Your Speech Coach

Last week I was asked by Psychology Today to study tapes of the speeches and
interviews of the top presidential candidates. Over the next few weeks I will
be posting the detailed notes I took as I read over 12 hours of tapes on the
candidates. As you read these notes I want you to be thinking of what you do
nonverbally during your speeches and how it may be “read” by your audiences.

Body language analysis of Presidential candidate  Barack Obama.
One of the most interesting and dramatic aspects of Obama’s body and para
language is that it changes so much from speech to speech and location to
location. While many candidates slow down their speech slightly to charm
their southern audiences and increase their rate for New York news shows,
Obama transforms. For example, if you had never heard him speak before and
watched him give his Selma Alabama speech you would note his voice is
extremely slow and takes on the relaxed consonants and cadence of Alabama.
When he is interviewed on1/10/2007 concerning his response to the Bush
Speech his voice pace is face, his speech is clipped, and his consonants are
crisp.
When he is out in crowds he stops to talk to someone, he laser focuses on
them. He gives them significant extended eye contact, leans forward and
stays in their intimate zone of space. These behaviors we observed in the
“charismatic” Clinton.
Remember what makes a candidate look honest and powerful to us when we view
him or her on the small screen, may be counter to what may look appropriate
to the audience he or she is speaking to when they are taped live.

When speaking, behind a podium or on a stage without one,  he does
something rather unusual…  he turns his face and body to either side or moves his
entire body towards the audience to shows his desire to empathize and
connect with them. However, when we view that on video, we may read it
differently subconsciously. For example, In the Selma speech he turns his
face and body to his right side then left again and again, rather than focus
to the front and center. Front and center speaking is read as more honest,
more forthright and powerful. On the tapes,  heactually leans his  body from the waist up out towards the audience of  students as he makes each point. Typically candidates stay straight up and down to show they are “straight” and strong on issues.
Obama’s body language cues are different in debates and interviews than in
speeches. In his third televised debate with Alan Keys, Obama becomes visibly angry:

he jabs out his finger at the interviewer in a symbolic weapon even a one time at
the end of the interview. At one point he even puts up both hands with the
forefingers out, symbolically firing as if there were guns in each hand. He
pushes his hand out toward, not just in a symbolic stop sign, but a more
aggressive pushing away motion. Nonverbally we can see he is an emotional
man. Look for interviews like his response to Bush speech. Watch his mouth
goes up more on his left side. Our emotional right hemisphere controls the
left side of he face  and when there is a split face and one side shows more than
the other,  note which side. The mouth twisting up to his left says he was
feeling very emotional, and though he wished to control it, he couldn’t.