Discussion»Questions»Communication» What kind of public speaker do you most enjoy listening to? The articulate creative thinker or the one with personality/enthusiasm? Why?
Can't we have BOTH? Brian Cox is articulate and keeps it interesting without dumbing it down. Maybe the fact that he played keyboards in a pop band once upon a time has something to do with it.
I suppose it is possible Sbf. Also kinda rare. I mean if your personality is quiet, thoughtful, intellectual, articulate having a bouncy jouncy upbeat energetic delivery is hard to envision simultaneously. I like to strain to listen to a speaker. That keeps the audience very quiet. I don't like raucous and bombastic. I guess those are two extremes aren't they? Take Barack Obama and Doofus Donny for example. Politics aside which do you prefer to listen to for any length of time? Whose demeanor causes you to hang on to every word and cherish it? Or a cerebral comedian who is very subtle versus the 3 stooges or the Marx Brothers? Thank you for your reply. JFK was such a speaker as well. Gosh. That is so long ago and far away. He was my first president. The first one I was old enough to vote for. SIGH.
I don't see the contrast given by the question, partly because it depends so much on context.
Among the speakers in general I admire are senior military officers and judges, because their professions require they can impart information and views clearly, coherently, unambiguously and concisely.
A High Court judge encounters people from all sections of society and levels of education, on both sides of each case, and has to be sure his or her listeners in Court or when explaining a general point of law outside, can understand the message without being patronised.
Few politicians are good public speakers - when closely involved with controversial matters, they are often too wrapped up in party dogma for that; but one British MP I admire though I don't support his party, is Frank Fields (Labour, for Birkenhead I think; certainly a Merseyside constituency). My esteem for him came from an essay he gave on the radio some years ago, on the way work and life in and around his beloved Liverpool has changed over the years.
The worst speakers, apart from commercial-radio DJs and rappers, are business managers, who find it clever to be semi-illiterate. They like to hide simple concepts behind utter rubbish full of vacuous clichés like "identifying a requirement to think outside of the box and push the envelope when levveriging" [whatever that is - I know a leveret is a young hare] " our capabilities to innovate new Mission Statements going forward".
(Mission Statement: a by-line invented by business theoreticians and fad-merchants who've never had proper jobs, to tell you either The Bl*****g Obvious or nothing at all. Such statements usually trip themselves up on telling phrases like "we strive to be world-class in..." - company directors seem unable to spot this says "we know we are not the best but never mind, 'world-class' means nowt anyway".)
[Edited to correct a spelling error.]
This post was edited by Durdle at September 17, 2017 6:31 PM MDT
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