How To Deliver a Ted Talk : Secrets of the World’s Most

Inspiring Presentations
Jeremy Donovan – 2012
The TED conference organizers share a set of Ten Commandments with
their invited speakers. Though these guidelines do offer a number of
compelling best practices, they do not reveal how to give a TED talk. I
have grouped the ten items into two categories below covering content
and delivery:
Content
Thou shalt not simply trot out thy usual shtick.
Thou shalt dream a great dream, or show forth a wondrous new thing or
share something thou hast never shared before
Thou shalt tell a story
Thou shall not sell from the stage: Neither thy company, thy goods, thy
writings, nor thy desperate need for funding; lest thou be cast aside into
utter darkness.
Thou shalt remember all the while: laughter is good
Delivery
Thou shalt reveal thy curiosity and thy passion.
Thou shalt freely comment on the utterances of other speakers for the
sake of blessed connection and exquisite controversy
Thou shalt not flaunt thine ego. Be thou vulnerable. Speak of thy failure
as well as they success.
Thou shalt not read thy speech.
Thou shalt not steal the time of them that follow thee.
P. 7-8.
Accelerating personal development is the third fundamental need that you
can access to connect with your audience. We all want to learn and grow.
We are curious about ourselves and we work to challenge and ultimately
overcome our limitations. We are equally curious about the world around
us. By way of example, if you have a recipe for setting and achieving
goals, then you have the makings of a great TED Talk. The mechanics of
this kind of topic are oft-used; what is novel is the story of how you have
failed, learned and overcome adversity. P. 12-13
Recap
Inspire your audience with a single idea, that either changes the way
people think about their world or persuades them to take action.
Create an audience-centric narrative layered with stories and facts.
Connect with people’s deep rooted needs for belonging, self interest, self-
actualization, or hope in the future.
P. 13//68
Chapter 3 How to Craft your Catchphrase
Simon and his cohort of TED speakers make their ideas spreadable by
turning their central idea into a foundational phrase, a power-bite, that
they repeat until it becomes implanted in their audience’s mind. In
addition to “start with why” Simon has “people don’t buy what you do,
they buy why you do it” and “work with people who believe what you
believe”. To truly understand that particular nearly rhyming “quality”
requires a brief grammar lesson. To make a phrase musical you can
repeat a word or phrase at the beginning (anaphora) or the end
(epistrophe) of successive clauses. Dickens hammered his readers with
anaphora at the beginning of the Tale of Two Cities :
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of
wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was
the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of
Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had
everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct
to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way- in short, the period
was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities
instead on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative
degree of comparison only.”
P. 15-16/68
There are two more quick characteristics that are important and
interrelated. When you construct a two part catchphrase, make the second
part positive and sharply contrasting with the first part. “People don’t buy
what you do…” is a negative statement that triggers one’s brain to ask
“Well then, what do they buy?” they buy why you do it” satisfies the
listener’s immediate need to know.
Recap
Make your idea viral by encapsulating it in an unforgettable catchphrase
that is between three and twelve words.
Craft your catchphrase to be action-oriented and rhythmic.
Repeat your catchphrase at least three times during your presentation.
P. 16/17-68.
Chapter 4 How to Be Introduced
A better introduction might have included something to the effect “By the
end of Han’s talk, you will learn the way that sharing global health data
will enhance the quality of your life, the lives of your children, and the
lives of seven billion of your closest friends.” With that small change, the
audience has a reason to sit up and pay attention. P. 19-20/68.
Most of the time, the person who introduces you will not know you from
Adam. In that case, you should provide a written introduction that follows
the three tenets discussed above by sharing what is in it for the audience,
by maximizing topical relevance, and by minimizing biographical
information. Make sure to take the time to review the introduction with
the emcee and even have him or her practice it once or twice to get the
timing and delivery down. That last step is almost always skipped and
sadly results in a bored audience. P. 20-21/68
Recap
Write a one to two minute introduction for your emcee that connects to
your core message.
Ensure that your introduction shares why you are the right person to share
your idea with the audience
Craft an introduction that positions you as a credible guide not as a super-
human.
21/68.
Chapter 5 – How to Open Your Talk
Remember that the first ten or twenty seconds of your speech is the peak
of your audience’s engagement level. First your personal story should
really be personal. Tell your own story and share your observations. It is
a good idea to make others the heroes in your stories. Second, make sure
your story is directly relevant to your core message. If your goal is to
inspire people to volunteer their time to feed the homeless, a cute story
how your dog can bark “I love you” just does not belong. Third, fourth
and fifth, make your story highly emotional, highly sensory, and rich in
dialogue. The story should be so specific that your audience is able to
relive it with you. P. 22/68.
Remember the magic four needs: physical health and safety; love and
belonging; desire and self-interest; hope in a brighter future. Jamie went
primal, life and death; and had his audience waiting with bated breath to
find out why this is happening and to learn how to stay alive. P. 24-25/68.
A single opening question is sufficient. But, Mr. Sinek instead chose to
bombard his audience with a string of “why” questions. This approach, an
extended “why tease”, is extremely effective but must be done carefully.
To successfully string multiple questions together in an opening, they
must all have the same answer. Simon even mixed how and why
questions together, a bit like playing with matches and dynamite;
however, both types of questions were rooted in the same underlying
reason. I would just leave you confused if I opened a speech with “Why
is it that the sky is blue? And why is it that that a rolling stone gathers no
moss? And why is it that elephants are afraid of mice?” P. 25/26-68.
If ten seconds does not sound like a lot, try it out in front of an audience;
it is an eternity of silence and discomfort for you and for the audience. It
is also the most amazing tension builder in a speaker’s toolbox. Use it
sparingly. P. 27/28-68.
Your opening should have caused your audience to consider the benefits
of your talk in an implicit way. The post-opening, which should always
exist, provides an explicit promise of the benefits that your audience will
let get and how long it will take to get them. For the longest time, I
followed one of the three standard openings with a statement such as: “In
the next forty five minutes, I will share with you the three secrets to
happiness.” That is a pretty good statement of benefits. “I will share” is
lot better than “I will tell”. However, it does have a couple of problems.
First and foremost, it is speaker-centric and not audience-centric. The
statement reveals what I am going to do, not what you are going to get.
Second, it is not particularly sensory. A great post-opening should
provide the audience with a visual metaphor of the structure of your
speech. Applying these lessons, I would use the following: “Forty five
minutes from now, you will walk out of here with the three A’s of
happiness in your toolbox.” That statement is audience centric, it queues
them to listen to my speech to pluck out the three A’s, and has given
them an action-oriented visual. P. 28/29-68.
Catchy mnemonics, such as acronyms or frameworks like the “three A’s”,
are a great way to provide a roadmap to your listeners. Resist the
temptation to share what the acronym stands for at the beginning of your
talk. The pleasure for the audience is in the progressive reveal over the
course of your speech. I have a strong preference for three’s since that is
the stickiest number. You can have three steps, three themes, three
strategies, three tips, three techniques, three tools.