Excite Your Audience

Like many of you, I watched President Obama’s inauguration speech today. Before I make my comments, first I want to say that this is in no way meant to be a political commentary or in any way a reflection on President Obama’s abilities. It is just meant to be a critique of the speech itself, not a critique of the man. So if your pro or con Obama, I really don’t want to hear your political views in this blog. That’s not what this blog is about. Note that I am not commenting on the political content of the speech, just on the way is was written and delivered.

I want to start by saying it’s a was a good speech. I liked it. However, one of my clients commented that it was the “best speech he had ever seen,” and I believe him. It’s not the best speech I’ve ever seen, but it was very good.

Now, that that’s out of the way, here is how I think the speech, although good especially by presidential standards, could have been better.

1) Many times during the speech, President Obama stepped on his applause and thereby reduced the crowd reaction considerably. A good speaking coach would have shown him where these moments were to be expected and how to capitalize on them. By changing the inflection in his voice at the ending of certain sentences and waiting for the crowd to react, President Obama could have stirred the audience practically into a frenzy. This opportunity was missed, reducing the effectiveness of the speech about 25% in my opinion. Imagine the impact this could have had on an already good speech.

2) There was no connecting thread to the speech. There was no recurring theme that makes a speech memorable. It has only been an hour since I heard it and I can’t remember pretty much anything he said. I can tell you vaguely what he said, but no details. There was a great speech that everyone was talking about today, MLK’s “I have a dream” speech. If you listen to the recording of that speech, every time he said “I have a dream,” and waited for the crowd reaction, that is what made that speech so powerful, and memorable, even 40 years later. President Obama’s speech today didn’t have that. Blame this one on the speech writer. All president employ speech writers and it their job to make this happen.

3) My last point is actually a problem with President Obama delivery in general. It’s the pinched finger hand gesture he makes. It looks like he is giving an “OK” sign only down by his lower chest. This gesture looks as if he is holding a pin and stabbing the audience with it. It’s aggressive in nature and should be removed from this stable of speaking tools.

As you can see, any speech can be made better. This was a good speech, but with a few tweaks could have been much more powerful.

I video record my speeches and critique them all the time. You should too. Remember, if you’re not getting better, you’re getting worse.

Tags: Inauguration Speech, Obama

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 at 4:33 pm and is filed under Speeches. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.