Here’s a sample 3-minute speech from a speech instructor that you can use in your CEO seminar. Boost your leadership and persuasiveness with a clear message.

 

Topic – Learn the humanities

Hello, everyone.
I’d like to share a funny anecdote with you.
It happened back in 1995, when the American journalist Earl Shorris interviewed a female prisoner in her early 20s in a New York prison.
She was serving her eighth year for murder, and when asked why she thought people were poor, she replied that they didn’t have the mental life that people in the city center had.
When asked what a mental life is, she replies, “You know, theater, recitals, museums, lectures, just the humanities.
That’s an epiphany for Earl Shorris, who immediately starts teaching humanities classes to homeless people and alcoholics in New York City.
That’s how the course, which has earned the nickname Humanities for the Poor, began.
Of the first 17 graduates of the course, two become doctors and one a nurse.
They have reclaimed their lives.
Now it’s South Korea.
The house in Gangnam, Seoul, is getting more expensive by the day, and the eldest daughter is bright enough to win a medal in a national English competition.
As the head of the family, it’s no wonder he’s smiling from ear to ear.
But at the third hop house, where he’s gotten better, he says with moist eyes, “But what’s the point of living?
But, what’s the point of living?
I don’t know why I live.
Is it for money, is it for my daughter.
Why do I live?
Philosophy is a discipline that begins with an awareness of the boundary between life and death.
Beyond death, the sum total of the desire to make life richer is the humanities.
I recommend the humanities to you.
Therein lies the answer.
If you ask me why the humanities, I answer.
It was a thirst, a thirst for knowledge that left me with an unfulfilled need to spend my weekends in the new releases and humanities sections of the bookstore, a desire to move beyond the same old routine, a desire to change the conversation from the corporate world and politics to drinks, golf, and real estate.
I would like to see a desire for the humanities among executives as well.
Talking about business to executives is just homophony.
Talking about literature and history, interpreting it and expanding it into your own.
Studying the humanities is a great way to connect with society and enrich your life and our lives.
After all, we can’t live by bread alone.
Thank you for listening.

 

 

Topic – Creator, Jisuk Lee

There’s a book called ‘Advertising Genius Lee Ji-seok’. His name is very famous, and if you search his website, you’ll see a lot of his advertising works. When you look at them, you’ll think that he was born and raised in Korean society. Usually, Korean education is thought of as a stifling education, an education without creativity, but I feel that Ieseok’s existence in this environment is amazing. If there are parents who have a thirst for their child to become a creativity captain, I even think that they can gain strength from watching him. That’s how I feel about him. He’s like a mutation or a variant born in Korean society.
Still only thirty years old, the young advertising designer made a name for himself at a relatively young age, working for some of the country’s leading advertising companies and winning many gold medals and awards at world-renowned advertising competitions. Now he’s back home, running a research center and working on public service announcements. My first thought is that he must have come from a very wealthy family and studied abroad early, or that he has a Ph.D. in advertising, so he must be a member of the social elite.
But it turns out that he had quite a bit of trouble in Korea. He said he applied to dozens of schools after graduation because he went to a local university, but none of them asked him to come. Even though he graduated at the top of his class in visual design, he couldn’t get a job because of his so-called weak specs, so he finally got his foot in the door as a signwriter in his neighborhood. Then he decided to move to the U.S. almost penniless, studied abroad, and worked his butt off to get to where he is today.
I once saw this on a humor site. The idea is that if Napoleon had been born in Korea, he would have been dismissed as a peasant, which is probably true because Korea is a country that values appearances. If Edison had been born in Korea, he would have been a radio shop owner, Beethoven would have been a deaf musician in the 254th episode of the Human Theater, Schweitzer would have been the director of a private hospital, and Neil Armstrong would have been an invalid. But when I saw Mr. Lee, I didn’t find the humor funny. It was a little bitter, and I wondered if this was the reality of Korean society.
I’m sure there are a lot of ‘Lee Ji-seoks’ in Korea right now. Our society is so education-oriented and specification-oriented that I wonder if we’re letting these treasures go undiscovered. I wonder if we’re making jokes about how if Einstein had been born in Korea, he would have had to deliver sleepovers.
I wonder if we’re passing up valuable talent because we’re so focused on education, looks, and overall signage. It’s not just a joke that women entering the workforce in their 20s are going to the plastic surgeon first before sending out their resumes. It’s not just a joke that they’re groaning at the amount of student loans they’re taking on, but deciding to go to graduate school.
We need to think about what it is that truly identifies that person, and hopefully it’s not their education, hopefully it’s not their looks, hopefully we can look at the world with a little bit more of a broader mindset.

 

 

Topic – Second place strategy

Who was the first person to walk on the moon?
Neil Armstrong.
But who was the second man on the moon?
The world’s first metallic printing press, the Jikji Cymbal.
What was the second?
The tallest mountain in the world is Everest in the Himalayas.
What is the second highest mountain?
As expected, the second is always harder.
As much as we hate to admit it, the management mantra that “only the first survives” keeps proving true.
At least in the human consciousness.
Everyone remembers the first something, but no one remembers the second.
The same is true for consumers.
Naturally, the first and biggest player in any space will dominate the consumer consciousness.
Being first is important.
At a young people’s drinking party, stories of their first love are enough to get a laugh.
But second loves aren’t even mentioned.
That’s why Jack Trout, the godfather of marketing, once said in his book.
“Marriage is not so much about marrying the best person as it is about marrying the first relatively good person.
If you want to succeed, you must understand the importance of being the first to get into the other person’s mind.”
The same goes for business relationships.
You’re always dealing with the first relatively good person you come across.
So to be successful in business, it’s important to get into the mind of your target customer before anyone else, and then do everything you can to make sure they don’t change their mind.
This begs the question: How do you stay in second place?
Well, there is a way.
Some companies have already shown us how.
It’s called the anti-horse strategy.
The number one player in the US car rental market has always been Hertz.
Many other car rental companies, including Avis, were all similarly sized, performing far worse than Hertz and always in the red.
But then Avis came along and said, “We work harder. We work harder.” and came up with a very creative marketing slogan that turned things around. The tagline read, “We’re always number two, so why do consumers use us? Because we work harder.”
At a time when no one else could even come close to catching up to number one, Avis boldly admitted to being number two and associated themselves with number one.
On the surface, this may seem like a humble strategy of accepting second place, but it was ambitious.
It was an ambitious strategy because it was aligning itself with a number one company that no one else was even close to.
In the end, Avis turned around and started to grow after this campaign.
Hertz, on the other hand, had to fight back with a marketing slogan that went something like this. “There’s Hertz, and then there’s not.”
This is a common growth strategy for second-place companies.
Finally, there’s something that every successful second-place company that adopts a strategy that works for them-whether it’s jockeying or systematizing-must remember.
It’s to never lose sight of what made them successful in the first place.
As Avis says, “We want to be number one. The fact that our business has stagnated again since we started using that marketing slogan.
It gives us a lot to think about.
Thank you for listening, everyone.

 

 

Topic – Inamori Spirit

If we look at life as 80 years, the first 20 years of life are preparation for going out into society.
The main stages are school and home.
It’s a stage where you sharpen your basic character and prepare to go out into society.
The next 40 years are spent working and honing yourself for society, and the last 20 years are spent preparing for death, which happens at age 65.
Sometimes I think, I wish my parents had a lot of money to leave me.
I think about it on the bumpy bus ride home from work, when I’m being harassed by my boss.
But I have to face reality, so I pull myself back together and get ready for work the next day.
I guess the formula that what belongs to the parents is what belongs to the children is deeply embedded in my head.
In Japan, there was a case like this.
There’s a guy named Inamori.
“There is no adversity in the world that can defeat me.” At the age of twenty-seven, the company he founded with 3 million yen in capital became one of the top 100 companies in the world.
He is the number one business mentor for executives around the world.
Kazuo Inamori created a new management method called “amoeba management” to manage his company efficiently, and many executives in Japan and around the world still follow his example.
That’s why many business leaders in Japan consider him one of the people they most admire.
Inamori is famous for the anecdote that he did not pass on Kyocera to his children but left it to professional managers.
He also donated a significant portion of his fortune during the Great Japanese Earthquake.
He never said how much.
That’s very typical of Inamori.
As he used to say, “The shroud has no pockets.
Even if you’ve amassed a fortune in your lifetime, you don’t want to go to the next world empty-handed.
The old people said that life after death is a bonus, so his attitude is right.
I wish we could have such an awake businessman and set a good example for people.
I can’t help but think of Kazuo Inamori, who is practicing resignation after the recent Hanjin Heavy Industries crisis.

 

 

Topic – Turnover is a big loss for companies

Turnover is no longer just a problem for job seekers.
It’s a bigger headache for companies.
The loss of experienced employees you’ve worked hard to train and develop is not only costly to hire new talent, but it also erodes your company’s future competitiveness.
However, talent management programs in Korea are still in their infancy at best.
In Korea, there are few dedicated talent retention departments that can prevent employees from leaving and increase job satisfaction.
As many as 40% of companies have no program at all to prevent employees from leaving, and even those that do have a talent management program only maintain a mentoring system that allows new employees to have a senior to share their concerns about adjusting to the company.
There are plenty of international examples to look to.
Ernst & Young, the world’s second-largest accounting firm, is a good example of a talent retention program.
The company grew from 61,000 employees in 1990 to 98,000 nine years later in 1999.
The biggest problem was the high turnover rate, especially in 1995, when the employee turnover rate was over 20%, and the turnover rate for women was 27%.
Research showed that the cost of recruiting and training a new employee was approaching 150% of the individual’s annual salary.
Company leaders set out to address the problem by creating a dedicated talent retention department.
A survey of 17,000 employees on job satisfaction and reasons for leaving reveals that female employees are stressed by low promotion opportunities and juggling work and family life.
The company designed flexible work hours for women and launched a variety of training programs to help women manage their careers.
As a result, the turnover rate of female employees dropped significantly, saving the company $21 million in costs.
The need for staff dedicated to talent retention is even greater for small and medium-sized businesses, which are more susceptible to losing key talent to larger organizations.
Talent management is money.
Let’s not forget that hiring and training a new employee can cost up to 150% of an individual’s annual salary.
If you treat your employees like they’re expendable, and they feel that way themselves and are ready to leave at any moment, you’re not going to be a good manager.
The loss of talent is not only going to hurt your company now, but it’s going to hurt your company decades from now.
There is no greater resource to support and drive a company than its people.
If you treat your employees like they’re your own, like they’re your own family, they’re not out of work for life.
Thank you for listening, everyone.

 

 

Topic – Be wary of optimism

What do we do when a company is on the brink of failure. Some of you in the room have obviously been through it, some of you have never been through it, some of you have never even imagined it, and so on. A first-time failure crisis. They can’t help but ask their leader, “When is the rescue coming?”
The leader feels the need to reassure them first. They start to sound optimistic. “It’s nothing. The weather will improve soon. Cheer up.” The younger subordinate complies. So they wait another 24 hours and ask again, ”When will we be rescued?” After 12 hours, the leader says, “It’ll get better soon,” so you turn to him with hope. But after 24 hours, the wind is still the same, so you say, “Hang in there,” and you do.
But there comes a point of human breaking point. Employees face a fear that’s too much to bear. They feel like giving up, but they still want to ask their leader one last time, because they’re the only one who can.
At this point, if the leader says, “Just a few more hours,” will they persevere? How many of us are calm in a crisis? We’re all just ordinary people, but we’re in a position of leadership. When payday rolls around, there’s a sense of urgency. We wonder if we’re going to be able to pay our people.
Payday comes and goes, and it’s that same feeling again. We live every day with the dilemma: Will we be able to pay our employees next month? And then a crisis hits. When the company’s tomorrow is unclear, leaders don’t know what to do. Not knowing the answer in a moment of crisis is because leaders are just like everyone else, so they try to deflect the crisis in front of them with optimism. When you feed people optimism, there’s no turning back at the end. When they go their separate ways, that’s when the organization falls apart. My belief is that the worse the crisis, the faster you get to the bottom. If you wait, it’s too late. You have to recover your sanity at the bottom, at the worst possible point.
There’s a very good precedent for this. The Japanese government only dug the crisis that was right in front of them to save the nuclear power plants. Now, there’s another crisis. When it got to the worst crisis, now nobody believed anything the Japanese government said. Isn’t that a pretty clear example of how we should behave in times of crisis?

 

 

Topic – I want you to research perfectly and bring your product to market

Potato chips, which make a crunching sound with every bite, are one of the best-selling snacks in the world.
In the UK, the biggest selling country for potato chips, Brits eat a whopping 165,000 tons of chips a year.
Potato chips are one of the noisiest snacks you can eat in a movie theater, and you’re likely to be bothered by your neighbors for the entire movie.
But the steady, yet explosive popularity of potato chips with the public has little to do with the sound they make.
The crunching sound that the chips make as they crumble between your teeth is a guarantee of the freshness and flavor of the snack.
If you’ve ever eaten potato chips that are soggy days after opening the package, you know how painful it can be.
Food engineers employed by potato chip companies have long been working on ways to make potato chips not only taste better, but also make a loud noise as they crunch.
First, to eat a potato chip, you have to open the plastic bag, and as we all know, that’s not easy.
You have to pinch and squeeze the air-filled bag to open it.
All the while, the snack continues to crunch inside.
If you use all your strength to open the package, the plastic sealant will burst open with a popping sound and the potato chips will come out all at once.
The reason you have to fight such an uphill battle every time you open the package is due to the careful planning of the manufacturers.
Not only does the air contained inside keep the snack safe and unbroken during the transportation process, but the envelope, which only opens after a vigorous attack, creates a soundtrack even before the snack is eaten.
In order to create a crunching sound that would stimulate people’s desire to buy, food engineers reportedly studied how carrots and apples sound when chewed.
They realized that carrots and apples are made up of cells that contain compressed water, and when the carrot hits the teeth, the tiny water droplets in the cells are ejected at speeds of up to 160 kilometers per hour, causing the cells in a bag of potato chips to fill up with air.
When the chips crunch, it’s the popping of the cells that creates the air popping sound.
After all, the potato chips we eat are 80% air.
We’re shoving chips into our mouths, but we don’t realize we’re eating them with our ears.
It’s not just about taste, it’s about sight, sound, touch, and where you’re selling in the space.
Everything has to be perfect to survive in the market, even marketing that catches people off guard, like the nudge concept.
Like kimchi that has been sitting for a long time, the concept of winning in a short period of time is a very dangerous idea.
It’s something to think about and study for a long time.

 

 

Topic – Share the situation with your employees during a crisis

Thank you, everyone, for attending.
It’s a time of turmoil.
We may not be in a time of national turmoil like the IMF, but we have our own crisis.
In fact, it’s not an exaggeration to say that it’s a minefield around every corner.
If we make it through one month, we worry about the next.
If you live like this for two years, you’ll end up getting sick from stress.
Even large Korean companies like Samsung and Hyundai go through periods of turmoil.
I don’t think it’s possible for us not to be shaken.
In times of crisis, everyone is anxious and panicky.
However, as leaders, we need to try to maintain our composure and use mind control to stabilize ourselves.
We all go through periods of confusion, but have you ever thought about how you’ll handle them?
As a leader, you need to be able to reassert certainty in times of turmoil.
You need to make sure your employees are aware of the crisis and focus your policy agenda like a magnifying glass focuses light.
They also need to be prepared to create detailed scenarios and discussions in anticipation of pushback from interest groups.
Of course, an open mind is fundamental.
When the big waves come, ride them once.
You shout that you can fight back and that you’re not scared.
The next time, an even bigger wave comes along.
Each one hits me like it’s the last.
Like this is the end, like this is the end of the road, like there’s no alternative.
But I persevere and fight back.
And then I think to myself.
I’m the only one fighting this wave.
I called my staff together and said.
I said, ‘We’re in serious trouble, some of you know it, some of you don’t, and I don’t know why, but I don’t think we’ve ever had a serious conversation about this with the entire staff in a crisis.
We are, without a doubt, facing the worst of the worst. The problem is that we’ve kept this to myself and a few other employees.
I want you to think of it as a matter of life and death.’
I’ve since completely turned around from being one of those people who says we’ll be fine in a crisis.
The employees were genuinely concerned and came up with measures to get through the crisis one by one.
And we bonded together.
We said, “We’re going to do this,” but the truth is, we weren’t sure.
The fear that was always in the back of my mind had the power to make me lose what I could have gained.
The self-doubt was breaking me down.
When I shared my fears, my employees were genuine.
They said let’s get through this together.
The word “together” helped me get back on my feet.
There was nothing better than the joy of knowing I had people who shared my heart.
Now I’m not afraid of the month ahead, or the year ahead, or the next year ahead.
Because I know I have people who will always be there for me.