Leadership And Public Speaking

Saturday, January 13, 2007 9:48 AM Will

The Leadership Power of Great Public Speaking

This week, Steve Jobs did his MacWorld song and dance. While he delivers his message to an eager and receptive audience, there's no question that his mastery of public speaking helps promote his message and causes even those who aren't Apple zealots to take notice. I'd hazard a guess that this skill is also a huge arrow in his leadership quiver inside of Apple Computer.

It's rare to find great leaders that can't speak to a crowd and get them to follow or at least riled up about what they are promoting. I'm sure there are cases where introverted, soft-spoken leaders have been successful, but most often, the ability to speak well to an audience is a required skill in successfully leading groups larger than a few dozen people. Unabashedly promoting one's organization and, often, oneself, is just a fundamental skill that anyone who is now a leader or wishes to be one must learn. The good news is that it can be learned.

At this week's Needham Growth Conference, I attended roughly 25 presentations by companies - both private and public. There were some poor speakers, some mediocre and a few really good ones. As you might expect, the quality of each presentation had little to do with its content. There were great presentations by CEOs of companies dealing with a boat load of stock option issues, their stock in the toilet, and there were crappy presentations from squeaky clean companies growing 300% year-over-year.

Generally speaking, the boring speakers lost their audiences, physically or mentally, by the time they reached the halfway point of their speech. The great speakers held their audience and were surrounded by people that wanted private time with them after their presentation. Good speakers walked away with dozens of business cards from potential investors and poor ones ate lunch by themselves. See a pattern here?

I've said before, that I believe that leadership and management are separate disciplines. If being or becoming a good leader is the goal you seek, practice being a good speaker (yes, it requires practice), prepare (a lot) before you speak, have something meaningful to say and ban timidity (but not humility) from your presentations. Use the force, Luke.

Being softly spoken has no bearing on the ability to be a great or even good public speaker. I think the author is mistaking being introverted for a lack of chrisma. A great point here is how a great presentation can lead to many networking opportunities.

Can You See His Point?

This is a very cool video of the masterful Doug Jefferys on public speaking and killer presentation skills. He's right on the money and entertaining too!

Notice his 'pointing' technique (and the story about Bill Clinton) - this has been adopted by many speakers (British PM Tony Blair used this too). It's a compromise between a (finger) point to add emphasis and the thumbs-up gesture. Enjoy.

Speechless in Seattle???

We're already into the second week of 2007 and for many of us we have much to accomplish over the next 12 months or so. However, it can seem that some things will forever be outside our reach if we don't first conquer that which holds us back. It is said that public speaking is the single biggest fear that people have - death usually being quoted as being the second!

Personally I'm not sure where these 'facts' come from or just how accurate they might be. What I do know is that for many people fear of speaking in public is paralyzing and highly costly (something we'll look at a bit more closley in future posts).

For now think about this - if you had the skills and knowledge to make simply Awesome Speeches that were highly persuasive and brimming with confidence when called upon, how would your life differ for the better now???


Don Callaghan