All human societies need leadership.  A company is a micro human society, therefore all companies need leadership.

Good leaders make good companies, and good leaders are, among other things, good at communicating who they are, what they believe, and who the employees should believe they are.  In the end, the final challenge, the ultimate task of leadership is to confer an identity on those the leader leads.

For instance, did Steve Jobs do this?  Did he confer an identity on a large number of people?  I would say that he did.  If you worked for him and his company, I suspect you carried a little voice inside your head that constantly reminded you that you were an Apple person—an Apple-onian; a little voice that made you feel good about yourself.  And in your social life, at parties, when you met people, you might sweetly keep your place of work a secret, but when asked, you might feel a little flash of triumph as you revealed, “I work for Apple.”   It’s like dropping the H Bomb (the Harvard thing.)  It confers an identity on you, for good or ill.

Shakespeare’s Henry V strives for this result in his St. Crispian’s Day speech, when promising his men that they will forever be remembered and honored if they survive the about-to-happen battle of Agincourt.

This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

I am very interested in giving our clients a process for creating, designing, and delivering presentations that ascend the step-ladder of value-creation, moving from the bottom rung of knowledge to the highest rung of identity—which includes the ability to convey values, principles, behaviors, expectations, and all those soft intangibles that shepherd us to excellence.

Knowledge and intelligence are necessary, but not sufficient for leadership.  We need people who are capable of conferring on us an identity that will help us become our best selves.

Some of us can create such an identity for ourselves, but not for others.  Some can do it for others, but not themselves.  And some of us create destructive identities for ourselves and others.  None of us is perfect, which is why we need laws, and leadership, and cultures.  We need shaping to be at our best, and for that, we need people who are more than knowledgeable, more than intelligent.  We need them to tell us stories—about who we really are, and who we can become.

Sims Wyeth & Co. provides public speaking courses, executive speech coaching, presentation skills training, voice and speech training, speech writing, and courses that address stage fright, body language, presentation strategy, and effective use of PowerPoint, all of which contribute to greater executive presence and personal impact.

I am usually allergic to buzzwords.  When storytelling became a popular metaphor for public speaking, influence, and persuasion I began to feel a little grumpy.  But I have been released temporarily from my distemper by an article in the New York Times called What Happened to Obama, by Drew Westen, a professor of psychology at Emory University and the author of “The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation.”

In this article, Mr.  Westen points out that Obama was elected to the presidency and given control of both houses of Congress to do the will of the people, which was to restore the rule of fair play to the American economy, and abolish the golden rule, which stipulates that he who has the gold makes the rules.

Whether you agree with the majority of the American people is not the point of the Times article, or of this post.  The point is that we humans are designed to absorb information through stories.  We tell ourselves stories about the past (history), stories about what’s going on in the present moment (news and commentary), and stories about the future (setting a course for a more perfect union).  And, according to Mr. Westen, Obama has failed so far to tell any of these stories that he was elected to tell.

Stories have heroes and villians, but due perhaps to his conciliatory disposition, our President does not like to name names and point out culpability.  He prefers a balanced approach and compromise, even though he was elected to clean up Washington.

Arthur Miller, the great American playwright, pointed out that when we elect our presidents, we are electing an archetype, a great father who will provide and protect, a hero who will create safety for us, and lead us into fights against those who mean to do us harm.  In essence, said Miller, we elect a metaphorical killer, someone who is brave enough to step onto a battlefield, whether that be in the halls of Congress, the mountains of Afghanistan, or the bully pulpit of Sunday morning TV, take out our enemies, and come back with their scalps.  Obama got bin Laden, but he has not taken the heads of those he was elected to neultralize (metaphorically!).

The present seems to be swarming with intractable problems.  The future is a frightening blankness fraught with a range of horrific possibilities.  We need and want someone to tell us a story about how we got here, how we can get out of this mess, what the future can be and how we can shape it.

I urge you to read this article.  It is relevant to any speaker who is trying to get an audience to do something.

Sims Wyeth & Co. provides public speaking courses, executive speech coaching, presentation skills training, voice and speech training, speech writing, and courses that address stage fright, body language, presentation strategy, and effective use of PowerPoint, all of which contribute to greater executive presence and personal impact.

Is developing yourself as a highly effective public speaker a journey into your inner recesses and resources, (what I call spelunking, which is technically the exploration of caves), or are presentation skills basically a set of techniques, tips, and tricks that anyone can master, bolt on to their exterior, and remain unchanged?

Let me think aloud.  If you bolt the public speaking techniques onto your exterior, aren’t you automatically deepened by the process of using them, or at least changed in some way by the effort?

Or, if you approach presenting as a spelunker, someone who sees the task as a process of personal growth and development, do you eventually arrive at the tips and tricks, buried like treasures in the center of your being, only this time they’re growing from the inside, out?

This idea presupposes that the public speaking tips and tricks are somehow fundamental universal principles that are present in all of us, lying dormant deep inside us.

Maybe if you approach the discipline of public speaking as a set of mechanical techniques they remain just that – tools you use – due, perhaps, to your willingness and ability to see them as tools that you put down once the job is done.

But then you are changed by the knowledge that you have a new ability, a greater power to influence others through your persuasive speaking, which could very well be a self-fulfilling prophecy, since your increased sense of power will give you greater confidence, which could speed you up the steep and thorny path to career success.

However, you may use your new-found confidence to speak lies, half-truths, and ideological blather to your audiences, in which case you have improved yourself as a speaker, but not as a person.

So it all comes down to intention.  You can become a better public speaker or presenter through acquiring tips and tricks, or by approaching it with the intention of using your skills for the greater good, but what will determine your personal growth is not your technique, but your purpose.

Which reminds me of this line from T.S. Eliot:

The last temptation is the greatest treason:

To do the right deed for the wrong reason.

Sims Wyeth & Co. provides public speaking courses, executive speech coaching, presentation skills training, voice and speech training, speech writing, and courses that address stage fright, body language, presentation strategy, and effective use of PowerPoint, all of which contribute to greater executive presence and personal impact.