Speak like TED presenter, wouldn’t that be awesome?
In the next few minutes, I’m going to give you the secrets to speaking like a top TED
presenter.
Secrets that would normally take 500 lifetimes to learn.
But you will learn it in a few minutes.
In the book [Talk Like TED: The 9 Public Speaking Secrets of the World’s Top Minds] by Carmine
Gallo, he looked at 500 different Ted Talks and came up with these 9 Secrets.
Before I get started.
I wanted to say that, knowledge means nothing if we don’t apply it.
Einstein once said: “Insanity is doing the same thing, but expecting different results.”
Only 1 in 10 people immediately apply their knowledge after learning it.
I challenge you to be the 1 in 10.
Using these techniques alone won’t make you a top TED presenter, but the sooner you
start using them, the more practice you will get.
The first secret to a great presentation is PASSION.
Are you passionate about what you are talking about?
If you’re not, you could still use the other techniques to make your presentation decent
sure, but the world’s top speakers usually talk about something they spend their life
devoted to--their passion.
For the longest time, I thought what made presenters great was their expertise in a
field.
While that’s true to some degree, it is not the amount of knowledge someone knows
that makes a great speech, anyone can read an encyclopedia.
It is the passion projected onto the audience that makes a presentation remarkable.
Ask yourself, what are you passionate about?
What makes your heart sing?
I give presentations on self improvement.
My passion is helping people live the life they want.
But in order to tap into a more emotional side of ourselves, we have to ask: what makes
our heart sing.
What makes my heart sing, is being able to help those who do not believe that they are
bound by destiny, those who believe they can achieve their dreams despite the way they
were brought up or despite their financial situations.
To be able to empower them, and show them that they can indeed become that person they
want to be.
Because I grew up in a poor family, and I never gave up building myself.
At times it was hard, and I wished there was someone to guide me.
When someone has the ambition to do more despite their upbringings, it reminds me of me, and
I want to be the person I never had, to guide them.
Secret number 2 is telling stories.
A talk about the injustice in our political system by Bryan Stevenson was rated one of
the most influential presentations on TED.com.
Sixty-two percent of Bryan’s talk was him telling us a story.
I remember when I started my journey to public speaking, I joined a toastmasters club.
It is a weekly gathering of people dedicated to improving their communication and leadership
skills.
We gave speeches approximately once a month or so.
My speeches were decent, never amazing, but not bad either.
After reading Carmine’s book, I started to incorporate passion and stories into my
talks.
I started to receive many compliments on how much I’ve improved.
In my mind, my speeches were exactly the same as they always were, I just added stories,
and chose topics I was passionate about.
Stories allow the audience to feel the emotions as if they were the main character.
It creates an understanding, a connection between the speaker and the audience.
A study showed that our brains can only take in a certain amount of information at once,
so the persuasiveness of a presentation isn’t about who can dish out a greater number of
valid reasons to support a point of view, but rather, it’s about the connection created
between the speaker and the listener.
Even if you incorporated passion and stories in your presentation, the audience will not
see the passion and will not connect with your stories unless it is delivered in the
right way.
That is why practice is so important.
Secret number 3 is practice.
Amanda Palmer, a musician, gave an outstanding speech.
Her TED talk, The Art of Asking reached 4 million views on YouTube.
She tells us a story of when she was a street performer.
She dressed up as a 6 foot clown, and would hand a flower and prolonged eye contact to
whoever gives her money.
Most of the time it was people who look like they haven’t talked to anyone in weeks.
She said “Sometimes people would yell at me, GET A JOB, but that was my job.
They didn’t understand the mutual exchange that took place between me and the people
who gave me money.
Where my eyes would say, Thank you, I see you, and their eyes would say, nobody ever
sees me.”
Before her TED appearance, she had never given a speech before, but she practised her speech
200 times.
Secret number 4 is Teach the audience something new.
Our brains love novelty.
Have you ever had the rush of positive emotions when you bought that new car, or that new
relationship, or anything new really.
Our body releases a hormone dopamine whenever we learn something new, so teach the audience
something.
Back to the point about being an expert.
You don’t have to be an expert, you just need passion, and enough knowledge to teach
people something new.
Those were the first 4 secrets of the world’s top minds, by Carmine Gallo.
Check out the next 5 secrets in the next video.
I encourage you to take a 5 to 10 minute break before watching part 2, for the information
to soak in, but obviously I can’t MAKE you.
I hope you enjoyed it.
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