My friend Jane Osler http://www.pjosler.com/ sent me a note yesterday with this link about St Crispin’s Day http://www.strategy-business.com/blog/Ending-the-Battle-between-Leadership-and-Management?gko=e3de6&bt_alias=eyJ1c2VySWQiOiIzMDk0NTkwNCJ9 which fell at the end of October. As you’ll see in the link, this is the day made famous by Shakespeare’s Henry V as Henry rallies his outnumbered soldiers against the French at the beginning of battle. Here are two clips; the first is the most recent film version with Kenneth Branagh in the title role (the clip is 5:41 but worth every second) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-yZNMWFqvM . The second is for the Canadians among us with the late and missed Leslies Nielsen from the final episode of Due South and his very funny version of the same speech  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjPj-5AYVg0 (about 1:08)

The blog Jane sent looked at the difference between leadership and management, and I appreciated the blogger’s point about the questions how and why. For me though, the St Crispin’s Day speech (Lawrence Olivier’s is also brilliant) inspires me around competency. Whether you watch Branagh’s or even Nielsen’s version, you are watching craftspeople working with an amazing tool, the speech itself. You and I will never be as good as Branagh with this speech, but I suggest you try  reading it yourself a few times. Here’s the text with a ‘modern’ version (and you have to click next page to get the whole speech). http://nfs.sparknotes.com/henryv/page_184.html Then read it out loud, you can do this in the privacy of your own bathroom if you wish. Feel the words as they roll off your tongue. The speech is a poem, and after a few times of reading it aloud you’ll feel the rhythm in the lines. And you’ll find that you actually can do this with practice. In fact if you read this speech aloud every day for two weeks before work, you’ll find at least two things happen; first, you’ll get better and better at the speech and you’ll find that the words actually start to inspire you. Next time you find yourself facing a difficult challenge you might even hear your inside voice say something like, ‘and gentlemen now abed in England shall think themselves accursed.’ And when that happens you’ll know you are gaining a competency.

 Masters like Branagh and Nielsen themselves can inspire us, but they would be the first to tell you, it’s all about practice. You and your team can do pretty much anything you put your minds to, you just need practice to become competent. 

 So this week, let’s practice.