Yesterday I had the privilege of hearing Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger speak in Toronto at the Economic Club of Toronto.
You can read all about the content of the Governor’s speech in many of the Toronto newspapers. My role is to share with you the many things that I saw in the Governor ‘s speech that may explain his extraordinary success.
To appreciate how great his success we need to look at some of his accomplishments and understand the greatness of them. The Governor has had successful careers in body building, movies, and in politics. Very unrelated fields. The only one close to this is President Ronald Regan.While I am sure there are lessons from some of the challenges for him in body building and acting, I will just focus on his success in politics.
To date, he has a strong reputation as a person and as a family man. He is a Republican married into the Kennedy family. The Kennedy’s and the Roosevelt’s are the royal families of the Democrats. Being able to marry into the Kennedy family and keeping his own politics is another amazing accomplishment. I know of no others with this kind of accomplishment.
While people like to make fun of his accent, in reality this is an amazing challenge for the Governor to overcome. His off the cuff communication skills were demonstrated during the question and answer period. It was clear, that he isn’t capable of speaking like a native English speaker because of his choice of words. As an actor, there can be multiple retakes any time he makes a mistake, but in front of a live audience or under the pressure of reporters questions he must be clear to have his message delivered. While the United States is called the land of opportunity, it doesn’t generally like or support foreigners, the pressure must have been amazing when he first started speaking publicly on issues of consequence, rather than his role in a film. The only other American politician that comes to mind is Henry Kissinger. But, Henry Kissinger never had to get elected.
His politics are also a demonstration of his success. He is known as a friend of the environment, which is ok. But this is the same person who is famous for driving Hummers!
While you may or may not agree with his politics, we can agree that he is clearly a successful person. I believe just some of his secrets to success were delivered in yesterday’s speech.
(I don’t have a copy of the speech, there might be slight paraphrasing of any quotes I make.)
The first thing the Governor did when coming up to the podium, was to make everybody feel at comfortable with him. He made a joke about the introduction, “Just the way I wrote it”. He created a bond with us by spending a few minutes relating to the audience. One of his best jokes was what he felt Canadians wanted to say to Americans lecture us – “Two words – Shut Up”. By the end of this part of the speech he connected with the audience. Another part was to show respect – he didn’t make it long, just short and to the point.
At no point during the speech did I hear him say “I accomplished this by myself” He only showed respect for others and their accomplishments. He showed tremendous respect for the people who helped him . Several times he spoke about the Weider brothers )who brought him to the United States). He invited them to the speech, talk about their accomplishments and introduced Joe Weider to the entire audience. It was clear he totally appreciated what they had done for him 30 years earlier.
When he got into the details of his speech, he made a couple of statements which I believe are core to the strengths of the man.
The Governor spoke about the environmental lobby and was saying that they are using fear to make change in society. He felt that would never change anybody or anything. He said you must work on the positive for success. You must look for solutions and positive change will occur. He totally believes that the problem will be solved if you start with the premise that the problem will be solved, but we just don’t know how. In my world, I call it PMA (Positive Mental Attitude).
The second thought I saw expressed, was the Govenor’s total complete faith in the American people. There was absolutely no question in his mind that Global Warming will be solved, and that capitalism will solve the problem. It was clear the audience had two choices. Join in the wealth that will be created in solving the problem or be left behind.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is a successful man.
Zale
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www.ZaleTabakman.ca
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