TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking

by Chris J. Anderson

How does a speaker avoid that kind of audience discomfort? The only way is to make it clear why this future is worth pursuing. Or present the idea in a way that emphasizes human values, not just clever technology.

at least a third of TED’s most viewed talks make no use of slides whatsoever.

Slides move at least a little bit of attention away from the speaker and onto the screen. If the whole power of a talk is in the personal connection between speaker and audience, slides may actually get in the way of that.

Nonetheless, if the core of your talk is intensely personal, or if you have other devices for livening up your talk—like humor or vivid stories—then you may do better to forget the visuals and just focus on speaking personally to the audience.

Having no slides at all is better than bad slides.

The main purpose of visuals can’t be to communicate words; your mouth is perfectly good at doing that. It’s to share things your mouth can’t do so well: photographs, video, animations, key data. Used this way, the screen can explain in an instant what might take hours otherwise.

We usually recommend medium-weight sans-serif fonts like Helvetica or Arial.

Don’t use excessively thin fonts as they are hard to read, especially on a dark background.

Use 24 points or larger in most cases. Use at most three sizes of your chosen typeface per presentation, and there should be a reason for each size.

I usually set credits in white, reversed out of the image and rotated 90 degrees so they sit vertically, up the right side of the slide.

A badly produced video will have your audience thinking more about its poor quality than about its content.

One of the first key decisions you need to make—and ideally you’ll make it early on in your talk preparation—is whether you will: A. write out the talk in full as a complete script (to be read, memorized, or a combination of the two), or B. have a clearly worked-out structure and speak in the moment to each of your points.

The huge advantage of going the scripted route is that you can make the best possible use of your available time.

But the big drawback of a script is that, unless you deliver it in the right way, the talk may not feel fresh. Being read to and being spoken to are two very different experiences. In general (and there are exceptions), audiences respond far more powerfully to the latter.

So if you go the script route, you have three main strategies open to you: Know the talk so well that it doesn’t for a moment sound scripted. (More on this shortly.) Refer to the script (either from a lectern—preferably not one that blocks out your whole body—or possibly from a screen or confidence monitor), but compensate by looking up during each sentence to make eye contact with the audience.

It’s about being familiar enough with the script that you’re really just glancing down once every sentence or two. Yes, this takes work, but it’s worth it, and it’s still far less daunting than full memorization.

Condense the script to bullet points and plan to express each point in your own language in the moment.

for the majority of speakers, the most reliable way to say what you really want to say in the most powerful way is to first script it out and get to know it so it’s part of you. But that is hard work. For most of us, an 18-minute talk can easily take five or six hours to memorize. An hour a day for a week. If you don’t have that time available, don’t even try to go this route.

When that happens, the problem is not so much the risk of the total freeze. It’s that the audience can tell you’re reciting. They may see your eyes roll around between paragraphs as you bring the next sentence to mind. More likely they will notice that your tone is slightly flat and robotic, because you are focused on bringing the right sentences out instead of bringing real meaning to those sentences.

This problem is fixable. But it takes some effort. Imagine you get to observe a friend who, over the course of a week or so, tries to memorize his talk. Let’s say that you ask him every day to give the best version of the talk that he can without using notes. You would notice something odd: Early on in the process, he would be quite convincing (if a little unstructured). He doesn’t actually know any of the talk by heart yet, so he simply does his best to give you the information he knows in approximately the order he’s planned. But a few days into the process, you notice a change. He has reached the point where he knows quite a bit of the talk by heart, and so those parts come out in eloquent paragraphs. But, you don’t feel the same original liveliness from them. You feel his stress. You hear words like, Let’s see; Just a minute; Let me start that again. Or you simply hear those paragraphs rattled off a little robotically. Those clues are giveaways that the talk is being recited rather than spoken with meaning. I call this phase of preparation the Uncanny Valley. It’s a term borrowed from a phenomenon in computer animation where the technology of animating humanlike characters is super-close to seeming real but is not quite there. The effect is creepy: worse than if the animator had steered clear of realism altogether. If your speaker friend comes to the stage in this mode, his talk will probably fail. He’d do better to forget about delivering a scripted talk and instead w...

At Camp Seafarer in North Carolina, we had to tread water while singing camp songs. Then, to make it harder, we had to tread water while also wiggling our forefingers in complicated patterns to the beat of the song. You haven’t really memorized your talk thoroughly until you can do an entire other activity that requires mental energy while giving your talk. Can you give your talk while measuring out the ingredients to make brownies? Can you give your talk while filing all the messy papers on your desk into a file cabinet? If you can give your talk while the cognitive load is that high on your system, you can give it well while focused on stage.

When I have time to memorize a talk, I memorize the $#@! out of it. I memorize the talk until the talk is like a tune. I workshop the talk in my mouth. I run it fast and slow, singsong and stentorian, cool and cooler. I rehearse the talk until I’m performing the talk, not remembering it. And good riddance, reciting. My personal memorization ritual usually happens the night(s) before my talk, in a hotel room. I turn on a TV interview show, slightly louder than usual, to create maximum cognitive interference. Then (no kidding) I hold one leg behind me and recite my talk to my reflection in the mirror. If I stop smiling, I have to start over. If I stall out, I have to start over. If I survive one entire recitation, I won’t forget my talk and the smiles will happen as they may.

If you drive a lot, you could consider recording the talk (just read it into your smartphone, for example) and then playing it back on low volume, while you try to speak just ahead of it. Then try again with the speed accelerated (most phones can do this). One of TED’s favorite speaker coaches, Gina Barnett, believes the key is to be able to recite the talk at double speed. When you can do that comfortably, giving the talk at normal speed will be automatic and you can focus 100 percent on meaning.

But it is important to distinguish unscripted from unprepared.

That you overrun your time slot. This is upsetting to conference organizers, and to all the speakers who follow you. It can also stress out your audience. Don’t do it. The only antidotes are to A. Try out the talk several times to be sure it can indeed be done within the time limit. If not, you must cut material. B. Be disciplined about watching the clock and know how far you need to be when half of your time has gone by. C. Prepare a talk that is no more than 90 percent of your time limit.

audiences really don’t mind one bit if you pause your talk for a moment to take stock.

I’m a master improviser, but talks aren’t the place for improvising, especially on a stage like TED where the time limit is so strict. I considered leaving spots where I could let myself muse and waffle a bit, but as I wrote and rewrote and practiced, I realized that I could convey MUCH more meaning if I did the work ahead of time and distilled my 40-second waffle down into a bite-sized, 5-second protein pill.

Believing what you are saying in real time has a much larger impact than saying the exact right words.

the audience can hear memorized text very clearly,

One of my priorities in giving a talk is to establish a personal relationship with the audience, and to do that I want room to improvise. Whether it’s ten people or ten thousand, a seminar or a rally, I feel it’s essential to talk with people, not at them, and to be authentic in doing it. I do plan talks carefully, however. When I walk on stage, I always know what I want to have said before I walk off again.

A great talk is both scripted AND improvisational. It is precisely like a great jazz performance: First, the opening and closing are always completely scripted; second, the general structure is fully determined before the first horn blows; but third, what makes jazz interesting and captivating is that in the middle of a tune there is always some point (or several points) in which the player can go off script and spontaneously create something that captures the mood of that particular audience in that particular room at that particular moment in time. The player can take a few moments to do this, but he must always know when to come home, and he must always know where home is. A totally improvisational talk is like free jazz: an utter abomination almost every time it happens. A totally scripted talk is like a classical music concert: intricate, deep, and flawlessly executed, but often predictable enough to put the audience to sleep because they know from the start that there will be no surprises.

Brilliant!

If everything in a talk leads in perfect lockstep fashion toward its conclusion, it wins points for logic but can leave the audience feeling as though they have been on a forced march rather than a pleasant, companionable walk.

Here’s the bottom line: The majority of TED speakers do in fact script their whole talk and memorize it, and they do their best to avoid letting it sound memorized. If you have time to do that, and to work your way past the robotic Uncanny Valley, it probably gives you your best shot at encapsulating all you want to say and avoiding the usual traps of a memorized talk. But if you don’t have the time to truly memorize until the talk is second nature, or if you already know that’s just not how you give a great talk, please don’t go this route. The key is to find the mode you can feel confident about, and commit to it. If that choice seems a little stressful, here’s some good news: As you start to rehearse, the difference between the two modes starts to fade. The starting points may be different, but in both cases you end up with a talk that is meticulously prepared and passionately delivered.

Summary

Musicians rehearse before playing. Actors rehearse before opening the theater doors to the paying public. For public talks, the stakes may well be as high or higher than any concert or play, yet many speakers seem to think they can just walk on the stage and get it right the first time.

The greatest corporate communicator of recent times, Steve Jobs, didn’t get there by talent alone. He put in hours of meticulous rehearsal for every major product launch Apple did. He obsessed over every detail.

Even speakers who don’t believe in scripting and memorizing their talks have still made a big point of rehearsing.

Deliver the speech at least five times in your bedroom, paraphrasing the core ideas. Even if you mess up or forget something, force yourself to finish with each go (and always keep time).

Memorization feels safer, but a little risk is good. Fear is energy, and you want some of that running through your wires.

Instead, I write down a list of what theater people call beats: here’s a thought about the DMCA, then one about SOPA, then one about the DNS, and so on.

the gap between memorized and in-the-moment talks starts to fade. The best memorized talks are known so well that speakers can concentrate on their passion for the ideas they contain. The best in-the-moment talks have been practiced enough times that their speakers know exactly what trajectory they should take, and they find many of the most powerful phrases already there in mind.

Great insight!

What we’re really talking about here is not two different ways of delivering a talk, but rather, it’s two different ways of constructing a talk. Some people start with a script, others with a set of bullet points, but the process of rehearsal moves these much closer together.

Maybe, at this point, you’ll push back and say that you hate talks that are rehearsed. You can always tell, however effortless someone thinks they’re making it seem. Talks should be fresh, unique, live! I know maybe a tiny handful of speakers who can do that. They’re building on a lifetime of experience and/or an unusual ability to construct and focus an idea in real time. But for most of us, giving a talk “fresh” brings with it terrible tradeoffs: lack of focus, missed key points, lack of clarity, and time overrun, just to name a few. I really don’t recommend this approach. When people think a talk sounds rehearsed, the problem is not too much rehearsal, it’s too little rehearsal. The speaker is stuck in the Uncanny Valley.

There may be some speaking occasions where you simply can’t justify taking the time to do this (in which case, speaking from a hand-held set of bullet points, or from a script that you look up from as much as you can, are your best options).

Most talks are not timed so tightly, and my style is often conversational and tangential. Practicing makes you realize just how much waffle there is in most talks. Practice, time yourself, and start cutting out all the asides and unnecessary stuff. I also found that in saying it aloud, I came up with phrases that worked well. I memorized those, then used them as anchors, or landing pads to touch down on. I didn’t memorize the whole talk—that can sound pretty fake unless you’re an actor—but I did memorize the structure and those few landing pad phrases, and that made the talk tighter and better.

Some things to ask your audience during or after these rehearsals: Did I get your attention from the get-go? Was I making eye contact? Did the talk succeed in building a new idea for you? Was each step of the journey satisfying? Were there enough examples to make everything clear? How was my tone of voice? Did it sound conversational (usually good) or as if I was preaching (usually bad)? Was there enough variety of tone and pacing? Did I sound as if I was reciting the talk? Were the attempts at humor natural or a little awkward? Was there enough humor? How were the visuals? Did they help or get in the way? Did you notice any annoying traits? Was I clicking my tongue? Swallowing too often? Shifting from side to side? Repeatedly using a phrase like “you know” or (worse) “like”? Were my body gestures natural? Did I finish on time? Were there moments you got a little bored? Was there something I could cut?

Finally, let’s talk about time limits.

But it’s not just about avoiding upsetting them and the event organizer. It’s also about landing your best talk. In our crazy modern attention economy, people respond to crisp, powerful content. They have no patience for flab.

Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address clocked in at just over 2 minutes.

You should plan to cut your material until you’re sure you can finish well under the limit. This will allow time for audience laughter and a wee glitch or two.

Your finish line is your time times 0.9. Write and rehearse a talk that is nine-tenths the time you were given: 1 hour = 54 minutes, 10 minutes = 9, 18 minutes = 16:12 (yes, it is). Then get on stage and ignore the clock. You’ll have breathing room to pace yourself, to pause, to screw up a little, to milk the audience’s response. Plus your writing will be tighter and you’ll stand out from the other speakers who are dancing to the rhythms of the same time limit.