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The same is true today. As a leader—or as an advocate—public speaking is the key to unlocking empathy, stirring excitement, sharing knowledge and insights, and promoting a shared dream.
Your number-one mission as a speaker is to take something that matters deeply to you and to rebuild it inside the minds of your listeners.
The only thing that truly matters in public speaking is not confidence, stage presence, or smooth talking. It’s having something worth saying.
Many of the best talks are simply based on a personal story and a simple lesson to be drawn from it.
Here’s the thing about inspiration: It has to be earned. Someone is inspiring not because they look at you with big eyes and ask you to find it in your heart to believe in their dream. It’s because they actually have a dream that’s worth getting excited about. And those dreams don’t come lightly. They come from blood, sweat, and tears.
Overstuffed equals underexplained.
Show why it matters . . . what’s the question you’re trying to answer, the problem you’re trying to solve, the experience you’re trying to share?
A. Introduction—getting settled, what will be covered B. Context—why this issue matters C. Main Concepts D. Practical Implications E. Conclusion He said, “There’s an old formula for writing essays that says a good essay answers three questions: What? So What? Now What?
Bring me your well-worn passion of decades, not some fresh, radical gimmick, and trust me—I will be captivated.”
MAKE EYE CONTACT, RIGHT FROM THE START
SHOW VULNERABILITY
A story is only ready to share when the presenter’s healing and growth is not dependent on the audience’s response to it.”
MAKE ’EM LAUGH—BUT NOT SQUIRM!
It’s a striking fact that at least a third of TED’s most viewed talks make no use of slides whatsoever. How can that be? Surely a talk plus images is always going to be more interesting than just a talk? Well no, actually. 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.
The most obvious case for visuals is simply to show something that’s hard to describe. Presenting the work of most
limit each slide to a single core idea.
Practice makes imperfection livable.
In our crazy modern attention economy, people respond to crisp, powerful content.
What matters is persuading the audience that they dare not switch off for a nanosecond.
Curiosity is the magnet that pulls your audience along with you. If you can wield it effectively, you can turn even difficult subjects into winning talks.
You’ve spent the talk explaining a particular piece of work. At the end, why not show us the bigger picture, a broader set of possibilities implied by your work?
wearing something that makes you feel good will help you project relaxed confidence.
Think about dressing for the people sitting in the back row.
The worst aspect of nerves is when the adrenaline sucks the water from your mouth and you struggle to speak.
When you’re nervous, eating may be the last thing you want to do, but an empty stomach can exacerbate anxiety.
Whether deliberate or unintentional, the effect of larger lecterns has been to create a huge visual barrier between speaker and audience.
you should plan to speak at your natural, conversational pace.
This may have been really annoying to a few individuals, but for the audience experience overall, it was a godsend.
the only way we can achieve success is by knowing more and more about less and less?
unification of knowledge.
all knowledge is connected into a giant web.
“The secret of happiness is: find something more important than you are, and dedicate your life to it.”
