NMP Live Meets Garry Kasparov, Russian Chess Grandmaster, 13th World Chess Champion, writer, politician and human rights activist. In our exclusive interview Garry talks about the difficulties in defending his title as World Champion, how he makes his speeches engaging, and why humans are risk-adverse. Watch the full video or read the transcript below.
In conversation with Garry Kasparov
What are the main topics on which you speak?
I started with strategy and decision-making based on my first book 'How Life Imitates Chess', a non-chess book although it has many chess elements from my own professional career, and I developed several themes based on the book. It included seminars, doing special practical tests and helping people see the process of decision-making from a very different angle.
Then I included other elements, such as risk and innovation and my views about the development of technologies, and of course there were always political elements, not necessarily of the Russian politics but general geo-political picture, if people wanted it of course.
Some of the speeches had stories from chess and education because as part of the Kasparov Chess Foundation I have been doing and still do a lot of work on promoting chess in the classroom, so with these subjects I was always comfortable composing a speech that I could tailor for the specific demand of a customer.
What's more challenging, becoming World Champion or defending the title?
You can win the World Title only once to become champion. Then if you want to stay at the top you have to defend it. So, naturally defending is more complicated because you always have to find the motivation that is the key factor.
Many great players, chess or elsewhere, they were simply loosing motivation, because it is very easy to get complacent and to stop working as hard you did before. The reason for my success was that I never lost my motivation since I thought it was all about making the difference, so I was always trying to challenge my own excellence and this is a never-ending quest.
How did you develop your talent for public speaking?
Thanks to my mother, she helped me to get a good education, and then it is not just simply reading books but also reading poetry and writing and making presentations. So I was quite good at addressing my schoolmates, of course there is a huge difference between addressing schoolmates and making professional presentations, but I was never shy of communicating my views and ideas to the public.
I became quite engaged in political activities in the Soviet Union in the late 80s with the rise of the pro-democracy movement and I was always willing to share my ideas and even my emotions.
Since I left professional chess I found it fairly easy to shift in to the world of speaking engagements and motivational presentations, because for me every speech is some kind of a challenge - I always want to come up with some new ideas so I can proudly say I never delivered a canned speech and I always look for a new angle.
Is there a single most important take-away message from your talks?
It depends on the subject, so I believe there are a few key ideas that I can package better than any other speaker, because it is very much based on what I have experienced. I am not an observer who sits in the comfort of his or her study collecting this information and then presenting it in a nice or eloquent way.
It is a personal experience, it’s always a personal story and I think one of the key messages on decision-making that I communicate to the audience is to be aware of universal tips, be aware of universal advice, that if you do this then you will get better. Any advice should be individual, because we are different and if you do medical tests to be cured of an illness then we should go through the tests to understand what works for us and what may be even counter-productive.
Decision-making is as unique as fingerprints or DNA. We are different – some of us are more aggressive, some of us are more defensive, and there is nothing wrong about one or another. It is all about understanding who you are and what are your strengths, what are your weaknesses, and then creating the framework for decision making which will make you most comfortable in realising your hidden potential.
Simply following the advice for the whole audience without contemplating how it may affect your own nature is extremely counter-productive.
Why, as human beings, are we adverse to risk taking?
I think we have been facing the growing rejection of risk as a concept in the last few decades because of the comfortable life we are used to living, and gradually it has spread around and affected our lives in business and politics, and even education.
I think now the concept of sacrifice as a very important part of progress has been lost, and people are looking for market economy, for liberal democracy as tools to provide them with new means of a comfortable life, not recognising that those tools are offering opportunities, not guarantees.
I think that is the risk-adverse society. It’s standing in the way of future progress and that’s why in my speeches I use more and more of the stories about risk taking and about recovering the very nature of capitalism that helped create mass wealth around the planet.
How do you make your speeches so engaging?
I always want to make sure my speech is a story. It’s not a bunch of sentiments or anecdotes; it’s something that is cohesive. It’s something that from beginning to end creates a theme that will very much reflect the title of the speech.
I am quite serious in picking out the title because I like to make sure that people realise that they got what they expected. There are of course many unexpected turns because I always want to surprise them with a story that is related to something they know. For instance, I always look for their history or something that is connected to the venue where I am doing the speech. I always want to find a story that has an interesting component; an interesting turn, a twist, but that comes from a big name they know such as William Beoing, Coco Channel, or Thomas Edison. But it has to be something they may not be aware of, something that is connected to these famous individuals, but could help us to see it from a different angle.
For me it is very important because they don’t have to be challenged with a source, so I create a few stories and try to make sure they can see the connection and it can help them to think about their own performance and to have something to chew on a few days after they heard the speech.
How do you influence and persuade an audience?
My art of persuasion is based on a very simple fact – I tell my own story. People know if you are trying to convey a message that is a sound bite or your true beliefs. I will lose my power of convincing people if I start telling them stories from other people, or presenting something where they can immediately sense that it’s not based on my own beliefs. As long as I am staying in my own territory I feel comfortable and then my psychological comfort is always being communicated to the public.
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