“My view is that along with the speech at my daughter's wedding, the leaving speech was the most difficult to do because – hopefully – you only do it once.” Mr Bartle says he worked very hard on the speech he made when he left the company in 1999 – “too important to improvise” – and thinks the occasion demands you come up with something out of the ordinary.
“You need to look forward, not back, and you need to minimise your departure in a sense. Tell people why it's time for you to go and why the business will go on without you.”
The ideal farewell speech should be a subtle balance of humour, memories, reassurance and gratitude. Tough enough when your departure is full of back-slapping and bonhomie; it's doubly difficult when there is a cloud over your exit and all this has to be delivered through gritted teeth. As one former banker notes: “You just hope everyone's too drunk to notice that your voice is flat and your smile is really a rictus grin.”