Before Bed, Watch TED: 3 Ways that TED Talks Can Improve Your Speaking

Summary:
Presenters should watch TED Talks for 3 reasons:
1. To get ideas for your own talks.
2. To improve a specific skill of your talks.
3. To ignite passion into your talks.

Yesterday I delivered my third Toastmasters presentation.

In my last presentation I talked too fast and without enough pauses. For this talk then, I slowed down a bit to allow the audience to digest what I was saying. But I inadvertently spoke with less energy as I spoke more slowly.

Oops. I’ll keep trying to improve.

The video, transcript, and slides are below.

How many views on YouTube do you think the most popular Toastmasters speech has received? Can someone shout a guess?

Now by show of hands, have you heard of Ted talks from the TED conference?

Now how many views do you think the most popular Ted talk has received? Can someone shout a guess?

I compare the 20,000 views for Toastmasters to the 5 million views for TED because it shows that as great as Toastmasters is, we’re not the only speakers in the world. And as one Toastmaster said:

Any Toastmaster would be hard pressed to find better inspiration for speeches than those at TED.

Tonight, I’d like to tell you about TED talks and give you three reasons to watch them.

So what is TED?

TED is a conference. It brings together some of the world’s top thinkers and achievers. The speakers are given a simple challenge: Give the talk your life in 18 minutes or less.

People who have spoke at TED include Bill Gates, the founders of Google and Amazon, the creator of the TV show Lost, U2 singer Bono, Bill Clinton, Tony Robbins, and many famous scientists, authors and Nobel Prize winners.

For Toastmasters, the best thing about TED is that all of the talks are online and available to you absolutely free.

My main message to you today is this:

Tonight, when you go home, watch one TED Talk at ted.com. Before you go to bed, watch some TED.

Brian, would you read this slide for us?

Thank you, Brian. You have now been hypnotized to watch TED before bed.

But for the rest of you, why should you watch TED?

There are three reasons:

To get ideas for your own talks.
To improve a specific skill of your talks.
To ignite passion into your talks.

1. To get ideas for your talks.

The first reason to watch TED is to get ideas for your talks.

As Toastmasters, we’re always looking for interesting ideas to speak about.

If you watch TED, I guarantee that you will get speech ideas.

Right now, there are over 700 TED talks. They cover a diversity of topics. You will find talks that interest you.

The topics include Technology, Education and Design (which is why the conference is named TED). There are also talks on global issues, culture, and communication. There is something for everyone.

As you watch a TED talk, you’ll think, “Hey! I’ve got an opinion about what he’s saying!” And that gives you a seed of an idea from which you can grow your own speech.

I recently watched a TED talk and thought, “The speaker didn’t address this important point.” So now I’m going to address that point in my next Toastmasters speech.

2. To improve a specific skill of your talks.

The second reason to watch TED is that it will help you improve a specific skill of your speaking.

One skill that I improved from watching TED is how to make better PowerPoint slides. I saw that many TED speakers use just one line of text and just one big picture per slide.

Look at the big red circle on this slide. It shows that at ted.com, you can watch talks that have been rated by viewers as either persuasive, or courageous, or funny, etc.

Who here wants to be more funny?

Well if you click here on “funny,” you’ll see talks that are funny.

One skill related to being funny is to pause when your audience laughs.

Let’s watch a clip from a TED Talk, and notice that when the audience laughs, the speaker pauses before he resumes speaking.

[I play the clip below from Sir Ken Robinson's talk "Do Schools Kill Creativity?" from 7:42 to 8:31.]

That clip is from a speech that is rated as funny, but you can watch TED talks that are rated highly in any skill that you want to improve, such as being funny, being persuasive or being inspiring.

Also, you’ll see that some presentations have received poor ratings. Viewers rate some talks as “long-winded” or “obnoxious.” Actually, I see some of you writing those words on my evaluation forms.

But you can also learn from these supposedly bad speeches. Watch a speech rated as “obnoxious” and ask yourself, “What does this guy say or do that is obnoxious?” Then you can ensure that you don’t do that during your speech.

3. To ignite passion into your talks.

The third reason to watch TED is to ignite passion into your talks.

If you’re giving a speech simply to improve your body language, that’s a fine goal.

But even if your body language is impeccable, you still might not connect with your audience.

TED presenters connect with their audiences because they are so passionate. The New York Times said that they are fevered, possessed.

And their excitement is contagious. Audiences leave feeling inspired and talking about the speeches.

The author of the book Presentation Zen was asked, “Who are the world’s best speakers?”

He answered,

Watch TED. You’ll see good speeches given by smart and creative people who are trying to change the world in their own way. Each talk is different, but really, if you’re not trying to change the world, then what is the point of making a presentation?

Watch TED, and you as well will feel inspired to give your own passionate talks.

Those are the three reasons to watch TED that I wanted to share with you:

To get ideas.
To improve a specific skill.
To ignite passion.

Thanks for listening. You’ve been a beautiful audience. If you remember one thing from this talk, please remember this. When I’m out of sight, and you go home tonight:

Brian, what are you going to do?