The vast majority of presentations given throughout the business world are mediocre.  The political world has a more interesting mix of good speeches and truly awful ones.  Remember John McCain’s speech the night of the New Hampshire primary?  He read a bad speech badly.  The only palliative we can extend him is that he probably had no time to prepare (or his speechwriters either).  And don’t get me started on education.  Again, there are brilliant lecturers, but in any given student’s experience of education, how many of those does she run across?  A handful.  That means hours beyond count of crimes against the ear and the mind.

Few people set out deliberately to give a bad speech, so how does it happen?  In my work, having seen thousands of speeches, I see three primary problems over and over again.

1.  Not enough research.  About a quarter of the failed speeches I see come about because the speaker didn’t learn enough about the audience to match the topic well with the group.  The speaker may know the subject, and may even deliver the speech well, but it’s to the wrong audience.  Bad speech.  And so easy to avoid:  just do the research.  Find out about the audience.  Find out everything about the audience.  Then you’re ready to go.

2.  Too much research.  Another quarter of bad speeches comes from the speaker preparing — out of panic — way too much material, and then determining that even if the audience dies of boredom or old age, he will tell them everything.  Speeches — an oral genre — are a poor way to convey information.  They are for persuasion, and that means picking and choosing what you’re going to say with great care. 

3.  Not enough preparation.  The other half of bad speeches, roughly speaking, come from too little rehearsal.  Nerves get in the way, and never get out of the way, because the speaker starts on that downhill spiral and doesn’t have the experience or the grounding to save the day.  Most speakers can handle one thing going slightly pear-shaped.  Say the lights are brighter than anticipated, because the speaker didn’t rehearse in the room.  The speaker squints, and goes bravely on.  Then, something else goes wrong.  Say the technology freezes up for a few minutes and the speaker can’t advance beyond the agenda slide.  Strike two.  But the speaker is still ready to bat, fixes the technology, and moves on.  Then, someone gets up and leaves.  That’s strike three, and that’s when you see the unprepared speaker get the deer-in-the-headlights look and it’s all over.

Ultimately, bad speaking is a matter of tact.  If you are tactful, you’ll do the research you need to do, and you won’t think of boring the audience with too much information.  You’ll rehearse, because that’s what a tactful person does — he doesn’t want to embarrass himself or the audience. 

The bad speaker is a tactless speaker.