Repetition: In addition to the many examples highlighted previously, Jobs concludes his speech by repeating “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.” three times. Repetition adds strength to key arguments, especially in a conclusion.

What could Jobs have done better?

Lack of eye contact:

The first thing I noticed while watching it was his delivery. Namely, that he didn’t actually deliver the address. He read it straight off of sheets of paper. This totally killed his eye contact with the audience. Sure, the audience got to study the top of his head and his particular nuances of male pattern baldness, but as for eye contact, there was nothing there.

In my book From Zero To Hero I mentioned how Steve Jobs used to prepare weeks ahead of his presentations. And we got to see his impressive dynamic presentations during Apple launch events. However, I strongly believe jobs could have made a greater impact by not just reading his speech.

A little more of eye contact and focus on delivery could have done wonders!

Did Jobs fully connect with the audience?

Written for paper:

The writing itself. We already looked at excellent turns of phrase and literary devices, but there was a degree to which I felt the speech was written for paper, not for voice. One of the things I learned somewhere around project number 4 or 5 in the CC manual (Toastmasters International) was that things which read as wonderfully eloquent on paper often sound horrible when spoken out loud. Spoken English just follows different rules and conventions than written English.

It was clear to me that Jobs wrote his address for paper but didn’t rehearse it out loud to find the places where the written English just didn’t work. Or did he do it on purpose? To sound like a Professor?

Was the use of great language too much for Jobs to make it sound conversational?

Cheap shot on Microsoft:

With all due respect to Jobs, I felt it was a mistake in his section on the calligraphy class, to take a tired, cliché pot-shot at Microsoft. The “…and since Windows just copied the Mac…” line. I didn’t feel that it helped his message at all to bring up something that, quite frankly, is almost a dogmatic difference of opinion between Mac lovers and Windows lovers. Sure, a lot of college kids love and use Macs, but also a lot of college kids can’t afford a Mac, and thus use lower cost Windows computers. The line isn’t exactly a zinger against Microsoft anymore, and while it may score a few lackluster points with the Mac users in the audience, it does so at the cost of rankling the majority of Windows users in the audience.

That line certainly didn’t help his message; he would have done better to avoid, in political parlance, “going negative.” Let his own accomplishments stand on their own, and resist the temptation to try building yourself up by tearing someone else down.

Conclusion

Jobs does leave a lot of question marks as to his delivery of the speech and as to whether it was rehearsed well enough to test for the voice. However, this speech should be an example to anyone learning public speaking. It is the best example of the use of a simple sentence and simple speech structure. The use of theme ’circle of life’ is the biggest highlight for me. At the end of the day Jobs leaves us encouraged, uplifted and inspired.

What do you think about this speech by Steve Jobs?

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