Presentation Persona Spotlight: Hillary Clinton

The first woman to be nominated for President of the United States gave an inspiring and uplifting speech at Wellesley College, a private women’s college. Hillary Clinton’s commencement speech included many calls to action and a few hints at her feelings following the loss of the 2016 election.

Clinton has proven herself to be a champion of empowering women and urging them to get involved with politics. Her speech is filled with motivational quotes that center around being fearless and bold.

Presentation Persona

What would Clinton’s presentation persona be? Based on this speech, I would score her as a Scholar, where she scores high in two of the four quadrants which include Exploration, Sharing, Response and Durability.

Presentation Persona

Here’s my breakdown:

Clinton put in a lot of thought and organization into her commencement speech. She relied mostly on her personal experience, but her lifelong career in politics grants her the knowledge build from. This gives Clinton a high score in the Exploration quadrant, which measures how prepared you are for a presentation. Clinton knows what she wants to say and what she wants to inspire her audience to do.

There are many humorous moments in Clinton’s speech, but she does lack charisma and excitement on stage. This gives her a mid- to low score in the Sharing quadrant. Changing the tone in her voice and conveying more emotion could help her appear more natural on stage.

While the audience did react throughout her speech with laughter and applause, Clinton did not seem prepared to engage with them. At the end of her speech, she gave a quick congratulation before stepping back from the podium. This is a mid- to low score of the Scholar because this presentation persona typically feels more relieved when the presentation is over and does the bare minimum of interacting with their audience afterwards.

This is the second highest score for this presentation persona because the Scholar’s message has longevity and relevance for the future.  Clinton knows how to inspire young women and encourage them to keep fighting for their beliefs, even after recovering from her own election lose. She urging the graduating class to pursue careers they are passionate about, try something and fail, and fight for their freedoms. This is the hallmark of her speech and her career as a public speaker.

“We’re going to share this future, we better do so with open hearts and outstretched hands, rather than closed minds and clinched fists.”

Hillary Clinton is an experienced, thoughtful and exemplary presenter, which makes her an inspiring Scholar.

Want to know your Badge? Take the assessment right now.

More from the Ethos3 Blog:

Hillary Clinton Defends Her Paid Speeches

Public Speaking Lessons from a Trump/Clinton Role Reversal

Presentation Persona Spotlight: Donald Trump

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