Leadership and great speeches: The Five Minute Class
How NOT to do it.
Don’t do this:
Here’s Marcus J. Ranum on why:
“In this performance, Ballmer combines behavioral extremes of
aggression,
wimpiness,
and dorkiness.
His body language is amazing because it's so self-contradictory within such a short time. This may, actually, be brilliant marketing - a deliberate attempt to create cognitive dissonance within the staff, etc. (i.e.: "who is this guy?" "wow, he's out of shape! " "if I were a billionaire, I wouldn't do that!")â€
The learning point
Be yourself.
Don’t feel you have to act something you are not.
People respond to authenticity.
If you feel you are not naturally a great speaker, don’t fake it in an attempt to make up for it. People will spot it instantly.
Your remaining 3 minutes
If you've already been tempted to read through Marcus J. Ranum's background thinking, sparked off by the speech above, then your five minutes are done. If not, have a three minute read by clicking on the link. Much of Ranum's thinking is powerful stuff in helping you with the values and principles that underlie great communication and without which even the best-written speech will fall on stony ground.
Source: Five Minute Class Class, Leadership and Great Speeches, a sample from the Communications Module, one of a number of development modules we can build for you within your own in-house version of The Leadership Hub.
NB IF YOU WORK FOR MICROSOFT:
We have up to an hour of material on Great Speeches, and can cut you a Five Minute Class to suit your needs from it. For example, if you work for Microsoft and are considering asking us to build you an in-house version of The Leadership Hub, you won't want this particular Five Minute Class on Leadership and Speeches, I presume...
Great speeches: Style and substance
Great assessment from Ranum - I too have been through the "fad favorites list" of temporary fixes. They seem to come up when times are tough, and management lacks a vision to turn things around. We've got some challenges in my group, and I'm trying to keep my team motivated by speaking calmly and consistently about how we are breaking the challenges into manageable bites and dealing with each in sequence. We then recognize each success, even if small.
As Ranum points out, we're too intelligent to be impressed by shallow cheerleading antics; using them on the people we lead shows lack of respect for their intelligence.
what a sham and what a joke!
I can't believe that Steve Ballmer did this. I had some respect for the company and the products it produces. i even use some as I do this now but this sort of ra ra that he has done in a meeting and has allowed to be there on you tube is creepy. What a joke! Imagine next time you are in a meeting whit this guy? What will you think?
Take Little: Add More Best Wishes & Namaste intelligence@re5.org
Steve is authenticaly passionate - and gets high speaker ratings
I think it's curious that you title this how not to give a speech but you don't judge Steve Ballmer on his effectiveness as a speaker. You show Steve jumping around and cheerleading, and imply he's being someone he isn't.  Have you ever been in the green room with him before his speech as he gets pumped up to go on stage?  Ever watched one of those internal Microsoft company meeting speeches all the way through? I have.Â
While his antics prior to the speech may seem wild, aggressive, dorky, and perhaps even dangerous to his health, they do communicate the man's true passion about the company, and it is contageous. His pre-speech behaviour sets the tone for a speech full of passion.
Now I'm not going to tell you his speeches are the best in the world (they aren't) but Steve consistently is rated one of the highest speakers at events he attends. It seems a bit unfair to use this video to show how speeches shouldn't be done, given it's only his warm-up, and given the context of an internal audience who appreciates him. Â Would you want people who weren't even there judging you only on your stage entrance and not the rest of your presentation?
Microsoft CEO and 'great speeches'
I think those are fair points, Sheryl. Thank you for pointing them out. One thing I do respect in a leader is something Sir John Hoskyns said about being prepared to look foolish. I just dug it out, and a note I wrote to myself based on it: "' 'Great leaders are prepared to look foolish', Sir John Hoskyns said. Any of us who step up, in any situation, and say or do what needs to be said or done, regardless of ridicule, regardless of established convention, is performing a powerfully creative act of leadership", I wrote in a note. I guess I should stick by that as I wrote it as a note to myself ;0) . I do have reservations about passion, though, as it tends to create a "you are with us or against us" climate and critical voices from within or without can then be seen as 'the enemy'. Actually, I love passion for doing the right thing and contributing, but I guess uncritical passion for an organization is a different thing. My other reservation is the old one about with great power needs to come great humility, not triumphalism, and Microsoft has great power. But, then again I'm British and we have reservatons about everything...From what I've heard, one of Bill Gates' strengths is constantly encouraging constructive criticism of Microsoft 'as is' to constantly move it forwards to be more of 'Microsoft as should be', which I guess balances the "Aren't we great!" messages.
Consider the Context
I agree with you in principle, Phil. We want leaders who have humility, who encourage constructive criticism, etc. All great topics for 5-minute lessons!Â
But again I think we need to consider the context of this video. I believe it was taken from an annual sales meeting, a time when Steve is pumping up the sales force to go meet the year's lofty goals. It's not all "Aren't we great" but a message about what he believes they can accomplish.Â
Context is very important
I agree with Sheryl, not only should we try to be aware of the context when we watch things like this, but also, the people who post these clips should also take responsibility for explaining the context, or at least disclaim the fact that they are not clear on the context. The Tom Cruise clip was another example of something that appeared (at least to my mind,) as being out of context. All Tom was actually doing was thanking the audience and the organisers for letting him introduce the next speaker, and then doing so. Abrashoff does a similar thing when he explains that he worked within the navy syustem, not against it (page 41 in my copy).
I remember reading a number of headlines, all around various different subjects, where reporters had focused on a particular comment or behaviour, and blown that out of proportion, taken it out of context, and used that for sensationalist headlines. That has a function, it sells newspapers. But that's all. One of it's consequences though is that the comment or behaviour ends up becoming the focus, rather than the whole discussion or issue. We see a similar thing sometimes in engineering, when we find a small error, investigate further, find further errors, and suddenly think that we have major issues. Putting that in context means, for us, evaluating not only the few failures, but also the many historical passes, the state of our warranty claims etc.
From a leadership point of view, if we don't understand the context,we may not be able to learn the real lesson, or, and this may be even worse, we may think we have learned something that goes against the real lesson.
When we were reading Maxwell's 21 laws, one of the things that occasionally reared it's head was the difference between eastern european views and american views. Only when you make an effort to understand the context of the leadership that is being discussed in the book, can you see the how and why that the author is trying to get across. Sport analogies worked well,everyone could relate. Religious analogies did not. Once those differences have been explored however, it becomes easier to understand and learn from the author's experience. (For those that don't know, Maxwell's background is a preaching one, not a business one.)
Colin.
Understanding the context: journalists often ignore it
That's interesting, your comment about journalism, Colin. And right, I think (about how they ignore context when it suits them to ignore it). And Phil used to be (and sometimes still is) a journalist, so maybe by using that clip he is carrying over past practices from a previous life without being aware he's doing it (I'm gonna keep out of his way now that I've said that). The Architect.