The ‘joy’ of motivational speakers

His opening gambit could not have been worse: “Suppose I were to take this grain of rice and hurl it into this audience… what difference would it make?”

I felt the pencil snap in my fingers and heard a deep sigh from my wife next to me – it was her worst-case scenario: my sitting in the front of an audience, only a metre or two away from a motivational speaker.

I turned to my wife and whispered, “I promise you, if he asks us to…”

“…get on your feet, everyone!”, enthused the speaker, “Let’s loosen up a little and get some energy into those bones of yours!”

I felt like an 80-year-old war veteran, riddled with shrapnel, being engulfed by a mindless gym bunny hosting a seniors’ exercise class.

I felt like punching him. Instead, I pushed myself deeper into my seat. Like a spaceship extractor beam, the glare from my wife slowly sucked me out of my seat into some semblance of compliance.

I hovered as gravity took hold, and looked at my wife for permission to sit back down. She did not have to say anything; her face was screaming, “Don’t you dare!”

I can thank my father for my hatred of motivational speakers. It was he who imbued me with the passion for scepticism; and as such, I have been able to protect myself from the warm and fuzzy tentacles of those bent on mind control.

Because that is essentially what motivational speaking is all about: getting into people’s heads and messing with them. And once they get in, they can do serious damage, such as making people believe they can be whatever they want to be.

Motivational speakers are worse than interrogators because at least when a guy comes at you with a hacksaw and a pair of pliers, you have a pretty good idea that his intentions toward you are anything but favourable.

A smiling motivator, on the other hand, pretends to be your friend; and the next thing you know, you are staring at your brains quivering in his cupped hands.

Of course, I am generalising just a little bit.

Some motivational speakers are quite toothless; but they are usually the ones who are comfortably shuffling around on the Rotary speaker circuit.

I call those “grounders” because intellectually, they never really venture anywhere above knee height, and their message is that everything needs to be built on a firm foundation.

Then you get the “rounders”. Their speciality is ‘wholeness’ and they use words such as “spirit” often. They believe things always need to be seen from a holistic perspective and that everything works better when everyone works together. If you stand still in the room, these people will hug you.

The worst for me are the “bounders”. Like Gummi Bears on acid, they bounce around the stage, enthusiasm oozing from every pore as they grab the air and herd everyone off into life’s next great adventure. They never talk, they project; and every second word is in uppercase. They expound a better YOU! Or you, but BETTER!

The man in front of me in this particular session was truly the undisputed King of the Bounders.

He was the chosen one, and it was his particular mission to save humanity in general – and me, it seemed, in particular – from a life of drudgery.

His modus operandi? “Upskilling Through Upselling”.

By leading us up the seven steps to better selling power, he showed us how, if a customer wanted a packet of toothpicks, you could make him walk out the shop with a 24-piece cutlery set, PLUS a microwave oven.

It was all lost on me, of course, as I was merely a guest at the conference.

The problem was that those behind me were buying it. All of it: the false interest he displayed on those sitting in front if him, the saccharine smile, and the stream of illogical ramblings packaged in easy-to-remember acronyms.

They utterly believed him, and when he had finished, on his command everyone (except me) leapt to their feet and exalted him.

It was then that I remembered where I had come across it before: in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four; and in an essay he wrote called “Looking back on the Spanish Civil War”, in which he penned: “If the Leader says of such and such an event, ‘It never happened’ – well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five – well, two and two are five. This prospect frightens me much more than bombs.”

Motivational speakers frighten me because they have such sway over the masses.

So the next time you see a motivational speaker with a grain of rice, think ‘double-think’, run for the door, and do not look over
your shoulder.

Big Brother could be right behind you. ▲

Daryl Ilbury