Deconstructing Al Gore

The FT Management blog on Al Gore and his presentational tricks.

Ever since his Oscar-winning film, An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore has been viewed as one of the world’s most persuasive public speakers. So when his new climate change lecture was premiered on Ted, a website dedicated to “inspired talks by the world’s greatest thinkers and doers”, earlier this week, I decided to pick it apart to see how it worked.

Like many people, I was impressed by An Inconvenient Truth. I’d even stood in line to hear Mr Gore speak in New York last May (this was deeply hypocritical, given that I had jetted in from Paris for an emission-heavy long weekend in Manhattan - unless getting him to sign a DVD counted as a carbon offset).

It was my hope that a close analysis of his new slideshow might be useful to public speakers in the business world. Having viewed it three times - and watched An Inconvenient Truth yet again for context - I think I have been able to identify four key elements to the performance. But after studying his verbal and visual tricks in detail, I’m not sure I’d queue to see him again.

The rest of this interesting item discusses the verbal and visual tricks in more detail.

The headings are:-

1. Jokey self-deprecation

2. Inspired comparisons

3. Slippery slides

4. Road-testing

Mr Gore’s 20-minute talk, followed by a Q&A session, can be viewed here.

Tags: Adam Jones, Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth, Financial Times, FT Management blog, Presentational Tricks, Verbal Tricks, Visual Tricks