Exploring The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking

Nsima and Brian discuss Ted Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking and explore ways to better engage any audience.

It is essential that you understand your audience and the people you will be speaking to before setting up your speech or presentation.

Disarm yourself and show your vulnerability to really connect with your audience.

Idea 1 - Make a throughline

A Throughline, which is "a connecting theme that ties together each narrative element. Every talk should have one." You should be able to summarize a throughline in less than 15 words and it's ideal that it has some bit of unexpectedness in them.

• With body language, you can fake it till you become it.


• More choice actually makes us less happy.


• Terrible city flags can reveal surprising design secrets.

Idea 2 - Make the Idea

Now that you have a throughline you can build your speech or presentation upon it. Here are the the tools that were outlined within the Ted Guide to Public speaking along with some speeches that used these tools.

Connection, Narration, Persuasion, Explanation, Revelation

Connection- Getting personal

Rules from Tom Riley

+Tell anecdotes relative to subject matter, the best humor is things around you

+ Have a funny remark ready if you flub your words, or if things gets messed up

• Build humor into potential visuals. Contrast between saying and showing


• Use Satire, say the opposite of what you mean, a comedic element


• Timing, give the laughter chance a moment to land, without fishing


• If you’re not funny, don’t try to be

Example Ted Talks in this category:

Kelly McGonigal - How To make stress your friend

Ron Gutman - The hidden power of smiling

Brene Brown - The power of vulnerability

Sherwin Nuand - how electroshock therapy changed me

Sir Ken Robinson - Do schools kill creativity? (Humorous beginning)

Monica Lewinsky - The Price of Shame (humor)

Rob Reid - The $8 billion iPod (satire in his talk)

NARRATION - Learn to storytell

The Arc of the story

-character for empathy

-build tension

-offer the right level of detail

-satisfying resolution

Don’t over stuff with details that the audience won’t understand

DO NOT LIE OR EMBELLISH details WITHIN YOUR STORY

Example Ted Talks in this category:

Andrew Solomon - How the worst moments in our lives make us who we are

Sir Ken Robinson - Do schools kill creativity?

Lawrence Lessig - We the people and the republic we must reclaim

Malcolm Gladwell - Choice, Happiness, and spaghetti sauce

PERSUASION

You need to show them their assumption is wrong, and yours is right, rebuild something better in the listeners mind.

PRIMING

Prime the listeners mind with examples before you make your point

Priming could be talking about the problem first. Talk about the problem and WHY it is a problem. Then talk about the your proposed solution.

Intuition Pump? - Examples and stories to prime the mind for your point

Example Ted Talks in this category:

Steven Pinker, the surprising decline of violence

Barry Schwartz, the paradox of choice , The jeans Priming example (makes you stressed)

Elizabeth Gilbert, Your elusive creative genius, Genius comes and goes, it’s not who you are.

Reason (If X is true, then Y must also be true)

Example Ted Talks in this category:

Dan Pallotta, The way we think about charity is dead wrong

Emily Oster - Flip your thinking on Aids in Africa (Classic use of the detective story to help us persuade ourselves)

Siegfried Woldhek: The search for the true face of Leonardo Classic use of the detective story to help us persuade ourselves

EXPLANATION

-Light the fire of curiosity. The need to close the knowledge gap

-Bring in big concepts 1 by 1

-Use metaphors, take facts and connect them to someone’s existing mental model of the world

-Use examples (Stories that use your point)

-What do you assume your audience knows?

-What’s your connecting theme?

-What are the concepts needed to build the explanation?

-What metaphors and examples will you use to build the concepts?

-Do a jargon check. Make sure your use of wording fits your audience,

-Make clear what the idea ISN’T before explaining what it IS. Makes it easier for the audience to understand and relate

TRY AND FIND OUT HOW IT IS NOT TO KNOW SOMETHING!

Robin Hogarth - The curse of knowledge

Steven Pinker - Overcoming the curse of knowledge may be the most important thing in becoming a clear speaker

Example Ted Talks in this category:

Dan Gilbert - The surprising science of happiness (He explains extremely rough biology and evolution) Continues to fill knowledge gaps through the talk

Deborah Gordon - The emergent genius of ant colonies

Sandra Aamodt - Why dieting doesn’t usually work

Hans Rosling - The best stats you’ve ever seen

David Deutsch - A new way to explain explanation

Nancy Kanwisher - A neural portrait of the human mind

Steven Johnson - Where Good ideas come from

David Christian - The history of our world in 18 minutes

Bonnie Bassier - How Bacteria “Talk"

REVELATION

The Wonder Walk - a talk based on the revelation of successive images/ideas

-“If you like that, just wait until you see this

-"Walking them through step by step, but linking it altogether in a compelling way

-Dreamscape speakers speak of the world as it might be -

-Paint a bold picture and do so to allow others to see and WANT it

-The more actionable, the better

Example Ted Talks in this category:

Martin Luther King - I have a Dream

John F. Kennedy - The Space Race