I wonder if it's a culture thing. I had an American boss a few years ago who loved to call meetings and give 'inspiring' speeches a long the lines of: "Who here wants to be bigger than Microsoft? Who here wants to beat Microsoft? If we really work on hard this we can take on Microsoft at their own game! And Win! So Go Team Go And Let's Kick Ass!!!"

The end result was a room full of people scratching their heads and thinking "wow that was stupid", and being generally demotivated because they'd just been set and obviously impossible task by a boss who obviously had no clue. Had he given a speech along the lines of "we have a really unique and interesting product here with strong potential of craving out a significant piece of the market in a small but growing niche" people would probably have left the meeting thinking "yea, we can really make that happen" and been much more inspired.