During the winter of 1999, I received a scholarship to a Dale Carnegie Course, an expensive professional training class aimed at developing interpersonal relations, communication skills, and positive mental attitudes. This particular course required me to give two speeches each week. Today, I only remember one speech that I gave during this eight-week course, one in which I rebelled against my instructor and earned an award from my fellow students. On that blustery Upper Michigan night in the basement of Superior National Bank in Hancock, we had to give a dynamic talk that would excite and motivate our audience. Each student, professionals of one kind or another, took turns at the center of a circle of 25 or so fellow participants, and if the teacher didnt think the speaker was dynamic enough, he would interrupt us by yelling: We dont believe you! That night the instructor did not think any of us were dynamic enough. As I watched him interrupt speech after speech, I became increasingly angry. There was no mentioned of the importance of the truth or wisdom of what the speakers were saying. He seemed only concerned with delivery, image, or style. One sweet lady was interrupted three times as she tried to talk about her dead grandmother: “We don’t believe you, Sue! You’re not dynamic enough!” To this instructor, the only valid criteria to judge persuasiveness was not truth, facts, or sound reasoning; rather, the only thing that seemed to matter was delivery and emotion. So as I watched my teacher interrupt speech after speech because my fellow students were not dynamic enough, I decided to change the topic of my own talk. At that point in my life, for personal, painful, and varied reasons, I was very tired and downright suspicious of dynamic speakers, and I deeply resented contrived emotion or manipulation. I sat there and stewed, becoming more and more irritated. I did not volunteer, so I was the last person to walk slowly to the middle of the circle to speak, and I barely got out one sentence: Rob, we dont believe you! Be dynamic! Okay, I thought. He wants dynamic, Ill give him dynamic. The only way I’m gonna pull this off is to, well, go berserk, and since I am already more than a little ticked by Mr. Dynamic, I’ll give him some dynamic. Without a word, I walked slowly over to my metal folding chair, lifted it above my head, and then with a shrill and savage scream, I threw it down full-force upon the carpeted basement floor. Immediately 25 of my fellow students pushed their chairs back two or three feet, enlarging the circle around me. I began to scream with abandon, this time with real emotion in my voice: Do you…. Do you wanna hear about the most dynamic speaker of the 20th Century?! We had been instructed to answer in the affirmative, so the nervous and tentative replies came: Y-Yes! This speaker was a man who took a despairing, economically-depressed country and gave it hope, prosperity, and pride again!!! At that point, a bank vice president tried to be helpful by picking up my chair that I had thrown down, but I was all over him: I pointed my finger in his face and warned him: LEAVE - THAT - ALONE! He slowly nodded and quickly backed away from the chair. I continued: Do you wanna hear about a man who changed the course of human history, in part, through his dynamic public speaking?! Yes! they responded in unison, like compliant, nervous school children. Well, Ill tell you about him! His name was Adolph Hitler. And let me tell you something else: Just because a speaker is exciting or dynamic does not mean that his message is noble, true, or good.” Silence. “So I ask you to do this tonight: Please doubt yourself. When you are excited, moved, or inspired by someone or something that might be called dynamic, please doubt your feelings. They can be wrong. You can be deceived.” At that point, I looked over at Mr. Dynamic, our Dale Carnegie instructor, and he was just looking at me with a puzzled expression. So I looked back at the faces of my classmates, thank them, picked up my chair off the carpeted floor, sat down again, and looked down at the floor. Looking back at that strange night, I dont think of the Crashing Through Award that my classmates gave me: Lincoln the Unknown, a biography written by Dale Carnegie that they all signed. It is still sitting on my classroom bookshelf unread. Rather, as I recall that strange night, I realize that I am even more convinced that human beings are easy to fool with the innumerable dynamic and slick things that surround us. Please doubt yourself.
Posted on: Mon, 17 Nov 2014 00:50:25 +0000
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