Speaking to Lead

Someone famous once said – the only reason to give a speech is to change the world. Last Friday I sat and watched several different speeches back to back during the opening of the Global Peace Festival. This was an excellent opportunity for me to compare and contrast the speaking styles of the top echelon of our political leadership. Here are some of my brief observations about the President. I’ll write in detail about Raila and Kalonzo in a later posting.

The President unfortunately has much room for improvement when it comes to public speaking. Speaking should create a communication experience for the audience – they should be inspired and unfortunately I can’t remember the last time he did this. Let’s start with the content of many of the speeches. Even as his presidency is in it’s twilight, I would start by dropping the person or persons who writes them, they are deadly dull. Now to be fair when you are giving speech after speech in different locations every day it may be difficult to have input in the speeches but you have to own a speech to be able to deliver it well. Being handed note cards minutes before you go on stage will not an inspirational speech make.

Obama has a team of well paid writers crafting his speeches yet he will change the speeches himself and also have plenty of input in the final product. How can you have the time to do this if you have to give a speech every day and run a country at the same time? Well this brings up the issue of over exposure. I think the President gives way too many speeches diminishing the impact that any number of them make and also limiting his contribution to make the speeches his own. For any leader giving a speech is an opportunity to articulate a vision or initiative the government is undertaking like fighting graft or building the economy. Anytime you speak as a leader regardless of whether you are opening a conference or speaking to newly graduated policemen that is an opportunity for you to get your message across and show leadership qualities with the masses. So it is imperative that this communication is done well. Because of his over-reliance on his note cards and poor body language i.e. no eye contact nor natural hand gestures, monotone voice delivery, no smiling or facial expressions to match the message there is no ‘emotional investment’ in what he is saying and as the audience it is difficult to buy into what he is selling us.

Kibaki is at his most natural when he is speaking extemporaneously or off-the-cuff. Here we see the energy, the smile, gestures, eye contact – all the things that make us want to listen to him. On the downside he doesn’t come across as very statesman-like sometimes due to the language and the unsophisticated way of putting certain points across (pumbavu, fellows should be killed?). The best speech I can remember Kibaki giving was his inauguration speech in December 2002. I got the following from the transcript - when was the last time you heard the President say ‘Look around you, see what a gorgeous constellation of stars we are, just look at this dazzling mosaic of people’ or this paragraph ‘I was woken up this morning by rays of sunlight, which had bathed my room in such brilliance that it felt completely new. I looked far into the horizon and the beauty of what I saw around me stirred my soul. It was as if I was standing atop Mount Kenya surveying the landscape. I said to myself "Oh, what a beautiful country!" They need to resuscitate that speech writer wherever he or she is! See the two examples below of the contrasting styles of the President speaking

On another note – I hope there is some bright eyed, bushy tailed advertising exec who is busy putting together an ad campaign to sell Kenya on the back of Prince Will's engagement to Waity Katy – something along the lines of ‘Visit Kenya the land of royal proposals’