Looking at a good digital conversation and Digital Leadership and A world lost for words as the great orators go out of style

I have lifted these ideas from a person I have great respect for.  His books and his writing skills are outstanding.  I rewrote this article from 2009 from the digital communication perspective to help our customers with their digital communications.  So you could say this is written by Peter Klein as lifted from Jeremy Kourdi with his permission.

WHAT makes for good digital communication and why are there so few great Digital Leaders/bloggers/twitters or digital communicators  today?

If you doubt the power of digital communication in the 21st century, consider this: one reason Barack Obama is president; he appeals to our emotions and aspirations with his personality, powerfully conveyed during the election through digital presence.

And one reason why British MPs are so unpopular is because they do not or if they do they suck at it.

It has become normal for words and expressions to become ubiquitous and devalued. People believe that communication is easy, when the opposite is true. If anything, communication is at a premium for two reasons.

First, the way words are used and the results they achieve remain vital for progress and success. This applies anywhere, in any language and any medium. 

Second, words are amplified through modern technology, spreading further, faster. They are more immediate and influential than ever. Despite this, the skills of the great digital leaders risk being never discovered even before they are forgotten.

Great Digital Leaders have several characteristics. Understanding these can help explain why there are (or appear to be) fewer around and even fewer on the horizons.

First, the best Digital Leaders are not afraid to be open and personal or to show their passion and values. This builds trust and a connection, and it means followers get to know the speaker.

For example, Barack Obama often refers to his wife and children and in the old days Martin Luther King's "I have a dream"  he frequently mentioned his children.  

Similarly, Sebastian Coe http://twitter.com/#!/sebcoe  opened his presentation for London's bid to host the 2012 Olympics with a very personal, engaging story and followed it with blogs, posts and a regular stream of Twittering and almost 6000 followers 

He spoke about how he watched a black and white television in his school to see two Yorkshire athletes, John and Sheila Sherwood, competing at the 1968 Olympics. He described it movingly: "That day a window to a new world opened for me. By the time I was back in my classroom, I knew what I wanted to do and what I wanted to be."  That same widow opens when he communicates the same message in a 140 words

Great Digital Leaders also show empathy, understand their audience and appeal to their values. This is valuable for any Digital Leader: who is your audience? What are your mutual interests?  Today you can see the smiles of the audience through the gift of cloud tags as you understand their values, ideas and interests.  This is the new digital body language, learning what the audience wants.

For example, Winston Churchill understood that people wanted a confident, defiant, resolute leader – a sense of clarity and purpose.

Virtues of honesty, fairness and courage are also hallmarks of a great speech and Digital Communication Leaders.

Typically, we want them for ourselves and we value them in others. Great women, from Emmeline Pankhurst http://twitter.com/#!/MrsEPankhurst to Aung San Suu Kyi http://twitter.com/#!/Plaid_SuuKyi, do this particularly well both in person (or their spirit) and on the multiple digital distribution channels on the web.

Also, let your words suit the moment. Often, with politicians and business leaders this means being clear, determined and unequivocal: "Yes we can... A change has come."  

Great Digital Leaders think about their message and how to engage their audience, and they use the tricks of good (alliteration, imagery and examples, the rule of three, a clear message and even something for your audience to think about or do).

Perhaps the reason that there are so few great Digital Leaders around today is that mastering the complexity of modern communications has come to dominate at the expense of traditional values and virtues.

For example, Tony Blair, David Cameron and Bill Clinton are great communicators but they are all criticised for values that are seen as skin-deep.

Gordon Brown, in contrast, is recognised for his "moral compass" but widely seen as a weak communicator with limited influence. 

Digital Leaders need to master the message and the media, and this double challenge proves difficult for many. Also, people seem to be more reticent than in the past about giving of themselves when going public, perhaps for fear of criticism or ridicule from a much wider range of sources (tweets, blogs, websites and 24-hour news alongside the conventional media).

Finally, it may just be the case that the reason we have less great Digital Leaders now is because we have fewer people who genuinely hold universal values that connect with people or that can get them across to using the new communication tools

For example, after the expenses scandals and economic problems, can we honestly say that politicians and executives really understand their leadership role?

Do they understand their influence and the expectations of their constituents? 

I suspect the answer is no – or not completely. 

Oratory is not detached from society, it reflects it.   Digital Leadership is Oratory on steroids and practiced by the untrained

In the United States, there has always been a "can-do" spirit of optimism, where the banal phrase "Yes we can" resonates. In the UK, with a more complex mix of emotions, this would clearly be less effective. But what works well everywhere is a clear realisation of what people value – understand that, and you begin to become a Digital Leader.

Rewritten from the work of Jeremy Kourdi who is co-author of The 100: Insights and Lessons from 100 of the Greatest Speakers and Speeches of All Time and his article Jeremy Kourdi: A world lost for words as the great orators are out of style

Published Date: 27 November 2009 

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