Presence or Perfection? Why Your Most Powerful Talk Can’t be Scripted

Published June 20, 2025 | By Gail

I’ve spent years helping others find their way back to the truth beneath the script. As I walk that path myself, this blog post offers two reflections:

The Trouble with Scripts
Where My Unscripted Life is Leading Me Now—and your invitation to join me!

Recently I witnessed a speaker who showed up with a beautiful script. A page was missing and she proceeded to “lose it.” A blank stare, then panic.

I’ve often witnessed that “losing it” is the beginning of “finding it”, although the speaker usually doesn’t experience it that way! That’s what happened here. In losing her place, she found herself in the moment. Only then did those of us in the audience feel something real happen and begin to relate to what she had to share.

In my work with speakers, I teach how to structure a talk without scripting. I know a script can get in the way of the very thing we most want — a palpable connection with our audience. (As for losing our place, do not get me started.)

When we script every word, we may sound polished, but we risk losing the magic that comes only from true presence. We miss the energy of the room, the insight that rises in the moment, the sudden recognition between listener and speaker — “Hey, that’s me, too!” Real transformation happens in the unscripted moment, alive and unrepeatable.

That doesn’t mean we don’t prepare. We do. We know our Medicine, our message, and the story that shows we’ve earned the right to speak it. We create the structure but not a script. Even then, once we’re up on that stage, we let go and listen for what wants to be said. We understand every audience is different. The energy of every room is different. And if we’re tethered to a script, we’re not fully present and can miss the greater intelligence that wants to move through us.

The same goes for writing in this new world of AI. The tools are remarkable. But the more we rely on polish, the more we lose what makes us human: our vulnerability, our imperfection, our relatability. AI can string together language. But only a human — a living, listening, sensing being — has a voice. That voice has been shaped by experience, loss, love, and devotion and speaks to our shared, tender humanity. There’s not much to hold on to when a speaker or writer is grammatically perfect but emotionally vacant.

When we are at home in ourselves, the audience feels it. Then we experience real connection, the kind that moves people emotionally, invites action, and changes lives and worlds.

Whether we’re speaking, writing, or simply showing up — let’s dare to be present. Presence is where the Mystery speaks, connection is felt, and the new story begins.

Where My Unscripted Life Is Leading Me Now

Eldership, Emergence, and New Ways to Play Together

As I am present to the new story of eldership that is emerging in me, I’m finding this to be a richly creative time — in both my work and what’s emerging through it. I thought I was complete with the traditional form of my Transformational Speaking Immersions (four days with just six people) … and yet Life seems to have other plans.

I’ve committed to the wisdom of “don’t push, don’t hold back, and watch what comes to my door.” What has come to my door is what my grandmother would have called “an elegant sufficiency” — a beautiful flow of clients ready for the Immersion experience. I’ve now fully enrolled two programs and am planning a third later in the year. (Apply here.)

What is enlivening me now is my new Transformational Listening™ work — opening to deeper sources of wisdom to guide our lives as well as the larger collective story. Oh, there are so many inspiring ways to listen — to body, to nature, to dreams, to Life! — that can steer our path toward the greater possibilities inherent in these times. As for our speaking, once we truly listen, our spoken words will matter as never before.

I’ve been experimenting with the structure of this new program and we just completed a beta group that blew our minds! I’ll be offering a weekend experience at cost later this year in Santa Fe. (We hope to gather at a nurturing nature-based retreat location — if available when I choose the date.)