Discoursing at Length

I am not the world's best orator.

While I project well, am interesting and entertaining, and definitely capture people's attention with my enthusiasm, my speeches as a whole often lack the polish of a true master. I struggle to find the balance between repeating themes enough to ingrain them in my audience's mind, while also not boring them, and tightly weaving all the levels of information together. I'm much better, actually, at longer presentations than 3 minute rehearsed spiels. In general, though, If I were to grade myself, I'd get around a B+. I'm able to mix hard facts with anecdotal stories, and be professional while also being dynamic.

As a girl who was once very shy and terrified of presenting, I attribute my complete ease and relative confidence with the entire process to an excellent education, starting with junior high and high school speech classes & presentations, and culminating in college classroom participation and church talks. In addition, the more I practice, the better I become -- I constantly try to improve myself.

I bring this all up by way of expressing my shock that so much of the professional workforce has not developed similar competencies. I am far from perfect, but I believe I at least have the qualifications to judge those far worse than myself.

I've attended several different legislative briefings on behalf of LAs this semester -- mostly regarding low income health and housing initiatives, plus a few others. This does not include the large numbers of foreign relations committee hearings, which are entities unto themselves. What has consistently stunned me about these briefings is how terrible of presenters the lobbyists are.

They will speak in subdued monotones, projecting into the floor. They will continue on endlessly, harping on the exact same points. They will attempt to establish their credentials at length, instead of focusing on specific issues.

But these are far from the most egregious of annoyances. On multiple occasions, I have walked into a briefing, which has booked a conference room for one hour. Upon walking in, they hand us a very professional compilation of facts, figures, summary statements -- all incredibly useful information. Then, the chief presenter will proceed to essentially read us the summary statement verbatim, and rattle off every data-point on the supporting charts...without any expanded explanation or analysis. I could process the same level of information in less than 5 minutes by reading it myself.

After 20-30 minutes of this painstaking unenlightening detail, the presenter will realize he/she has only used half of the time. So, acting under the misguided impression that more time is better, they will ramble for 10-15 more minutes on exactly the same points previously covered, before finally turning it to the audience for questions. The audience, devoid of questions since their brains have turned into asymmetric putty, sits in silence -- hoping the presenter will then get the hint to end the meeting. But no! Wishing to fill the remaining time, the presenter makes up questions, which he answers on behalf of himself. Finally, incapable of wasting more time, he lets us out after 54 minutes -- and compliments himself on letting us out early!

It is no wonder that interns are delegated to take notes at these events.

This reminds me of an article I read several years ago about how Powerpoint was making people dumber -- because it was so much easier to make a "professional" presentation, but yet have it completely devoid of substance. Several of my professors have validated this in the past year as well. The director of the LAMP program once told my class that when he attends a conference or meeting where a presenter can't even match the speaking capabilities of sophomores in his classes, he simply walks out. He has better uses for his time.

Now, quite happily, some briefings have been incredibly interesting. For example, one of the top staff members in charge of the Nunn-Lugar came our office a briefing on all of Lugar's pictures hanging in our large conference room. He walked in, explained the background of the program, told us amazing stories backed up with quality information, and explained all the photos in detail. "This is a Tomahak submarine. Only 6 were made. They carried enough missile power to destroy the entire metropolitan area of Indianapolis, launching from anywhere in the world, within 30 minutes. When Senator Lugar was visiting Russia once, a former Soviet admiral called him spontaneously and invited to give him a tour of the sub, and make plans to destroy it...no American had ever been on one previously..." Stories about destroying biological weapons, being unlawfully detained in Russia with Barack Obama, and much more followed. Dynamic, engaging, eliciting participation -- the briefing lasted an hour and felt like 10 minutes.

Now, if everyone could just develop the speaking skills of our foreign relations committee staff, the world would be a much happier place. All they need to do is 1) Project 2) Give pertinent (and hopefully interesting?) information not immediately in front of your audience's face and 3) Keep spiels as short as possible.