Leadership Detectives
Leadership Detectives
Leaders - Understand the Importance of Inspirational Communication
Welcome to Season 2, Episode 5 of The Leadership Detectives.
In this episode, we highlight the importance of inspirational communication.
We look back on various speeches that have inspired us over the years, and analyse why they seem to connect on such a deep level.
We also discuss why communication is crucial for a leader to inspire those around them - whether it is on stage, in the realms of business, or day to day within their family life.
Find Neil online at: https://neilthubron.com
Find Albert on LinkedIn at: www.linkedin.com/in/albert-e-joseph
Welcome to the Leadership Detectives with Albert Joseph and Neil Fuhrung. This is the go to podcast, uncovering clues about great leadership. If you are a leader today or an aspiring leader, this podcast is a must for you. We're here again today, uncovering clues about great leadership. Albert, how are you doing today?
SPEAKER_00:I'm really good. I'm really good. Yeah, it's been a busy week this week, actually. And yeah, a bit of relaxation last night, and then got up early this morning because there was so much going on in my head. And then I started pinging out to the boys and realized it was quarter to seven in the morning.
SPEAKER_01:But you've been playing golf in the last week, haven't you?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, well, yeah. Well, we're playing on Sunday. There's a big group, 16 of us going out actually. Now they're letting us back out to play. So yeah, looking forward to that. Look, you've got the damn time as well, right? Get your mind away from some of this stuff. Nice to just have some social time with people as well. So yeah, looking forward to it. Looking forward to it. Good to be back, right? But we're here. We're going to talk about some stuff today. So, what what we're going to what are we going to share with our audience?
SPEAKER_01:Let me give you an intro to what we're going to talk about. So, I have a dream that every leader who listens to this podcast will ask, not what can my team do for me, but what can I do for my team to be an inspirational communicator? So, so we're going to talk about inspirational communication today. And why are we going to talk about that? Because when we've been looking at all of the elements of leadership that are critical to being a great leader, whether you like it or not, whether you're an introvert or an extrovert, quite loud, it doesn't matter. Inspirational communication is one of the most important parts of being a great leader. And we're pretty fired up this morning because we've been doing a lot of research for this. And when you watch lots of inspirational speeches, you can't help but be fired up, can you?
SPEAKER_00:It's absolutely crazy, right? I came off of watching El Pacino talking to an American football team in the dressing room, and I'm loving it. And it's like, what? But that's a good way of kind of introducing this, right? Some of your best leaders, guys, when you think it through, maybe they were better communicators than you realized. Because maybe you never analyzed it, maybe you never looked for it, but did it affect you? And that's what we're going to talk about today, right? How do you communicate inspirationally? Yeah. Um, and we might talk about some examples as well because we can just bring it home. So when you think about leaders that have inspired you, then also think about how you're going to inspire your team. So that's what we're going to do for the next kind of 25 minutes or so.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, perfect. And and and let's let's look at, you know, so why is inspirational communication so important to being a great leader and creating a really effective and efficient and driven team? Because if you look at some of the great speeches, and we were doing a bit of research on this yesterday, and and and you you know, you still think about what are the famous speeches out there, and I just used a couple of them mixed together there. There was uh Martin Luther King's speech, I have a dream. Anybody who's watched that speech, or even if you haven't, if you've heard him say, I have a dream, yeah, it creates a level of feeling inside you. And and I mean, what other what other speeches did you find that you thought were really inspirational?
SPEAKER_00:There's one we touched on yesterday, right? Which was which was Obama talking about his concession, and and that's an interesting word, isn't it? But conceding the leadership to the next leader. And what he talked about in that was I am but one runner in this race. And my job is to receive the baton from somebody and then do the best job I can for our country, and then pass that baton to the next person running that race. And we're all running the one race for our country, and and he that that that speech got relived again on LinkedIn when our friend Donald Trump was quite the opposite, even though he's a great speaker, the effect he had on people by not conceding. So that that was a great speech to see how he he made people understand the role that he played and and and got a lot of respect from it.
SPEAKER_01:It's interesting actually that if you think about the great speeches, and this is why inspirational communication is so important. Inspirational speeches or speeches that inspire you create emotion, they create conviction, passion, energy behind a direction. Sometimes that's not always good. I mean, Hitler was incredibly inspirational and inspired a whole nation to basically do some pretty horrible things. If you think about where we see inspirational speeches, we see them in sports to inspire a sports team to go out and do better, like the Al Pacino speech, which is a great movie. Or you're inspiring a military, the military to do something, like uh Colonel Tim Collins from the Irish Guards and his famous speech. He was trying to focus people on going to war and and and do you know, step over that line into that fear. You've got presidents who are who are trying to inspire with their vision. So it's all about creating that energy behind where you want people to go.
SPEAKER_00:So we're talking about creating motivation, right? And whether that motivation, as you say, right, is whether it's towards an outcome in sports, whether it's towards an outcome on your corporate measurements, whether it's towards an outcome of how the team is performing. Maybe you're the inspiration you're bringing to the guys is just to work better together. There's no tangible, and we're gonna move the needle three points, right? It's just about how they perform. So I think the other thing you need to think about as we get into the detail on this is that emotion has got to be something that resonates with people. The audience you're talking to, this has got to resonate with them. I could do a speech about a certain thing in front of my kids, and they'll just be looking at me like, what are you on? Right. So you've got to think about who your audience is and what resonates with them, right? That's really important.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And I think we, you know, as we get into the how, that's that's definitely something you've got to put put your should yourself in the shoes of the of the people who you are trying to inspire. I want I want to focus a little bit if it's okay. I'd like to focus a little bit on the why, because I know a lot of leaders will sit back and go, you know, I'm just not that kind of person. I'm just not that loud, bouncy person who stands on stage and inspires people or who opens their heart up in an email or whatever the communication might be. And I don't know what you think, but every leader has to find a way of inspiring their troops, of inspiring their team. Yeah, it doesn't matter what your personality is or what your level is in the business.
SPEAKER_00:Let's look at that why. I think the why for me that we should share is as a leader, you must have some passion. You must have some passion, right? And one of the whys for me is how do you transfer that passion to your team? That's one of the whys. If you haven't got a passionate team, I'm not saying they can't perform, I'm not saying they can't deliver, but boy, you can really make a difference if they do have that passion. So, one of the whys for me is transferring the passion you've got as a leader to your team. That's one reason. What's other reasons, Renee?
SPEAKER_01:What other what uh Aristotle did some research into how leaders energize and inspire. This was back in whenever it was BC, and he found that the leaders that communicated before COVID. Yes, before COVID. Okay, so this was the other BC. Okay, but yeah, it was a long time ago anyway. But he found that the leaders that were most effective, 60% of their language was pathos language, not logos language. And I think there's a really important clue there that the why is about creating emotion, the why is about creating the energy. Because if you don't have that, then the teams are less effective. Yep. You know, the teams are less energized. You know, we we've talked about this in previous episodes about the motivation. If you've got motivated employees, their productivity is higher, their attrition rate is lower, they work collaboratively better together, their stress levels are lower, they're happier. And inspirational communication helps with that. Neil, do you want to do you wanna just expand a little bit on the pathos logos thing for in case you're okay? So so yeah, so pathos logos. So pathos basically is the emotional, emotional vocabulary, emotional part of your brain. It's the right part of your brain that that tends to be fired up by those types of visions and and and emotional words, whereas the left part of the brain is is more about logic and language, and that's where all the maths stuff is done. So you you do need both to communicate because you can't just communicate with loads of passion, you do need a bit of supporting logic as well.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, and we'll when when we get into the hows, we'll we'll talk a little bit more about that, guys, then, because I think that's quite important.
SPEAKER_01:It's interesting. I found so I was I was doing watching Tim Collins' speech last night, and uh Tim Collins was basically standing on the border between Saudi Arabia and Iraq just before the tanks rolled over in the first Gulf War. And he was uh colonel of the Irish Guards, and he was doing this, and the speech is outstanding. But there's a quote in uh the the notes at the bottom of the YouTube video that says, I was stood 20 feet away from Colonel Collins when he made this speech. And as scared as we were, this was the biggest boost to confidence that anything. What a legend! Yeah now you imagine you're terrified because you're gonna you're going to risk your life. And in the speech, he doesn't sugarcoat that. He says, you know, some of you will not be seeing the end of the day, and we will respect you and look after you and all that sort of thing. But he said, But we will do our best and we will be ferocious in war and magnanimous in magnanimous in victory. Sorry. You're creating that feeling to allow someone to step outside their comfort zone.
SPEAKER_00:It's interesting because I guess if you take that, what you've just described there, you can pull all that into moments of time in which it happened. And what we're talking to our leaders about here is something you need to be doing on an ongoing basis. It's not like you have this one piece of communication, and now my team's fired up, right? And we're gonna we're gonna make it. No, so this is that that's great to expand that and say you need to make this a way of working with your team, communicating. And what Neil and I are talking about here, when we say inspirational communication, we don't mean sitting down to plan to write a speech, we're talking about how you conduct yourself on an ongoing basis. Okay, so you're right.
SPEAKER_01:Right now, let's move into the how, right? Because I think that's the most important thing here is we give the clues to how to do this. And you know, we've I think we've made the point that inspirational communication is key. And anybody who's been inspired by a speaker, by reading an email, by reading a story, you know, you'll know why. But you're absolutely right. I mean, the first thing I've written down on my piece of paper here is you've got to have passion, belief, and energy around where you're taking your organization, your team, your business anyway. And if if you start with that and start with that passion and energy, then it'll start to come through.
SPEAKER_00:So you're right. I mean, that's a good it's a good put this down as the beginning of the sentence, right, guys. You need to come out of the blocks. Look, you've just started with a team, you've just come in with the team. You want to establish yourself and then you want to get them on board. We're not saying you arrive and on day one you go, I have a dream, right? It ain't gonna work like that. We get that. But make this the start of the way you're gonna communicate. No, that's a good point.
SPEAKER_01:What do you want them to do as a result? When you're inspiring someone, what do you want them to do once you've inspired them? You know, so where do you want them to go? How do you want them to feel? And you've got to be clear on that as well as you're starting to build this picture of how you're gonna communicate inspirationally. That makes sense to you, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So, what we're saying, guys, is your communication has to be designed for an outcome. And that outcome is probably to change something. I'm not saying it always will be, but it could be to change something in their emotion, their motivation, their feeling. And that's what you'll set out to do on this journey, right? Maybe it's not to change something, maybe it's to keep them doing what they're doing. Yeah, maybe they're doing a great job, yeah. They're doing a great job, right? And you're just keeping them energized, right? So that's another really good point for us to think about here, guys. You don't only have to do this inspirational communication because you've got something to lift up, it's because you might want to keep them there. So you have a duty to be doing this on an ongoing basis, right? You're not only coming in because there's troubled times. As a leader, you've got to be patting them on the back and thanking them when things are going well.
SPEAKER_01:What you just made me think about there, when we talk about inspirational communication, it is all about changing that emotional feeling. Because the how the you know, how we're going to do this, the technicalities of executing on a task, a motivated, energized person will find a way of doing that. And and actually that's really important because that that makes the the heavy lifting of leadership so much easier if you've energized the team to find the ways of making this stuff happen because you've inspired them.
SPEAKER_00:You just made me think of something as well. What just doing that, right? For as long as I've known you, you are high energy, strong tone of voice. Let's go over the hill, let's go get it done. Is that the only way to inspire people by your communication?
SPEAKER_01:I think that's a it's a it's a good point, right? And it's like we said at the beginning, right? You don't have to be that that high-energy bouncy guy on stage, uh, you know, and running over the hill. You know, I quite often look behind me and I'm on my own. So I've inspired myself, but no one else behind me. I feel great. But but I think no, no, you, and and it's interesting. I was just listening to a Jim Rowan, uh, who is you know, he's just one of the best speakers and best personal development guys out there. And he was the guy who trained Tony Robbins, who you know you and I both admire and get motivated by. And Jim Rowan was saying, you've got to develop your own style, don't be someone else. But that doesn't mean that you can't be inspirational in your own style. Because if it's coming from the heart, there's a there's a really important point, right? And whenever I've been teaching people to do speeches or be, you know, say put the piece of paper down, put the facts down, and just talk from your heart. Forget the head, forget the logic, talk from your heart. And so it doesn't matter whether you're loud, whether you're boisterous, whether you're quiet, as long as you're talking from your heart, it will come across.
SPEAKER_00:I think you're right. And so I can think about some leaders that I've worked with who would have been a lot more passive, a lot more calm, maybe even quiet spoken, but they could still get the message across really clearly. So the things we're talking about, guys, it's about tonality, it's about language, but it's about passion, it's about knowledge, it's about confidence, right? That's the things that you got to bring out here. And it doesn't have to be because you're bouncing around and lively on stage or or on an email or whatever, right?
SPEAKER_01:And actually, there's another good point in that as well. So I've heard a leader speak inspirationally recently. You know, he's a business owner, runs his own business. I do some work with his leadership team. And the reason he was inspirational was because he had a vision and he had conviction. And what he said about where he wanted to take the business and how he wanted to change customers' lives, you know, the the people who are receiving the service, I thought I felt was inspirational. And and so actually, there's another you see, you've got to have vision, passion, but belief. See so to be able to communicate inspirationally.
SPEAKER_00:So, what else? What else are you going to do? There's another there's another key element. Let's talk about content. Okay, there's another key element in all the inspirational things we've looked at, all the inspirational communication, speeches, whatever. There's a theme in it, guys, which is they often use a story. Right. Because stories resonate. Come back to Neil's thing about pathos and logos, right? Stories resonate with people, stories are memorable. People can pick that up. Now, if you can get the right story that resonates with your audience, it's gonna stay with them. They don't have to remember everything you've said, they have to remember the intent and the drive that you were talking about. That's what they have to remember. And the story does it, Neil, right?
SPEAKER_01:There's two types of stories as well. So yeah, it's a key point. And it's interesting. When I five, six years ago, I did some work, it was actually for IBM at the time to look at what makes leaders inspirational. And I I I studied lots of inspirational leaders because basically they were trying to work out how we can help leaders be more inspirational. One of the things I I did a survey out to the public and just asked, you know, when you're inspired by leaders, what do they do? And one of the things that came out that I wasn't expecting was storytelling. They tell great stories, but the stories they tell, so there's two types of stories. You can tell stories about something that's already happened, or you can tell stories about what it's gonna be like in the future when you follow them on this journey, you know, and some of the best leaders, like I have a dream of a country, you know, that that has equality for all colours, that that is a story, that's a vision, a story of the future. Um, I know the one that just came to mind, which I hadn't thought about before this conversation, was Steve Jobs' famous speech. You know, he's done two of them, and I remember both the vision was about having a thousand songs in your pocket. So the story was imagine you are, and then so there's this story about what it's going to be like in the future and how you build that story up. I think that's really key.
SPEAKER_00:That's a really good point, actually, because that again, it look, it doesn't work for everybody. Some people's minds don't work like that, right? But for many people, the anticipation and the forward looking, and and now we're tying back, by the way, guys, to the topic we did last, which was about having a compelling vision, right? So that that's really important. You're bringing all this together now, guys, because telling a story about the future is also pulling into your vision.
SPEAKER_01:Well, to be honest, that's why we did it in that order, wasn't it? You know, whereas uh great leaders have a compelling vision and they are able to communicate with inspiration. Um, so there is a flow to it, and I think it's interesting. You mentioned content, so we talked about stories, which is important. That it's worth just reflecting on how we communicate for a second. So we communicate with the words we use and we the vocabulary we use, and when we want to communicate inspirationally, that vocabulary needs to be emotional because we're trying to create emotional reactions to it. And when if you look at the I don't know who did the study, I can never remember who did it, but there was a study done years ago that Tony Robbins talks about, and everyone talks about is how we communicate 7% is words, 30%, 8% is how we say those words, the speed, the tone, the pace, etc. And 55% is our physiology, how we use our body. How does that come across to you?
SPEAKER_00:I I think it it'd be a good example, it'd be like you might you might deliver something in a certain way. You could write it down on a bit of paper and give it to me. Does that mean if I read that out, I'm gonna inspire people in the same way? Maybe not. Probably not, because it's about the whole thing that you brought together. So, like you say, the tonality, the body language, right? If I'm gonna sit there passively and not engage with my audience, then it doesn't matter what I'm writing. I could stand at a electron and just read stuff. That's not gonna do the job, right? So you're absolutely right, you've got to bring that all together. I think the other thing we've got to think about is the media, right? Neil and I've talked a lot here about talking. That's not the only way we communicate with our people. So we also communicate in the written word. Now that is a hell of a skill to inspire people by your written word, because now you can't put anything else into that except the words that are written down. So now it's about your language, it's about your examples, it could still be about the stories. So, really important to think about our media here and the way that you represent that.
SPEAKER_01:Actually, there's an interesting link up with all of those things, right? So, words might only communicate 7%, and then tone, how can you get tone across or pace across in a written communication? And how can you get physiology across? To me, it's dead simple. Firstly, it's what you're saying in your head, and it's how you're using your body. If you're trying to write an inspirational email and you're sitting slumped over with your back arched, you're not filling your lungs with oxygen, you're looking down, and you've got slow thoughts going through your head, you're probably not going to write inspirational words on the screen. So you create the energy in you that then comes through you onto the words that you write in the in the email.
SPEAKER_00:It actually makes me think that it's wider than that as well, right? So the email is one, but then you've also got whether you're using an office package. So maybe you're doing it on a on a PowerPoint chart, right? Pictures, pictures are really powerful, right? Yeah, yeah. Think about that as well. Make it easy for your audience to absorb what you're saying. Can you imagine writing something in a flat paragraph that never stopped? Can you imagine? No breaks, nothing like that. So make it easy for your pe for your reader to absorb what you're saying. Highlight things that you want to bring out, use the right language, use the right emphasis, don't overdo it, but use exclamation marks, use question marks, right? That's what they're all there for. Now, this is my sounding this is getting really technical, this is really difficult, but it isn't. Because come back to what Neil said up front. Do it with passion, yeah, with the right intent in mind, and you will find it. It will come.
SPEAKER_01:And it's interesting, you said uh don't go over the top. I would slightly counter that with what you think's over the top won't come across as over the top when it's read or when it when they someone sees you speak it. I've done this personally, you know, I I when I trained in uh Toastmasters as a speaker, one of the things that I learned was about being more theatrical, but also what I thought was over the top with what I was saying and what I was doing. And then when I sat and watched it back, it actually didn't come across like that to the audience. So it felt really uncomfortable when I was, you know, it felt a little bit over the top. But when I when I spoke to the audience or when I saw feedback, it didn't come across like that. And so you I think you can go a bit further than you feel comfortable with in your inspirational communication.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I mean, this is probably for wrap-up, right? But it's worth me saying it now because it's in my head.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Give us in your comments and some feedback, guys, examples of where you've seen communication that's really inspired you. Likewise, tell us about things that haven't, that's deflated you, right? Didn't achieve what you thought the deliverer was trying to achieve. It's all good examples for people listening to this and reading our blog and and our posts to be able to share, right? There's some great examples. So please, maybe I should have kept it for the close. But yeah, didn't want to lose it while it was there.
SPEAKER_01:I think the other thing to kind of pull into this as we as we start wrapping up a little bit on this one, is the other thing that's critical to inspirational communication, and you've touched on it already, is you've got to keep repeating yourself. It's not a one-time thing. Martin Luther King, I didn't count it, but he said, I have a dream 20, 30 times in that speech. If you listen to uh, and it's not just about repetition of the words, it's about repetition of the message. Because then people believe, they know that you're convicted and you're going in that direction. If you listen to anything by Nelson Mandela, there's no question about what he's focused on because he keeps repeating the same message, the same vision, the same belief. Anyone from the from the sports, same thing. You know, there's repeating messages, and that creates inspiration as well.
SPEAKER_00:There's one more thing we haven't touched on, right? And and again, this is not for everybody, but don't avoid sense of humor. I think sometimes it's really powerful. Now it could be misplaced, and you have got to be careful with your audience. So be careful with what you're you call sense of humor. You don't want to offend anybody, yeah, but it also makes it more personal, it also makes it more real, it makes it less plastic, right? This is about saying, This is me, and if that's what you how if that's how you are normally, there's no reason why you wouldn't. One of the recordings we did a couple of days ago, and you guys will get to hear it in in the coming days, was talking about being one person. You don't have to be someone different at work, you don't have to be someone different in the changing room, you know, if if you're inspiring a sports team, you could be the same person, you just have to turn up and down certain characteristics. That's all. So think about the sense of humor. It might work for you, it's not a mandatory, by the way. But you Neil uses it, I use it, right? But it's not planned, it needs to be natural, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think it's about being yourself, being authentic, being human. And if you see humor in things, you know, I see humor in things that should be quite serious, especially when I used to sit in board meetings. And and and and I'd make a comment, and people would say, This is serious now. Yeah, I know it is, but it's also funny. So I think that you know, that's just my personality, though, to be honest. I I am one of those people that and when I've been in adverse situations, you know, physically adverse situations, I always laugh at myself for being so stupid for being there. So, no, it's here's a good point, actually, is is don't feel uncomfortable using humor in helping us inspire people. So, I mean, we've talked a lot about so we talked about the vision last time, and we talked about now inspiring people with your communication. And the two are important to being a great leader because great leaders have people that want to follow them, and that could be at any level in any organization or business or whatever walk of life you know you're leading in, and how you communicate and some of the tips we've shared here hopefully will help you become a better, more inspirational communicator.
SPEAKER_00:So, just as we close off on this one, guys, just to say we mentioned a little while ago that we'd had some help with developing our podcast and what's going on. That's going really well, right? We we see a lot more people downloading. We see that we're getting some good traffic and some following, which is fantastic. But give us any feedback you want on that and how it's working for you. You'll see some other media that we're bringing out and just trying to keep things fired up, guys. But thank you very much for your following and for your uh support here. It's really working.
SPEAKER_01:So yeah, great to know fantastic. And and look, it's been inspirational again to talk to you, mate. It always is. You were one of the leaders that used to inspire me, and you still do.
SPEAKER_00:Hey, but that hey, so let's just close on another point there. That's really quite important. I may have been your boss, but you inspired me in the way that you acted. So, this is really important as well, guys. Think about that. You're not only talking about inspiring your people down that are your subordinates, you can inspire up as well, right? That's really quite important. You could inspire left, right, up, down, family, whatever. Think about it and practice it and enjoy it. Enjoy it. Exactly. Enjoy it.
SPEAKER_01:It's not, it shouldn't be a chore, it should be something that you enjoy and you feel good about as well. So, yeah, listen, great to catch up with you. And please subscribe and give us thumbs up and all that kind of stuff to give us the love to know that we're doing the right things. Good stuff. And uh look forward to catching up with you next time, mate. Great to see you, Neil. Take care, have a great weekend. Catch you soon.
SPEAKER_00:Cheers, bye. Thank you for listening to the Leadership Detectives with Neil Thumbron and Albert Joseph. Please remember to subscribe, give us your comments and your feedback. Please also visit leadershipdetectives.com for all the episodes and more resources and support.