TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking

by Chris J. Anderson

By the same logic, if you’re feeling nervous, it can actually work in your favor.

We often encourage speakers who look like they may struggle with nerves to simply be ready, if necessary, to acknowledge it.

Vulnerability can be powerful at any stage of a talk.

Willing to be vulnerable is one of the most powerful tools a speaker can wield. But as with anything powerful, it should be handled with care.

seeking, but it’s not vulnerability and it doesn’t lead to connection. The best way I’ve found to get clear on this is to really examine our intentions.

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

“We need to have owned our stories before sharing them is experienced as a gift. 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! Concentrating on a talk can be hard work, and humor is a wonderful way to bring the audience with you.

When you laugh with someone, you both feel you’re on the same side. It’s a fantastic tool for building a connection.

Humor hacks away the main resistance to listening to a talk.

Audiences who laugh with you quickly come to like you. And if people like you, they’re much readier to take seriously what you have to say. Laughter blows open someone’s defenses, and suddenly you have a chance to truly communicate with them.

There’s another big benefit of laughter early in a talk. It’s a powerful signal that you’re connecting.

And when he eventually gets serious and moves into his main point about the loss of creativity in schools, we’re hanging on every word.

Caution: Successfully spending that much time on humorous stories is a special gift, not recommended for most of us. But if you can find just one short story that makes people smile, it may unlock the rest of your talk.

(Unless you’re extremely talented, I strongly recommend avoiding accents, other than your own!)

Thirty years ago, speakers packed their talks with jokes based on gender, race, and disability. Don’t go there! The world has changed.

Humor is a skilled art, and not everyone can do it. Ineffective humor is worse than no humor at all. Telling a joke that you downloaded o...

Tell anecdotes relevant to your subject matter, where humor is natural. The best humor is based on observation of things occurring around you and then exaggerating or remixing them.

Have a funny remark ready if you flub your words, the A/V goes awry, or if the clicker doesn’t work. The audience has been there and you instantly win their sympathy.

Build humor into your visuals. You can also have the humor be the contrast between what you’re saying and what you’re showing. There are lo...

Use satire, saying the opposite of what you mean, then revealing your intent, though this i...

Timing is critical. If there’s a laughter moment, you have to give it a chance to land. That may take the courage to pause just for a moment. And to do so without...

Very important: If you’re not funny, don’t try to be funny. Test the humor on family or friends, or even a colleague. Are they lau...

Dangers (even in the hands of people blessed with the gift of humor): Off-color remarks and offensive language: Don’t. You’re not ...

Limericks or other seemingly funny poetry Puns Sarcasm Going on too long Any attempted humor based on religion, ethnicity, gender identity, politics. Members of those com...

If you plan to do a lot of public speaking, it’s really worth trying to find your own brand of humor that works. And if not, don’t panic. It’s not for everyone. There are plenty of other ways to connect.

PARK YOUR EGO Would you want to trust your mind to someone who was completely full of himself? Nothing damages the prospects of a talk more than the sense that the speaker is a blowhard. And if that happens early on . . . look out.

Be yourself. The worst talks are the ones where someone is trying to be someone they aren’t. If you are generally goofy, then be goofy. If you are emotional, then be emotional. The one exception to that is if you are arrogant and self-centered. Then you should definitely pretend to be someone else.

Ego emerges in lots of ways that may be truly invisible to a speaker who’s used to being the center of attention: Name-dropping Stories that seem designed only to show off Boasting about your or your company’s achievements Making the talk all about you rather than an idea others can use.

I could tell you to go back to basics and to remember that the purpose of your talk is to gift an idea, not to self-promote.

TELL A STORY Storytelling is so important that the entire next chapter is dedicated to it, but one of its most important functions is to build connection with the audience.

Powerful stories can appear at any stage of a talk. A great way to open. A great way to illustrate in the middle. And sometimes, though less often, a great way to end.

The stories that can generate the best connection are stories about you personally or about people close to you.

But be careful. Some stories can come over as boastful or emotionally manipulative.

And that advice applies to this entire chapter on connection. I’ve sometimes described these suggestions as tools or techniques. It’s important they don’t come over that way. They need to be part of an authentic desire to connect. You’re a human. Your listeners are humans. Think of them as friends. And just reach out.

I can’t end this chapter without lamenting the biggest killer of connection: tribal thinking. Whether in politics, religion, or race, people who are part of a community that has rejected wholesale the ideas you want to articulate, are, to say the least, a challenging audience.

Politics can do this. And so can religion. Some views are held so deeply that if a speaker seems to be threatening them, people go into a different mode. Instead of listening, they shut down and smolder. This is a very big problem.

The toxicity of our political (and religious) nonconversations is a true tragedy of the modern world. When people aren’t prepared or ready to listen, communication can’t happen.

Don’t use language that may trigger tribal responses. Start with a vision of the world as seen through their eyes. And use every one of the tools described here to build a connection based on your shared humanity.

Stories helped make us who we are. I mean this literally. The best evidence from archaeology and anthropology suggests that the human mind coevolved with storytelling.

Stories brought social status to great storytellers and actionable insights to great listeners.

So it’s not just that we all love hearing stories. They probably helped shape how our minds share and receive information. Certainly, the power of stories has continued to this day, as evidenced by the multi-billion-dollar industries built around novels, movies, and TV.

They typically have a simple linear structure that makes them easy to follow. You just let the speaker take you on a journey, one step at a time. Thanks to our long history around campfires, our minds are really good at tracking along.

And a natural part of listening to stories is that you empathize with the experiences of the characters.

The classic formula is: A protagonist with goals meets an unexpected obstacle and a crisis results. The protagonist attempts to overcome the obstacle, leading to a climax, and finally a denouement. (There

When it comes to sharing a story from the stage, remember to emphasize four key things: Base it on a character your audience can empathize with. Build tension, whether through curiosity, social intrigue, or actual danger. Offer the right level of detail. Too little and the story is not vivid. Too much and it gets bogged down. End with a satisfying resolution, whether funny, moving, or revealing.

Some of the greatest talks are built around a single story. This structure offers the speaker huge benefits: The throughline is taken care of. (It is simply the narrative arc of the story.) Provided the story is compelling, you can evoke an intense response in the audience. If the story is about you, you will create empathy for some of the things you care most about. It’s easy to remember what you’re going to say because the structure is linear, and your brain is extremely comfortable recalling one event right after another.

Many speakers therefore use a speaking slot simply to share their own story. It is the simplest, easiest-to-prepare type of talk there is. And there’s a comfort to it. You know your story.

But there’s a trap here too. Remember, the goal is to give. Personal stories sometimes fail to do that.

There’s one other nonnegotiable essential if you’re to tell your own story. It has to be true. This may seem obvious, but, alas, speakers are sometimes tempted to exaggerate or even fabricate.