One piece of practical advice I often give organisers is to watch a full keynote if they possibly can. Every professional speaker has a beautifully edited showreel. Mine included. They are useful, but they are also rather deceptive. Three minutes of highlights can make almost anyone look exceptional.
Watching someone hold the attention of an audience for an hour is a rather different test.
Does the speaker still have something worth saying after twenty minutes? Do they know when to slow down? Can they respond naturally when something unexpected happens? Do they appear genuinely interested in the audience, or merely in delivering a performance?
Those qualities are much harder to edit into a showreel.
Perhaps the biggest misconception of all is that the keynote exists in isolation. In reality, it becomes part of the conference’s wider story. A really good keynote doesn’t feel like an entertaining interruption before lunch. It somehow gathers together many of the themes people have already been discussing and sends them back into the conference with fresh eyes.
When that happens, something rather satisfying occurs. The organiser’s objectives, the speaker’s stories, and the audience’s own experiences all begin pointing in the same direction. The keynote no longer feels like a performance. It feels like an integral part of the conference itself.
So, How Do You Choose the Right Keynote Speaker for Your Conference?
In the end, I don’t think conference organisers are really buying sixty minutes of speaking.
They’re buying perspective.
They’re hoping that, somewhere in those sixty minutes, people will find a slightly different way of looking at uncertainty, leadership, teamwork or change. They’re hoping that one idea, one story or one question will stay with people long after the lights have been switched off and the exhibition stands packed away.
That is quite a responsibility, and one that I don’t think should ever be taken lightly.
So if you were to choose the right keynote speaker for your conference, you shouldn’t begin with the biggest name or the most extraordinary achievement.
I’d begin with a much simpler question.
Who is most likely to help our audience think differently?
Everything else, I suspect, follows from there.