21 Great Leaders: Learn Their Lessons, Improve Your Influence (10 page)

In 1946, he came to the United States to deliver a speech in Missouri. On the train ride to Missouri, Churchill lost $250 in a poker game with President Truman and his aides but otherwise had a good time.
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Churchill delivered one of his greatest speeches at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, on March 5, 1946. He called it “The Sinews of Peace.” It was, in some ways, similar to Ronald Reagan’s “Evil Empire” speech of March 8, 1983. Churchill warned that the Soviet Union had not kept its wartime agreements, and that Soviet-style Communism had spread like a shadow across Eastern Europe:

Churchill coined a vivid metaphor—“Iron Curtain”—to describe the growing Soviet sphere of domination in Eastern Europe. Many were alarmed at Churchill’s bluntness—yet Churchill’s words were prophetic. Leaders are called to speak unpleasant truths that often provoke an angry reaction. The truth about the “Iron Curtain” needed to be spoken. Some have said that this speech began the Cold War—but Churchill didn’t start the Cold War. He simply called our attention to it.

In 1951, Churchill was called back as prime minister of Great Britain. Perhaps the people of Great Britain, having watched the Iron Curtain descending across Europe, felt they needed a warrior to lead them. Churchill suffered a series of mild strokes during those years, and he knew his health was declining. He resigned as prime minister in April 1955 and tried to remain active in public life.

On January 15, 1965, Churchill suffered a severe stroke. He lingered for nine days; then, on the morning of Sunday, January 24, he passed away at the age of ninety. A grateful world mourned.

Winston Churchill towered as a role model of the Second Side of Leadership, communication skills. His career is rich in lessons for our leadership lives today. Some examples:

1.
Always communicate hope and optimism
. As prime minister, Churchill was often the bearer of bad tidings. Yet he never delivered bad news without surrounding it in hope. Even as Hitler’s armies rolled through Europe, Churchill envisioned a coming day when “the joybells will ring again.” Even when Churchill had nothing to offer the British people but “blood, toil, tears and sweat,” he inspired them with a promise of “victory, victory at all costs.”

In your leadership life, you will sometimes be called to deliver bad news. Make sure you treat every “bad news day” as an opportunity to inspire and motivate your followers with the promise of ultimate victory.

2.
Repeat, repeat, repeat
. Churchill wanted to make sure the boys at Harrow School did not miss his meaning. So he said, “Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never!” Sometimes it helps to repeat a statement multiple times in one speech. Sometimes it helps to repeat the same message again and again, week after week. People learn by repetition.

Great leaders don’t hesitate to communicate the vision then communicate it again and again and again. Don’t assume that communicating it once is sufficient. By about the tenth time you’ve delivered the same basic message, you’ll be sick of it—but that’s when people are beginning to grasp what you’re telling them. Be relentless in communicating your vision.

3.
Be witty
. A gentle sense of humor is an enormous asset to a communicator. During a parliamentary debate, Churchill appeared to be nodding off as a political opponent spoke. The speaker was offended and distracted by Churchill’s apparent slumber. Glowering at Churchill, he said, “Must you sleep while I’m speaking?”

“No,” Churchill replied, “it is purely voluntary.”
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Avoid using humor to attack others—but a quick wit can be extremely helpful in deflecting other people’s attacks on you.

4.
Be visual
. Churchill understood the power of visual symbols—even something as simple as his two-fingered V for “victory.” Churchill began using that sign in July 1941 when the BBC launched its “V for Victory” campaign, encouraging listeners in Nazi-occupied Europe to scrawl the letter V to show support for the Allies. After Churchill adopted that symbol, the V for Victory sign went viral around the world.

When you speak, make your message memorable by making it visual. Use symbols, pictures, props, PowerPoint, and any other medium you can think of to reach not only the ears of your listeners, but their eyes as well.

5.
Be succinct
. As a speaker, don’t wear out your welcome. Often, the less you say, the more they’ll remember. Churchill’s speech to the students at Harrow School was just 750 words long. Even more concise, Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address was 272 words long, and his second inaugural address was only 700 words. As King Solomon observed in Ecclesiastes: “The more the words, the less the meaning, and how does that profit anyone?”
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There is a maxim that is often attributed to Winston Churchill: “A good speech should be like a woman’s skirt; long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest.”

I don’t think he actually said it, but I’m pretty sure he would agree.

M
ARTIN
L
UTHER
K
ING
J
R
.

“I Have a Dream”

Ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus…. I would rather be a man of conviction than a man of conformity
.

D
R
. M
ARTIN
L
UTHER
K
ING
J
R
.

T
hanks to my mother, I am a witness to history.

In the summer of 1963, I was in Florida, planning to drive to Indiana University and complete my master’s in physical education. I called my mother to tell her I was going to stop by Wilmington, Delaware, for a visit, but she said, “Don’t come to Wilmington. Meet me in Washington, DC. I’m going to hear Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.”

Mom idolized Dr. King. She had been involved in social causes for as long as I can remember. I had no idea what an important event the March on Washington would be.

On August 28, 1963, my mother, my sister Carol, and I were three faces in a crowd of 250,000 people thronging the National Mall. People tend to remember only Dr. King’s speech, but there were many speakers and performers that day. I heard speeches by James Baldwin, Sidney Poitier, and Marlon Brando. Gospel singer Mahalia Jackson sang “How I Got Over”; Bob Dylan and Joan Baez sang “When the Ship Comes In”; and Peter, Paul, and Mary sang “Blowin’ in the Wind.”

Then came the main event—Dr. King himself.

I remember how Dr. King’s words stirred my emotions. I was close enough to see the passion in his eyes as he said, “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’ ” There was power in those words—in their sound, their cadence, the refrains of “I have a dream!” and “Let freedom ring!”

There was power in the way Dr. King’s speech echoed great words and great ideas from Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and the Gettysburg Address, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, great Negro spirituals and the Bible.

There was power in the metaphors Dr. King chose. America, he said, had “given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds.’ ” He spoke of transforming “the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.” He echoed the thundering Old Testament prophet Amos, saying, “we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

I didn’t realize at the time that Dr. King’s closing words were not a part of his prepared text. There is a point, about twelve minutes into the speech, where Dr. King says, “Unearned suffering is redemptive” and “this situation can and will be changed.”

I’m told that, as the applause roared, Mahalia Jackson said to Dr. King, “Tell them, Martin! Tell them about the dream!”

At that moment, Dr. King apparently made a split-second decision. He set his prepared text aside, and from then on he didn’t use any notes. He spoke straight from his heart.

“I still have a dream,” he said. “It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream….”

Martin Luther King Jr. was born in Atlanta on January 15, 1929. His father, “Daddy King,” was a Baptist minister who taught young Martin to resist segregation.

Once, Reverend King Sr. took young Martin to a shoe store. They sat down in the front of the store. The young white shoe clerk said, “I’ll be happy to wait on you if you’ll just move to those seats in the rear.”

“There’s nothing wrong with these seats,” Daddy King said. “We’re comfortable here.”

“I’m sorry,” the clerk said, “but you’ll have to move.”

Daddy King took Martin by the hand and they walked out.

“This was the first time I had seen Dad so furious,” Martin later recalled. “I still remember walking down the street beside him as he muttered, ‘I don’t care how long I have to live with this system, I will never accept it.’ ”
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In high school, Martin Luther King Jr. excelled in public speaking and debate. Once, while returning by bus from a speaking contest in a neighboring city, Martin and his speech teacher were ordered by the bus driver to give up their seats to a white passenger. Martin refused at first, but his teacher persuaded him to comply with the law. “That night will never leave my mind,” he later said. “It was the angriest I have ever been in my life.”
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An exceptional student, Martin skipped the ninth grade and went straight from the eleventh grade to Morehouse College without formally graduating from high school. He was a college freshman at age fifteen. He graduated from Morehouse in 1948 and went on to Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania. He earned a PhD in systematic theology at Boston University and became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, at age twenty-five.

Dr. King was inspired by
The Kingdom of God Is within You
, a treatise on nonviolent resistance by Leo Tolstoy; Henry David Thoreau’s essay “On Civil Disobedience”; theologians Paul Tillich and Reinhold Niebuhr; and the life of Gandhi, who employed nonviolent resistance to achieve India’s independence.

Dr. King played a key role in the 385-day-long Montgomery Bus Boycott, December 1955 through December 1956. The boycott began when Rosa Parks, a secretary of the Montgomery NAACP, refused to obey a bus driver’s order that she give her seat to a white passenger. During the boycott, Dr. King was arrested and his house was firebombed. His leadership during the boycott elevated him to national prominence.

Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech is the purest example of the Second Side of Leadership ever spoken. It’s a speech about a leadership vision—a vision in which we live out our creed that “all men are created equal,” a vision in which people will be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. It’s a powerful dream, a transformative vision—but a dream accomplishes nothing until it’s communicated. On that hot August day when Dr. King spoke those words, his vision spread to 250,000 souls on the National Mall and to the millions who were watching on TV.

An uncommunicated vision accomplishes nothing. But a vision expressed by a skilled communicator can change the world. When the First Side of Leadership is joined to the Second Side of Leadership, the river of history changes course.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a complete seven-sided leader. But if I had to pick one side of leadership that marked his life more than any other, it would be communication skills. There is much we can learn about the Second Side of Leadership by studying the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. You can actually hear the rhythms and the inflection of his rich voice echoing in the words on the page. Let’s listen:

In “Paul’s Letter to American Christians,” November 4, 1956, Dr. King imagined a letter the apostle Paul might write to the church in America. He delivered this message at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama. Here’s an excerpt: