Iqbal Quadir, microcredit pioneer with GrameenBank to create GrameenPhone, had a great idea.  He’s brought hope and prosperity to 80 million rural Bangladeshi with his wireless phone services, which allow women in villages to start small businesses selling phone calls to their neighbors.  Many other services follow from there, and this kind of bottom-up thinking has not only transformed life in Bangladesh, but also thinking about how to help the poor worldwide. 

Plainly, a great man with a great idea.  But as a speaker, he leaves a lot to be desired.  The kind of mistakes he makes are very typical of a passionate nerd, so they’re worth pointing out. 

You can see him speaking here:  http://bit.ly/OuM5o.  What makes him a weak speaker?  Three main flaws. 

1.  He talks to his slides, not the audience.   Iqbal spends a surprising amount of time peering up at his slides, with his back or shoulder to the audience.  The result is highly disengaging for the poor audience, and it leaves Iqbal looking uncertain about his material.  More than that, audiences tend to follow a speaker’s lead.  So if you look at your slides, the audience will too – and it won’t look at you.  You become secondary to the slides, and that’s not a good thing. 

2.  He talks about the history of the idea rather than what’s in it for the audience.   This temptation is hard for many speakers to resist.  They talk about how the idea occurred to them, or developed through time, or evolved.  That’s natural, because that’s the way it happened to them, but it’s not particularly interesting to the audience.  What audiences care about is what’s in it for them.  So cut to the chase, make a long story short, and give us the gist.  We want to know why the idea matters to us, and how we can use it.  We don’t care about its history. 

3.  He talks about mastery but his body language speaks uncertainty.   This is a man who has accomplished extraordinary things, in the face of steep odds, but his body language betrays the enormous uncertainty of an unpracticed, uncomfortable speaker.  The adrenaline has overtaken him, so he gasps for breath; the result it to make him – and the audience – more nervous.  He rarely makes eye contact with the audience, so he doesn’t get a chance to form a relationship with that audience.  And he shifts uncomfortably on happy feet from his computer to his slides and back again without connecting with the audience.  The result is that his enormous accomplishments are undercut and we begin to doubt the message, because the messenger is so weak. 

All kudos to Iqbal Quadir for his wonderful work in benefiting an entire country with bold thinking – and indeed the world.  If only his public speaking were as wonderful.