In general, I like to think of myself as a positive person who believes in helping people learn through positive examples but when it comes to public speaking, i think there is a rule to learning from bad examples.
Let’s face it: all of us hear bad examples of public speaking ll the time. Here is the thing though, when you see someone who is boring, make a note to not do what they are doing. Most of us, whether we are students, adults, or professionals, we see a lot of boring lectures or people just reading to us off of PowerPoint slides. Maybe you are switching channels on the TV and end up watching a congressional person reading a document with his head buried in a piece of paper with a very monotonous and boring voice. All of us can instantly spot things that we do not like in speakers.
Use this to your advantage. When you see something in a speaker that you do not like, make a mental note that you will not do that. I know this tip sounds very simple and virtually worthless and yet I see a number of my clients not do this. They say they do not want to be boring and then put together a very boring PowerPoint presentation with lots of bullet points and feel compelled to go through all the data.
No! You do not have to do anything where you know in advance that you are going to bore people. So where you should be modelling good speakers, you should also be noticing bad ones so you can conscientiously avoid doing what they do wrong.