When you listen to yourself, some of what you hear is conducted to your ears through your head. Other people just hear your voice carried by the air. Reader’s Digest just had a web article explaining that, and there was another one by Jordan Gaines at NBC News back in 2013.
The first few times you hear (and watch) yourself rehearsing on recordings that feedback may be disconcerting. You may think you’re the worst speaker ever and want to cover your ears, as is shown above. Get over it, and see what you could be doing better.
Yesterday at Faculty Focus there was an article by Amy Blanding, Kealin McCabe, and Heather Smith from the University of Northern British Columbia titled The Worst Lecture Ever. It described beginning a course on presentation skills with a series of bad examples:
“We held the Worst Lecture Competition during the first full week of classes. The instructors and a graduate student competed for the Worst Lecture award, while students evaluated and voted for the worst lecture. Drawing on literature about effective presentations as well as personal feedback and our own experiences, we identified characteristics of the worst presentations. Then we divided those characteristics among ourselves, determined the personas we would adopt, and prepared to deliver the worst possible lecture. Heather presented a lecture about her cats. With slides full of cat photos and the enthusiasm of a devout cat lover, she shared plenty of useless facts and deviated from the topic to include photos of her trip to Australia. Heather was disorganized, unprepared, and tangential. She dressed sloppily, included quotes without citations, and cited problematic sources. On the plus side, she did have a clear learning objective. Unfortunately, she didn’t meet it… perhaps because she ran over the allotted time.”
When I read the December 14th blog post by Ben and Kelly Decker on The Top Ten Best (and Worst Communicators of 2011 there was one name glaringly missing from their worst list. That was James Arthur Ray, who also wasn’t listed for either 2009 or 2010.
Mr. Ray is a well-known motivational speaker, author, and proponent of the Law of Attraction. A 2008 article in Fortune called him “The man who would be Robbins, Covey, and Chopra.”
On October 8, 2009, as part of a “Spiritual Warrior” program he led a “sweat lodge” program in a mostly enclosed sauna-like space heated by pouring water over hot rocks. Before it began he reportedly told participants that although they might feel like they were going to die they would not. But, three people did die - Kirby Brown, Liz Neuman, and James Shore. Mr. Ray literally gave a killer motivational speech.
James Arthur Ray eventually was tried in Yavapai County, Arizona. On June 22, 2011 he was found guilty on three counts of negligent homicide. Those events are discussed here. Finally, on November 18th, he was sentenced to two years in prison. His attorneys, whose fees already have cost him $5.6 million, are appealing that verdict.
Mr. Ray displayed an amazing combination of arrogance and ignorance. The hazards resulting from combinations of heat and humidity are well-known and thus preventable. For another example, see this simple chart. This August OSHA even released a free heat safety App. Yet, reportedly Ray didn’t even have a thermometer in the so-called sweat lodge he was running (and also, of course, no way of measuring humidity).
Today there was a press release in which Deborah Shames and David Booth, who are the principals of Eloqui Communications, handed out their first annual Say What? awards for three categories of public speaking. They named the following people:
OWN THE ROOM (for outstanding speaking):
Barack Obama, for his FortHood Address
Patrick Kennedy and Ted Kennedy Jr,. for Ted Kennedy's eulogy
Brian Williams, for NBC Nightly News
BLAH, BLAH, BLAH (for speaking without skill, meaning or passion):
Caroline Kennedy
Alan Greenspan
Joe Biden, our Vice President
FOOT IN MOUTH (for clueless speaking rather than shutting up):
Kanye West
Serena Williams
Joe Wilson, South Carolina Congressman for his “you lie” outburst
This list of top threes really is even sillier than one naming the most boring public speakers in the UK that I discussed previously. You need a list of five or ten in order to accommodate the “winners” in obvious categories like politicians, sports figures, musicians, actors, clergy, and businesspeople.
The press release did a pretty good job of putting “foot in mouth” too. In the first paragraph it described Shames and Booth as authors of:
“…Own the Room, their jointly-authored, business presentation book that has recently earned top rankings on three different Amazon.com bestseller lists.”
The last paragraph gave the full title of the book as Own the Room: Business Presentations That Persuade, Engage & Get Results. However, it omitted listing Peter Desberg, who actually is the third co-author. He does not work for Eloqui Communications, so he wasn’t “featured” in this press release. It is usually better not to leave out any co-authors when mentioning a book, unless you are trying to start a vendetta!
How would you like to pick up your morning newspaper and find that you just had been named the most boring public speaker in the UK? How about being named up in the top five?
On March 11 Cow LLP put out a press release for the text-to speech firm Spinvox titled: “Brits - Bored by Brown and Becks.”
Based on the percentages responding in a poll of a thousand people done in January 2009, they listed the top five worst public speakers as being:
Gordon Brown (20%), the Prime Minister David Beckham (14%), the football star Kate Winslet (11%), the movie actress Chris Moyles (11%), the radio announcer Prince Charles (7%), the Prince of Wales
The Press Association (analogous to the Associated Press, or AP in the US) promptly snipped it down to sound bit size, and it appeared as a “news” article in the Daily Star and elsewhere. Anna Raccoon quipped that Brown is the new beige. Now, all this really is quite silly. None of these personalities actually is a very boring public speaker. All of them are just in the public eye and therefore “top of mind.” Perhaps Cow LLP should change their name to Bull.
For example, as was noted by Ian Whitworth, Gordon Brown gave an excellent 34-minute speech to a joint session of the US Congress. You can also view a 2 minute excerpt from about the 13:30 mark. He does sometimes slip up though, as when he answers a question by talking about having saved the world rather than the banks.
If you want to see a truly boring speaker, have a look at this 1969 vintage Monty Python clip of John Cleese putting the radio audience to sleep with his reading of the six o clock BBC news. He does a wonderful job of following his training: “Deep breaths, and try not to think about what you’re saying.”
This blog is about public speaking. The author is Richard I. Garber, ACS, a Toastmaster. From July 2008 to June 2010 he was Vice President-Education for Capitol Club Toastmasters in Boise, Idaho. From July 2017 to June 2019 he was Vice President Public Realtions for Saint Al's Toastmasters. Opinions expressed on this blog are those of the author alone, and are not the official positions of Toastmasters International, etc.
Richard is retired. He has over twenty years of experience as a consultant on failure analysis (figuring out why things busted or rusted) and a Ph.D. in Metallurgical Engineering & Materials Science.
His email is r_i_garber at hotmail.com
