On September 28, Elon Musk contradicted everything I’ve ever learned about public speaking. He stuttered, looked nervous, went off on tangents, and forgot where his slides were. But guess what? He gave a great presentation!
Mr. Musk spoke at an event that was being held at a SpaceX launch site in Boca Chica, Texas. He spoke about the company’s new plan to build cities on Mars and unveiled the Starship Mark 1 prototype. The intimate crowd of about 100 SpaceX employees loved the presentation and frequently interrupted Mr. Musk with their cheers and applause.
My family and I were watching the speech live. What struck me was how bad a public speaker Elon Musk is! He broke all of the public speaking rules: he giggled nervously, he repeated himself, he dropped countless “uhs” and “ahs” into his speech. Overall, Mr. Musk came across as an engineer who has to do the one thing he hates most, to speak in public.
But none of that mattered. Elon Musk is a brilliant thinker who’s pushing the boundaries of space exploration in a way that was unthinkable just a short time ago. He’s an Alpha Geek who speaks to his tribe in a way that they understand and respond to. He’s getting people fired up about his vision and giving them the inspiration they need to do the work that will achieve it. So what if his public speaking skills aren’t polished? They don’t need to be because the people he’s communicating to wouldn’t listen to him, wouldn’t trust him, wouldn’t follow him, if he came across as a slick public speaker. Then he’d be just another suit.
Obviously, this speaking style is working quite well for Mr. Musk. He knows who he’s talking to and how to connect with them. And that’s the most important goal of a presentation: to connect with the audience to drive the results you want. He’s not setting out to be the world’s greatest public speaker. But he is on course to become one of the world’s greatest innovators, with the help of the engineers he speaks to so well.