The room is yours.
You already know how to lead. This course is about the moments when leading means speaking: the keynote, the pitch, the town hall, the camera in your face. Your job in those moments is to make people see something, believe it, and want to act.
How every drill works
Most drills start with a card. You never know exactly what is coming. Neither does a real audience.
Standing, out loud, against the clock. The coach runs the tools and plays the audience.
The coach ticks the checks and gives one note, never three.
Repeat immediately, changing exactly one thing. The second run is where the learning happens.
Your business and your opportunity
Every card in this course asks about this. Two minutes, plain words.
Where are you today?
1 = I avoid it · 5 = I could teach it. Revisit at the end.
Never let the room get lost
A reader can see the headings, flick back a page, check how much is left. A listener can’t. Signposts are the headings, paragraph breaks and page numbers of speech.
Why signpost?
An audience that knows the route relaxes and listens instead of wondering where you are going.
Clear signposts sound like someone who has thought this through. That is authority.
You decide which line goes in the newspaper, the Slack message, the dinner conversation.
Lost your place? A summary signpost buys three seconds and looks deliberate.
The signpost toolkit
| Function | Use it to | C2 language |
|---|---|---|
| Roadmap | Open: show the route. | I want to do three things in the next ten minutes… · By the time I sit down, you’ll know… |
| Transition | Mark a turn. | That brings me to… · So much for where we’ve been. Where are we going? |
| Rhetorical question | Turn without sounding mechanical. | So where does that leave us? · Why does this matter to you? |
| Enumerate | Help people count and remember. | The first… The second… And the last, and the one that matters most… |
| Highlight | Say what must stick. | If you remember one thing from today, make it this. · Here’s the heart of it. |
| Contrast turn | Create tension. | That’s the theory. Here’s what actually happened. |
| Detour and return | Step aside safely. | Let me take a short detour… Back to the main road. |
| Summarise | Consolidate before moving on. | In short… · So, three things: … |
| Loop back | Close the circle emotionally. | I started with a lighthouse. Let me finish there. |
| Call | Turn listening into action. | So here’s what I’m asking you to do… |
C2 note: Firstly, secondly, thirdly is correct but sounds like a school essay. Mix in rhetorical questions and contrast turns so the structure is felt, not announced.
Make them see it
People forget arguments and remember pictures. A good metaphor does in one sentence what a slide does in ten bullets, and teams repeat it for years.
Why use imagery?
“Culture” is invisible. “Culture is the operating system everything else runs on” is not.
The brain stores images better than claims. The picture carries the idea home.
A harbour feels safe; a storm feels urgent. You choose the emotion with the image.
A strong image becomes how the whole company talks about the idea, long after the speech.
The family of comparisons
| Type | What it is | Example | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Metaphor | X is Y. | Trust is the currency of this business. | A punchy single line. |
| Simile | X is like Y. | Changing our systems is like rebuilding a plane mid-flight. | Softer, explanatory. |
| Analogy | An extended comparison that explains how something works. | A merger is a transplant: the surgery is the easy part. The question is whether the body accepts the organ. | Explaining a complex process. |
| Allegory / parable | A short story with a moral. | The North Wind and the Sun: force made the traveller hold his coat tighter; warmth made him take it off. | Values, culture, change. |
| Image | A vivid scene. | Picture a farmer at dawn, loading the first crate of the season. | Openings, the future. |
How to build one in five steps
Say the idea in one plain sentence first. “We have to change while still running the business.”
Pick a world your audience already knows: sailing, cooking, football, music, mountains, gardens.
Match two or three features. No more. “Rebuild the engine while the plane is still flying.”
Bridge back to reality: In other words… · And that is exactly where we are.
Bring it back later as a callback, ideally at the close.
Telling an allegory well
- Keep it under 90 seconds. The story is the vehicle, not the destination.
- Tell it in the present tense. “A traveller is walking along a road…” pulls people in.
- Pause after the story. Let them reach the moral a beat before you say it.
- One moral only, then bridge: I think about that story every time we… · Which brings me to us.
Traps
- Mixed metaphors: We’ll steer the ship and score the winning goal. Pick one world.
- Clichés: move the needle · low-hanging fruit · boil the ocean. Clichés are metaphors that have died.
- Culture-bound worlds: baseball or cricket images can lose half an international room. Football, cooking, weather and journeys travel.
- The wrong emotion: war metaphors in a merger tell one side they lost.
Information changes minds. Inspiration changes behaviour.
Most of a CEO’s big speeches have one real job: to make people want to do something they weren’t going to do before you stood up. That is a skill, and it can be drilled.
The inspiration toolkit
| Technique | Why it works | How it sounds |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose before plan | People commit to a reason before they commit to a plan. | Before I tell you what we’re doing, let me tell you why it matters. |
| What is / what could be | The gap between the two creates desire. | Today, customers wait. Imagine a day when they never have to. |
| Future-pacing | Lets people rehearse success in their heads. | Imagine it’s five years from now. You walk into… |
| We, not I | Shared ownership; “I” makes it your project, “we” makes it theirs. | We built this. We’ll build what comes next. |
| Honest admission | One moment of vulnerability buys a great deal of trust. | I’ll be honest: I got this wrong before. |
| Anaphora | Repeating an opening builds rhythm and momentum. | We will earn it in every warehouse. We will earn it in every truck… |
| Rule of three | Three feels complete; two feels unfinished. | Braver, faster, kinder. |
| One clear call | Inspiration without an action fades by lunchtime. | When you go back to your teams today, I’m asking for one thing… |
| The quiet line | Dropping your volume on the key line makes people lean in. | (softly) And that is why I’m still here. |
The lighthouse
A two-minute address to all staff on a new strategy. Read it aloud to your coach. Then switch on the devices and read it again, landing each one.
Good morning. I want to talk about three things: where we’ve been, where we’re going, and what I need from each of you.
For forty years, this company has been a lighthouse. Customers didn’t have to think about us. They just knew we’d be there when the night came in.
But lighthouses don’t move. And the coastline has.
So where are we going? Imagine it’s five years from now. A farmer loads a crate of fruit at dawn, and by the time it reaches a family’s table on the other side of an ocean, nobody has had to worry about it for a single minute. That isn’t logistics. That’s trust, delivered.
We will earn that trust in every warehouse. We will earn it in every truck. We will earn it in every conversation you have with a customer.
I’ll be honest with you: I don’t have every answer. I’ve got things wrong before, and I’ll get some of this wrong too.
But here is the one thing I’m certain of. This doesn’t get built by a strategy document. It gets built by us. So when you go back to your teams today, I’m asking you for one thing: find the one place where we make a customer wait, and fix it.
Lighthouses don’t move. We do. Let’s go.
Make them want it before they decide
Experienced decision-makers decide early and spend the rest of the meeting testing that decision. Win the first thirty seconds, get to the ask fast, and leave them with a picture.
Architecture of a pitch
| Move | Job | Clock |
|---|---|---|
| Hook | A question, image, story or claim that earns the next minute. | 0:00–0:15 |
| Tension | The gap between what the world needs and what exists. | 0:15–0:30 |
| Insight | What you understood that others didn’t. Often a metaphor. | 0:30–0:45 |
| Proof | One piece of evidence only you can claim. | 0:45–1:05 |
| Vision | The future-paced picture of success. | 1:05–1:20 |
| Ask | Exactly what you want from them. No softeners. | 1:20–1:30 |
| Close | Why them. Loop back to the hook. | 1:30–1:40 |
Eight hooks
When did you last trust a company without thinking about it?
In ten years, nobody will own a warehouse.
Last winter, a driver called me at 3 a.m. from a frozen road.
Imagine opening your fridge and knowing exactly where every item came from.
The first time I pitched this idea, I was laughed out of the room.
(holding up a peach) This travelled further than most of you did this year.
Our grandparents bought food from a neighbour. Our children will buy it from an algorithm.
(five seconds of silence) … That is how long a customer waits before giving up on you.
Draft your 90-second pitch
Pitch the opportunity you wrote on the Brief page to the people you need to convince. Use a hook, one metaphor, a vision and a clear ask.
When did you last trust a company without thinking about it? That’s the business we’re in. Every day, millions of crates of food cross oceans, and every one of them is a promise: that what left the farm fresh will arrive fresh. Right now, in southern Europe, that promise is being broken, not because people don’t care, but because the infrastructure simply isn’t there. Our insight was that customers don’t buy cold storage. They buy certainty. And that’s what we’ve built: in three years, from nothing, to a business our customers almost never leave. Imagine a network where a grower in Andalusia never has to wonder whether their harvest will make it. We want to build that network, and we want to build it with you. We’re asking you to become our long-term partner in this expansion, and to commit by the end of the quarter. You invest for decades. So do we. That’s why we came to you first.
The camera is not the audience
A journalist’s job is to get a story. Yours is to get your message through them to the people watching. That is a different game, with different rules.
Six rules for any interview
Decide them before you arrive. Every answer is a route back to one of them.
Respond briefly, bridge, then deliver a message. What matters more is… · The real question is…
8–12 seconds, quotable alone, with an image if possible. Assume only one line survives the edit.
“Is this a cover-up?” is never answered with “This is not a cover-up.” That becomes the headline.
The key thing here is… · If your viewers remember one thing…
The interview isn’t over until you’ve left the building. Microphones stay on.
Build your three messages
Use your opportunity: you are announcing the investment and what it will build. Fill the house before the media drills.
Voice, pause, stillness
The same words can sound like a memo or a call to arms. The difference is pace, pause, stress and stillness.
Vary it. Speed up for story, slow right down for the line that matters.
Before the key line and after it. Silence is where meaning lands.
Stress the contrast and the new idea, never the little words.
One deliberate gesture, on the line that matters.
Where does the weight go?
Speaker taps words to stress them and the gaps to insert a pause ( / ). Compare with the coach’s marking, then perform each line twice: once as marked, once exaggerated. The coach says which sounded more like a leader.
Find your speaking speed
Read from the teleprompter at three speeds. The coach watches your face, not the screen, and chooses the run that sounded most in control. Then deliver it once more without the screen.
Now perform it
Draw a brief. Prepare against the clock. Deliver standing up. The coach plays the audience in the brief, scores you, and you log the attempt.
Prep notes
Rubric
1 = not yet · 3 = boardroom-ready · 5 = people would follow you out of the room.
| Date | Brief | Score | Note |
|---|
Your toolkit
| Moment | Move | Signature line |
|---|---|---|
| Opening | Hook, then roadmap | I want to do three things before I sit down… |
| Changing direction | Rhetorical-question transition | So where does that leave us? |
| An abstract idea | Essence → world → map → land | In other words, we’re rebuilding the engine mid-flight. |
| Values or culture | A 60-second allegory, then bridge | I think about that story every time we… |
| Rallying people | Future-pace, we-language, one call | Imagine it’s five years from now… So I’m asking you for one thing. |
| Pitching | Hook · tension · insight · proof · vision · ask · close | You invest for decades. So do we. |
| On camera | Answer, bridge, communicate | What really matters here is… |
| Closing | Loop back to the opening image | Lighthouses don’t move. We do. |
Has anything moved?
Re-run Drill 1 on the same question. Adjust the sliders on the Brief page, then note what changed.
Before the next session
Bring everything for the coach to run live.