How to Deliver a Great TED Talk: Presentation Secrets of the World's Best Speakers (How to Give a TED Talk) (2 page)

PART 1

SIMPLE

Great presentations are simple and easy to understand. In this section we explore how to make your presentation simple without dumbing it down.

More specifically, by the end of this section you will know how to create simple yet effective presentations. You will learn:

• How to find your core message
  
• How to create your Power Phrase
  
• Rhetorical techniques to make your Power Phrase memorable
  
• The simple ABC-C structure for presentations
  
• Three opening mistakes to avoid
  
• Five Opening Gambits to create an attention-grabbing opening
  
• How to make your structure clear using a Roadmap
  
• Ten anchors to make your presentation memorable
  
• How to craft a compelling conclusion
  

CHAPTER ONE

How to Find Your Core Message

The first step in creating a powerful TED presentation is to find a message you are passionate about. If you were given only 18 minutes to share your message with the world, what message would you share?

I have a poster with a powerful quote stuck on my bedroom wall. It’s a quote that resonated with me the moment I read it. The quote is by Mark Brown, the Toastmasters International 1995 World Champion of Public Speaking:

“Your life tells a story and there is someone out there who needs to hear it. You may think your story is not sensational, but it does not have to be sensational it just has to be sincere. If your audience can relate to you and your experiences, and chances are they will, then you need to tell them what you have been through, share your life, share your love and share your message with the world.”

Even though I don’t know you, I believe that you have a message that you need to share with the world. You have a story that can help others and it’s your duty to share it.

If you still haven’t found your story and your message, ask yourself: What transformative experience have I gone through that can help others? What knowledge do I have that can make life easier for others? If I were to die today and had to leave my son/daughter/niece/nephew with only one message about living life, what message would I leave them with?”

TED speakers are people who are passionate about their messages. For example, brain researcher
Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor
shared on the TED stage the lesson she learned when a blood vessel exploded in the left half of her brain.
Andy Puddicombe
, who left college midway through a sports science degree to become a monk, shared with his audience the importance of taking 10 minutes every day to focus on the present moment.
Simon Sinek
, who dedicated his career to studying successful organizations and leaders, delivered one of the most popular TED talks ever on how great leaders inspire action.

It doesn’t matter what topic you choose. Topics on the TED stage have ranged from “10 things you didn’t know about orgasm” to “how to tie your shoes” to “how to spot a liar.” While the topics on the TED stage may be diverse, there is a commonality among all the speakers. They don’t just give speeches – they open themselves up to the world and share their insights and experiences.

Find a message you are passionate about and which drives you. If you have a message that you genuinely believe in, delivering your speech will be easy because the passion will fuel your excitement. You won’t have to fake a smile or rehearse your body language because your enthusiasm will guide your delivery.

Finding your message requires you to search inside yourself. The process can take anywhere from a couple of minutes to a couple of weeks. However, once you have found the story or experience you would like to share with your audience, the most important thing you must do is distill it into a core message. You should be able to write out the answer to the following question in less than 10 words:

If your audience was to forget everything else that you said, what is the one single thing that you would want them to remember?

For example, the core message of Simon Sinek’s popular TED talk, “
How great leaders inspire action
,” was the phrase “Start with why.” Can you distill your core message down into a short and memorable sentence?

Finding the core of a message is about forced prioritization rather than “dumbing-down.” You may have a lot of ideas you want to share with your audience, but you should strip away all the unnecessary ideas. You should even get rid of all the ideas that aren’t
crucial
– aren’t the
most important thing
that the audience should know.

Identifying and writing down your core message has two key benefits:

• It
  helps you decide what to keep and what to throw out
  . If you have an interesting story, statistic or chart, you should include it only if it helps explain your core message. If it doesn’t, save it for another speech.
  
• It
  helps the audience remember and understand
  your presentation. Once you’ve stripped away all the unnecessary details, the audience gets the benefit of hearing a focused, simple and clear talk. When they leave, they’ll remember you and your core message. You’ll have made an impact.
  

As an example of “finding the core,” let us examine an important idea from Bill Clinton’s 1992 political campaign.

IT’S THE ECONOMY, STUPID

A political campaign is a war zone for hundreds of political issues: budget and spending, civil rights, drug policy, energy policy, foreign policy, health care, immigration, jobs and unemployment, national security, social security, tax policy. The list goes on and on.

With so many key issues at stake, is it possible for a political campaign to find
one single core message?

In the 1992 U.S. election, Bill Clinton’s political campaign did just that when they came up with the following slogan: “
It’s the economy, stupid!”
Clinton’s core message was that he was the guy who was going to get the economy back into shape. The Clinton campaign realized that while all the other issues were important ones, the most important one was to kick-start the economy. They began focusing all their efforts on promoting the core message – “It’s the economy, stupid!” – because that was the most important issue on American voters’ minds.

If Bill Clinton’s campaign can be narrowed down into one core message, then your presentation certainly can too.

IN A NUTSHELL:

• Finding your core message is about forced prioritization. If your audience was to forget everything else that you said, what is the one single thing that you would want them to remember?
  
• Write out your core message on a piece of paper in less than 20 words
  
• Your core message will help you decide what to include and what to discard. Ruthlessly cut out anything that is not directly related to the core message. The result will be a highly focused speech which the audience will remember and thank you for.
  

CHAPTER TWO

Creating a Repeatable Power Phrase

By the time your audience leaves your presentation, they’ve forgotten 20% of what you said. The following day, they’ve forgotten 50% of your message. Within four days, they’ve lost 80% of your message. These are disheartening statistics.

How do you make your presentation memorable?

How do you make your core message sticky?

How do you make sure your message doesn’t go in one ear and out the other?

One of the best ways to ensure your message gets remembered and repeated is to boil your core message down into a single, catchy phrase that you can repeat several times throughout the presentation. This phrase is called a Power Phrase.

For example, consider Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. His power phrase was “I have a dream.” It is a phrase that has withstood the test of time.

One important thing about your Power Phrase is that it should be less than 10 words. If it’s any longer, it will be too long to remember.

There are several rhetorical devices you can use to make your Power Phrase catchy.

CONTRAST

Use contrast to make your phrase catchy. Consider pairing opposite ideas together to make your phrase memorable. For example, look at the following pairing of opposites:

“It is our
light
, not our
darkness
that most frightens us.”
Marianne Williamson

“No one
rises
to
low
expectations.”
John Leslie Brown

“Who can you count
in
and who should you count
out
?”
John Leslie Brown

“The solution is not to do more of the wrong things, to entice people with a
sweeter carrot
, or threaten them with a
sharper stick
. We need a whole new approach.”
Dan Pink

“People
don’t buy
what you do,
they buy
why you do it.”
Simon Sinek

CHIASMUS

Chiasmus is a rhetorical device in which the order of the words in the second of two paired phrases is the reverse of the order in the first. For example:

“Ask not what
your country
can do for
you
– ask what
you
can do for
your country
”
John F. Kennedy

“When the
going
gets
tough
, the
tough
gets
going
”

“We don’t
mistrust each other
because we’re
armed
; we’re
armed
because we
mistrust each other
.”
Ronald Reagan

“People the world over have always been more impressed by the
power
of our
example
than by the
example
of our
power
.”
Bill Clinton

RHYME

In his excellent book on persuasion, “YES: 50 Secrets from the Science of Persuasion,” Dr. Robert Cialdini writes that “rhyme can make your influence climb.” It turns out that people perceive rhyming statements as being truer than non-rhyming statements. Plus, rhyming statements are easier to remember. Here is a Power Phrase that uses rhyme:

“Trust is a must.”
Ryan Avery, 2012 Toastmasters World Champion of Public Speaking

“What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve”
Napoleon Hill

ALLITERATION

Alliteration is the repetition of an initial consonant sound. Consider the following Power Phrase, which makes great use of alliteration:

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the
c
olor of their skin, but by the
c
ontent of their
c
haracter.”
Martin Luther King

“If you can
d
ream it, you can
d
o it”
Walt Disney

“The solution is not to do more of the wrong things, to entice people with a
s
weeter carrot, or threaten them with a
s
harper
s
tick. We need a whole new approach.”
Dan Pink

“People don’t buy
w
hat you do, they buy
w
hy you do it.”
Simon Sinek

IN A NUTSHELL

• Turn your core message into a short, repeatable Power Phrase
  
• Use one or a combination of the following rhetorical techniques to make your Power Phrase memorable:
  
  • Contrast
    
  • Chiasmus
    
  • Rhyme
    
  • Alliteration