Writing an MBA (Online) Graduation Speech
A few days ago, I had the honour of delivering the graduation speech on behalf of the MBA2020 class of ESMT.
This was a very special graduation ceremony because it was the first-ever online MBA graduation ceremony that ESMT has held. Due to Covid-19 restrictions in Berlin, this was the only way that we could all graduate on time.
When I first mentioned to my husband that I was elected to give a speech on graduation day, he shared with me his speech ‘formula’:
Speech = talk about the past + talk about the future + talk about what’s inside your heart + add a few jokes (tadaa!)
Not a bad formula actually…
While the speech was only 10 mins, it took me several hours over several days to craft it. The MBA Office ran a test round with me, offered me tips on content, style, and also shared with me some sample speeches, but I knew that I had to make this speech my own. Unlike previous speakers, I wasn’t the funniest person in the class, so it would be silly and weird to write it in a style that wasn’t mine.
There weren’t any guidelines to follow so that didn’t make things any easier. What I really wanted to accomplish through the speech was to adequately represent the class’ experience, mood, feelings, and hope.
Some other things that went into consideration in writing and delivering are:
- Broad audience — Besides my classmates, their family members and friends, as well as the ESMT community would also be attending so I kept the speech as broad as possible without lots of internal jokes so that they would not feel left out.
- Non-native speakers — My classmates come from 22 countries, many of them are non-native English-speaking ones. While there was little I could do about non-English speakers, I tried to use simpler, non-bombastic words so that as many people as possible could understand me.
- Speak slower, but clearer — Speaking slower, but clearer, using pauses, making eye contact, and thinking about intonation helps to bring the audience’s attention to you. This was a very useful skill that I learned in the Women’s Leadership Excellence program last year. Also, reading to my daughter every evening helped!
- Online presentation — Look at the camera for eye contact, sit somewhere facing natural lighting, use a headphone with an extendable microphone if possible, make sure that your headphone is charged, laptop is charged, change the Zoom background etc.
We had close to 200 people attending our online graduation! Perhaps something to really possible with a face-to-face format. Perhaps the graduation with the lowest carbon footprint since nobody flew in for the ceremony.
All-in-all, I think it went really well from the feedback that I have received and I hope I did justice to my classmates for their trust and confidence with this speech.
I’m sharing these tips to help anyone who will be writing or delivering a speech (or any presentations, really) to an international audience soon and some of these tips will apply to both virtual and face-to-face settings.
If anyone is interested, here’s the (slightly adapted)graduation speech below.
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ESMT MBA 2020 Graduation Speech, 11th Feb 2021
Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for being here today. My name is Yu Jean and it is my honour to deliver this speech on behalf of the MBA class of 2020. It’s been slightly over a year since I met this group of brilliant people and the circumstances of how we met were…. slightly different than where we are today. There were 48 of us, from 23 countries, with a total of 380 years of experience behind us, eager to change the world and our own lives… and look how the world has now changed ours.
Allow me to share with you a bit of what the past year had been like for us. In Jan 2020, we started off the MBA program just like how it would be for MBA classes before us. We went through one week of orientation to get to know each other and the school, started classes with world-class professors that blew our mind, and went on a trekking trip that lasted several hours somewhere northwards of Berlin.in winter.in ZERO degrees. I’m from Malaysia, a very warm country in South-East Asia, so I really don’t like the cold. But now, I think you would understand if I said I kind of wish we could go back to those times.
Perhaps this crazy adventure was a sign of how the rest of the year would look like — finding ways to work together, not having all the tools, not knowing where we are going, finding comfort in uncertainty, and making the best of a very vague situation.
We enjoyed two months of face-to-face classes before Berlin entered the first lockdown in mid-March 2020 and many of us were worried about being able to cope with difficult subjects such as Finance. It was an unprecedented situation for us as well as ESMT. Almost overnight, we had to move from face-to-face learning to online learning. And that was our learning experience for the next three months until mid-June.
The lockdown had affected each one of us differently — some found that they had even more time available than before, some really felt the impact of social isolation, and parents of young children like myself had to find ways to juggle being a full-time student AND a full-time parent.
We were allowed to go back to campus sometime around mid-June and classes were held in a hybrid format. That means both face-to-face classes and online classes were made available and students could participate in formats that they were most comfortable with. We were divided into three different tracks namely Managerial Analytics, Innovation & Entrepreneurship, and Strategic Leadership, and this was how we carried out our core courses, electives subjects, and track projects.
The last three months of 2020 offered us an opportunity to put our learnings into practice by consulting for external organizations and we worked in small teams to find solutions for companies and NGOs. After submitting the final report in January which was just last month, today has been what we have been waiting for.
A lot has happened over the past year and now we “stand” before you to receive the recognition for the hard work and determination that went into earning this degree. And I believe that I speak for my classmates when I say that this success is not only ours, it is YOURS too. There’s a proverb that goes, “It takes a village to raise a child” but I believe that this applies to adults as well and each of you are our village. In a year like no other, it takes extraordinary, collective effort to pull it through, and we wouldn’t have made it without you.
- To our partners, significant others, children, parents, siblings, close friends and family members — thank you for being our first-level of support, for your motivating words, for your patience and understanding, and for being there for us every step of the way
- To the ESMT team — the MBA Office, professors, school administrators, Corona Taskforce, Career Services, Student Services, Facilities Management, and all support services — this year has been just as hard for you as it has been for us. Thank you for doing all that you can in making the best out of the situation for us.
- Finally, especially in times like these, thank you as well to the invisible Frontliners who are not here among us today, but who are just as important in making today possible. My thoughts go out to health care workers, first responders, social workers, transportation and delivery workers, food industry workers, and many more for putting your health and lives on the line to keep the country running.
So what does it mean now to complete this MBA? A title? A certificate? Money?
An MBA is every bit a personal development as much as it is a professional one. At its core, an MBA allows people to complement their existing experience with business skills, it offers exposure to different fields and functional areas, and it provides an understanding of tools and methodologies to frame and solve problems.
But beyond the abundance of 2x2 matrices, the Five Forces model, PESTEL, Revenue Recognition principle, linear regression, random forest, Business Model Canvas, and the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) that evokes intense feelings from our Finance professor (Inside joke, cold-call: Guillermo! Are you there!?!?), the MBA also teaches important managerial skills that can be applied to all settings such as:
- Why diversity is crucial in organizations?
- What is important when read and analyzing data?
- What is a good decision?
- What is a good manager?
- When do we compete and when do we collaborate?
Ladies and gentlemen, what you also see before you is a group of individuals who have chosen to dedicate a year of their lives and invest it towards their own growth. It is a path that not everyone would take and one that took us away from our comfort zone, into the fear zone, through the learning zone, to be in the growth zone. Each and everyone from our class have left their careers, families, and friends in order to forge new ones here and I say to my classmates, don’t you let yourself forget what you’ve put in to be able to be here today!
It’s definitely challenging graduating in uncertain times like these. Definitely not what we had in mind. Even more so, we owe it to ourselves to grasp opportunities as they come, lean in to and support one another, and have empathy and compassion for those who need them.
Success is a journey, not a destination and we are all on this journey together. Each one of us will do extremely well, I am certain, and I hope that we will always remember those who have paved the way for us and also be there to pave the way for others as well.
So, to end my session, like how all great speeches go, I would like to share an excerpt from a poem that never gets old:
The Road Not Taken by ROBERT FROST
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both…
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Thank you very much for listening.
(pause for applause)
Next up on the program, we have a special performance for you. Ladies and Gentlemen, please join me to welcome MBA 2020 graduate, Jason Lee!
