TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking

by Chris J. Anderson

Your designer will love you if you or a team member assemble as many of the assets (photos, videos, sounds) as possible in a folder before he starts designing. Also, to help the designer, sometimes I’ll open a new Keynote file and make dummy slides with instructions, for example: This slide will show one of the species we’re trying to conserve. This slide will show the dry lakebed; etc.

There are many ways to prepare for and deliver a talk, and it’s important to find the one that’s right for you.

Because when it comes to the exact moment, even if you’ve prepared something that is stunning, there is a long list of things that can go wrong, among them: Your tone of voice puts your audience to sleep. You sound like you’re reciting. You run out of time before you’ve completed half of what you wanted to say.

You get flustered trying to remember how your slides fit with the words you prepared. Your videos fail to start, and your slide clicker doesn’t work properly. You fail to make eye contact with a single member of the audience. You feel uncomfortable on stage, not knowing whether you should walk around a little or stay rooted to one spot. So instead you compromise...

The audience laughs when they most definitely were not supposed to. The standing ovation you dreamed of is replaced by a smattering of polite applause. And—the one thing people dread most—you forget what you were...

Some years ago, TED used to be quite rigid in its rules on talk delivery: No lecterns. Never read your talk. And, in general, those rules make sense. People truly respond to the vulnerability of a speaker who stands there unprotected by a lectern and speaks from the heart. That is human-to-human communication in its purest form.

But there is also power in variety.

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.

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

Scripting also has the advantage that drafts of the talk can be shared ahead of time.

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. Notice I didn’t say to read the script. You may have the entire thing there in front of you, but it’s important that you feel as if you’re in speaking mode, not reading mode. The audience can tell the difference. It’s all about giving meaning to the words as you speak as naturally and passionately as you can. It’s about audience eye contact and smiles or other facial expressions. 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. This has its own set of challeng...

There are only two circumstances where you might get away with actually reading your script: Your talk is accompanied by absolutely gorgeous images or videos that play while you are speaking. In this scenario, you are the lyrical caption provider. The audience’s attention is o...

You are a truly great writer, and the audience understands that they are listening to a piece of written work. But, as we’ll see below, even for great writers with a script in lyric...

And many other speakers, as we’ll see, believe the best way to “write” a talk is simply to try to speak it out loud multiple times.

But, once again, it’s a mistake to be too rigid about this. Great writers can make a different type of talk, one in which the elegant prewritten language is the whole point.

The clues are in the language’s lyricism—words like hew and torment. This is a powerful piece of writing, and it’s meant to be heard that way. Even though he was speaking from notes, the lyrical power of the language made us feel we were in the hands of a master craftsman. We wanted the talk to have been prewritten. (By the way, Andrew told me that this actually is how he speaks to friends at bars. I wish I could be a bystander.)

There’s a lot to be said for going unscripted. It can sound fresh, alive, real, like you are thinking out loud. If this is your most comfortable speaking style, and if you are covering material that is very familiar to you, this may be your best choice.

But it is important to distinguish unscripted from unprepared. In an important talk, there’s no excuse for the latter. Many unscripted talks, alas, result in half-baked explanations, non sequiturs, key elements missed, and rambling overruns.

You also need a strategy to avoid the obvious pitfalls of such an approach: That suddenly you can’t, in the moment, find the words to explain a key concept. Antidote: Practice out loud several versions of each step in your journey until you’re confident that you have complete mental clarity around each one.

That you leave out something crucial. It may be worth working on a transition from each step to the next that makes the sequence come naturally. Perhaps you commit to remembering those transition phrases, or add them to your notes.

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 whe...

One temptation many speakers fall prey to is to use their slides as crutches. In the worst form, this means a series of dismal slides covered with text and bullet poin...

Whichever mode of speaking you decide on, there’s a very simple, very obvious tool you can use to improve your talk, but it’s one that most speakers rarely undertake: Rehearse. Repeatedly.

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

That phrase unintentional memorization is an important one. If you rehearse enough, you may find yourself simply knowing the talk in its best form.

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. It’s really important that you take the clock seriously. This is certainly true when you’re part of a packed program.

Let’s sum it up. For a high-stakes talk, it’s very important to rehearse multiple times, preferably in front of people you trust. Work on it until it’s comfortably under your allocated time limit and insist on honest feedback from your rehearsal audience. Your goal is to end up with a talk whose structure is second nature to you so that you can concentrate on meaning what you say.

Whether or not you memorize your talk, it’s important to pay attention to how you begin and how you end it. At the beginning of your talk, you have about a minute to intrigue people with what you’ll be saying. And the way you end will strongly influence how your talk is remembered. However you deliver the rest of the talk, I strongly encourage you to script and memorize the opening minute and the closing lines. It helps with nerves, with confidence, and with impact.

FOUR WAYS TO START STRONG Audience attention is a truly precious commodity. You always have it when you first arrive on stage. Don’t fritter it away with small talk. It really, truly doesn’t matter that much that you are honored to be there, or that the organizer’s wife needs to be thanked. What matters is persuading the audience that they dare not switch off for a nanosecond. You want an opening that grabs people from the first moment. A surprising statement. An intriguing question. A short story. An incredible image.

Here are four ways to stake your claim to the audience’s attention. 1. Deliver a dose of drama Your first words really do matter.

2. Ignite curiosity

Igniting curiosity is the single most versatile tool at your disposal for ensuring audience engagement. If a talk’s goal is to build an idea in listeners’ minds, then curiosity is the fuel that powers listeners’ active participation.

3. Show a compelling slide, video, or object Sometimes the best opening hook is a glorious, impactful, or intriguing picture or video.

4. Tease, but don’t give it away Occasionally, speakers try to bring too much to their opening paragraph. They essentially give away the punchline of their talk.

SEVEN WAYS TO END WITH POWER If you’ve held people’s attention through the talk, don’t ruin it with a flat ending.

Here’s how not to end: “Well, that’s my time gone, so I’ll wrap up there.” (You mean, you had a lot more to say but can’t tell us because of bad planning?) “Finally, I just want to thank my awesome team, who are pictured here: David, Joanna, Gavin, Samantha, Lee, Abdul, and Hezekiah. Also, my university, and my sponsors.” (Lovely, but do you care about them more than your idea, and more than us, your audience?!)

“So, given the importance of this issue, I hope we can start a new conversation about it together.” (A conversation?! Isn’t that a little lame? What should be the outcome of that conversation?) “The future is full of challenges and opportunities. Everyone here has it in their heart to make a difference. Let’s dream together. Let’s be the change we want to see in the world.” (Beautiful sentiment, but the clichés really don’t help anyone.)

“I’ll close with this video which summarizes my points.” (No! Never end with a video. End with you!) “So that concludes my argument, now are there any questions?” (Or, how to preempt your own applause.) “I’m sorry I haven’t had time to discuss some of the major issues here, but hopefully this has at least given you a flavor of the topic.” (Don’t apologi...

“In closing, I should just point out that my organization could probably solve this problem if we were adequately funded. You have it in your power to change the world with us.”...

“Thanks for being such an amazing audience. I have loved every moment, standing here, talking to you. I’ll carry this experience with me for a long, long time. You’ve been so patient, and I know that you’ll take what you’ve heard today and do some...

Camera pull-back 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?

Call to action If you’ve given your audience a powerful idea, why not end by nudging them to act on it?

Personal commitment It’s one thing to call on the audience to act, but sometimes speakers score by making a giant commitment of their own.

Values and vision Can you turn what you’ve discussed into an inspiring or hopeful vision of what might be? Many speakers try.

Satisfying encapsulation Sometimes speakers find a way to neatly reframe the case they’ve been making.

Narrative symmetry A talk built carefully on a throughline can deliver a pleasing conclusion by linking back to its opening.

Lyrical inspiration Sometimes, if the talk has opened people up, it’s possible to end with poetic language that taps deep into matters of the heart. This