I was recently interviewed by a public speaking magazine on the subject of various kinds of debates – their uses and abuses.  The underlying question was, is debate training a good thing for public speakers or not?

The first distinction you have to make is between debating as people practice it in high school and college, and the thing that the presidential candidates do.  As any debate aficionado will tell you, what the candidates do is not a debate in the traditional sense. 

That doesn’t mean that it is somehow less, or wrong, or impure.  It’s just different.  It doesn’t follow the rules of debate.  Nonetheless, it is a fascinating way to see how the various candidates behave live and less scripted.  Of course, they memorize answers and use pieces of their stump speeches, and so on, but relatively speaking we’re seeing them in as impromptu a setting as we’re likely to see them.  That makes the presidential debates inherently fascinating, and revealing.  And of course, the stakes are very high.

Traditional debate, on the other hand, is many things.  Some debate styles involve speaking as fast as possible – up to 300 words per minute, or twice the rate of an average speaker – in order to lodge as many facts as possible in the judges’ ears.  Some debate styles are obscene, deliberately filled with as many double entendres as possible. 

None of this is terribly useful for persuasive speaking in the grown up business world.  Persuasion is at once intellectual and emotional, and many debate styles promote the intellectual over the emotional.  As a result, debaters can become all head and no heart.  That makes them largely useless in the rough and tumble of real life persuasion, where trust and credibility are the relevant currencies. 

Nonetheless, the research skills, the ability to think and respond on your feet, the ability to marshal complex arguments, the poise under attack – all of the general skills you develop from practicing debate – certainly will stand you in good stead. 

In the end, the best way to become a better, more persuasive speaker is to practice.  In debate as in life, there are no shortcuts.