TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking

by Chris J. Anderson

President Woodrow Wilson was once asked about how long it took him to prepare for a speech. He replied: That depends on the length of the speech. If it is a 10-minute speech it takes me all of two weeks to prepare it; if it is a half-hour speech it takes me a week; if I can talk as long as I want to it requires no preparation at all. I am ready now.

“If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.”

“Choose a human being—an actual human being in your life—and prepare your talk as if you will be delivering it to that one person only.

Ron Gutman gave a TED Talk on the hidden power of smiles. It’s well worth 7½ minutes of your time.)

Brown strongly recommends that you don’t share parts of yourself that you haven’t yet worked through.

What’s satisfying about each of these talks is the way they draw out the meaning from the story. You don’t want to insult the intelligence of the audience by force-feeding exactly the conclusion they must draw from the tale you’ve told.

And what’s to come is a truly astonishing slide. Gilbert shows us data suggesting that, one year after winning the lottery or becoming a paraplegic, both groups are actually equally happy. What?! That can’t be right.

First share a draft script with colleagues and friends. Then try it out in front of a private audience. And specifically ask the questions, Did that make sense? Was anything confusing?

Their strategy is to bring in the new concept and describe its shape just enough so that the prepared minds of the audience can snap it into place for themselves. That’s time-efficient for you and deeply satisfying for them. By the end of the talk they’re basking in the glow of their own smarts.

consider making clear what it isn’t.

Dan Pallotta’s talk. He’s arguing that it’s crazy how we frown on high salaries for nonprofit leaders. “You want to make fifty million dollars selling violent video games to kids, go for it. We’ll put you on the cover of Wired magazine. But you want to make half a million dollars trying to cure kids of malaria, you’re considered a parasite yourself.”

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?

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.

“This is what I tell people: Practice doesn’t make perfect. Practice makes imperfection livable. Because when you know something inside out, you can PLAY with what comes your way, rather than shut it out.”

must come across as if you are sharing these ideas for the first time.

Martin Luther King didn’t say, “Vivid, powerful, unforgettable is the vision I bring to you this day.” He said, “I have a dream.”

One temptation many speakers fall prey to is to use their slides as crutches.

You know how when you give a talk, you like certain parts more than others? You have to love every single sentence.

I personally tend to list out bullet points of what I want to talk about and then try communicating those ideas in my natural language as if I’m talking to friends at a dinner table. The key is to keep your mind focused on the ideas and let the words fall out.

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.

It doesn’t matter how many rooms I’ve spoken in before, today’s audience is always new and different.

First of all he writes a script for his talks (being careful to use spoken English). But then, when I deliver them, I don’t stick to the script I wrote. So why do I write them? Because writing a story is how you find out where the holes are!

“Rehearse your impromptu remarks.” Or at least leave room in your talk for a few optional asides. 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.

Jill Bolte Taylor, whose talk about her stroke exploded across the Internet in 2008, told me: I practiced literally hundreds of hours. Over and over again, even in my sleep as I would awake and find myself reciting the talk.

Practice your speech in front of someone who knows nothing about your work.

rehearsals that actually created the talk. Here’s what he said: I once heard Ron Vawter, the greatest actor I’ve ever known, answer a question about his rehearsal technique. He replied, “I just say the words enough times that they sound like they’re coming from me.”

TED Talk by Julian Treasure called, “How to speak so that people want to listen.”

Now try reading your script, applying a change in tone for each mark. For example, let yourself smile while looking at the pink dots, pause for the big black blob, and speed up a little for the wavy pencil line, while speaking more softly.

Try to remember all the emotions associated with each passage of your talk.

Record yourself reading it and then play it back with your eyes closed.

There are two ways of losing an audience: going too fast is by far the rarer of the two. Going too slowly is actually the bigger problem, since it allows time for people’s minds to wander off.

connection and curiosity much more easily than oration. That conversational tone is even more important when you watch a talk online. There you’re a single person looking at a screen, and you want the speaker to address you as such. Talks that are orated to a large crowd rarely go viral. Some speakers fall into a trap here. In the thrill of being on stage, they get caught up in a slightly too grandiose sense of the occasion and begin unconsciously embracing a form of oration. They slow down their pace. They speak a little too loudly. And they insert dramatic pauses between sentences. This is an absolute talk killer. Oration is a subtle art that only a few are truly great at. It can be appropriate in church or at a mass political rally. But for other public-speaking occasions, I recommend leaving it alone.

Dame Stephanie Shirley chose to sit for her talk, using a metal stool with one foot tucked back on a rung, and notes in her lap. It looked relaxed and natural. The late, great neurologist Oliver Sacks also sat for his talk. At the other end of the spectrum, Clifford Stoll leapt and darted around the stage with such energy that it added an entirely new and unique dimension to his talk.

Don’t mimic someone else’s style or conform to what you think is a particular “TED way” of presenting. That’s boring, banal, and backward. Don’t try to be the next Ken Robinson or the next Jill Bolte Taylor. Be the first you.

“And how many thermonuclear warheads do you think there are on Earth today?” He paused. “Thirty. Thousand.” Without saying anything else he reached down and picked up a sack of pellets, and tipped them into the bucket, first one at a time, then as a torrent. The sound was deafening, terrifying. At that moment, every person in that room understood deeply, viscerally, why this issue matters.