As CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt needs little introduction.  And before his current world-shaking job, he was CTO of Sun Microsystems, where he led Java development, and CEO of Novell.  He was also on the Board of Apple before he resigned to avoid conflicts of interest between Apple and Google.  Clearly, he’s a big deal in the rarified world of high-tech giants. 

But how good a speaker is he?

You can see him delivering a commencement speech to Carnegie Mellon here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiYwUde3wNo.  And you can see him talking to CIOs courtesy of Gartner here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHxub_yQfig. 

Eric’s a highly self-assured and competent speaker.  He projects a sense of ease, which is the single most important thing you can do to improve your overall connection with the audience – it’s just not easy to accomplish.  To be sure, he commits all the mistakes of someone who has not made public speaking proficiency a high priority – he looks down at his speaking notes before he finishes the previous sentence, he uses fake gestures, and his gestures happen too late in the intent-gesture-think-speak sequence that people employ when they’re being natural.  To name a few.  But overall, he’s quite comfortable with his speaking, and that’s unusual for a business speaker. 

Of course, his commencement speech at Carnegie Mellon was a collection of the usual clichés, but they were delivered with geniality and aplomb, and who remembers those commencement speeches anyway?  Overall, Eric is good enough to get by, and better than many.