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Talk Like TED: The 9 Public-Speaking Secrets of the World's Top Minds

by Carmine Gallo

Introduction: Ideas Are the Currency of the Twenty-first Century

• If you can't inspire anyone with your ideas, it won't matter how great those ideas are.

Part 1: Emotional

Chapter 1: Unleash the Master Within

• Dig deep to identify your unique and meaningful connection to your presentation topic. Your presentation is nothing without passion.
• Our levels of desire, persistence, and confidence end up playing a much larger role in success than sheer reasoning powers.
• Asking yourself "What's my product?" isn't as productive as asking "What business am I really in? What am I passionate about?"
• If your goal of speaking is altruistic, namely giving them information to better their lives, then you'll make a deeper connection and feel more comfortable in your role.
• If you're not having a great time at a great career, it will be harder for you to generate enthusiasm through your presentations.
• Happiness is a choice, an attitude that is contagious, and your state of mind will positively affect the way your listeners perceive you.
• Entrepreneurial passion is a positive, intense feeling that you experience for something that is profoundly meaningful to you as an individual.
• Passionate business leaders are more creative, set higher goals, exhibit greater persistence, and record better company performance.
• Positive emotions, such as passion, enthusiasm, excitement, and optimism, are contagious, lifting the moods of others.
• Positive leaders are perceived as more effective, and are therefore more likely to persuade their followers to do what they want their followers to do.

Chapter 2: Master the Art of Storytelling

• Stories stimulate and engage the brain, helping the speaker connect with the audience and making it more likely they will agree with the speaker's point of view.
• A narrative is one of the most powerful ways to break down resistance.
• Data, facts, and analysis challenge people. But narrative gets people comfortable enough to care about the community that you are advocating for.
• Aristotle believed that persuasion occurs when three components are represented: ethos, legos, and pathos.
• Ethos is credibility; logos is the means of persuasion through logic, data, and statistics; pathos is the act of appealing to emotions.
• A story activates language, sensory, visual, and motor areas of the brain; a Powerpoint slide activates only the language-processing center.
• There is always a story to tell, but sometimes you must look hard to find it.
• The first type of story is a personal story. They are an essential trait of authentic leadership, or those who inspire uncommon effort.
• Curiosity happens when we feel a gap in our knowledge, and so a personal experience that leads to an unexpected result makes for a compelling story.
• The second type of story is that of other people. Such stories can still generate empathy, or recognition and feeling of emotions experienced by someone else.
• The third type of story is about brand success. Successful brands leverage personal stories or characters for success.
• Audiences want to be inspired; they need a hero. Captivate them with stories about yourself, other people, or successful brands.
• A powerful narrative can persuade others that your company, product, or idea can help them achieve the success that they desire.
• When telling a story, use metaphors, analogies, and vivid language, and eliminate cliches, buzzwords, and jargon. Audiences tune out familiar phrases.
• Introduce a hero, or someone that people can root for, and a villain. Cast the villain as a challenge, but not as an actual person or competitor.

Chapter 3: Have a Conversation

• Practice relentlessly and internalize your content so that you can deliver the presentation as comfortably as having a conversation with a close friend.
• True persuasion happens only when you gain your listeners' trust. Voice, gestures, and body language incongruent with your words betrays that trust.
• An authentic presentation takes practice. It requires that your nonverbal communication is consistent with your message.
• To craft and deliver a presentation, get help with planning, receive early feedback, and rehearse in front of others.
• To improve body language and delivery, identify what you are passionate about, and practice until true presence comes to the surface.
• The four elements of verbal delivery are rate, volume, pitch, and pauses.
• Most people slow down their rate of speech when giving a presentation, making them sound unnatural. Talk like you're having a conversation instead.
• The problem with most technical or scientific discussions is that the presenters fail to make the content visual, interesting, or entertaining.
• Truthful and confident people have command presence; their look of authority begins with what they wear and how they carry themselves.
• Great leaders convey a feeling of control despite the circumstances, even if there is no immediate solution.
• Complex thinkers use complex gestures and gestures actually give the audience confidence in the speaker.
• So use gestures, but use the sparingly and only at key moments to reinforce key messages.
• Keep your gestures between your eyes and your belly button. Hands that hang below your navel lack energy and confidence.
• An "eager nonverbal" style has animated, broad, open movements; hand movements openly projected outward; and forward-leaning body positions.
• If you fidget, tap, or jingle, watch a recording of yourself presenting; this makes you better equipped to eliminate useless movements and gestures.
• If you stand still, walk and work the room. Again, record yourself presenting, and ensure that you walk out of frame several times.
• "Power posing" increases testosterone and lowers cortisol levels in the brain, which will make you feel more confident and commanding.
• Fake it until you make it. And then fake it until you become it.
• Delivery and gestures, mastered through practice, will enhance your overall message, but without passion and practice, your presence will be severely diminished.

Part 2: Novel

Chapter 4: Teach Me Something New

• Reveal information that's completely new to your audience, packaged differently, or offers a fresh and novel way to solve a problem.
• The human brain loves novelty, and so an unfamiliar, unusual, or unexpected element intrigues us and jolts us out of preconceived notions.
• As long as you relate your topic to the audience by teaching them something new they can use in their daily lives, you'll hook them, too.
• Making information new and exciting releases dopamine in the listener; this in turn makes the information memorable.
• Sometimes the data you present might not be earthshaking or entirely unfamiliar, but that doesn't mean you can't deliver it in a fresh way.
• The smarter someone is, the more likely they are to be persuaded if you give them a new lens through which to see the world.
• You'll become more interesting if you're interested in learning and sharing ideas from other fields that are much different from your own.
• Great conversations or presentations take you to ideas you'd never considered, instead of ideas that are cliché or overused.
• In order to force the brain to see things differently, you must find new and novel ways for it to perceive information differently.
• Pay attention to the stories in your life; if they teach you something new and valuable, chances are other people will want to hear about it.
• The Flynn Effect shows that the average IQ scores have increased for each generation wherever such IQ data is available.
• If you can't explain your big idea, or the one thing you want your audience to know, in 140 characters or less, keep working on your message.
• The "Twitter headline" brings clarity to your message and makes it easier for your audience to process the content.
• Cognitive research shows that our brains need to see the big picture before the details.
• The headline should identify what the product, service, or cause is as well as what makes it unique. Do not create a tagline instead.

Chapter 5: Deliver Jaw-Dropping Moments

• A jaw-dropping moment delivers a shocking, impressive, or surprising moment that is so moving or memorable that is remembered long afterward.
• Such moments create a heightened state of emotion, which increases the chance your audience will remember your message and act on it.
• Identify the most important points you need to make, and then find a novel and memorable way to communicate those messages.
• When you need to create a presentation, do not start by opening the application; instead start by creating the story.
• An emotionally charged event releases dopamine, which aids memory and information processing.
• How vividly we perceive something in the first place predicts how vividly we will remember it later on.
• The brain is wired to recall emotionally vivid events, whether positive or negative, and avoid the mundane.
• A "holy smokes" moment is the one moment when you drive a point home; it's the first thing you tell someone else who wants to know about your presentation.
• To create such a moment, use a prop or demo, unexpected or shocking statistics, pictures or video, memorable headlines, and personal stories.
• When presenting statistics, make numbers meaningful by placing them in a context that the audience can relate to.
• A succinct message that conveys your idea is easily shared via social media; it is the digital equivalent of the sound bite.
• Great communicators are great storytellers; stories create impact moments.
• End with a "showstopper" moment, or a high note. It seals the deal and permanently brands the message in our minds.

Chapter 6: Lighten Up

• Don't take yourself or your topic too seriously; the brain loves humor, so give your audience something to smile about.
• Humor lowers defenses and makes you more likable, making your audience more receptive to your message and more willing to support you.
• Unless you are a professional comedian, jokes are not authentic; but a humorous observation is appropriate and very effective.
• Humor is one of those tools the brain is hardwired to react to and is key to making a message new and novel.
• We use humor as an "ingratiation tactic," making it easier to be accepted into a group. It's a form of interpersonal communication.
• Laughter induces or accentuates positive emotion in others, in order to influence their behavior and promote a more favorable attitude.
• When we meet people who have a good sense of humor, we are more likely to attribute other desirable traits to their personalities.
• In management, humor reduces hostility, deflects criticism, relieves tension, improves morale, and helps communicate difficult messages.
• Anecdotes, observations, and personal stories are not intended to elicit a huge laugh but to put a smile on people's faces and endear the speaker.
• Start a presentation with observational humor; if you try to draw a big laugh right out the gate and bomb, you may not recover.
• An analogy, or a comparison which points out similarities between two different things, can bring a smile to your listener.
• An easy way to get a laugh without being a comedian or telling a joke is to quote someone else who said something funny.
• Quotes break up your slides nicely and provide a mental break. Avoid quotes that are common and overused, and ensure that they are relevant.
• Most PowerPoint presentations have no emotional impact, so include photos or a video to lighten the mood.
• Blend humor, shock, and statistics: Statistics alone are boring, shock alone is a turn off, and humor alone would take away from any serious implications.
• Laughter also lowers blood pressure, strengthens the immune system, improves breathing, and just makes you feel good.

Part 3: Memorable

Chapter 7: Stick to the 18-Minute Rule

• If you must create a presentation that's longer than 18 minutes, build in soft breaks like stories, videos, and demonstrations every 10 minutes.
• The longer the presentation, the more the listener has to organize, comprehend, and remember, creating a "cognitive backlog" and anxiety.
• Tasks that demand willpower reduce your glucose levels. Glucose provides energy, and your brain cells need twice as much energy as other cells.
• Creativity thrives under intelligent constraints. A time limit provides a focus and a framework for creativity to flourish.
• It takes courage to keep things simple. Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, so keep your pitches simple.
• The rule of three means people remember three things really well; add more items and retention falls of considerably.
• The rule of three is a more contemporary and accurate formulation of "the magical number seven, plus or minus two."
• A message map is a tool for a pitch or presentation that helps keep your content clear and concise, and which uses the rule of three.
• It is: Create a Twitter-friendly headline, support it with three key messages, and reinforce each message with stories, statistics, and examples.

Chapter 8: Paint a Mental Picture with Multisensory Experiences

• Deliver presentations that touch more than one of the senses: sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell.
• The brain does not pay attention to boring things, but it craves multisensory experiences.
• When the brain is allowed to build a visual model in addition to a verbal one, the mental connections are much stronger.
• Vision trumps all other senses, so deliver information as a combination of pictures and text rather than just text alone.
• When paying attention to a lecture, conversation, or presentation, the brain cannot pay equal attention to multiple items; it cannot multitask.
• Concepts presented as pictures instead of words are six times more likely to be recalled.
• Pictures are processed in several channels instead of one, giving the brain a far deeper and meaningful encoding experience.
• The "dual coding" theory suggests that pictures are encoded as both visual and verbal, while words are encoded only verbally.
• Use visuals to enhance words, not duplicate.
• Each slide should have only one theme or statistic; do not bombard the audience with an avalanche of numbers and charts all in one view.
• Don't just think about what you want people to know, think about how you want them to feel.
• Strive for no more than 40 words on the first ten slides, and work on eliminating bullet points from your slides.
• Metaphors, analogies, and rich imagery work because the same brain areas are activated as if you were actually seeing the event.
• Use concrete examples as much as possible; the brain is not designed to grasp abstractions.
• An anaphora is a speaking device where you repeat the same words at the beginning of successive clauses or sentences.
• Props and demonstrations are useful multisensory tools to help the audience tangibly grasp your idea and the problem it solves.
• Courage gets noticed; courage wins hearts and minds; courage is what you need to deliver the talk of your life.

Chapter 9: Stay in Your Lane

• Most people can spot a phony, so if you try to be something you're not, you'll fail to gain your audience's trust.
• Successful people identify their life's core purpose and relentlessly follow that purpose to become the best representation of themselves.
• Your goal should not be to "deliver a presentation," but to inspire your audience, to move them, and to have them dream bigger.
• Be real, be yourself; you'll never convince your audience of anything if they don't trust, admire, and genuinely like you.
• Identify your lane and why you're so passionate about that lane. Stay there, hold the space, and be your true authentic self.