This blog is the second in a series of blogs on people that have added something important to the world of communications. Today, it's Steve Jobs. The series is personal and partial, but I welcome nominations for those you think I’ve missed. I’m grateful to these people because understanding how we communicate is desperately important to bettering our humanity in both business and life. Miscommunications are sometimes merely irritating, but sometimes fatal. Business communications are usually banal and boring and only occasionally riveting. Leadership is tougher than ever – and more than ever about communicating well. The great business communicators can turn little companies into dominant ones and truly change the world.
Which brings me to Steve Jobs. Maybe it’s obvious, but as he said in his wonderful Stanford commencement speech in 2005, life is obvious in retrospect – you connect the dots backward. Without Steve the standards for business communications – not to mention equipment – would be a lot lower. The new product announcement would be geeky and even dull, rather than the great theatre that Jobs made it. And we never would have had the best 2 sentences on keeping it real, two sentences that always pick me up when I get down or in a rut: “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.”
The reputation of all but a very, very few CEOs is vanishingly short-lived, because most of them are caretakers rather than creators. Steve Jobs was one of the creators, and I’m grateful to him for that just about every day.
Here are three of Jobs’ best communication tips:
1. Tell a story, don’t talk about features. Pre-Jobs, most product announcements were of the “longer, lower, wider” variety – they boasted of features. Jobs tells a story with his product announcements, a story about what you can do with the cool new toy he’s launching. Try it, it works.
2. Keep your visuals visual. In spite of the best efforts of communication mavens like me, there are still way too many slideware users who think of slides as speaker notes. Jobs used plenty of visuals, but he kept them clean, simple, and full of pictures. No bullets! No lists!
3. Connect to your passion. No surprise, perhaps, but an important one nonetheless: Jobs let his enthusiasm for the product shine through each time he launched a new Apple object. His enthusiasm was infectious – literally – because we have these neurons called “mirror neurons” that reflect back at the other person the emotion they’re projecting to us. We experience the same emotion that the speaker does, so if the speaker is buttoned down and boring, that’s what we’ll feel. But if the speaker is full of passion for her subject, we’ll get that.
Since I reviewed Kate Middleton’s first public speech, it seems only fair to check out another world leader’s maiden attempt at public communication. Kim Jon-un, the 29-year-old dictator of North Korea, addressed one of his country frequent military shows yesterday. The occasion was surprising because it may signal a shift in, at least, PR from that unfortunate little country. Kim Jon-un’s predecessor enjoyed 17 years as supreme leader, and only spoke in public once. The new one apparently plans to set a different pace, since he’s only been in charge for a few months and he’s already tied his father.
The differences between the two speakers are instructive. Kim needs the practice. Where Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge, was winsome and appealing, Kim, the dictator, was monotonous and rarely looked up from his text. Where Kate connected with her audience on the subject of missing her husband, Kim never seemed to connect with his audience at all. He even made the classic mistake of breaking his flow as he turned the page of his text. He shifted nervously from one foot to the other at several points during the speech. The only point at which he looked even a little animated was the end, when he waggled a forefinger at the audience as he uttered his last words.
The audience applauded wildly when he was done, but then he can have those who don’t applaud wildly killed, so that may not signal much beyond a desire not to be slaughtered for lack of enthusiasm. I recommended that Kate use a teleprompter until she gets a little more practiced. I would even more strongly recommend a teleprompter to Kim Jong-un, in order to bring his head up out of the text and to give the illusion that he is speaking to the audience in front of him.
It’s wonderful to think that even a speaker who can bump off his audience gets nervous. That should provide comfort to adrenaline-filled public speakers everywhere. The video below will give you a glimpse of Kim’s first nervous speech and a chance to glory in the realization absolute power isn't absolute -- it doesn't include control over butterflies.
Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, who is currently half of England’s most adorable royal couple, gave her first public speech yesterday. Don’t envy her! Where the rest of us have an audience of maybe a score or a hundred for our first speeches, Kate had the entire world.
How did she do? She was adorable. She was OK. She was….the Duchess of Cambridge. The speech was halting, because she read her brief comments, and had to keep looking down to get the next sentence. That was a bit awkward. She was obviously nervous. But she made up for that with her charm.
Her best moment came when she mentioned missing her husband, who’s on duty in the Falklands at the moment. The audience reacted, she gave a genuine smile, and it was very sweet.
OK, so she’ll gain confidence and get over the reading thing. Perhaps she’ll get used to having a real conversation with her audiences, so that she can work from a few notes or none at all. Memorization would be second best – and a distant second, because it’s hard work, she’s liable to forget, and people who memorize their speeches usually come off as stiff and inauthentic.
As I was watching her, I was thinking about teleprompters. Teleprompters make weak, nervous speakers look better. Past a certain point of experience, though, and they drag all but the most eloquent speakers down. Consider all the criticism President Obama has faced for not being as eloquent now that he’s President as he was on the campaign trail.
That’s because, on the campaign trail, he gave basically the same speech over and over and over again. He got good at it. Now, he’s gives a speech or two a day, with very little prep, and he’s reliant on the teleprompter. It’s keeping him from reaching the emotional highs and connections he made with his audiences on the campaign trail.
Let’s be clear: there’s no shame in using a teleprompter. It’s just a way of putting a speech text up in front of your eyes so you don’t have to look down every few seconds like Kate Middleton.
Teleprompters are now less than $200 for the portable kind. So if you’re a nervous, weak speaker, or you’re just starting out, or you have to give lots of speeches, consider using one. It will keep you on track, and you won’t have to put your head down every few seconds like the Duchess of Cambridge. In that way, you’ll maintain your contact with the audience.
But if you’re a practiced, frequent speaker, and you have the time to master your material, then work from notes or memory and avoid the teleprompter. It will only drag you down.
Audiences long for presenters to be real with them, and just have a conversation. Sure, they want a focused, smart conversation, not a rambling, pointless one like so many real conversations. But they want an authentic connection with their speakers, and the way to achieve that is with a conversation.
That’s hard for speakers to do. When we’re nervous, we want control. When we’re full of adrenaline, we want to protect ourselves. And when we’re confronted with a big crowd, most of us want to hide. And yet a conversation with an audience requires that you give up control, open yourself up, and let go of self-protection.
Professor Brene Brown talks brilliantly about the risks of opening up in front of an audience in her TED talk, “the Power of Vulnerability.” She’s funny, articulate, and moving. Brown is willing to go deep into her own vulnerabilities in order to offer up some hard-won wisdom about courage, compassion, and connection – for her the secret to a successful life.
Along the way her example yields some helpful tips on how to have a conversation with your audience. So do yourself a favor, watch the video, and learn a few things from this great presenter.
Talk more about problems than solutions.
Speakers want to present themselves and their ideas as whole, complete, and – as Brown notes – a tidily wrapped package. But audiences want to see the struggle. They want to know about the problems. Only once you’ve shown that you’ve been down in the valley too will they be willing to climb up the mountain with you. As Brown points out, “When you ask people about love, they tell you about heartbreak.” That’s where the best stories are to be found.
Be willing to self-disclose, but don’t make it about you.
Brown shares plenty about her own struggles as a control freak, and it’s both revealing and funny. But she never makes the talk solely about her. She’s always relating what she learns back to society, the rest of us, you and me. She’s a parent, and she shares what she’s learned in this way: “Children are hard-wired for struggle. They’re not perfect, but they’re worthy of love and belonging.”
Put your best thinking out there; don’t hold back.
Too often speakers settle for the superficial and avoid the deeper issues because, well, they’re hard. Brown is willing to give us her best, whether it’s about her own therapy, or the current political climate. As Brown points out, our political dialogue today has broken down because it’s only about blame. And yet we can only work toward solutions when people are willing to be vulnerable and admit to the problems we’re all facing. She says, “This is not our first rodeo, people. We just need you to be authentic and real….and say, ‘we’re sorry; we’ll fix it’.”
Brown’s talk is top-notch, insightful, witty, and well worth 20 minutes of your time. Watch Brown’s non-verbal communication to see what open, relaxed body language can do to bring in an audience. Watch the talk to see how to have a wonderful conversation with your listeners. Watch Brown to learn something priceless about the importance of vulnerability in our lives.
It’s the season for State of the State addresses. They get less attention than the President’s State of the Union address, but they’re arguably more important to the legislators and citizens of the states in question. I got my start in the public speaking world writing speeches for the Governor of Virginia, and my first big test was the State of the Commonwealth address there.
Each year, it was a down-to-the-wire, nail-biter speech. Because it was always a policy and initiative list, there were many government officials involved, each with a policy axe to grind, weighing in, and the speechwriter was caught in the middle trying to make the words cover everything and still transmit a good speech. We usually started about 3 weeks before the date, and worked pretty much around the clock until the moment itself. In fact, one year I remember editing directly on the teleprompter a few minutes before the Governor was due to start.
It was all about control – control of message, control of initiative, control of the political agenda.
Governor John Kasich has a better way, sparing the sanity and the work hours of his staff. He apparently ad libs most of the speech. The result? The staff gets a break, but not the audience. Kasich rambles on for nearly an hour and a half, far longer than the President, and he discusses every imaginable topic, and a few you never would imagine. He mentions his “hot” wife, God as the lobbyist for handicapped people, and low weight babies, he imitates someone with Parkinson’s disease, he ‘shouts out’ to half the audience, he admonishes winners of his new Governor’s Courage Awards not to sell their medals on eBay, he argues that ex-cons should be able to drive trucks and cut hair, while mentioning that hugs from a woman he names “made him believe in God,” he condemns the slave trade, he describes himself as “a little boy in a Congressman’s body” – and he cries.
This is an hilarious, heartfelt, mortifying, embarrassing speech, at least for the first hour or so. It’s the puppet master’s nightmare, the speechwriter’s joke, and the audience’s torment. In the end, it is the best argument for a teleprompter and a script I’ve ever witnessed. Kasich just goes on and on, enthusiastic to the end, fired up on adrenaline and self-absorption. Meanwhile, the audience grows old, becomes grandparents, and finds religion, praying for release.
In the end, it's audience abuse, pure and simple.
Stick to the written speech, Governor Kasich! Your state needs to get to work!
Here’s a link to the speech. If you have lots of time on your hands, you’re a bored bureaucrat in some other state, or perhaps you’re retired and don’t like golf, then this is the video for you.
I first published this blog a year ago in honor of MLK. So many people have remarked on it that I've decided to republish it today, with minor modifications, once again in honor of the 20th century's greatest orator.
Justly celebrated as one of the greatest speeches of the 20th century, Martin Luther King, Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech becomes even more remarkable when you know that the last 6 minutes of the 16-minute speech were ad-libbed. King felt that he was not reaching the audience the way he wanted to with his prepared text (and Mahalia Jackson, standing nearby, was urging him to "Tell them about the dream, Martin!"), so he called up the metaphor that he had been thinking about for some months, and uttered the unforgettable plea for racial justice, “I have a dream.”
The first 10 minutes of the speech would have been brilliant enough for most speakers to retire on. King began by echoing the Biblical language of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, saying, “Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. . . . But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free.”
King then goes on to talk about the “promissory note” owed to Black Americans – the bad check – the freedom that was still due. He says, “But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.” The response was a roar, and King moved on to talk about “the fierce urgency of now,” repeating the line again and again that “now is the time” for America to make good on that bad check. In fact, the speech is perhaps the best example of the effective use of repeated lines that gather power and force with each repetition.
For an average speaker, that call and response would have been good enough. But King was inspired by the occasion, the locale, and the enormous crowd, and he made an on-the-spot decision to reach deeper.
At the ten-minute mark, King wraps up the section by saying, “No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” This stock Biblical phrase from the Baptist preaching tradition is the signal that King is going off-text, and he next does something truly dramatic: he reaches out to the audience directly, saying, “I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations.”
“Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina,” he continues, and then comes the famous metaphor: “I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment I still have a dream.”
As King works up to the mighty peroration of the greatest American speech of the 20th century, his cadences continue to rise and fall, going higher each time to signal his passion for the subject. The top of the rhetorical arc comes with the closing lines, when King stands on tiptoe, and raises his right hand, and says:
When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”
The roar from the crowd is unmistakable: King has connected with them, he has given an unforgettable speech, and by digging down deep into his soul, he has forever changed the world.
If you’re a public speaker you live some intense moments of your life in the limelight, on stage, in front of an audience – and you know what it is to make mistakes. We all react differently to them. For some of us, mistakes are so terrifying a prospect that it takes all the joy out of the moment. And we agonize about them for hours – weeks – years – afterwards. For others, mistakes are merely the cost of doing business. And for still others, mistakes are opportunities.
Stefon Harris, an accomplished jazz performer on the vibraphone, gives a spirited explanation of what mistakes mean to jazz performers in a recent TED.com talk. I highly recommend the talk both for some great music and a wonderful insight into the nature of error. Stefon says, “There are no mistakes,” in jazz, and I think those of us who live in the public speaking world should embrace his attitude. There are no mistakes.
I spent years as an actor, and doing Improv, and while actors believe in mistakes (fluffing lines, missing an entrance, botching a cue), Improv people don’t. Everything that happens in Improv is simply grist for the mill. As soon as you let go of the idea of right and wrong, you start loosening up and getting good at Improv. The attitude again is liberating for public speakers.
The audience doesn’t know what you haven’t said. So don’t obsess about getting every word or phrase exactly right according to some text, or to some idea of perfection. Just deliver your message as best you can, with passion, to the audience in front of you. In the end, it’s about the audience, not about you anyway.
Stefon’s other insights from the improvisational world of jazz:
1. It’s all about the present. Everyone tells us to be in the moment – our yoga teachers, our life coaches, even the Dalai Lama. Stefon says jazz musicians have to be in the moment because there’s so much going on, you can’t possibly worry about the past or stress about the future. Speakers take note, and focus on the moment.
2. Leading is about influence – and influence is about listening. Stefon demonstrates the difference between coming into a session and insisting on your musical ideas no matter what anyone else says, and listening. If you listen, then you’re inclined to pull ideas from the people around you, and they’re far more likely to follow your lead when the time comes. With enthusiasm. Audiences need the same treatment.
3. Good music comes from awareness and acceptance. You’ve got to be aware of your fellow musicians, and your audience, and you accept what comes at you, so that you can turn it into music. The same attitude helps public speakers deal with the inevitable differences in the setting, the audience, and the moment.
4. No micromanaging. If you are rigid and uncompromising, your fellow musicians will get turned off. If you let everyone else have their say, you’ll be listened to more respectfully when your turn comes. In the same way, speakers need to work with each audience, and treat it with the respect that unique collection of individuals deserves.
Of course public speakers have a road map in their heads (and Power Point slides on their computers) about where they want their speeches to go. But if we can relax a little about the precise road we take, and allow the moment to dictate direction to us, then just like a jazz musician, we can find serendipity in each unique occasion.
I’ve blogged about Malcolm Gladwell before, and given him mixed reviews as a good storyteller, but a speaker with some quirks that got in the way of maximum effectiveness.
Well, it’s time to give Gladwell a second look. His TED talk from July 2011, posted in October, is a masterpiece of the storytelling art, and it is delivered well. This is a talk that any speaker can learn from. If you’re a polished performer, learn from Gladwell’s pacing and tonal variety – and his storytelling. If you’re a novice, then focus on Gladwell’s storytelling, because it is so good that it makes me wish that more speakers would up the ante on themselves and weave a tale as well as he does.
OK, what is it that Gladwell does so brilliantly? Five lessons of the storyteller’s art come from this TED video and the “Strange Tale of the Norden Bombsight.”
First, Gladwell grabs our interest with the high stakes of the story. The best stories are matters of life and death. Of course, a story about a bombsight is exactly that. Our interest is piqued because we’re talking about war, death, and destruction. It’s the storyteller’s equivalent of shouting “fire!” in a crowded theatre – it gets our attention.
Second, Gladwell structures the story in three parts or acts, with the right kind of conclusion. In the first part, or act, Gladwell tells us about Norden and his bombsight and what it was supposed to do. In this way he builds up the interest in the device. Instead of telling us the story retrospectively, he puts us in the time period, in the search for an accurate way to aim bombs, and he tells us why that’s important.
In the second part, Gladwell tells us what actually happened with the Norden bombsight, and why it didn’t deliver on its promise for pinpoint accuracy. This unexpected turn keeps our interest in the story high, because he’s made us care about the device and we want to know why it fails.
And in the third part of his tale, Gladwell draws the larger moral of the story. The point of his tale, again surprising, is that the search for pinpoint accuracy is not the right quest. Instead, we need to be thinking about things like the bombsight in a different and more profound way, with their inherent limitations. The complexity of human issues, we learn, defies solution by the simplicity of things.
And stay tuned for the postscript with which Gladwell closes his tale. It’s brilliant.
Third, Gladwell peppers his story with precise, relevant details – but not too many. Details bring stories to life. And they kill stories when there are too many of them. Gladwell knows exactly when to give us a telling detail, and when to ease up and keep us at the 20,000-foot view. We know exactly how many SCUD missile launchers the US successfully took out during the Iraq war -- zero – but we never get a precise description of the bombsight itself. Why? Because only an engineer would care. The bombsight is too complicated. The average listener only care about its effects.
Fourth, Gladwell has (mostly) conquered his ‘happy feet’ problem. In his earlier talks, Malcolm’s nervous energy showed up in relentless pacing up and down the stage. Now, he’s relaxed enough (or practiced enough) to come to a halt and plant his feet occasionally, and that simple shift makes an enormous difference in his effectiveness. A storyteller's job is to stand and deliver, so that motion doesn't get in the way of comprehension, but rather reinforces it.
Fifth, Gladwell varies his pacing and pitch with the ebb and flow of the story. Advanced speakers should watch and listen to the video focusing on Gladwell’s voice. It’s resonant and strong, and he varies it expertly, speeding up and raising the volume at times, and slowing down and lowering both pitch and volume when he needs a dramatic emphasis. This TED talk shows Gladwell at the peak of his game. Now, if we can just get him to tuck in his shirt….
Watch out, TED. There’s a rival for your viewers’ attentions out there: the Do Lectures. The Do Lectures are granola and Birkenstocks where TED is arugula and, I don’t know, Italian loafers. The Do Lectures happen on a small farm in the little country of Wales, and they’re mostly about sustainable living, but the big idea is that they are talks about people who Do Things, and who might inspire us to Do Things too. In other words, don’t just sit around staring at your computer like I am right now, and like you are when you read this, but get up, get inspired, and get moving.
A typical example of a very thoughtful and inspiring speech from the Do Lectures is Craig Mod’s talk about how the digital era and the iPad affect books and publishing. Craig, a publisher and digital savant, begins quite modestly by saying that anyone who tells you where the publishing industry is heading doesn’t know what he is talking about. And that’s fair warning: the publishing industry is in ferment right now and no one knows where it will be in even a few years’ time.
He then goes on to quite lucidly explain what opportunities the digital era is creating in publishing and what you can – and indeed, should, because these are Do Lectures – do about it. He says that early examples of digital publishing like Encarta asked the wrong question. Encarta asked “How can we stuff a traditional encyclopedia into a digital format?” Instead, it should have asked, “How does digital affect the artifact, the book, publishing?”
And when you ask that question, you get answers like Wikipedia, Kickstarter, and Flipboard, where Mod is working now. It’s a small shift in perspective that yields huge changes in thinking if you’ve got the passion to engage with the combination of digital and books. Mod is on to something with that question, and every writer, speaker, publisher, and distributor should be asking it of what they’re doing, every day.
Mod is enthusiastic as a speaker, rather than polished, but he closes with an extraordinary gambit that I have not seen anyone else use quite as well. He personalizes the talk by directly addressing all the other speakers at the Do Lectures by name, and suggesting to them how they could bring publishing and digital together in their lives. It’s a bravura performance, and deserves emulation by other speakers who want to make a room small – in a very effective and positive way. Nice going, Craig.
For my third in this series on speakers you should cross town to see, let me introduce you to Jacqueline Novogratz. Whenever I’m feeling discouraged about the state of the world, or the economy, I put on one of Jacqueline’s TED talks and get inspired again. Jacqueline is the head of the Acumen Fund, an organization that funds businesses that are making the world a better place and making money at the same time.
The Acumen Fund practices what Jacqueline calls “patient capitalism.” That means the Fund invests in its companies for 15 years or so, in order to give them a chance to get established and become profitable – and make the world better by finding ways to improve farming, deliver safe drinking water, and provide pollution-free energy to countries around the world.
It’s an inspiring story, and Novogratz is an inspiring leader. Her long view of capitalism means that she can say, “what we yearn for as human beings is to be visible to each other,” and you understand what is really guiding her actions and the work of the Acumen Fund.
Her most recent talk on TED comes from a TEDwomen conference in December 2010, and the standing ovation she gets at the end is richly deserved. Her stories will move you if you have a heart. And hang in there to the 14-minute mark, because her story of Ruby, the 6-year old girl from the Civil Rights movement, will show you what courage and grace under extreme pressure looks like.
Jacqueline comes across as a shy speaker, with some self-protective gestures, but her heartfelt passion overcomes that shyness and connects powerfully with her audience – and will connect with you if you let her in. I recommend all 5 of her TED talks – and any conference where she’s speaking.
I’m back from some travel with the second in my series about speakers worth catching. If you have speakers you’ve seen recently that inspired you, please send along the names and I’ll see about including them in the series.
Western music uses a 12-notes scale, and Doug asks the audience, why don’t you ever hear musicians complaining that they only have those 12 notes? It’s a humorous way to talk about leadership, abundance, and getting the job done with what you have. He has the audience guessing the song and performer with only a few notes as clues, to make the point that if a musician can make a unique mark with only those, then surely a business leader can make a difference with all the resources businesses have.
It’s fun, and a good way to make the serious point underlying the music and the jokes. Keeley has a great relaxed conversational style, and he’s very accomplished on the guitar. The combination makes for a compelling presentation. The video doesn’t give the entire speech, unfortunately, but enough to give you a taste of it, and to make you wish you were there.
I’m going to start a blog series on current speakers worth watching and begin with Mitch Joel, author of the bestselling Six Pixels of Separation(what a great title!), prolific blogger under the same name, and frequent public speaker on the subject of social media and marketing. Mitch’s blog is one that I never miss, because he’s always onto the trends and always saying something interesting.
If you’re new to the web and social media, Six Pixels of Separation should be your first stop. Mitch explains the basics – and some advanced stuff – in clear, compelling language. He argues for consistency, adding value, honesty, and speaking like a real human being – and he brings all those essential virtues to his own approach to marketing and the web.
You can catch Mitch speaking here at a recent social media conference, and he’s worth watching for his speaking style as well as what he’s saying. (It's a 4-part video; I've just linked to part one. You can catch the rest on YouTube.) Mitch has a very relaxed, conversational manner, which fits his subject matter and his persona perfectly. The man and the message work comfortably together. Note how well he works the room without wandering too much. He makes it look easy – and of course it isn’t. The match of the casual, comfortable style along with the message – that he’s a ‘presentist’, not a futurist, works very well.
For an always-thoughtful take on the new cyber world of marketing, Mitch Joel is your guy.
Sheryl Sandberg’s TED talk is a tour de force of strong message coupled with an elegant delivery. The talk is aimed at women and discusses the role of women in the workplace, but both men and women can profit from studying this compelling speaker.
Sandberg begins with the problem – women make up more than 50 % of the population, but only hold a small percentage of leadership roles in government, non-profit organizations, and the private sector. She makes her case well, supporting it with a few well-chosen stats and one or two great anecdotes.
Moving on to her solution, Sandberg keeps the spine of her talk clear and simple – why don’t more speakers follow this ancient structure, codified by the Ancient Greeks, and used by smart speakers ever since? She offers 3 ideas to help the situation:
1. Sit at the table 2. Make your partner a real partner 3. Don’t leave before you leave
She then explains each one in more depth. “Sit at the table” means that women shouldn’t hold themselves back out of deference or a desire to be liked. As she notes, success and likeability are positively correlated for men, negatively for women. Meaning that women need to get more comfortable with success.
Second, "make your partner a real partner" means getting your mate to contribute equally at home. We’re still a long way from this happy state. As Sandberg says, it’s probably not all due to Sunday afternoon football and laziness….
Finally, Sandberg says, don’t leave before you leave. Don’t start to check out because you’re thinking about taking some time off for a family. Guys don’t. You need to keep pushing your career ahead, so that at the very least when you come back you get a good assignment, not the mommy track.
Sandberg doesn't pull her punches about the attitudes of either men or women. As a stay-at-home Dad myself when my daughter Sarah was young, I can attest that what Sandberg says is true – you feel like a freak. The other mommies don’t talk to you while you’re waiting in line to pick up your kid. Sandberg closes with a plea to women to help push the change forward by changing their thinking, as well as trying to change the thinking of the other 50% of the population.
Sandberg delivers the talk with a quiet poise that helps us understand why she’s running Facebook, more than holding her own in what must be a male-dominated culture. While she uses some unnecessary (but understandable) self-protective gestures at first, she commands the stage with consistent grace and style, moving on her thoughts and planting her feet to finish them. Many a speaker could improve just by watching Sandberg’s choreography.
If I were coaching her, I would work on her voice, getting her to open up and access her passion and strength more deliberately. But she’s already speaking at a very high level, and this TED talk is a pleasure to watch. Take it in for what Sandberg can teach you about speech structure and delivery.
I love long summer nights, fireworks, and up tempo music. So the Boston Pops 4th of July fireworks and patriotic music spectacular is made for me – and the roughly 800,000 other people who thronged the Charles River Esplanade last night. Some years I’ve attended in person; this year I watched it on TV.
Michael Chiklis, best known to TV audiences for his portrayal of Vic, the tortured policeman on The Shield, had MC duties for CBS, which meant that he had two audiences, one big and one little. The big audience was all those people on the Esplanade. The little audience was the millions of TV viewers.
If that seems backward to you, that’s because it’s a performer’s perspective. To reach a live audience, especially one that has been – ahem – celebrating for hours before you even get to the microphone, you have to go big. It’s not a time for subtlety. It’s a time to yell, “Hello Boston!” with a cheek-splitting grin on your face and hope for the best.
TV audiences, on the other hand, need subtlety, because the cool medium of TV magnifies the little changes in emotion that the camera catches – a look, a sigh, a change of heart. As a result, a great, big, “Hello Boston!” looks goofy and over the top.
Michael Chiklis worked the big crowd like the pro that he is, but there was no way that he could make much of a connection with the little audience on the other end of the TV camera. Every time the camera cut back to him, it felt like we were interrupting someone else’s party.
When you find yourself on a big stage, with a live audience of thousands in front of you, go big. Amp up the energy. Talk to the back row, not the front row. And ride the wave of energy you will get back from that audience. But when you’re doing a television interview, go small. Feel the emotion you want to convey. Don’t shout it out, or try to emote. Just let the emotions happen inside. Let the camera come to you.
It’s impossible to serve both masters – the large live audience and the tiny TV one. The former is stadium rock, and the latter is chamber music. Even a pro like Michael Chiklis can’t do both at once.
I’ve been blogging recently about the abuse and misuse of PowerPoint and other slide software. Today I’m sharing an example of a great business speech that succeeds without using PowerPoint at all. It’s Simon Sinek’s TED talk, and it’s worthy of study. Simon’s talk is about “How great leaders inspire action,” and it succeeds in spite of some flaws in Simon’s delivery because:
1. He keeps it very simple. Simon starts with a deceptively simple question – why do some people and companies succeed, and change the world, while others do not? Martin Luther King, Jr, the Wright Brothers, Apple Computer – everyone else had access to the same information, or insights, or materials, and yet there was only one MLK, Jr, and so on. Why? His answer is also simple – great leaders and companies answer the question of motivation, or purpose, first, communicating inspiration, not technique. The rest of us worry about what and how; great leaders worry about why.
2. He uses a flip chart. The effect of a flip chart is that we feel like we’re getting to hear something for the first time – as if Simon were making it up on the spot. Of course he isn’t, but that doesn’t matter. PowerPoint looks canned; a flip chart talk looks customized.
3. He offers lots of clear examples, and only a smattering of data, to back up his assertions. The human mind is constructed to remember stories, not data, and Simon plays beautifully to this predisposition by giving us examples, anecdotes, and stories, and very little data. We get just enough data, in fact, to believe that he knows what he’s talking about. No more.
To be sure, Simon has his flaws. He comes across as arrogant, but he softens the appearance of arrogance by tipping his head to one side – a classic listening gesture. But that gesture gives up authority, so it’s not the best way to connect with an audience. He also frequently looks down and away from his audience – a thinking gesture – which gives him a professorial air. Again, arrogance mitigated by introversion. But not a great way to connect with an audience.
Those flaws don’t matter in the end, though, because Simon’s presentation is clear, empowering, and actionable. It’s a great model for how to do a business talk. Study it and be inspired.
The first motivational speaker I ever heard was the inimitable Admiral Grace Hopper, sometime in the 80s at the University of Virginia. Hopper left her position as a mathematics professor at Vassar during WWII to join the Navy. She was instrumental in developing COBOL and takes credit for inventing the word “debug” as applied to computers – she says because a moth disabled a computer she was working on during WWII, and she remarked that the computer needed “debugging.”
Grace carried on her speaking career until her death in 1992 at 85. When I saw her in the 80s, she had her message down. She began with some self-deprecating humor about being a woman in the Navy, and in the computer world. The truth was she was so smart she broke through the gender barriers of the day with her brains and character.
That alone was inspiring. But the core of her message was about waste. A nanosecond doesn’t sound like a long time, but if you measure it in terms of how far an electric impulse travels in that time, it’s something over 11 inches.
Grace would hand out ‘nanoseconds’ to everyone in her audience – eleven inches of green and white phone wire – and urge everyone to think clearly and precisely, avoid waste, and reach their potential.
I still have the nanosecond today. I’m looking at it now. Grace Hopper was named the first “computer sciences man of the year” in 1969, but it’s not her courage and trailblazing that has made me keep this prop – this piece of wire – for nearly 30 years. It’s Grace Hopper’s character. That, and the prop, made her and her speech unforgettable.
Here's a brief clip from an old "60 Minutes" program on Hopper. It captures a little of her wit and wisdom. Enjoy!
On March 2, 2011, a pale, thin Steve Jobs kicked off the iPad 2 with his signature new product presentation in San Francisco. He entered to a standing ovation and was interrupted by applause many times during the course of the talk. He was clearly playing to a crowd of fans, but nonetheless his presentation offers a number of lessons about how to present persuasively and effectively. Use these tips to improve your own presentations.
1. He begins by acknowledging the crowd. Jobs realizes that he’s there for the audience, and he shows his awareness by focusing on the crowd. He waits for them to react, to finish their applause. He doesn’t rush their responses. That’s how you establish a rapport with the people in front of you.
2. He uses mostly open gestures. Jobs is a seasoned presenter, and he doesn’t betray much nervousness. But he does tip us off to his nerves in the beginning with some awkward hand gestures: he can’t quite decide where to put them. But soon he settles down and makes his gestures mostly open. Aside from a tendency to put his hands behind his back when he doesn’t know what else to do, which is not very effective, most of his gestures are strong and open.
3. He frames the talk at a high level at the opening. Jobs begins by saying, “I’ve got some updates to talk about, and then a major product announcement. So let’s get started.” And then he’s off and running. He doesn’t make the mistake so many inexperienced presenters make by wasting those first critical minutes in a detailed examination of the agenda. That’s boring. Instead, tell us why we’re there, in a quick framing sentence or two – or story – and then get on it with it.
4. He keeps his remarks both emotional and grounded. Jobs is not afraid to quote a competitor – especially when it makes a good point about Apple – and he lets us know how he feels about Apple products. He used words like “cool” and “wonderful” and “exciting” regularly. He keeps our interest by letting us know how interested he is.
5. He uses visuals well – including video. Virtually all of Jobs’ slides are pictures. Very few bullets and certainly no speaker notes. And his use of video is instructive: the video is touching – including a moving account of how the iPad helps autistic children cope better – and takes us places that Jobs would have to work much harder to do with words.
6. He’s focused on the audience. Jobs never makes the mistake less experienced presenters do by talking to their slides (or video). He’s always talking to the audience. He knows what he’s going to say, and uses the visuals as an enhancement, not a crutch.
7. He tells a good story. Jobs builds suspense by keeping the iPad 2 announcement to the end of his part of the presentation. He leads up to the big deal, rather than “telling them what you’re going to say, saying it, and then telling them what you said.”
8. He doesn’t use jargon. Jobs’ language is straightforward, direct, and enthusiastic. He uses little or no jargon – occasionally a tech term will creep in, but then he is the head of a high-tech company – and keeps his remarks grounded in real activities of real people. He’s always telling us what his gadgets can do, not what esoteric features they have.
9. Finally, he has fun. A speaker’s enthusiasm is infectious – literally, because we have mirror neurons in our heads that share the emotions we see around us. If the speaker is nervous, we get nervous. If the speaker is jazzed, we get jazzed. That’s why a Jobs presentation is fun to watch.
William Ury is one of my heroes. He co-wrote, with Roger Fisher, what is still the best book on negotiation, Getting to Yes. And he has been negotiating in tough spots around the world for nearly 4 decades, from Russia to the Middle East, from Africa to Asia, and from the boardroom to the shop floor. When there seem to be only 2 sides to an argument, and they are deeply opposed, Ury is dedicated to finding a third way. Most recently, he has helped started a grass-roots movement to bring peace to the Middle East, by walking in 'Abraham's path', and finding the common story that just might bring all those warring peoples together. He talks about this quest in the video clip below.
He's not a charismatic speaker, but he's a thoughtful, enlightening, competent one. And his story -- and cause -- is certainly inspirational. His opening anecdote, about 17 camels and 3 brothers, is one that everyone who will ever get involved in any kind of negotiation should know.
As such, he's a fitting speaker to round out this series on inspirational speakers and stories. With thanks to Patrick Burns for sending me the link to this video. Enjoy!
Have you ever been inspired by a teacher? The combination of care and passion, discipline and creativity, openness and focus in the right teacher changes your life and opens you up to new possibilities. That's a rare gift, and for the 9th in the series of inspirational speakers, I'm celebrating Taylor Mali, who puts it all on the line in a poem that gives us the teacher's point of view -- unforgettably. I'm dedicating this blog to Mrs. Mahoney, Mr. Pye, Miss Lord, and Professor Edgar Shannon, all of whom inspired and nurtured me. Thank you. And thanks to Terry Lavelle, who sent me the link.
I'm continuing my series of blogs on inspirational speakers with inspirational stories. Let's see if we can lift everyone's spirits during this holiday season by sharing some inspiration!
Thanks to those who've sent suggestions. I've received a number that are fantastic -- stay tuned and keep 'em coming! No politics please - of course there are many great political speakers, but they're too divisive.
I'm stretching the category a little with this entry: Melissa Etheridge, who after all sings her piece. But if you didn't see her performance of "Piece of my Heart," during a tribute to Janis Joplin (with Joss Stone) at the Grammys a couple of years back, you missed one of the most inspirational musical performances in memory. Why? Melissa was undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer at the time, and wasn't even sure that she would be able to perform, let alone pour her heart into the song as she did.
The clip opens with Joss Stone, and she's very good, but when Melissa hits the stage, you witness courage and heart personified. Enjoy!
Of course the best all-time inspirational speech for moments when the odds seem long and the soldiers weary was penned by Shakespeare and put in the mouth of Henry V -- the "Saint Crispin's Day speech." Henry rallies his troops before battle with the French, who outnumbered them 5 to 1, telling them that if they all died, why then that was a sufficient number of English dead. And if they triumphed and lived, then who would want to share the glory beyond "we few, we happy few, we band of brothers." It's a wonderful moment of bravado and charisma, and Kenneth Branagh gives it a good reading here. Enjoy!
UCLA basketball coach John Wooden touched many lives and inspired many a player. He lived to be 100, and here he is speaking near the end of his life on some of his values and precepts for living. His extraordinary simplicity and charm will stay with you as long as his wisdom. In an era of complexity, it's sometimes good to stand back and remember how simple and clear life really is when you keep your values straight and remember to pass first, shoot second. Enjoy!
Continuing with my inspirational speakers and their stories in honor of the holiday season, I'm posting a simply extraordinary performance by a 10-year-old speaker, Dalton Sherman. If you've ever been nervous before speaking, then take a lesson from Dalton, who steps ups to an arena full of teachers and more than holds his own. Dalton has all the moves, and all the body language, of a motivational speaker 4 times his age. He's the answer to all those speakers who say they remember being humiliated in the 6th grade. This is his 6th (or 5th) grade moment, and I have to say it's a triumph. Enjoy!
Please send me your own favorite inspirational speakers and I'll post them here.
I'm continuing my series of blogs on inspirational speakers with inspirational stories. It's the season, and anyway the world seems to be in a dark mood. Let's see if we can lift the spirits by sharing some inspiration! Please send me your most inspirational videos and I'll post the best ones. No politics please - of course there are many great political speakers, but they're too divisive.
My fourth inspirational speaker is Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroscientist who had a stroke, survived the experience, and talks about it in a way that is unique and uniquely moving and inspiring. Taylor has the great ability to take a potentially tragic event and find the humor in it -- without ducking any of the tougher realities of the situation. Listen to her extraordinary speech on what it feels like to have a stroke -- and move beyond it -- with openness, courage, and grace.
Paul Dunn was one of the first 10 employees at H-P in Australia, and went on to start his own computer company, as well as a number of other companies and ideas -- all of which seemed to make millions. He's one of the world's smartest and most successful entrepreneurs you've probably never heard of unless you're from Australia or New Zealand or you've heard him speak somewhere around the world.
At some point in his career, Paul started mentoring others, traveling around the world giving back, teaching others how to succeed as entrepreneurs, and inspiring people to work with him to create a more joyful world. He's currently the chairman of an organization called B1G1, or Buy One, Give One. B1G1 is running 612 projects in 28 countries to date, from feeding the hungry to restoring vision to the blind. It's an extraordinary organization that was started by a Japanese woman and entrepreneur with vision and heart -- and one of Paul's mentees.
Here's Paul at a TEDx event in New Zealand, telling the story of B1G1 and more. By the way, this video astonished me because Paul mentions my name at the end -- but that's not the reason to watch it. Watch it because Paul has a huge heart and a compelling vision for how we are connected, as one, on this little planet. Enjoy!
I'm continuing my series of blogs on inspirational speakers with inspirational stories. It's the season, and anyway the world seems to be in a dark mood. Let's see if we can lift the spirits by sharing some inspiration! Please send me your most inspirational videos and I'll post the best ones. No politics please - of course there are many great political speakers, but they're too divisive.
My second inspirational speaker is Sir Ken Robinson, an impassioned and articulate campaigner on behalf of creativity in schools (and life). If you've been lucky enough to have a teacher who changed your life -- or suffered from bad teaching -- then you'll appreciate Sir Ken's message. He manages to be witty, wise, and inspiring all at the same time. Enjoy!
I'm going to start a series of blogs on inspirational speakers with inspirational stories. It's the season, and anyway the world seems to be in a dark mood. Let's see if we can lift the spirits by sharing some inspiration! Please send me your most inspirational videos and I'll post the best ones. No politics please - of course there are many great political speakers, but they're too divisive.
OK, my first inspirational speaker is Alice Herz-Sommer, who, at 106 years old, is the world's oldest concentration camp survivor. She is a musician, and so was sent to a camp where she had to perform for the Nazis. But she says the music kept her alive, and she is living testimony to the power of music to feed the soul, celebrate life, and keep death at bay. Here's a little bit of her story:
By the way, Alice turns 107 on Friday. You can send her birthday wishes to: alice107bday@gmail.com. Happy Birthday, Alice!
50 years ago yesterday, Senator John F. Kennedy wrapped up an exhausting presidential campaign at the Boston Garden with a speech to his most loyal supporters. He’s clearly tired, and the speech doesn’t soar quite the way his inaugural would, but watch the excerpts for 3 things that Kennedy did particularly well, and from which any public speaker can learn:
1. Let your points land. Far too many speakers don’t wait for the audience. In this case, with tens of thousands of people listening, Kennedy shows his mastery of audience interaction by waiting for them at every important point. We say, “give” a speech, and that’s an essential idea that’s often lost: you give the speech to the audience. It’s the audience’s speech. Let them have it. Don’t talk over them or past them. 2. Gesture powerfully and simply. Kennedy’s gestures are strong – to a fault, since he overuses the jabbing forefinger. But at the end of the clip you’ll see him open his hand when he makes the ‘ask’ of the audience, and then make a fist, to show emotion at the conclusion. What he lacks in subtlety, he more than makes up for in power and simplicity. 3. Stand tall and believe in your message. Kennedy’s posture may have had something to do with a bad back, but he stands tall and conveys great self-confidence in his message. Your posture signals to an audience how you feel about your subject, and Kennedy’s posture showed no self-doubt. When you stand up to give a speech, stand straight and proud. That way the audience will give you a real hearing.
Here’s the clip. Enjoy!
This blog is dedicated to the memory of Ted Sorensen, presidential advisor and speechwriter with a flair for the memorable phrase. You are missed.
Once again, I'm focusing on an extraordinary thinker and scientist, V. S. Ramachandran. His work in neurology has helped patients with phantom limb pain, a particularly cruel affliction for people who have lost an arm or a leg. What's more, his ingenious solution for phantom limb pain cost all of three dollars.
He has also brought clarity and insight to a number of other curious brain diseases, including the very rare syndrome where a patient believes his or her mother to be an imposter. V. S. is one of those rare thinkers that sees old problems in new ways, thereby transforming a field of inquiry. Further, he has the extraordinary ability to explain his insights clearly and memorably to the average person.
Here he is on people who can't recognize their mothers, phantom limb pain, and other mental mysteries like synesthesia:
As a speaker, Ramachandran' s humor and passion carry conviction and make him memorable. It's interesting to note that his posture is a pronounced "head" posture -- meaning that, seen from the side, he leads with his head. That's typical of intellectuals and others who have a lot on their minds. And, it's a posture that more and more people adopt these days because of hours of work in front of a computer. But, unfortunately, it's not a posture that people instinctively trust. We read it unconsciously as timid, downcast, subservient, or self-effacing. In V. S.'s case, it comes partly from the relative position of the audience (below him, off the stage) and partly from all the thinking going on. But regardless of where it comes from, it has a negative effect on the audience.
Instead, when you're giving a speech, or simply trying to make a good impression, keep your chin up and your shoulders back a little, like a soldier without the tension. Standing up straight will create unconscious feelings of trust in your audience. We instinctively lower our heads and pitch them forward when we know ourselves to be in the presence of someone we consider our superior. It's that unconscious self-abasement that you want to avoid.
In Ramachandran's case, the effect is mitigated for his immediate audience by the raised stage. And his extraordinary rhetorical skills further engage his audience rather than putting it off. But imagine how powerful his speaking would be if he could get himself out of that head posture!
I'm going to devote a couple of blogs to a genius and an expert on neurology: V. S. Ramachandran. He's a compellingly clear speaker on difficult scientific topics. Anyone who has to present dense material -- science or engineering, say -- can take a lesson or two from this masterful storyteller. Here, he talks about mirror neurons, the neurons in our brain that make it possible for us to be empathetic.
What makes V. S. so effective? Following are a few rules to keep in mind:
1. Focus on the passion. Ramachandran's passion for the subject shines through his presentation, in his emphasis, his vigorous gestures, and his intensity. Charisma is focused emotion, and V. S. focuses admirably. As such, we can't take our eyes off him.
2. Keep the language simple. V. S. largely avoids jargon of any kind. The most difficult word he uses in this piece is "neuron," and most people know the meaning of the word well enough to get by, even if we don't know the full scientific properties involved. V. S. further keeps providing clear examples to keep us grounded in the real rather than the esoteric.
3. Remind us what the larger point of it all is. Ramachandran's talk is really about empathy, evolution, and what connects us as human beings. The science is merely a way to understand these big issues. By keeping us always focused on the larger picture, V. S. keeps our heads in the game.
I've worked with many a presenter of difficult material, including scientists, medical people, engineers, IT folks, and so forth. Each of them has believed that her topic presents unique challenges in making the subject comprehensible to the layperson. And yet, the basic issues always come down to passion, simplicity, and focus. If you can keep these in mind, you can present the most difficult material with clarity and power.
A final note on Ramachandran's presenting style. As you'll see more clearly in the video in my next blog, he has a bad case of "head posture." I've blogged on this before; it's a sign that the speaker is focused on, well, thinking. No surprise here; V. S. has a lot to think about, and it's all about the brain itself. But the effect is to distance the speaker from the audience. All the more reason, then, to admire V. S. Ramachandran's extraordinary ability to communicate persuasively despite his less than accomodating body language.
Our brains evolved to keep us alive and safe -- but not to speak in front of an audience in the 21st century. My story about Richard Branson illustrates what happens when evolution takes over. Enjoy!
Great public speaking requires the intersection of the message, the speaker, and the audience. Even an Obama or a Reagan misfires sometimes when those three requirements, like the stars, are not aligned.
Understanding how to put the three elements of a successful speech together requires something not often talked about in public speaking circles: tact. A speaker needs to have the tact to understand what is right for a particular audience at a particular time. But what is tact, and how do you exercise it?
Here’s a way to think more precisely about what tact means. As I talk about in more depth in Trust Me, there are 4 steps to a successful, tactful relationship with an audience. Speaker and audience need to be first openand then connected with each other before the audience will be ready to hear the speaker’s passion. The final step is for the speaker to listen to the audience as hard as the audience listens to the speaker. Put all 4 steps together, and you have tact – and a successful speech.
Now, watch what happens when someone has plenty of passion, but isn’t open or connected with his audience. The resulting fatal lack of tact is hilarious: http://bit.ly/bF7hue.
A reader was kind enough to send me a link to J. K. Rowling’s commencement address to Harvard in 2008 and ask what I thought of her performance. Watching the video brought to mind how much public speaking has changed and what the new requirements are now for success in public speaking.
Let me begin by saying that if you’re a die-hard Harry Potter fan, stop reading. You won’t brook any criticism of J. K., so it’s time to check out now. I’m a Harry Potter fan too, but public speaking is public speaking, and I have to call the shots as I see them.
J. K.’s is a classic commencement speech. It has touches of humor and irony, some humility from the famous person invited to hold forth for the benefit of the new grads, and the requisite dollop of good advice. Failure and imagination are the themes. You need them both.
It’s a good speech – it’s well written – but there is something about it that feels terribly old-fashioned. Rowling reads the speech from start to finish, looking up occasionally to see the audience, but for a good deal of the time her head is buried in her text. The result is an elegantly worded, ultimately remote speech. It reads as a text better than it sounds.
Of course, an author as famous as J. K. Rowling thrills her audience simply by showing up. It’s a coup for Harvard to have her on the dais. Nonetheless, audiences today expect a conversation and a connection with the speaker. The remote, text-oriented, read speech simply doesn’t seem interesting enough to audiences brought up on the intimacy of television and talk. Worse than that, it doesn’t really connect with the audience.
Commencement speeches, and political conventions, because of their formal quality are the last bastion of the read speech. That’s why they seem so boring. As J. K. herself notes, she remembered nothing of the commencement speech given at her graduation, despite the famous philosopher who gave it.
Those few commencement speeches that stick in the minds of their witnesses do so because of the ways in which they break the conventions of the boring read text. Here are three ways to make your commencement speech memorable:
1.Talk to the audience; don’t read to them. 2.Make the speech interactive. 3. Don’t give advice.
If you must read your commencement speech (why?), then here are four ways to make the speech seem more lively:
1. Use a teleprompter. That will at least keep your head up out of your notes. 2. Keep your sentences short and conversational in style. 3. Look down at the text to get the next sentence, then deliver it with your head up facing the audience. Only look down when you’re finished, to get the next line. That takes some practice, but it is possible with effort. 4. Vary your pacing, your pitch, your tone – everything. Just like in conversation.
I hope J. K.’s next commencement speech is less formal and more engaging. Given how little of a commencement speech is remembered by the audience, the speakers should just relax and talk to their audiences. They’d have a better chance of being heard.
Sometimes a talk is inspiring, not because of the power of the delivery, but because of the power of the idea. Jacek Utko is a Polish newspaper designer, and he gives a brief TED talk telling his story in a quiet, almost deliberately uncharismatic way. His eye contact with the audience is spotty, he wanders the stage, and he makes tight, self-protective gestures that don’t include the audience.
But he’s figured out how to save the newspaper. And in a 6-minute talk, he shares his inspiration – Cirque de Soleil – his vision – newspapers that are incredibly eye-catching – and his determination. He managed to achieve as much as 100 percent increases in newspaper circulation with his brilliant designs, with not much money, no staff, and no attention at all from the design world.
Until he started winning awards. One of his newspapers was awarded the “Best Designed Newspaper in the World,” by a major design competition, and Jacek has now designed newspapers all over Eastern Europe. And all of them are thriving.
In 6 minutes, Utko robs you of all your excuses and leaves you with the challenge never to do merely good work. It’s an inspirational message that should be heard by a much wider circle than designers alone.
Jill Bolte Taylor gives one of the most moving talks I’ve ever seen on TED on the subject of her stroke and recovery. The talk is brilliant in spite of some limitations in Jill’s delivery and all serious students of public speaking should study it for an understanding of what makes a talk work – and what makes a talk memorable.
Taylor, a brain scientist, begins by explaining that she got into the field because her brother was schizophrenic, and she wondered why she could have dreams and realize them in the world, while her brother had dreams that ended as mere delusions. We’re hooked from that moment on; the simple truth of her brother’s suffering and her quest to find some way to help frames the talk beautifully.
Taylor then brings a real brain on stage – a real human brain – and shows us the 2 hemispheres. The right, she says, is in the here and now, the moment, and takes in all the sensory information it is able to embrace our connectedness as a species.
The left hemisphere, on the other hand, is all about the past and future, thinks in language, and identifies us as separate individuals.
Then comes the stroke. Taylor’s description of it is extraordinary – courageous, precise, funny, and heartbreaking. The character of the woman is revealed in these moments that would terrify most of us completely. When she says, a moment later, quite dryly, “I realized I was no longer the choreographer of my own life,” the understatement packs a real wallop.
Had Taylor stopped here, the speech would have been extraordinary enough. But she uses her stroke, what she experienced during it, and her recovery, to make a plea for universal understanding and to educate us all in how we can “slip the surly bonds of earth” and achieve real bliss in the here-and-now. That makes both the speech, and her suffering, transcendent.
There’s much to learn from Taylor’s speech and her delivery. She is nasal, and her voice grates a little, but soon we’re swept up in the drama of her story and we don’t care. Her humor and courage both win us over in spite of the limitation of her voice.
Watch her body language – it’s extraordinary. She stands quite still much of the time, and is unafraid to use her body almost as a dancer would. Her hand gestures powerfully evoke the openness that underlies her message – a classic instance of body language and message aligning to make a memorable speech. So we don’t mind that the gestures are almost too big. She’s putting it all out there, and we can only respond by giving her an audience’s unconditional love and support. The audience in the room leaps to its feet once she’s done – not a typical response from a TED audience.
Taylor’s speech demonstrates how to weave the personal and the global together to make a speech authentic and yet not self-absorbed. Listen to her speech to receive a master class in structure and construction. It’s a thing of beauty. Don’t miss it.
Do you think it's the best speech on TED? Please vote for Taylor, or nominate an alternative, by leaving a comment.
Mena Trott, together with her husband, founded Six Apart, the company that created TypePad, the blogging platform this blog and many others are carried on. That makes her the “founding mother of the blog revolution,” as TED.com put it, so she’s a natural person to invite to speak about the importance of blogging. The importance of blogging? Come on, blogging has revolutionized communications! TED can be forgiven for thinking that Mena would be a sure-fire bet.
And let’s say right away that she’s not a bad speaker. She’s lively, intelligent, and only a little nervous. That puts her right on a par with thousands of other speakers. What went wrong was not her delivery, but rather the speech itself.
For all that I write about speech delivery, and non-verbal communications, it’s good to remember that the reason we give speeches is to communicate about something. At the end of the day and the speech, we learn all we can about public speaking because content matters. We humans need to cajole, persuade, enlighten, lead, threaten, encourage, narrate, testify, reconcile – we need to communicate – with each other. About a topic, an issue, a subject, a dream we care about.
And sometimes the content is terrible and the moment is missed. In this case, Mena’s speech takes an inherently fascinating subject and misses the opportunity by a country mile. What goes wrong? Here are the pitfalls that Mena falls into and that the rest of us can avoid, thanks to her horrible example. Here’s the speech, so you can follow along: http://bit.ly/VGww9.
1. She talks about herself too much. What audiences care about is what’s in it for them, not the speaker’s intimate biography – unless you give us a reason to care. Mena doesn’t give us a reason beyond telling us that blogs are personal. In fact, most of the examples she cites are about people doing good things for the world, not sharing personal stories. Her own personal blog is what gets her into trouble.
2. She’s not trying to persuade the audience of anything. Mena’s speech has no point beyond the idea that blogs are interesting and are changing the world somehow. But that’s the premise for bringing her to TED, the starting point. It’s not an idea worthy of a speech. She needs to ask herself questions like the following: Why are they changing the world? Why now? What’s going to happen to them? What key trends are you seeing? And so on. The announcement that blogs are here and that lots of people read them is not itself sufficient. The best reason to give a speech is to persuade the audience of something. Take a point of view!
3. The speech has no arc. When you ask people to follow a speech, you’re asking them to do a lot of mental work. It’s your job to help them by providing a clear structure – a story in three acts, a problem-solution speech (one of my personal favorites), a chronological account of an issue – there are many ways to structure a speech, but the point is to pick one. Mena’s speech starts out with a series of funny asides, and then peters out with more asides, that aren’t funny. The audience stops laughing, it checks out, and the speech dies. It goes nowhere, and ultimately the audience won’t forgive that. In the end, Mena wastes everyone's time because she hasn't taken the trouble to figure out something real to say, and how to say it in a clear, compelling way.
Iqbal Quadir, microcredit pioneer with GrameenBank to create GrameenPhone, had a great idea. He’s brought hope and prosperity to 80 million rural Bangladeshi with his wireless phone services, which allow women in villages to start small businesses selling phone calls to their neighbors. Many other services follow from there, and this kind of bottom-up thinking has not only transformed life in Bangladesh, but also thinking about how to help the poor worldwide.
Plainly, a great man with a great idea. But as a speaker, he leaves a lot to be desired. The kind of mistakes he makes are very typical of a passionate nerd, so they’re worth pointing out.
You can see him speaking here: http://bit.ly/OuM5o. What makes him a weak speaker? Three main flaws.
1. He talks to his slides, not the audience. Iqbal spends a surprising amount of time peering up at his slides, with his back or shoulder to the audience. The result is highly disengaging for the poor audience, and it leaves Iqbal looking uncertain about his material. More than that, audiences tend to follow a speaker’s lead. So if you look at your slides, the audience will too – and it won’t look at you. You become secondary to the slides, and that’s not a good thing.
2. He talks about the history of the idea rather than what’s in it for the audience. This temptation is hard for many speakers to resist. They talk about how the idea occurred to them, or developed through time, or evolved. That’s natural, because that’s the way it happened to them, but it’s not particularly interesting to the audience. What audiences care about is what’s in it for them. So cut to the chase, make a long story short, and give us the gist. We want to know why the idea matters to us, and how we can use it. We don’t care about its history.
3. He talks about mastery but his body language speaks uncertainty. This is a man who has accomplished extraordinary things, in the face of steep odds, but his body language betrays the enormous uncertainty of an unpracticed, uncomfortable speaker. The adrenaline has overtaken him, so he gasps for breath; the result it to make him – and the audience – more nervous. He rarely makes eye contact with the audience, so he doesn’t get a chance to form a relationship with that audience. And he shifts uncomfortably on happy feet from his computer to his slides and back again without connecting with the audience. The result is that his enormous accomplishments are undercut and we begin to doubt the message, because the messenger is so weak.
All kudos to Iqbal Quadir for his wonderful work in benefiting an entire country with bold thinking – and indeed the world. If only his public speaking were as wonderful.
Jamie Oliver burst onto the world scene as a celebrity chef thanks to his “Naked Chef” TV series in the late 1990s, followed by other TV shows, successful books, endorsement deals with supermarkets, and an assault on school lunches, first in the UK and then in the US.
In late 2009, he won the 2010 TED Prize for his efforts to start a healthy food and eating revolution. His TED talk is here: http://bit.ly/cod9o3. In it, he makes a wish: that everyone will help him build a “strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food, inspire families to cook again, and to fight obesity.” That wish brings him a standing ovation.
How does he get the standing ovation, and more importantly, how does he make the speech memorable?
First, passion. Oliver sells his message with intensity from the very start. It shows up in bad ways as well as good. He’s got a bad case of happy feet, wasting too much energy wandering around the stage. His impact would be even greater if he choreographed himself more intelligently. And he oversells at the beginning, starting with a high pitch of outrage, rather than allowing himself to create an arc of emotion throughout his talk.
But he’s doing so much else well that we forgive him these faults. His passion is genuine and comes through in his body language, his voice, and his message. He begins with a great framing statistic: “In the length of time that it takes me to give this talk, 4 people will die from obesity.” That gets our attention, and from there he’s off to the races. Our children will live 10 years less than we will thanks to the lousy food we give them. Ouch. Diet-related disease is the biggest killer in the US in spite of the fact that it’s murder and mayhem that get the headlines. Ouch. Ten percent of our health expenditures right now are for obesity-related items, and that’s set to double in ten years. Ouch.
Second, the speech is a textbook example of a well-constructed persuasive speech in the problem-solution format. He begins with the hook, the compelling statistic, and then spends the next 12 minutes or so in the problem, showing clips, citing stats, and making arguments about how big a problem obesity is and how it’s killing our children. Then, it’s on to the solution in the remaining 8 minutes or so. And his prescriptions are specific. Supermarkets should put a ‘food ambassador’ in each store to help promote healthy alternatives. Schools should serve proper fresh food for lunch. And kids should be taught 10 recipes that will save their lives before they graduate. And so on.
This is persuasive speaking at its finest, in spite of Oliver’s very human flaws. He deserves the prize, and we should pay attention – on our feet.
Bjarke Ingels is a Danish architect on a quest to prove to the world that sustainable building doesn’t need to be boring or self-denying. With cool irony and sly humor, Ingels grounds a discussion of three extraordinary building complexes in a bigger argument for thinking way, way, way out of the box architecturally speaking.
Ingels is also a great example of how a nerd (at least, an architectural nerd) can succeed as a speaker: by accepting his own imperfections and having fun with his talk anyway. Because Ingels clearly enjoys himself and is passionate about his subject, his talk is entertaining to watch despite some of the clumsiness of his speaking style. You can see him giving a TED.com talk here: http://bit.ly/opzjG.
The first project he discusses is the Danish entry in an international exposition in China. Ingels and his colleagues actually talked the Danish government into shipping the famous little mermaid statue to Shanghai for the Expo. You have to see the building to believe it; it’s a brilliant combination of water, outside space, and bicycles.
The second project is an extraordinarily innovative apartment building that manages to integrate parking space in a way that’s innovative, energy efficient, and even beautiful.
The final architectural panel in Ingels’ triptych is the transformation of an entire island in central Asia from a desert space into a sustainable, carbon neutral wonderland of seven building-mountains and a central park. You’ve never seen buildings quite like these before; let’s hope that they become inspirations for a lot more building like them. When you put the typical modern city next to Ingels’ vision, the city looks drab indeed.
Shai Agassi’s plan for electric, zero-emission vehicles makes so much sense and is such a radical departure from the old thinking on the subject of powering cars that I’m afraid it won’t get the hearing that it deserves. People resist new ideas – truly new ideas – more fiercely than even obviously bad old ideas, and for a long, long time. It’s why doctors still resist having to wash their hands before operating. Still!
Agassi figured out that the way to get people over the fear of the dead electric car battery was to separate the ownership of the car and the battery. So you’ll buy an electric car, but you’ll go to a station like a gas station where your battery is swapped for a fresh one in less than 2 minutes. The whole range problem of the electric car solved in one flash of insight.
Since cars and trucks emit roughly 25% of the world’s human-made carbon dioxide, Agassi’s idea could have a large, beneficial effect on climate change. Not to mention that we wouldn’t have to depend as much in volatile parts of the world for imported energy.
So what’s the catch? Obviously that we need a whole network of battery stations set up before we can all start driving electric cars with confidence. So Agassi has begun to tour the world trying to persuade countries to go along. So far, Israel, Australia, Denmark and Hawaii have signed up.
How effective a speaker is Agassi? You can see him speaking here: http://bit.ly/2XO6C.
He’s quite practiced, but he suffers from the intellectual’s speaking problem – he’s too smart for his own good. To be successful, a speaker must establish trust with the audience. There are a variety of ways to do that, but we don’t trust intellectuals, so dazzling people with your intellect doesn’t do it. We are impressed by Agassi, but we don’t immediately trust him, and the result is that we’re not moved emotionally to go along. And it’s through the emotions that people are moved to action.
Agassi needs to work on trust rather than intellectual argument, and his brilliant idea will spread much faster. And because his idea is so important, I hereby offer to work with him for free in order to help the cause. Next time you’re in the US, Shai, look us up.
Nick analyzes some of the world’s most prominent speakers and provides his honest critiques based both on live performances and on videos of their talks that have been posted online.
