The football season has just got underway but I want to take you back to the World Cup final in July.
Why on earth was Tom Cruise, an American Hollywood star, giving a speech at the closing ceremony in New York?
That was the question on my mind and on many other football fans – apart from the obvious if you are English which is when is it (the Cup) coming home!
He has no connection with the sport. Why was he delivering a very American-style inspirational message to a predominantly international football audience?
And that was the problem – the ethos or credibility was not there.
In fact, he was telling the audience, something they already know better than him – that football crosses borders and cultures, unites people and as he says at the end – “This is greatness”.
The speech is generic – it sounds like he is delivering a text that had been approved by FIFA.
By failing to speak about something he knows about or even trying to make it his own, we lost interest.
It was a performance and not authentic.
Audiences value authenticity – they don’t want you to spout empty words that could apply to any context. They want to get a sense of who you are, what you think and what the subject means to you.
It is not only about the words but also the delivery. Cruise lacked gravitas and ran out of steam at the end.
The matrix of authentic presenting
In the top left-hand corner of the matrix are the performers – the politicians, the actors who have the skill and techniques but are too polished, too scripted. Think of Tony Blair the former British Prime Minister!
Skill only takes you so far. You need to let people experience who you are. In my workshops and coaching sessions, I help people move from high to low skill levels to the top right-hand corner through support on drafting impactful speeches and delivering them with impact.
FIFA handed Cruise a mission impossible – to deliver a speech that failed the authenticity test. It was a poorly crafted speech to a highly informed audience that fell flat.
While he only spoke for 2-minutes, you could sense that he was, for many in the audience, holding up the start of the match – the real reason they were there.
Ironically as he said in the speech – football is a language spoken without words!