With the arrival and success of the TEDTalk, we are losing some public speaking distinctions. For example, what’s the difference between a speech and a presentation? I’m not sure if anyone cares, but I have always felt that each is a separate tool designed for different jobs. So, if you are concerned about whether you should prepare a speech or a presentation, here is my take on how they differ and what the proper purpose of each should be.
We have records of speeches that date back to ancient Egypt. We know what Pericles said in Athens, and we even know the date he said it. We can read the screeds of Demosthenes, and the muscular barbs of Cicero. The record of sermons and political speeches goes back centuries. We relish what George Washington said when he bid farewell to the officers of the Continental Army, and we cherish the words of Abraham Lincoln who spoke at Gettysburg 150 years ago.
Speeches are part of the historical record. Presentations are not. They are working stiffs, anonymous lugs who labor in the shadows and are soon forgotten.
Speeches, on the other hand, are educated men of means, ladies of repute and virtue, serious and articulate, who hold forth on issues of the day, or on eternal questions, laden with importance. Some are long remembered
Busy people at the very last minute throw presentations together like a deck of cards. There’s no such thing as a PreezoWriter, but there sure are SpeechWriters. They’ve been around for a long time, and some of them work for global leaders and have or will give them words that will resonate through the halls of the past and the malls of the future.
Presentations, on the other hand, aren’t really written at all. In the real world, presenters create them on PowerPoint templates, assemble them from a library of previously used PowerPoint slides, or groups of people sequence slides and agree on what should go on them. Occasionally, someone uses the notes section of PowerPoint to write a spoken text, but if it’s used, it’s usually memorized, not read, and tends to be composed in shorthand.
Speeches, on the other hand, are nothing but written. No pictures. No bullet points on a screen. Just a person on a stage, mostly at a lectern, reading from a printed text, or from a teleprompter.
Because presenters are expected to speak without reading from a text, they need to internalize what they will say, which they accomplish by rehearsing early and often.
However, because they don’t want to go blank and embarrass themselves, they display on a white screen trigger words or phrases to help them remember what to say. These they call bullet points.
Thus, while the speechmaker strives to sound conversational to disguise the fact that she is reading from a written text (or perhaps she is only trying to minimize the damage to her delivery caused by her need to read), the presenter confesses her need for written support by displaying what is essentially an outline of her remarks.
She (the presenter) will have been told at some point that her bullet points (her outline) are helpful to her listeners as well as to herself, but I have not seen any solid evidence such displays are helpful, and my experience leads me to believe that written words displayed for listeners cause them to be distracted. After all, who can read and listen at the same time?
Speech-makers-and-writers need to appeal to the visual mind: they need to paint pictures that listeners can view on the inside of their eyelids. They do this by telling stories.
Presenters need to do the same thing, but because they are often dealing with hard-nosed business issues, are creating their own content, and are more interested in getting out the facts than telling stories, they tend to replace stories with digital images that attempt to illustrate their points. As we know from our childhood, images that arise in the mind through the power of storytelling are vivid and sometimes indelible. I’ve spent more than twenty years helping people develop business presentations, and at this moment (on the train from Boston to Newark, NJ) I cannot think of a single PowerPoint slide that has stuck to the gray matter between my ears.
Speechmakers and writers have to stand more or less in one place, close to their text. They can take a few tentative steps away from the lectern, but soon enough they will beat a path back to their security blanket–the written word.
Presenters—the good ones, anyway—use their freedom from the written word to strut their way across the stage. Especially if they’ve given the same presentation many times. Then with boisterous courage they stride toward the audience, look them in the eye, then move back toward the screen (to point out a word), and then, perhaps, sit jauntily on a stool to engage with their listeners.
This is not easy for a speechmaker to do. I think of speeches as more compressed and disciplined. Their transitions depend on careful word choice, and specific phrases, whereas presentations are more informal, interactive, and deliberative–the audience very often is interrupting the presenter, asking questions, even debating amongst themselves.
Both speeches and presentations can argue about what happened in the past, or what should be done in the future. But anything ceremonial in nature, meant to praise or delight, I would call a speech.
Both are tools created by our amazing ancestors in order to accomplish important tasks—tasks that were, and are, important to the survival and well-being of human groups.
Speeches can remind us what we are fighting for and get us fired up for the battle.
Presentations can help us explain how an accident happened and who was at fault.
Speeches can quite literally confer on us an identity, membership in a group, a tribe, or a nation—and give us thereby a sense of meaning.
Presentations can help us pack the cargo hold so it will balance the plane, convince us to floss on a regular basis, or explain to a business owner who we are and why she should hire us.
Two tools, one more suited for lifting us up, the other more suited for inching us forward. One elegant, one practical. One dressy, the other more casual. One like a thoroughbred, the other, a mule. One like a limo, the other, a truck.
Some of us are good at one and not the other. Some are good at both. And some are good at neither.
The world would be a better place if more were good at both.
Sims Wyeth & Co. provides public speaking courses, leadership skills, presentation skills, voice training, speech training, speech writing, and courses that address stage fright, body language, presentation strategy, persuasive speaking, sales training, and effective use of PowerPoint, all of which contribute to greater executive presence and personal impact.