Nick Morgan - The Kings Speech

The Academy Award winning movie The Kings Speech revolves around the relationship between a reluctant king, George VI of England, and his speech coach, the Australian Lionel Logue .

The film reveals that a strict father and some painful teasing as a child contributed to Georges stutter, and that he was quite content in his role as the Duke of York, second in line to the throne after his older brother, who would become Edward VIII . Even so, the pressure on George, born Albert and known as Bertie only by his family (and Logue), to speak at public events causes him to engage several speech coaches in an effort to overcome his stammer. All such efforts fail until his wife, Elizabeth , discovers Lionel Logue, who had built a reputation working with shell-shocked soldiers from World War I and worked out of a shabby suite of offices on Harley Street in London. The two began working together, and George made remarkable progress even though he resisted Logues unorthodox methods and insistence at treating the Duke of York like an equal. My house, my rules, Logue maintained.

The central drama in The Kings Speech comes when The Duke of York inherits the throne after his father dies and his older brother, Edward, abdicates to marry the American divorcee Wallis Simpson .

George will have some lines to speak at his coronation, and he must rely on Logue more than ever.

He gets through his coronation without embarrassing himself, but the Kings real test comes several years later, in 1939, when he must address England and the world to explain that England is at war with Germany. George VI will both represent and lead England during the speech, and he cannot stammer in his countrys hour of need.

In my two decades as a communications coach, Ive seen many clients go on similar journeys. The coaching relationship is an intensely personal one, and the stakes are frequently high. While no one Ive worked with has had to declare war, my clients have given Congressional testimony, argued high-stakes cases in front of juries, given interviews on television, and spoken in front of thousands of people around the world.

The lessons, five in particular, Ive learned working with my clients parallel the lessons from The Kings Speech. Lets take each in turn.

Youre not as good as you probably think you are. If youre a leader, youre likely surrounded by people who tell you what you want to hear, not what you need to know. I once worked with the CEO of a health care company who thought he was a pretty good public speaker. He came to me because he wanted to go from good to great.

Then I taped one of his speeches and showed it to him. He was astounded. Like many of us, when he was on stage, with adrenaline coursing through his system, he lost affect. He looked like the proverbial deer in the headlights - his face showed no animation, and his voice was a steady monotone.

Im really boring, arent I! he exclaimed. That knowledge was painful to acquire. But for years he had been asking the first person he saw after giving a speech how he had done. And that person was invariably a vice president who told him he was great.

Fortunately, that CEO was tough and honest, and, with my not-so-gentle critique, he resolved to improve. Similarly, youve got to be willing to be honest with yourself. If you wont admit youve got a problem, then youve got no upside potential.

How do you accomplish this difficult task? Get someone to videotape you the next time you speak. Then let 24 hours go by (so youll no longer be in adrenaline mode) and watch the video. Then compare your performance with that of speakers you admire. How do you stack up? Are you as eloquent as a Kennedy? As passionate as Martin Luther King, Jr? If not, youve got work to do.

In The Kings Speech, it took a tremendous personal struggle, but the King finally opened up to Logue once he had faced reality and realized that his inability to speak in public was an insuperable barrier to his Kingship.

Many executives have reached the position they currently hold by pleasing their superiors and competing vigorously with co-workers. But once they get to the C-Suite, the communication styles that served them well before no longer work.

I once worked with an executive who had used the street-wise skills he had learned growing up in Brooklyn to fight his way into the leadership ranks of a Fortune 500 company.

When he was made CFO, however, the bare-knuckles approach with employees and colleagues was no longer welcome. He was now interacting with the board, and its members expected collegiality, not aggression. I spent 6 months working with him to tone down his pugnacious communication style. The work really accelerated when I showed him a video of him role-playing himself in a meeting, and he told me, I act like a punk!

Switching behavior from what has worked so well before is quite hard, especially when it comes to communication styles. The new style often feels risky and unfamiliar, so the temptation to revert back to the old style is great. Executives often fall back and tell me that, Its not real, its not me, meaning that they prefer the old over the new behavior. I worked with an executive once, for example, who was impatient of preparation and preferred to wing it in meetings with clients and co-workers. I was called in after he had been promoted to the C-Suite, and had a disastrous meeting with the investment community in which he made some off-the-cuff remarks that drove the stock price down. It took that kind of feedback from Wall Street to make him realize that he wasnt his style, and that he had to start rehearsing and using scripted remarks or lose his job.

But in fact its not an executives soul thats at stake, its his or her behavior with others. If youre not willing to adapt your communications style to fit your new role, youre not going to go the distance.

George VI had to be willing to let go of his personal reserve during his sessions with Logue. He had to fight his desire to hide behind the shield that class and power gave him and change his behavior even though it was uncomfortable and unfamiliar.

Similarly, its important for leaders, especially those in new roles, to decide on what kind of impact they want to have, and what sort of communications style will enable that impact. Do you want to bring change to a conservative, slow-moving industry? Then a style that embodies creative flair, or technological change, or even one that shows you to be impatient might serve you well. You pick the style, and then a coach can help you figure out what that needs to look like in public and how best to develop it.

Its easier, of course, if the new style matches elements of your personality. I recently worked with an executive who was being groomed to become the CEO of his company. But his reserve, which had worked well enough in the largely supporting financial roles he had occupied before, was making the board hesitate; he got quite nervous when addressing more than a small number of people. Our discussion at first centered on his resistance to change. He told me, Im an introvert. Thats who I am.

In fact, he resented the idea of what he saw as changing his personality to become CEO. So I asked him if he wanted to be CEO at all. He said yes. Then I asked him what he saw as good CEO communications styles. He listed characteristics that included ease in front of groups, authenticity in dealing with multiple stakeholders, and so on. Then I showed him a brief DVD of him making a presentation and analyzed the style he was showing, stressing that I was not evaluating his personality, merely the persona that he was projecting. He came across as inward-looking, intense, and quite nervous. I asked him if that was the persona he wanted to project, and he said no.