Election Debate 2 - We don't review it, we dissect it. 5 leaders, 5 dissections.

So, here we go. Once again, this is purely our opinion, based entirely on technical delivery. We leave the politics to the clever people.

Ed Miliband

At the first debate, Miliband showcased a major developmental step forward in his speaking. Yes, it looked over-coached, overtly dramatic and contrived at times, but it was the first time I've seen him exhibit control of his speaking disciplines. This time around, he made an even larger evolutionary jump -he succeeded in bringing his new-found skills into his natural speaking skill-set and comfort zone. Indeed, this was a more relaxed and commanding delivery than any I've seen him make before. So let's get a little technical...

The most sharply-dressed speaker on the stage was positioned at the extreme stage-right lectern. He placed his left foot slightly forward (sometimes even stepping onto the base of the lectern), bringing his left shoulder back and angling his body into the debate. This confident looking posture conveyed assertive alertness. Ocassional moments, where his left hand slipped into his pocket, had a slightly diminishing effect on his status, as he skirted the line between relaxed and care-free. When speaking, he tended to reduce the angle slightly, always removing his foot from the lectern base, ensuring that the posture wasn't too expressive, as expression in ambient posture can reduce the motivation to gesture (the body's compulsion to communicate being satisfied by the posture). This natural posture change made his eye-line shifts, between the studio audience and the camera, seem far less forced than two weeks ago. Speaking pace was well measured, demonstrating status-building ownership of time, allowing him space to find emphasis through vowel elongation, rather than by hitting the plosive consonants. At the previous encounter, Miliband found the length in his vowels through very long, quite speedy, beat gestures, in the form of downward strokes of the hand, hinging at the elbow. This time around, he reduced the length, quite dramatically, whilst slowing the movements down to support the same elongation in his vowels. This steady, controlled beat gesture was far more pleasing to the eye and was precisely the adaptation that I suggested in our last analysis (no, I didn't work with him!). At the end of his beat gesture was a clasp of the finger-tips. This is a form of precision gesture, communicating an attention to detail and accuracy in thought. It's a strangeness that gestures, as well as conveying a mind-set, can encourage one. Try bringing your finger-tips together and moving your hand up and down in slow, controlled strokes, and feel how it focuses your mind. Gestures are a physical manifestation of a thought and their benefit is mainly to the speaker, not the audience. Gestures with longevity and control, tend to hold a speakers mind to the thought -it's difficult to drop a thought when physically holding it. The bizarre, haunting minor inflections that littered his previous delivery weren't entirely eradicated but were reduced in frequency.

This is the most commanding delivery to date for the Labour leader. He must be careful to avoid looking self-satisfied (long blinks of the eye, as he steps back from speaking, can look smug), but technically, from a delivery stand-point, this was his evening.

Leanne Wood

For me, the greatest pleasure of the evening was seeing Leanne Wood free herself from the humbling hand-clasp, at navel level, that devastated her previous delivery. Ocassionally, she found her way back to it, but on the whole her hands were free to impact her speaking rhythms. Actually, her gestures were still small and lacked longevity but they were improved and some of the beautiful, lyrical vowels that populate her lovely dialect were allowed to exist. She is still forced onto the plosive consonants at times, and she makes quick, jutting movements of the head when this happens, but this was a step in the right direction. Her pace was far more controlled, this time around, which gave platform for the vowel elongation to exist and served to build status, to a degree.

Indeed, in my opinion, status must be the focus of her development. Growing nicely, as it is, her delivery is just too small, too limited in the physical space around her. She must find more width to her movements and allow deictic gesturing to occur. Deictic gestures are movements that populate the space around us, when physical areas can come to represent thoughts, ideas and even people. Pushing an idea away, as it is mentioned (or, indeed, a person, as their name is spoken) will communicate a negative relationship with it; drawing an idea towards the body, or simply placing it in close proximity to the body, will commuicate an affinity to it. By not having any width to her physical communication, Wood is losing the ability to use this precious skill. Putting deictic gestures aside, a confident person will fill their space and a low-status individual will try to disappear.

Wood's page skills are awful. She must try to avoid finishing a sentence at the page -it is immensely weakening. When she drops to the page, before a new point or subject, as she frequently does, she must do one of two things.

• Begin speaking at the page and then lift the eye-line 3 or 4 words into the sentence.

• Lift the eye-line before speaking, take a moment to engage and then speak.

To come up from the page whilst speaking the first word is weakening, amateur and lacks grace. Actually, at this level, there is little excuse for so much time at the page, which takes us on to Natalie Bennett.

Natalie Bennett

I'm afraid that this is a review that requires me to choose between being kind to Natalie Bennett or honest with you.

Unfortunately, Bennett's communication style and speaking skill-set made for an abrasive and cold delivery. At times, this seemed more like a hard-sell from an angry, desperate door-to-door vendor, than a delivery made by the leader of a political party, who wants to engage and compel.

Bennett's resonance placement is almost entirely in her head, almost lacking any trace of the chest resonance register. The head resonance is metallic sounding and harsh on the ear (think darleks). It is superb at conveying cold, intellectual prowess and cerebral, statistical, data-driven content, but it is far less able to communicate our feelings and passions than the weightier, warmer, chest resonance. Yes, too far into the chest register and a speaker sounds like a hippy (a stereotype that I'm sure the Green Party are committed to resisting), but such extreme use of the head resonance is damaging to any leader, in any political party or any organisation. If you'd like an example of how powerful the effect of resonance can be, make an “eee” sound behind the nose. Now, holding that resonance placement, say “I love you” to your partner and you'll see just how much negative effect it has. Bennett's resonance balance has nothing to do with her native dialect, which uses both registers across it's variations. This is an idiosyncrasy in Bennett's delivery style that can be eliminated and it must be her main focus.

Bennett used her neck to punctuate her speaking, making sharp jutting movements with her chin. This forced her onto the cold, hard, plosive consonants, as she sought emphasis. Our emotions are in our vowels, through elongation of the vowels (see earlier post for detailed explanation of this), and we tend to use the consonants when speaking about something that we have only a cerebral relationship with. This exaggerated the effect of her head resonance. She must use fluid, controlled and curving gestures to find the vowels in her words.

Bennett's use of the page is dreadful (see Leanne Wood's review, above, for the detail on how it should be done). She must know her content better that she did last night. The debate began and concluded with one-minute prepared deliveries from each of the speakers. Surely, with this much at stake, she could spare the time to know the content of these.

For the reasons above, this delivery lacked grace and came over as a hard-sell. Her cold, emotionally detached delivery style was totally out of sync with her content.

Nicola Sturgeon

From a delivery stand-point, Sturgeon was probably the winner of the previous debate. This time around, she brought many of the same skills to her delivery, whilst (excluding the last question) playing a quieter, more controlled part in it. This showed that Sturgeon is as comfortable in careful debate as she is in the verbal dogfights that she was involved in last time and in the closing part of the debate last night.

Crucially, putting her nervous first minute aside, she freed herself from the hand clasp that worked against her in the first debate. Indeed, last night her gestures were bigger, bolder, more deictic and had better longevity. Freeing up her hands had a wonderful impact on her speaking rhythms. If her vowels were good at the first encounter, they were excellent last night. She must still be wary of side-to-side movements in her upper body, as her powerful synergy, that binds her skills, will work against her, pushing her onto the consonants. Crossing her legs, which was ocassional, limited her ability to find width in her gestures, as her body was finely balanced, with a higher centre of gravity, and it must be avoided.

Actually, from her political stand-point (and I'm not going to get political), the evening played in her favour, with the questions having increasing relevance to her and allowing her to build in intensity and drama, as the evening progressed. This is a structure that many try to achieve and in some respects, it was a gift of chance.

Her nicely balanced resonance allowed her to speak from the heart and the head, in equal measure, ensuring that she held our interest, throughout the evening.

So it was much of the same, last night, with some nice adaptions to the skill-set, as she found a more measured delivery style. In the closing minutes, when she went toe-to-toe with Miliband, she returned to the powerful controlled beat gestures and strongly elongated vowels that won her so much success in the last debate.

Nigel Farage

Well, the content analysts are all talking about strategic mistakes, but from a technical delivery view-point, this was Farage back at his best.

As always, the quick hammering beats of his hands created punctuated, staccato rhythms in his speaking, destroying all hope of vowel elongation and pushing him onto the abrasive consonants. Jutting movements of the head created harsh lexical stresses and there was no hope for the more powerful, emotive, prosodic stress, as he sought emphasis. However, there was one crucIal difference in his performance last night...

Time ownership. Last night he avoided the temptation to say as much as possible in his allocated one-minute slots, and instead, embeded some stunning dynamic pauses into his speaking. A dynamic pause is a moment where the thought and the eye-line are held, forbidding the audience to disengage. Farage seems to thrive under pressure and it was in some of his most pressured moments, when he slowed his pace and imbued the delivery with moments of silence, that his delivery was most impressive.

Interestingly, Farage moved his resonance placement much closer to balance, as he introduced more of his chest register into his voice -I suspect this was not consciously done. The introduction of more chest register conveyed passion and commitment in his speaking. This became more noticable when he entered a vicious spat with Miliband. Not getting political, speaking purely as a communication coach, a speaker must never use the words “liar” or “lying” in a formal debate, as it undermines the legitimacy of the event itself. “Misleading” is as far as an accuasation should go, in a formal debate -the audience will make the translation.

Still present, albeit to a lesser degree, was Farage's use of non-verbal communication, as he dramatically reacted to other speakers words, as they spoke. He should bring this under his control. His non-verbal communication is becoming non-verbal leakage. Grinning so wildly when others speak, a speaker runs the risk of becoming the class clown -or worse still, the village idiot.

Still idiosyncratic, this was a better, more confident delivery. If Farage wanted to communicate passion, he succeeded.

David Cameron

The political analysts all have opinions on Cameron's absence from this debate. Speaking purely from a communications point of view, screen time is everything and every second counts.

Nick Clegg

As above but worse. To quote Oscar Wilde:

“There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about and that is not being talked about”.

So, there we have it. I hope you enjoyed our analysis. Roll on the next debate...