Leadership Through Speeches: A Visionary Model

Brian O’C. Leggett

Brian O’C. Leggett

IESE Business School, Unviversity of Navarra, Spain

Volume 2: 2009, pp. 69-80; ABSTRACT

Leadership within an organization concerns effective communication. But how can we effectively inspire and motivate others to work enthusiastically for something that will materialize in the future? How can we ask them to put their energies and trust into something that has not yet happened? We do it by appealing to our audience’s imagination, by painting a picture or a vision of what can be. But to do this our audience needs to trust us both professionally and personally. In a nutshell, we need to have credibility or as the ancients used to call it, ‘ethos’. This article discusses the need to create this necessary feeling of trust. It presents us with the Monroe model for visionary type speeches as a means of achieving this end. Finally, it closes with some practical exercises on the draft speech, using the Monroe model, given by the CEO of Carmela.

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