How Motivational Speech Succeeds – with a Touch of Perspective

What exactly is motivational speech? Ok, we admit you know what it actually is – motivate someone or a bunch of people with some pep talk. 

But we guess what you really want to know is does this really work? 

Motivational speech sounds good when you hear it. It entertains you, it makes you feel you can break the odds and swim against the current. But a few days after the talk is over, wouldn’t the psychological effects of it wear off? Wouldn’t all those anecdotes and thought-provoking quotes and statements just sound like a great story you heard? 

Well, if history is anything to go by, pep talk does work. It did play a big part in ending World War II. And it gave the United States the power it needed to bounce back from Pearl Harbor. 

Don’t get a clue what I’m talking about? 

It was one of Sir Winston Churchill’s famous speeches that gave Britain’s Royal Air Force the determination and the strategic nous it needed to fend off the Nazi fighter planes and destroy them over the English Channel in the crucial Battle of Britain:

“The Battle of Britain is about to begin. On this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization…Hitler knows he will have to break us in this island or lose the war.

If we can stand up to him all Europe may be freed and the life of the world may move forward into broad sunlit uplands; but if we fail, the whole world, including the United States and all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister and perhaps more prolonged by the lights of a perverted science.

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty and so bear ourselves that if the British Commonwealth and Empire last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.”

Excerpts from Winston Churchill’s “Finest Hour” speech to the House of Commons, 18 June 1940

President Roosevelt’s motivational addressing of the nation following the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor brought the United States into World War II. It wasn't what the country intended, but its joining with the Allied powers helped them win the war and topple the dark powers:

“We are now in this war. We are in it–all the way. It will not only be a long war, it will be a hard war….We don’t like it–we didn’t want to get in it–but we are in it and we’re going to fight it with everything we’ve got.”

Excerpts from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Pearl Harbor Speech”, also known as “Infamy Speech” to the US Congress, 8 December, 1941

If you look at these speeches, they motivated by adding some perspective to the situation the audience was facing – the troublesome set of circumstances they’re in, the empathy by the speaker towards what they are facing, the dangers that could arise if the audience didn’t act despite being wearied by enemy attacks, and the glory that awaits them if they perform the decisive but dangerous and troublesome action of taking on the enemy.

So that’s where motivational speech succeeds – not just through anecdotes and quotes, but with a healthy dose of perspective. The motivation that perspective provides fails to disappear from the mind, no matter how adverse the situation is. And that’s how motivational speech powers people to perform seemingly impossible feats.  

Peter Theodorou has studied the effects of perspective and also other aspects that make motivational public speaking bring about the desired effects intended by the organizers on their audience. That’s why he is a sought after public speaker.