Nick Morgan, Public Words

What should a speaker ask an audience to do?

A speaker asks a lot of an audience.  Understanding, enthusiasm, support -- and inactivity.  Audiences are expected to be passive by most speakers most of the time.  That's after all what speakers are paid for -- to inform and entertain the audience, right?  Not the other way around.  And the higher the price, the more entertaining the speaker better be.  But that means that most speakers figure that they should be doing the majority of the work. 

That's unfortunate, because if a speaker does a good job, pouring out lots of energy into an appreciative crowd, the audience is soon ready to give that energy back.  And it wants to give that energy back in the form of -- action.

Happy audiences want to do something, to show their involvement, their appreciation, their connection to the speaker.  (Unhappy audiences want to do something else:  leave.)  A wise speaker gives the audience an opportunity to express that collective energy in the form of action. 

So think of something that you can get audiences to do, and they will thank you with higher ratings, better response, and more lasting connection with you.  Look for some sort of action step for the audience to take that is relevant to your talk and closes your speech with dynamism. 

I'll give you one example.  We helped a speaker design a talk to a large audience on a religious and charitable theme.  For the action step at the end, we had the speaker ask everyone in the audience to reach into their pockets and purses, grab all the loose change they could, and, on the count of 3, throw it on the floor of the meeting hall. 

We then sent 'runners' around to pick it all up.  The speech raised $12,000 for AIDS relief in 5 minutes.  That's an action step. 

A speaker asks a lot of an audience.  Understanding, enthusiasm, support -- and inactivity.  Audiences are expected to be passive by most speakers most of the time.  That's after all what speakers are paid for -- to inform and entertain the audience, right?  Not the other way around.  And the higher the price, the more entertaining the speaker better be.  But that means that most speakers figure that they should be doing the majority of the work. 

That's unfortunate, because if a speaker does a good job, pouring out lots of energy into an appreciative crowd, the audience is soon ready to give that energy back.  And it wants to give that energy back in the form of -- action.

Happy audiences want to do something, to show their involvement, their appreciation, their connection to the speaker.  (Unhappy audiences want to do something else:  leave.)  A wise speaker gives the audience an opportunity to express that collective energy in the form of action. 

So think of something that you can get audiences to do, and they will thank you with higher ratings, better response, and more lasting connection with you.  Look for some sort of action step for the audience to take that is relevant to your talk and closes your speech with dynamism. 

I'll give you one example.  We helped a speaker design a talk to a large audience on a religious and charitable theme.  For the action step at the end, we had the speaker ask everyone in the audience to reach into their pockets and purses, grab all the loose change they could, and, on the count of 3, throw it on the floor of the meeting hall. 

We then sent 'runners' around to pick it all up.  The speech raised $12,000 for AIDS relief in 5 minutes.  That's an action step. 

Can you give a successful presentation sitting down?

Many clients ask me if they can present sitting down.  It's a natural question -- it feels more collegial, and less exposed, to sit down around the table like everyone else.  And isn't it a good thing to be collegial?  Doesn't it send out a nice message about what kind of person you are?

The answer is, unfortunately, not always.  Standing up while others are sitting automatically bestows some authority on the standee.  And there are times when it's important to claim that authority, just as there are times when it's OK to be collegial.  Just be aware that when you sit down, you are first and foremost saying, 'I'm one of you.'  Don't 'say' it unless you mean it. 

Of course we don't like arrogant, pushy people who claim authority that's not their own.  But we also don't like people who pretend to be humble folks when in fact they're running the show.  Both are annoying, and poor leadership.

Stand when you are leading a charge.  If you are addressing the troops in order to present a new plan or direction, the decision has already been made, and you want to bring the people along with you, then stand.  Sitting in that sort of situation is a form of non-verbal lying.  Sitting is for discussion. 

Stand when you are announcing a decision (after hearing a variety of opinions).  Let's say you've listened to your team discuss some options and you've arrived at a decision.  That's a good time to stand, to show that discussion is over and action is at hand. 

Stand when your expertise is called upon.  If you're the expert in the room, then you should stand to deliver your expertise.  Sit down when you're done, and the others can have their day too. 

Know when to sit, and when to stand.  It does make a difference.  We all give provisional respect to those stand up to make their points; after that it's up to you to earn continuing respect with the quality of the decision, the announcement, or the expertise. 

Many clients ask me if they can present sitting down.  It's a natural question -- it feels more collegial, and less exposed, to sit down around the table like everyone else.  And isn't it a good thing to be collegial?  Doesn't it send out a nice message about what kind of person you are?

The answer is, unfortunately, not always.  Standing up while others are sitting automatically bestows some authority on the standee.  And there are times when it's important to claim that authority, just as there are times when it's OK to be collegial.  Just be aware that when you sit down, you are first and foremost saying, 'I'm one of you.'  Don't 'say' it unless you mean it. 

Of course we don't like arrogant, pushy people who claim authority that's not their own.  But we also don't like people who pretend to be humble folks when in fact they're running the show.  Both are annoying, and poor leadership.

Stand when you are leading a charge.  If you are addressing the troops in order to present a new plan or direction, the decision has already been made, and you want to bring the people along with you, then stand.  Sitting in that sort of situation is a form of non-verbal lying.  Sitting is for discussion. 

Stand when you are announcing a decision (after hearing a variety of opinions).  Let's say you've listened to your team discuss some options and you've arrived at a decision.  That's a good time to stand, to show that discussion is over and action is at hand. 

Stand when your expertise is called upon.  If you're the expert in the room, then you should stand to deliver your expertise.  Sit down when you're done, and the others can have their day too. 

Know when to sit, and when to stand.  It does make a difference.  We all give provisional respect to those stand up to make their points; after that it's up to you to earn continuing respect with the quality of the decision, the announcement, or the expertise. 

6 tips for using teleprompters

Should you use a teleprompter?  If so, what are the traps for the unwary?  I had a question from an old friend and reader of the blog about the uses and abuses of teleprompters.  So here’s the deal on them. 

1.  Teleprompters make weak presenters better – bringing them up to average.  A teleprompter provides you with two little transparent screens, one left, one right, and an operator scrolling the text on the screens at your speaking pace.  Thus the machine forces you to keep your head out of your notes, and encourages you to move your head left and right as you follow the scrolling text. 

2.  You’re still reading text, though, and that’s not the best way to give a speech.  Very few people can read a text with the same passion and conversational tone they can muster while talking – say, from notes.  Politicians like President Obama have put in hundreds of hours on teleprompters, and they still practice importance speeches in order to sound alive.  Most people fall into a dreadful sing-song when they’re reading.  So, unless you’re a terrible speaker, or one who can’t speak from notes, you’re better off not using the teleprompter. 

3.  If you need to be very precise, say, for legal reasons, in what you say, the teleprompter is a good option.  If reading a text is important to you for some reason beyond the performance issues, a teleprompter can keep you specific and focused.   

4.  To look good using a teleprompter, mix it up a little.  The other danger with a teleprompter is that you’ll create inadvertent comedy by moving your head too robotically left and right to follow the scrolling text.  Again, check out a practiced politician.  President Reagan was particularly good at let his head movements vary, lagging the movement of his eyes, so that he appeared to be making natural eye contact with his audience. 

5.  The best option may be having notes on the teleprompter, not a full text.  I’ve worked often with executives who want the security of a teleprompter or a security monitor but didn’t want to read a text.  What we’ve done is put notes up on the teleprompter (or a security monitor).  That can work quite well – the best of both worlds – with this important caveat:  you must rehearse with the teleprompter operator.  The reason for this is that you need to get comfortable with each other about how literally you’re going to follow the notes, and where you’re going to wax eloquently for whole minutes, say, before returning to the notes.  Teleprompter operators are very good at following speakers in my experience, but I have had a few hilarious exceptions.  Let’s just say that rehearsal is key. 

6.  The bottom line?  Let the technology support you.  In today’s conferences and meetings, you should be able to get just about any kind of technological support you need.  Use the technology that supports you best and makes you look good.  Experiment with teleprompters, security monitors, video, Power Point – the works – but never forget that the reason people give speeches is to make a human connection with an audience in person.  The technology should support that, never detract from it. 

The weirdest public speaker you've ever seen? 4 lessons from Clifford Stoll

For my holiday blog and present to readers and those passionate about good public speaking, here is Clifford Stoll:  http://tinyurl.com/djsg9v.  Stoll may be the weirdest public speaker I've ever seen, but you probably have seen weirder ones.  Let me know your nominations for the title, and I'll blog on the best ones over the holidays.  In the meanwhile, Stoll’s TED performance will teach you a good deal about how to hold the interest of the audience.  

1.  Dare to go to the edge.  Stoll’s performance is idiosyncratic, but you can’t take your eyes off him.  You don’t know what he’s going to do next.  Most speakers start predictably – I’m glad to be here – and continue that way – What I’m going to talk about today is xxxxxx – and audiences zone out as a result.  The speaker sets the parameters, so there’s no excuse:  if you’re boring, you’ve only got yourself to blame. 

2.  Contrast is the key to holding the stage.   Stoll doesn’t jump around like a man possessed the entire talk.  He slows down, softens his voice, and tells the audience something moving every now and then.  That contrast is the key to his art, and his appeal.  Speakers take heed:  little Johnny or Jane One-Note never holds an audience for long.

3.  Reveal a real emotion to win the audience’s heart.  Stoll’s talk contains a tribute to a mentor of his, Robert Moog, inventor of the Moog Synthesizer, musician, and rare human being.  And Stoll closes with a touching tribute to learning and the liberal arts.  He’s being real there, and we reward his opening of his heart by taking him into our own. 

4.  Remember that you’re giving a performance, and you have to be authentic, at the same time.  Great public speaking is a paradox.  You have to reveal your heart AND you have to keep in mind that you’re performing.  Many people give sloppy talks using the excuse that they have to be real.  And many people give shallow, inauthentic talks, using the excuse that they have to perform.  The truth is that you have to do both.  It’s a paradox.  Great speakers embrace that paradox and find truth in performance – and performance in truth. 

Happy holidays!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What's the biggest risk in public speaking?

When you stand up to speak, you're risking a good deal.  You can fail to engage the crowd, you can make a fool of yourself, you can attempt too little or too much and miss the mark.  While the risk is almost always greater in your own mind than in reality, it is nonetheless a real risk.

Naturally enough, that's what's on most people's minds at the moment they begin to speak.  They're thinking to themselves, "Why did I agree to do this?  It could all go horribly wrong!  People are going to think I'm an idiot!" or something along those lines.

The result of that self-talk is a series of behaviors that increases the likelihood that precisely the feared result will occur.  People who fear failure in speaking are defensive, and that defensiveness shows up in a variety of ways, all bad.  They may pace nervously -- the familiar 'happy feet' of some speakers.  They may clutch and un-clutch their hands in front of their stomachs.  They may cross their arms, hide their hands behind their backs, or keep their arms firmly fixed to their sides, only waving their forearms, in a characteristic gesture of many business speakers that I call the 'Penguin flap'. 

All of these gestures, and others besides, signal nervousness to the audience.  But more than that, they signal that the speaker is trying to protect himself.  The speaker, in fact, is shutting off part of herself from the audience. 

And that's the problem.  The whole point of presentations, from the audience's point of view, is to see the speaker whole, to gain insight into this person who has the authority to stand up and speak to a crowd.  If the audience sense that the person is holding back, its judgment is that the speaker is ultimately dishonest, and so can't be trusted.

That's not of course (usually) what the speaker intends, but that's the tough luck of public speaking.  The good news is that the audience desperately wants the speaker to succeed, and so is willing to grant the speaker a lot of nervous, self-protective leeway in the first few minutes before giving up entirely and writing the presentation off as a bad job. 

If you're speaking, then, try to begin right away avoiding self-protection.  Get over yourself and your nerves.  Be open to the audience.  If you can manage that, the crowd will carry you and give you back far more energy that you put out.  The irony of public speaking is that the biggest risk is not risking yourself. 

When you stand up to speak, you're risking a good deal.  You can fail to engage the crowd, you can make a fool of yourself, you can attempt too little or too much and miss the mark.  While the risk is almost always greater in your own mind than in reality, it is nonetheless a real risk.

Naturally enough, that's what's on most people's minds at the moment they begin to speak.  They're thinking to themselves, "Why did I agree to do this?  It could all go horribly wrong!  People are going to think I'm an idiot!" or something along those lines.

The result of that self-talk is a series of behaviors that increases the likelihood that precisely the feared result will occur.  People who fear failure in speaking are defensive, and that defensiveness shows up in a variety of ways, all bad.  They may pace nervously -- the familiar 'happy feet' of some speakers.  They may clutch and un-clutch their hands in front of their stomachs.  They may cross their arms, hide their hands behind their backs, or keep their arms firmly fixed to their sides, only waving their forearms, in a characteristic gesture of many business speakers that I call the 'Penguin flap'. 

All of these gestures, and others besides, signal nervousness to the audience.  But more than that, they signal that the speaker is trying to protect himself.  The speaker, in fact, is shutting off part of herself from the audience. 

And that's the problem.  The whole point of presentations, from the audience's point of view, is to see the speaker whole, to gain insight into this person who has the authority to stand up and speak to a crowd.  If the audience sense that the person is holding back, its judgment is that the speaker is ultimately dishonest, and so can't be trusted.

That's not of course (usually) what the speaker intends, but that's the tough luck of public speaking.  The good news is that the audience desperately wants the speaker to succeed, and so is willing to grant the speaker a lot of nervous, self-protective leeway in the first few minutes before giving up entirely and writing the presentation off as a bad job. 

If you're speaking, then, try to begin right away avoiding self-protection.  Get over yourself and your nerves.  Be open to the audience.  If you can manage that, the crowd will carry you and give you back far more energy that you put out.  The irony of public speaking is that the biggest risk is not risking yourself. 

Is rehearsal important?

Is rehearsal important?  Odd that I should even have to pose the question, but a surprising number of the people we've worked with over the years have tried to wiggle out of rehearsing even important speeches. 

Speakers want to deliver charismatic, assured, memorable performances.  Some of them say they want to 'wing it', because thinking too hard about it or preparing too much will make them stale or boring. 

Don't believe it, and don't credit that urge in yourself if it comes up.  It's just avoidance.  It's the fear talking.  And more importantly, it's wrong.

In order to achieve the apparently effortless, natural-looking performance a great stage actor delivers, he or she rehearses for six weeks, give or take, doing the same thing over and over and over again until it has become part of not only the intellectual memory, but also the sense memory.  Professional actors rehearse all day for six weeks.  You should rehearse, at an absolute minimum, three times. 

Every speech -- every communication -- is two conversations, I like to say.  One is verbal, the content, and the other is non-verbal, the body language.  You need to practice both.  They must be aligned for the speech to be successful.  It takes time (and rehearsal) for the non-verbal, especially, to become easy and natural-looking.  You can't just 'think' the non-verbal side of things precisely because it's not primarily an intellectual act -- it's a pre-intellectual one.  Different parts of the brain are involved than the frontal lobe, where the intellect is busy. 

I can always tell an under-rehearsed speech not only because the speaker may fumble the words, or the transitions, but because the non-verbal side of the speech looks awkward.  Winging it means that you will look like you're doing it for the first time.  Is that what you want to say to the audience?

Audiences will forgive the occasional verbal slip, but if you look like you don't know what you're doing, they'll write you off as a loser every time.

It's not about being slick.  It's about looking authentic -- looking like you, not some nervous, fumbling version of you.  Rehearsal lets you get there. 

I talk about this in more depth in my book, Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma.  Give it to a public speaker you love this holiday. 

Is rehearsal important?  Odd that I should even have to pose the question, but a surprising number of the people we've worked with over the years have tried to wiggle out of rehearsing even important speeches. 

Speakers want to deliver charismatic, assured, memorable performances.  Some of them say they want to 'wing it', because thinking too hard about it or preparing too much will make them stale or boring. 

Don't believe it, and don't credit that urge in yourself if it comes up.  It's just avoidance.  It's the fear talking.  And more importantly, it's wrong.

In order to achieve the apparently effortless, natural-looking performance a great stage actor delivers, he or she rehearses for six weeks, give or take, doing the same thing over and over and over again until it has become part of not only the intellectual memory, but also the sense memory.  Professional actors rehearse all day for six weeks.  You should rehearse, at an absolute minimum, three times. 

Every speech -- every communication -- is two conversations, I like to say.  One is verbal, the content, and the other is non-verbal, the body language.  You need to practice both.  They must be aligned for the speech to be successful.  It takes time (and rehearsal) for the non-verbal, especially, to become easy and natural-looking.  You can't just 'think' the non-verbal side of things precisely because it's not primarily an intellectual act -- it's a pre-intellectual one.  Different parts of the brain are involved than the frontal lobe, where the intellect is busy. 

I can always tell an under-rehearsed speech not only because the speaker may fumble the words, or the transitions, but because the non-verbal side of the speech looks awkward.  Winging it means that you will look like you're doing it for the first time.  Is that what you want to say to the audience?

Audiences will forgive the occasional verbal slip, but if you look like you don't know what you're doing, they'll write you off as a loser every time.

It's not about being slick.  It's about looking authentic -- looking like you, not some nervous, fumbling version of you.  Rehearsal lets you get there. 

I talk about this in more depth in my book, Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma.  Give it to a public speaker you love this holiday. 

Public Speaking and the Holidays

The paid public speaking business is a notoriously seasonal one, with peaks in the spring and fall, and valleys in the winter and summer.  That means that the holidays are a great time for public speakers to catch up with themselves, refresh their messages (and slides if you use them) and make resolutions for better public speaking next year. 

Depending on the circles you travel in, you may be called upon to give one of those curious relics from former times, the after-dinner toast or short speech on a festive occasion.  In the Victorian age, the after-dinner toast was a serious test of a public person.  At the great dinner parties of the well to do and the politically connected, the heroes of the age, whether literary, political, or military, were expected to expound on a subject at astonishing length without notes. 

Charles Dickens, the most popular author of the age, was a master of these after-dinner speeches, and his secret was the Ancient Greek method of dividing his talk up into sections, and then remembering each section by mentally attaching it to a room in his house.  Then, as he spoke, he would take an imaginary tour of his abode, and cover the "heads" of his talk by finding them in one room after another.  He often spoke in this way for two hours or more.  Recall that the mother of the ancient muses was the uber-muse of memory; lengthy speeches were considered a good thing.  Her name was Mnemnosyne, she was a Titan, and she slept with Zeus for nine consecutive nights to produce the nine (lesser) muses. 

Nowadays, mercifully, we like much shorter speeches.  If called upon to give a toast or after-dinner speech, remember President Reagan's excellent advice -- keep it to less than 12 minutes, and shorter still if alcohol has been consumed.  Be positive, speak ill of no one, and sit down before your audience stands up to leave.  Happy holidays.

President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech- how good was it?

 

Great speechmaking is rare, and recent great speechmaking (in this soundbite-driven age) is rarer still.  All the more reason to celebrate, then, President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech.  This speech is an instant masterpiece. 

Obama’s genius comes in his willingness to speak the unvarnished truth in three primary ways.

First, he confronts directly the controversies surrounding his award.  Obama says:

In part, this is because I am at the beginning, and not the end, of my labors on the world stage. Compared to some of the giants of history who have received this prize - Schweitzer and King; Marshall and Mandela - my accomplishments are slight.

He then continues with the most serious complaint:

But perhaps the most profound issue surrounding my receipt of this prize is the fact that I am the Commander-in-Chief of a nation in the midst of two wars. One of these wars is winding down. The other is a conflict that America did not seek; one in which we are joined by forty three other countries - including Norway - in an effort to defend ourselves and all nations from further attacks.

Note how deftly he deals with the issue even as he confronts it directly. 

These questions are not new. War, in one form or another, appeared with the first man. At the dawn of history, its morality was not questioned; it was simply a fact, like drought or disease - the manner in which tribes and then civilizations sought power and settled their differences.

This discussion leads President Obama into a defense of the principle of the just war – war that is fought by rules, respects the rights of civilians, is waged in self-defense, and uses proportional force. 

 

Obama uses the idea of a just war to review and justify America’s role as the sole superpower: 

Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this: the United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms. The service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform has promoted peace and prosperity from Germany to Korea, and enabled democracy to take hold in places like the Balkans.

From that justification, the President turns to his concept of a just peace.  That’s a neat rhetorical turn, and allows him to propose three tenets in support of it.  First, the world must develop alternatives to violence “that are tough enough to change behavior.”  Second, the just peace must be based on “the inherent rights and dignity of every individual.”  And third, a just peace must “encompass economic security and opportunity. For true peace is not just freedom from fear, but freedom from want.” 

 

After that, and a blunt rejection of terrorism and violence in the name of religion, Obama closes with some of the most stirring rhetoric we’ve heard from him to date:

So let us reach for the world that ought to be - that spark of the divine that still stirs within each of our souls. Somewhere today, in the here and now, a soldier sees he's outgunned but stands firm to keep the peace.

Somewhere today, in this world, a young protestor awaits the brutality of her government, but has the courage to march on. Somewhere today, a mother facing punishing poverty still takes the time to teach her child, who believes that a cruel world still has a place for his dreams.

Let us live by their example.

With this speech, President Obama shows that he can hold his own among the great voices of the modern era.  This is indeed public rhetoric of the finest kind.   

 

 

 

 

Three Big Myths of Executive Public Speaking

For my blog today, I'm linking to an article I just wrote for Forbes.com on the 3 big myths of executive public speaking:  I should start with a joke, too much rehearsal is bad for me, and I want to go right to Q n A.  Here's the full article:  http://tinyurl.com/y9q4lkh

How much emotion is too much in public speaking?

How much emotion is too much in public speaking?  That’s the question the following video raised for me.  It’s Daniel Beaty, poet and actor, delivering the powerful story he calls, “Knock, Knock”:  http://tinyurl.com/ykul7c7. 

Beaty’s emotional pitch is exactly right for his subject, but what about more conventional settings and business-oriented topics?  How much is too much? 

Over my two decades of coaching I have developed two answers for this conundrum.  But first an observation.  In the vast majority of business speeches, there’s too little passion, not too much.  Far too many business audiences have been lulled to sleep by the droning messages of executives, professional speakers, and former sports stars brought in to tell the employees something about reaching for the gold. 

Here’s the first answer.  If you understand the audience and the occasion, there’s always a right emotional pitch to be found.  It’s called tact, and it’s focused on the audience and the occasion, not on your – the speaker’s – feelings.  When in doubt, go for restraint rather than shock value, but you really shouldn’t be in doubt if you have done your homework and understand the people in the room, their hopes and fears, and what’s at stake for them.  And seeing a speaker break down in tears unexpectedly can have great shock value, but seeing someone hold back the tears is almost always profoundly moving. 

And the second answer?  On those rare occasions when the speaker can combine a deep understanding of the situation with real passion for a subject, giving vent to strong emotion can be electrifying and can change the world.  Watch the ending of Reverend Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech to see what I mean:  http://tinyurl.com/y4acg5.  There are times when profound anger, sorrow, joy, or delight can lift us up as one and point us to a better world.  Those are the moments – as a lifetime student of public speaking – that I live for. 

 

 

 

 

How good a speaker is Eric Schmidt?

As CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt needs little introduction.  And before his current world-shaking job, he was CTO of Sun Microsystems, where he led Java development, and CEO of Novell.  He was also on the Board of Apple before he resigned to avoid conflicts of interest between Apple and Google.  Clearly, he’s a big deal in the rarified world of high-tech giants. 

But how good a speaker is he?

You can see him delivering a commencement speech to Carnegie Mellon here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiYwUde3wNo.  And you can see him talking to CIOs courtesy of Gartner here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHxub_yQfig. 

Eric’s a highly self-assured and competent speaker.  He projects a sense of ease, which is the single most important thing you can do to improve your overall connection with the audience – it’s just not easy to accomplish.  To be sure, he commits all the mistakes of someone who has not made public speaking proficiency a high priority – he looks down at his speaking notes before he finishes the previous sentence, he uses fake gestures, and his gestures happen too late in the intent-gesture-think-speak sequence that people employ when they’re being natural.  To name a few.  But overall, he’s quite comfortable with his speaking, and that’s unusual for a business speaker. 

Of course, his commencement speech at Carnegie Mellon was a collection of the usual clichés, but they were delivered with geniality and aplomb, and who remembers those commencement speeches anyway?  Overall, Eric is good enough to get by, and better than many. 

 

How good a speaker is Jack Welch?

Jack Welch is probably the most famous CEO in the world – still, despite having been retired from GE since 2001.  His reign there was controversial – some called him Neutron Jack for reducing GE’s head count from over 400,00 to less than 300,000 in his first five years as CEO.  In 2000, he was named ‘manager of the century’ by Fortune.  His first book, Jack: Straight from the Gut, was a NYTimes #1 bestseller, and he continues to advise and offer opinions on the business issues of the day, including displaying skepticism about global warming and other environmental issues while saying that companies have to embrace ‘green’ business because the customers want it. 

But how good a speaker is he?

You can see him here talking about how people are his products:  http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/260/.  Also here, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaXO9Uab6K0, at the 2009 Global Business Forum. 

Jack is an energetic, intelligent speaker.  He’s at his best responding to questions, and he does so with real thoughtfulness and candor.  That said, he comes across as a bit of a bully with a nasal, harsh voice that grates on the ear and a tendency to think his answers are more startling and original than they are.  He’s a real Yankee – the kind that says ‘chaaaage’, not ‘charge’ and  ‘staaaat’, not ‘start’. 

Jack is fine in small doses, and when he’s well focused.  But he would pall over the longer haul of an hour-long speech.  Catch him on the Q n A.