Communication impact: Discussion about written communication excellence

·     Definition of communication excellence

A great majority of people pretends to having excellent communication skills, and nowadays many situations require them. As far as I am concerned, an excellent communicator should be able to diffuse information to people clearly and simply, in a way that interlocutors can understand the meanings. Said differently, he should transmit and receive messages clearly and with ease, read the audience and adapt his exchange to the context and the encountered situations.

One of the most impacting communication I have ever read is the speech given by Dominique de Villepin, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, at the United Nations Security Council just a few days before the military intervention on Iraq in 2003.

·     Brief introduction about the context of the media

On February 14th, 2003, De Villepin delivered -at the UN Security Council- a remarkable speech against the launch of the Iraq invasion, or at least against an immediate military intervention aiming this country’s regime.

In term of context, let us precise that De Villepin spoke in the name of France and several countries (of which Germany and Russia) against any form of military interventions, awaiting for the final conclusions of UN inspectors leaded by Dr. Blix and Dr. ElBaradei. In the other hand, Georges W. Bush, the US president at that time, appeared to have a very limited patience with the weapons inspections process even before the February 14th Security Council meeting. It was obvious that The United States of America, along with its allied countries such as the United Kingdom and Spain, were very pushy and advocate openly a prompt military intervention against Saddam Hussein’s regime.

On February 14th, Dr. Blix's presentation to the UN Council was not conclusive. Regarding the process, the Iraqis had continued to co-operate with the UN inspectors. These latter had not found any prohibited weapons (chemical, biological or nuclear), except a small number of empty chemical munitions that the Iraqis should have declared and destroyed earlier to the inspection.

France led opposition to the US and United Kingdom in the Security Council and De Villepin won, during his speech, an unprecedented applause for his passionate comments against the war on Iraq.

 ·     Importance of non-verbal communication

Even though De Villepin had a memorable speech with striking and well-chosen words (a part that will be developed latter on this paper), he demonstrated how powerful the non-verbal communication could be in an important summit. It is true that these kind of elements could roughly be appreciated in the writing transcription of his speech, but the video of his intervention worth the watch.

Indeed, I appreciated De Villepin’s facial expressions, with a closed face and a solemn tone of voice. Even sited, the speaker moved his head in a smooth but never-ending motion, seeking to establish a frequent visual contact with his opponents on Iraq file, especially M. Colin Powell (US Secretary of State from 2001 to 2005 in the Bush Administration) present in attendance.

While remaining calm and all-in-control as long as he read his speech, De Villepin’s straight posture reminded me the one of Charles De Gaulle, one of the greatest men in France’s history, who was the symbol of the resistance against Nazi Germany in World War II and reestablish later the democracy in France as President of the fifth Republic. In addition, while he was addressing the members of the UN Security Council, De Villepin even copied De Gaulle’s way of crossing fingers as a way to channel his innermost emotions and redirect them towards his mouth and words.

 ·     Role of the speech‘s structure

I would like to outline that I was quite impressed by the structure of De Villepin’ speech that he wrote by himself and modified several times before the start of the Security Council meeting. Let me first precise that De Villepin is known to be a man of letters as he wrote at the beginning of his politician career several historical and political essays, a book about poetry, along with many studies about Napoleon. But as a leader, De Villepin knew how to work to lower the temperature and defuse conflict in the hope of minimizing any destructive dynamics (Bolman and Deal 2014, p94).

Coming back to De Villepin’s speech, its author started by reminding France’s position in this conflict, shared with several countries around the meeting’s table. The purpose was to remind its opponents, the US-UK-Spain axis, that France did not stand alone in this fight against a quick military intervention in Iraq.

Then, he continued his rhetoric by restating the collective adoption of Resolution 1441, stressing on the two-stage approach proposed to the Security Council and agreed by all its members (including the USA and UK): the disarmament through inspections and, should this strategy fail, the consideration of all alternative options including the recourse to force. Taking into account that Iraqi representatives showed full involvement and cooperation with UN inspectors, De Villepin insisted that the recourse to force was not justified yet, as the option of inspections has not been taken to the end: “Given this context, the use of force is not justified at this time. There is an alternative to war: Disarming Iraq via inspections” (De Villepin 2003).

Afterwards, he carried on his demonstration and insisted on the chaos any military intervention could beget:

"No one today can claim that the path of war will be shorter than the path of inspections. No one can claim that it would lead to a safer, more just, more stable world, for war is always the sanction of failure […]; How do we ensure that the considerable risks of such intervention can actually be kept under control?" (De Villepin 2003)

In order to contrast with this gloomy outlook, De Villepin insisted by putting the emphasis on the solutions suggested by his delegation, as the unique way to gather all countries around a sustainable and shared goal: fighting terrorism mercilessly by further cooperation with Iraq. In order to convince his audience, he used short sentences and positive vocabulary in this speech to value, in a clear way, the efforts made by Iraq’s regime on the field:

"The Iraqis have provided the inspectors with new documentations […]; in the ballistic area, the information provided by Iraq has enabled the inspectors to make progress […]; real progress is emerging […]." (De Villepin 2003)

Besides, in that particular case a military action is launched, De Villepin insisted on big democracies duty to rebuild the country and to restore stability in the country:

"The option of war might seem a priori to be the swiftest, but let us not forget that having won the war, peace has to be built. Let us not delude ourselves" (De Villepin 2003)

·     Use of impacting words

The use of strong punchlines also characterizes his intervention at the UN Security Council that day. Indeed, he used them in order to highlight the symbolic role France aimed to have in this conflict:

In this temple of the United Nations, we are the guardians of an ideal, the guardians of a conscience […].This message comes to you today from an old country, France, from a continent, Europe, that has known war, occupation, barbarity […]. France believes in our ability to build together a better world”.(De Villepin 2003)

Furthermore, De Villepin referred to his opponents’ main arguments: “Oh, yes, I hear criticism. There are those who think that […]. However, let me recall that […]. Then there are those who believe that […]” (De Villepin 2003). This extract might prove that the speaker is open to a dialogue, but in fact the purpose here is to rebut others’ arguments and prove their limits (Anderson 2010). It is a clever way to remind France’s position which consisted in considering the option of war as the latest path to follow. Later in the speech, he restated the solutions he suggested earlier, and propose to the Council members another meeting on March 14th in order to assess the situation and judge the progress made and what remains to be done. To a certain extent, providing a visibility on short term aimed to add further credibility to his plan as the US commitment remained very uncertain at that stage.

Finally yet importantly, De Villepin concluded his statement on a high note by making an allusion to a previous attack of Donald Rumsfeld, the U.S. Defense Secretary at that time, responding to a reporter's question on January 24th 2003 about European opposition to the use of force in Iraq. He said that France and Germany were part of “old Europe” and he contrasted them with the vitality of the “new Europe” (Black and Hooper 2003), made up in large part of formerly communist countries. To this attack, De Villepin responded during the Security Council:

You're thinking of Europe as Germany and France. I do not. I think that's 'old Europe.' If you look at the entire NATO Europe today, the center of gravity is shifting to the East and there are a lot of new members (De Villepin 2003)

Therefore, De Villepin took the opportunity during this UN Security Council to answer Rumsfeld’s attack in a very diplomatic manner as a way to call for actions and to go beyond misunderstandings. He stated:

In this temple of the United Nations, we are the guardians of an ideal, the guardians of a conscience […]. This message comes to you today from an old country, France, from a continent (inaudible) Europe that has known war, occupation, barbarity. It is an old country that does not forget and is very aware of all it owes to freedom fighters who came from America and elsewhere.(De Villepin 2003)

·     Communications lessons learned

Overall, we have seen through this article the importance of both the non-verbal and verbal communication in a speech, as the former enhances the latter’s key messages. When delivering a speech, one should build his argumentation and structure his oral intervention, but he should also adopt it to the context, the circumstances and the audience in order to make his speech the most impactful.

Last but not least, ending his intervention on a high note is -to a certain extent- the cherry on the cake in a communication as it reinforces the link with the intervention’s global context and adds further credibility to the key messages delivered earlier.