One of the worst speakers was a past boss of mine. She has to get in front of all her employers and talk about new important company changes. She was clearly very nervous and had no idea what she was going to say. She kept reading off her note card and showed no eye contact. This was the kind of speech that did not keep the audience directed towards the speacher at all. Everyone was talking amongst themselves. If you want to have a good speech you need to engage with your audience and act like you care about what you are talking about rather than stumbling around reading a card.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Steve Jobs
Throughout my life, I have been lucky enough to hear many different speakers, in many different places. It can be very challenging capturing the audience’s attention and keeping the audience with the speaker at all times throughout his or her speech. In 2005, my cousin graduated from Stanford University. The commencement speech was made by Steve Jobs, who is the co- founder, inventor and chief executive officer of Apple. At the time I did not know who Steve Jobs was. In his speech he speaks about how in life you should never settle, whether it is with your job that you hate or in a relationship that isn’t working. This has always and will always stick with me in my life. Something else Steve says that I think is very powerful was “you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.” This speech can really be meaningful to anyone because we all want to be happy and doing working in an environment that makes us happy. I think because Steve had accomplished so much in his life, and he himself has been the one who made it happen. I think his story if very inspiring and the way he told it will forever have a lasting impression on me and my life
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I had no idea who Steve Jobs was until I read your blog post. It is so amazing that you got to see him speak, and at a school like Stanford I suppose it is not that surprising. I really enjoy when you get to see someone speak who is so successful and they make you feel like you can actually become that successful as well. It is like they are actually a real person too! They seem to say all the right things that could have been written by a speech writer but I prefer to think they wrote it themselves. You're lucky you got to see him, and Congrats to your cousin!
ReplyDeleteWhat a wonderful experience to see Steve Jobs live. It seems strange to me, someone who is an influential individual to my personal goals of success, was unknown to you prior to this experience. Plus Eleanor, not knowing who Steve Jobs is until your post, all I have to say is HOW? I love all he does with Apple and in the field of Animation. I could not even imagine how inspirational it would have been to see him speak at a graduation ceremony! If I was a student of that graduating class, I would walk away pumped up for a future full of success and accomplishments.
ReplyDeleteI too am jealous you had a chance to hear Steve Jobs live. Particularly this speech, as it is often referred to by many as one of his greatest. I find the comment about "trusting that dots will connect in the future" to be powerful and a great example of use of analogy to make a point. I think that when a speaker misuse analogies (something that seems to happens way too often in both private and public speaking) it is extremely distracting and destroys the speaker credibility. However, as Steve Jobs shows, proper and thoughtful use of analogy is extremely powerful.
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