Obama’s speaking technique

This week the ABC’s Kerry O’Brien interviewed Barack Obama. What strikes one about Obama is his sheer consistency of high performance listening and speech communication.

He immediately connects with his audience with his face and eye communication. He always nods when being asked a question – which marks him as someone who is present and listening evenly to the question, and as a person who withholds judgement, both positive and negative.

Through his personal communication he comes across as a person of balance, gravity and substance through his deep measured voice, still body and fluid gestures.

If you need to deliver any type of presentation (sales presentations, board presentation, etc) you can improve your performance by repetitively watching Obama (watch YouTube clips of him) and adapting one of his techniques to your own speaking and presenting.

For example, practice Obama’s measured movement and speaking when he begins to speak. Video record your attempts and then rate yourself against  Obama’s standard. This repetitive practice with the objective feedback of video recordings will help you make incremental improvements in your speaking and presentation impact.