I don’t
really watch a lot of speakers. I tend to read more speeches than actually
listen to them. However, I guess in a way I was influenced by a speaker. I have
never done any drugs in my life… This is mainly because I never saw a point to
them and they also had speakers in junior high and high school advocating
against their use. There was a man that came to my junior high school who used
to do drugs heavily. It is one thing to see ‘The Faces of Meth’ website and
another to actually hear someone’s story about how they ruined their life. It
had a huge impact on me and it was mainly because of the passion the man had
behind his story. He was genuinely saddened by his past and was very strongly
against anyone else turning out like him. You would never think just by looking
that this man would be a good speaker, but you could tell after listening to
him that he had done it many times before. The WORST speaker I have ever heard
was at a motivational seminar. It was called a motivational seminar, but in the
end it was just a massive sales pitch by several people. One of the men was
talking about investments and how you should purchase homes and sell them right
away. He kept telling the audience to never have anything in their name. The
reason he was so awful is because he didn’t practice what he preached. He let
it slip that he had several cars to his name and several homes. His credibility
was completely out the window…
I am much in the same boat as you when it comes to watching a lot of speakers but I definitely agree with you when it comes to the credibility of the speaker. Both your best and worst speakers were on completely opposite ends of this spectrum. The passion and honesty that is exhibited by someone who has lived through something can make them more influential in my opinion than even the most practiced speakers. I have found this to be an issue with a lot of the motivational speakers that I have had to sit through their presentations for in different leadership conferences for work. The speech most times is so rehearsed and so far from the speakers true nature or life experiences that more often than not I space out and stop listening after the first few minutes.
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