How to give a good graduation speech: a tale of three speakers

Photo Claudia Leisinger

In my time, I’ve taken part in quite a few graduation ceremonies, including the one where the guest of honour told the graduates to stop singing, and listen to what she had to say. I’ve made speeches, handed out certificates, smiled, shaken hands, and mispronounced names. Fortunately, graduations being a time to celebrate achievements with friends and family, audiences are usually very forgiving.

It’s a long time, however, since I graduated myself. Recently I was reunited with my classmates at a graduation ceremony in London. Given my previous experience of graduation ceremonies, I listened to the speeches and observed the ceremonies with a professional pair of ears and eyes. I was looking forward to sharing the stage with my beloved tutors and peers, all of whom had supported and challenged me in different ways. And I was also up for some gentle joshing over champagne and canapes. It was a wet and windy Friday evening, and because of this, perhaps, the promise of a glass of wine was more than usually pleasing.

A tale of three speakers

The first speaker talked about himself. The second speaker talked about somebody else. And the third speaker gave a pitch perfect talk about what she had learned about teamwork and conflict resolution, ending with three powerful messages for us to take away.

Talking about yourself and other people

When giving a speech, it’s OK, and even a good thing, to talk about yourself. I sometimes tell a joke against myself in order to connect with my audience. It’s a well-known technique for putting yourself on the same level as your audience. It’s also good to talk about other people. When I talk about leadership I always speak about leaders I know, and the skills and qualities that make them a leader for me.

Start with your audience

What I really liked about the third speaker was that she kept her talk firmly on intersection of leadership and learning, which was the place where we had all met more than a year ago. The third speaker started with her audience. A transatlantic rower, she talked about what she did, and what she had learned.

Be clear about your messages

Then she shared three simple and elegant messages about to lead a team when the going gets tough:

Have a conflict resolution plan before you start a project
Spend time with different people to avoid factions or cliques, and
Share your vulnerability with your team when you don’t know what to do.

Be modest about your achievements

The other thing the third speaker did was to keep a balanced perspective on what she had done. She didn’t pretend to be a superhero. Yes, she had had to face waves the size of a double-decker bus. And also, she remembered the beauty of seas, gleaming with phosphorescence, and stars so bright she felt she could reach out and touch them.

So what are the lessons for graduation speakers?

Start and finish with your audience

Be modest about your achievements

Whatever you say, have a reason for saying it to your audience

Give your audience something to take away and use

Be authentic

Be brief

For more information about leadership and learning, please take a look at my new website

What real leaders really do

What leaders really do?

Once upon a time, when I thought I wanted to work in HR, I read a much reprinted article by John P Kotter, called “What leaders really do” (Havard Business Review, May-June 1990). In plain English Kotter described a step by step approach to helping people deliver the organisation’s vision e.g. involving people in decision-making, being a good role model, providing coaching and feedback, and praising people when they were successful. At the time Kotter made complete sense to me, and I was grateful to him for making leadership seem so simple.

Years later...

Twenty years later, when I read the article again, I was nearly sick. This is a good thing, because it shows how much my ideas about leadership have changed since I began working in leadership and sustainability. How could I have imagined that this mechanical approach to managing people was the real deal? 

In Praise of the Incomplete Leader

Somewhere between my first and second readings of Kotter, I came across an article co-authored by Peter Senge, called ‘In Praise of the Incomplete Leader’. It began with the words ‘No leader is perfect’. I became very excited. ‘The Incomplete Leader’ describes four leadership competencies and why they matter: making sense of the world, relating to people, communicating your vision, and inventing ways to make it happen. 

Leadership beyond organisations

What I instantly liked was the framing of leadership as way of thinking and acting, a process of being and becoming. ‘Incomplete Leadership’ is not tied to an organisational setting. It can work in teams, partnerships, networks and communities. With its strong emphasis on creating shared narratives, ‘Incomplete Leadership’ is a joint quest for the best possible way forward. It’s OK not to have all the answers, provided we keep asking questions, and telling stories to raise our spirits.

What real leaders really do

Since I discovered the ‘Incomplete Leader’, I’ve thought a lot about what we can do to provide real leadership in a complex and uncertain world. The list that follows is incomplete, but that’s OK!

Real leaders:

1. Are motivated by serving other people, their community, their organisation, their favourite cause
2. Are curious about the future           
3. Scan the horizon for opportunities, innovations, and threats 
4. Question their assumptions and beliefs           
5. Listen and observe constantly           
6. Are comfortable with complexity           
7. Gather information from multiple sources. They talk to everyone they meet. They subscribe newspapers and magazines, have a twitter account, and read blogs
8. Invest time in building diverse personal and professional networks because they know the value of diversity
9. Explore many as many options as possible before making up their minds
10. Suspend judgment on hearing about a new way of doing things
11. They like to experiment because it is fun. They have courage, and they are willing to take risks
12. Take time out to think and reflect, perhaps go for walk or swim. They may keep a diary, a journal, or a write a blog
13. Encourage different points of view and involve people in decision-making           
14. Are open and honest about making mistakes. They treat mistakes as an opportunity to learn and share what they discovered with others
15. Take responsibility for their actions           
16. Want to learn and they want other people to learn, too. They give and receive feedback freely
17. Enjoy what they do. Real leaders make a positive difference to the lives of other people. People like to work with them because they are life enhancers
18. ?

 London, 18 August 2013

Thanks for reading my blog. If you liked this page, you might like to check out my business website which has more content on leadership and learning.

www.kellowlearning.com

Becoming a coach: me and Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme

I’ve got a permanent sugar rush of thoughts and feelings about coaching and training. I’m like Monsieur Jourdain in Moliere’s ‘Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme’, who discovered that, all his life, he had been speaking prose without knowing it.

Fifteen months ago, I started a serious executive coaching programme. Two days ago, I attended a final assessment day. Soon I will find out whether or not I have met the standard.

To get to the assessment day, I had to notch up one induction day, four residential training modules, four tutorials, dozens of practice coaching sessions, much reading of coaching texts and articles, four required learning logs, two unplanned blogs, and one theoretical essay. Having gone through all of that, it’s no wonder I am having a rush of thoughts and feelings about learning and coaching. 

What lies beneath my training approach

I’ve made a connection between Gestalt based coaching and my approach to delivering leadership training. Like Monsieur Jourdain, I have discovered that, all my life, I have been using Gestalt methodology to underpin my training courses, without knowing it. 

Instinctively, I design training programmes as participative learning journeys. I encourage learners to:

• listen and observe
• notice what they are thinking and feeling
• gather and make sense of data
• keep an open mind, and
• work together to make sense of challenges and dilemmas.

From a Gestalt coaching perspective, this is about being and learning in the moment, and noticing patterns and connections. It’s about raising awareness of real needs, and mobilising energy towards appropriate action. 

I’m still processing what I have learned. I can’t wait to review my training practice through a Gestalt lens. Meanwhile, here is the 'before' and 'after' of my approach to coaching.

How I coached before the course	How I coach now
Took responsibility for solving the client’s dilemmas and problems	I work in partnership with the client
Analysed what the client was telling me	Observe, reflect, summarise
Tried very hard to be nice	Not afraid to challenge appropriately
Asked lots of unhelpful (dissonant) questions	Comfortable with silence
Talked about my experiences	Appropriately disclose if the client is interested in hearing about my experience
Believed I must have the answers	Not afraid to say ‘I don’t know what to do with this’
Pushed the client into action	Create space for the client to discover what they want to do
Made assumptions about what the client was telling me	Form working hypotheses AND keep an open mind
Thought ahead constantly which affected my ability to be present	Stay fully present with the client
Relied on listening and questioning	Invite the client to experiment Gestalt and Cognitive Behavioural methodologies
Felt awkward contracting and closing	Am more confident when contracting and helping client to identify what they have learned

It’s been quite a journey. I really must apologise to all my friends who volunteered to be coached by me, when I didn’t know what I know now.

16 March 2013

Thanks for reading my blog. If you liked this page, you might like to check out my business website which has more content on leadership and learning.

www.kellowlearning.com

Something very interesting happened at Moodle Camp

We built 10 new e-learning modules

Something very interesting happened at a recent gathering of LEAD Fellows and friends from all over the LEAD network. The event, which took place in London, was called ‘Moodle Camp’. Working in teams, we designed and built 10 new E-Learning modules covering a range of leadership and sustainable development competencies. These new modules will be tested on LEAD Fellows, and then launched in June 2012 at Rio+20. We achieved our goal.This was good.

Learning to take risks
On the 3rd day of the Moodle Camp, we shared the modules with an invited group of experienced leadership and sustainability practitioners from different organisations. I felt we were taking a risk. What if we failed to produce anything worth sharing? How might this affect our reputation as a learning organisation? But succeed we did. Our guests were curious, insightful and enthusiastic. They gave us much constructive feedback that we will incorporate into the beta version of the modules. 'It was good', they said, 'that we had involved them before the modules were finished.' Everyone went home tired and happy. Knowing when to take a risk is a leadership skill.

So what?
“So what?” you might say. E-Learning is not so new. LEAD has specialised in leadership and sustainable development for almost 20 years. If you put a group of LEAD Fellows in a room for 48 hours, and they succeed in creating some E-Learning modules on leadership and sustainable development, what is so interesting or surprising about that? 

What LEAD Fellows love to do

“I agree with you, it's not particularly surprising”, I would say. But that’s not the point. We’ve all seen LEAD Fellows in action at national, regional and international sessions. LEAD Fellows love to work in teams of people from different cultures and sectors. LEAD Fellows take a systems approach; they listen and ask questions, see and think differently, share knowledge, challenge constructively, take risks, explore and uncover innovative solutions. That’s normal for LEAD. 

What was really interesting was learning together
What was really interesting at Moodle Camp was not just that we succeeded in designing and building 10 new products against a very tight deadline. What was really interesting was that we were learning all the time about what makes an engaging E-Learning module. We were learning all the time from, and with each other.

How did we do that? You’ll have to read part 2 of this blog.

To learn more about LEAD go here www.lead.org

Take a break: get a new perspective

I’ve just had the most wonderful experience walking with a friend in Torridon, North West Scotland. Only a week ago, we were taking in the beauty of the Cairngorm valley from the window of the Caledonian Sleeper: snow-capped mountains in the distance, stations built like Victorian hunting lodges, silver birch and Dulux white snowdrops growing by the line. Despite the inspiring view, I was worrying about work. Was there anything I had not done that I should have done? Were there things I had done that I should not have done? Even though I slept soundly on the train, I could still feel the ties that bind me to work.

The power of time, distance and novelty 

Removing myself from a situation and waking up in a totally different environment can help to reduce my killer sense of responsibility for everything. After a cooked breakfast at the station hotel, I felt the ties weakening. Maybe it was admiring the grand hotel staircase that is the original of the one in The Titanic. Probably it was the black pudding that helped most. Meeting the owl from the Harry Potter films outside Inverness M & S was magical. With one eye closed and one eye open, she turned her head from side to side like a clockwork toy. I couldn’t help noticing that the owl’s keeper looked very like an owl himself, with his owlish glasses and long snowy white hair. Time, distance and novelty all helped to make me feel less responsible for everything.

Take a SMART challenge

Walking in Torridon for the first time helped me to focus on a practical and immediate goal: getting to Coire Mhic Fhearchair and back safely. Unlike my never ending ‘to do’ list at work, a guided hill walk is a SMART challenge. You know where you are going (specific) and how far you will have to walk (measurable). By turning up you agree (agreed) to the route.  Your guide has assessed your fitness for the walk (realistic) and you know roughly how long the walk will take (timebound). Ryan, our guide, showed us the remains of a Lancaster bomber that crashed in Coire Mhic Fhearchair in 1951. He had recently taken part in a ceremony to mark the 60^th anniversary of the crash. Someone had cut the wreath from the skeletal wing of the plane.

The Importance of Treats

When you have walked to one of the most beautiful places in the world, it’s quite all right to stop for tea and scones. A gin martini can add value to the view from the hotel of the loch and the mountains. It would be impolite not to drink local beer and eat haggis with 2 GPs, an anaethetist, and an accountant in the bar. Talking nonsense to strangers is a good way to see how far you can reinvent yourself. Losing (respectably) at the pub quiz is part of the fun.

Cathedrals in the sky

The hills of Torridon look as if Andy Goldsworthy has arranged them. They guard the entrances to valleys like sphinxes. They change colour in the evening sun. Scottish hills are a bit of a tease. Sometimes they hide in the clouds. Just when you have forgotten about his existence, Ben Eighe will reappear. Several walkers in our group said that being in the mountains gives them a sense of humility. Ryan McLean, our mountain guide, has lived in Torridon all his life. When challenged by the local minister to come to church, Ryan told him that walking in the mountains is his equivalent of going to church. Seeing the mountains through Ryan’s eyes made me question why I live in London. If you want a different perspective, try going for a walk in the hills of Torridon. 

http://www.thetorridon.com/inn/