Welcome to this week’s Weekly Speaker.  In this clip, the presenter speaks about the missions, goals and structures of research universities. 

I watched this clip very intently over 5 times before I was able to figure out the central message — that a university is about its people. And I was only able to decipher that after catching it on the top of a PowerPoint slide with entirely too much information. 

Let us start with the positives. The presenter’s nice appearance and pleasant disposition present well.  You want to like him, and you want to listen to him. There is no question in my mind that he is an expert on this topic. When he speaks with emotion, his body language and hand movements mirror his verbiage, and he comes across as passionate. Unfortunately, this only happens for a few brief moments during the entire presentation.

The presenter speaks for 3 minutes and 37 seconds. During that time period, there were at least 24 uses of what I would term as "verbal noise" - umm, uhh, or ehhh. If that did not lose members of the audience, then the numerous times throughout the presentation that he began a sentence and then changed direction did. 

The lack of flow, use of confusing hand motions with poor eye contact, and frequent loss of place make it very difficult to follow the message of this speech. Even if you were completely focused on every word, it would be extremely difficult for a member of the audience to know what the message, and the point, of the presentation was.

Everyone can learn from this speech.  Spending a short period of time preparing a brief outline would have improved the flow. Minimal practice alone would have dramatically reduced the verbal noise and would have shortened this speech by at least a minute, nearly a third of the entire presentation, without changing any content. There is no telling how effective this speech could have been with a lot of practice, a lot of tweaking, and a lot of feedback. 

This should not be construed as an attack on the presenter in any way. He is brilliant in his subject matter, and could be an amazing presenter as his cadence and tone are very welcoming. What this is an example of is why every person who speaks publicly, no matter how busy or how high ranking, should practice a number of times prior to speaking.

It is often said that Winston Churchill spent over one hour preparing for every minute of speech he was going to deliver — a five minute speech would therefore require 5 hours of practice.  There is a reason why he is considered to be one of the greatest orators that has ever lived.