CorpComms Magazine

Much has been made of Ed Miliband's lack of innate oratorial flair, and as the leader of the Labour Party's personal poll ratings have continued to slide, every element of his delivery has been dissected and derided. 

Last Tuesday's relaunch speech at London's Oxo Tower was meant to draw a line under the criticism but praise was in short supply. Every last detail was critiqued from his 'gleaming and gloaming' teeth, to his gait, which was branded a 'splayed waddle' by Quentin Letts of the Daily Mail. Even the Guardian's Simon Hoggart had a pop, citing the Labour leader's contrived use of gesticulation.

Peter Coë, director of healthcare communications agency Tudor Reilly, was one of those left unimpressed by the performance. 'Miliband's relaunch speech was one of his worst. It was a more natural pace but in other respects he was really quite scary - a bit like a hyper-animated version of John Redwood - his nearest Tory equivalent in the 1990s,' he says. 

'He typically comes across as over-rehearsed, intense, robotic and even a bit manic,' says Coë, recalling Miliband's 'These strikes are wrong' interview from last June when the leader rejigged an identical set of words five times. It didn't go unnoticed; the video was posted to YouTube and has now been viewed nearly 400,000 times.

Coë says: 'It was the biggest giveaway yet that he's reliant on scripts and is scared stiff of being himself. I think he's suffering from too much training, too little self-confidence - and too few distinctive policies.' 

But is there really such a thing as too much training? Tom Maddocks, director of Media Training Associates, thinks so. 'If you push people down the track of being a political robot by ignoring the question that can be very frustrating,' he explains.

Maddocks counsels against over emphasising gesticulation. 'If you do this there is a danger you concentrate on gesticulation at the expense of the message.'

Robin Bailey, owner of Capricorn Media, thinks there's no such thing as too much coaching but concedes media training has taken a bad rap in recent years for coaching the personality out of people. 'Take [footballer] Michael Owen as an example; it shouldn't be about teaching people to say as little as possible as a means of damage limitation,' he says.

Coë thinks well-trained orators are finessed to the point where they can act naturally in a series of unnatural and often challenging environments. 'Some people get thrown into top positions with very little natural ability to do that; they end up getting trained over and over again, and fail to improve. As they get criticised publicly for their dismal performances, they become even more self-conscious and wooden than they were in the first place.'

Content is king

Trainers argue that one of the biggest thorns in Miliband's side is the lack of Labour policy narrative. Roddy McDougall, adviser at Trinity Management Communications, thinks the leader suffers from a lack of conviction. 'The problem with his set piece speeches are that he tends to use awkward jargon which I don't think he feels comfortable with,' says McDougall.

'Fundamentally it's about good content, he doesn't have a clear line on the actual point of the Labour Party,' says Andrew Caesar-Gordon, owner of Electric Airwaves.

Coë is also scathing about Miliband's liberal use of rhetorical devices, saying: 'They're too frequent and too obvious.'

'I would suggest that he sort out the geography of his speechmaking, what he's doing with his hands, how he walks, and encourage him to smile warmly so then he can start to make some progress,' advises Bailey. 

Natural talent 

Miliband has also seen his nasal timbre come under fire but this need not preclude him from successful public speaking, media training professionals agree, citing Winston Churchill, Stephen Hawking, Margaret Thatcher and King George VI, as people who have overcome difficulties. 

And the Miliband advice holds for chief executives too. 'If a chief executive is not a natural communicator, the worst thing you can do is make them into someone they aren't,' McDougall says.

'Some people have a natural talent for speaking but many do not. Even so, I find that 95 per cent of the time you can improve what they do,' adds Maddocks. 

So where next for Miliband? He may have his work cut out, experts say. In addition to the unclear policy, Miliband suffers strong oratorial competition in the form of Prime Minster David Cameron. 

'If he was up against John Major as Prime Minster, his shortcomings might be less obvious. Unfortunately for Miliband, David Cameron is one of the smoothest and most confident public speakers we've seen in the role for more than half a century,' Coë says. 

The party leader may also struggle to improve because of the lack of independent advice in the political world. 'He should hire a performance coach from outside the politician's usual coterie of party flunkies,' says Coë. 

Too often the politician's PR will be reluctant to give honest feedback, agrees Caesar-Gordon. 'There is even more ego in politics than in business and often the speaker will turn to their PR who will say You were marvellous, even when that wasn't the case.' Even Miliband's closest aides may have struggled to gush last week.

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