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Inspiring people and keeping them motivated is one of the most important attributes of a leader. It’s not always easy to motivate your employees. But as a leader, it’s your job to do so—and you should never give up on that mission. Here are some tips for giving the best motivational speech as a CEO to employees for inspiring people.
3 Tips to write the best Motivational Speech from CEO to Employees
If you’re here, you’re probably looking for motivation or preparing to inspire your team on a big day. Let’s look at some of the influential and persuasive tools used by these CEOs.
1. Inspire your team members by acknowledging and celebrating wins, big and small.
- It helps to establish a culture where everyone who works for your company feels like they are part of something bigger than themselves.
- If a project succeeds, it’s important to recognize that success and give credit where credit is due. Celebrate small wins along with big ones.
- Be sure to recognize any employee who goes above and beyond their job description or makes an effort to help others out of the kindness of their heart.
2. Building a culture of recognition is an effective means of motivating employees to regularly exceed their goals.
- Recognition is a powerful motivator. It’s not just about patting someone on the back, but rather it involves letting people know that their efforts are valued.
- In order for recognition to be effective, it should be done in a public way, in a timely fashion, and be meaningful. Use your speech to recognize the efforts of your employees.
3. Inject wit, humor, and empathy into your words to build trust, create bonds, repair relationships, and create joy in the workplace.
- As you know, humor is a great way to connect with people. It builds trust, creates bonds, repairs relationships, and creates joy in the workplace.
- It can also motivate your employees and make them feel good about themselves. And if you want to make someone feel special or important—or even just lighten the mood at a tense moment—a joke is often just what’s needed!
- Telling personal stories also works wonders.
Best CEO speeches to employees
Great CEOs rely on various communication tools to inspire their teams and influence others to take action. Here are some of the CEOs who have successfully found the courage to show their true selves through inspirational speeches added to their presentations.
1. Howard Schultz:
If you go and ask any presentation expert about who, according to them, is one of the best storytelling executives in the business currently, they’ll probably say former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz.
- Schultz often returned to his story about how he rose from rags to riches, from being a child of often unemployed parents in Brooklyn public housing to becoming the CEO of the world’s most successful coffeehouse chain. He’d use the story as a starting point to describe the history and mission of Starbucks and to explain many decisions he made regarding the company.
- He mentioned in his speeches how he took inspiration from his father, who was injured and unable to work, which gave him the urge to launch a company that took care of its workers and provided them with benefits, like insurance and adequate time-off.
- By framing his business goals in a personal story about his values, Schultz made his corporate mission understandable and described his strategic decisions in a way that made sense to anyone.
- Check his complete speech here.
I love Starbucks. Many of you do, too. We all have a stake in our future. It is something we all share. And this serves as an invitation to come build it.
Howard Schultz:
2. Sheryl Sandberg:
Not everyone is comfortable sharing their stories from their struggling period, just like Sheryl Sandberg once felt reluctant to share her tale of tragedy in her public speeches.
- Today, the Facebook COO masterfully reveals deeply personal stories in her talks, and these make her messages powerful and brings hope.
- One of Sandberg’s most effective uses of personal storytelling happened during her 2016 UC Berkeley commencement speech after tragically and suddenly losing her husband Dave Goldberg in 2015. Sandberg chose not to mourn but to harness that painful tragedy to deliver a talk that was profoundly affecting and inspiring. She described her experience of losing her husband, then explained how she was able to rise from her unbearable grief into a stronger, more resilient person.
When life sucks you under, you can kick against the bottom, break the surface, and breathe again…you can choose joy and meaning.”
Sheryl Sandberg:
Sandberg’s exhortation was powerful and uplifting despite its origin in a tragedy. She figured out how to unlock the power of a personal setback story for a presentation message that fosters endurance and drives the forward movement.
3. Rowan Trollope:
Five9 CEO Rowan Trollope never fails to use firsthand anecdotes in his speeches. These stories make him feel relatable rather than like an untouchable executive who seems significantly snobbish and highly professional, not having a moment to listen to his employees’ needs and impulses.
- As a leading SVP at Cisco, he delivered the 2016 Cisco Keynote at Enterprise Connect. He opened the speech with the story of his first experience with weightlessness at the “Zero-G Experience” when his instructor warned him he would laugh when he was finally weightless (all people do), he resolved to remain stoic. However, once he got up into the air and floated, he burst out laughing uncontrollably—reminding him that he was human, just like everyone who’d been weightless before him (even professional astronauts).
- Trollope’s story not only showed his humanity but also endeared him to the audience, giving him an understandable jumping-off point to explain to listeners what he wanted to do with Cisco products. He wanted to create products and devices that delighted users, whether they were professionals in the industry or just picking up the technology for the first time.
Like his weightlessness story, most of Trollope’s tales are entertaining and full of humility. They work to demonstrate his “humanness”—taking him down off any “executive pedestal” and making him approachable and accessible. This results in a message that feels relevant and understandable to everyone listening. Read Trollope’s complete speech and be inspired.
“Organizations are spending $275B a year as an industry to deliver an experience that a lot of times, most people don’t like. That feels like an opportunity to me.”
Rowan Trollope
Conclusion
Motivation is something that everyone needs, and it’s up to you as a leader to inspire your employees. If you want people to surround themselves with positive energy every day, then you have to do the same for them. It’s easy for leaders to get caught up in their own personal issues and forget about the people who rely on them for support. Remember: it’s all about building relationships with others because without them, what would we have?
