Episode #266: How An Expert Prepares For A TEDx Talk

Reading this headline you might be thinking, “Oh yeah, this guy says he is an expert? Is that really true?”. In this fake news world, that is an entirely reasonable caution. Would the following qualify me: this TEDx talk was my 546th public speech, I am a Master Trainer for Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo Japan and I am a certified High Impact Presentations Instructor having taught thousands of people how to present over the last twenty plus years and I am about to publish my book Japan Presentations Mastery? I thought it might be interesting to pull back the velvet curtain and reveal how I prepared for this talk, expert or otherwise, but at least someone with substantial public speaking experience.

TEDx has certain restrictions around what you can talk about and how long you can talk for. The TED mission is to research and discover “ideas worth spreading”. I needed a topic which was a fit for the format and I had up to thirteen minutes to deliver my talk. There are many things I could have addressed on stage, but I thought “Transform Our Relationships” would have universal appeal, because TED talks are broadcast all around the world.

The first thing to consider was how to end the talk. I needed to clarify what was the central message I wanted to impart. The title was the central message, so “transform your relationships for the better” became my choice of the close. I also linked the close back to some remarks I made right at the start, so I was able to tie a neat bow on the talk. There are no questions in the TED format, so there was only need to design that one close.

I next did some research on what others were saying about transforming relationships. I found a report entitled “Relationships in the 21st Century”. When I read the report, I thought the findings were rather unremarkable and that it would be perfect for debunking at the start. Even a slightly controversial start can be an attention grabber. I left the final design of the opening until the end though. The start has only one aim and that is to grab audience attention to listen to what it is we have to say.

I had the end clearly in mind and a vague idea about the opening, so now I needed to build chapters for the talk. Thirteen minutes is quite short, so every word is gold. I thought Dale Carnegie’s human relations principles were the perfect tool which I could pass on to the audience to apply in their own relationships. There are thirty human relations principles, so that was too many. I selected seven.

Each principle formed a chapter, so that made the construction of the talk quite easy. I needed some flesh on the bones of this skeleton of the talk though, so I selected some easy to access examples of how to use the principles. Some of these story vignettes were created to make the point and some were actual examples from real life.

I needed a bridge between the start of the talk and the Dale Carnegie human relations principles, which would set the scene for what was to come. I drew on some well known influencers – Mahatma Gandhi and Isaac Newton. I wanted to make the point that the secret of achieving a transformation was to start with yourself, rather than expecting everyone else to change to suit you. Gandhi’s quote is well known: “become the change you wish to see in the world”. Perfect.

Also, every high school student has studied Newtonian Physics and so remember his proclamation that “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction”. Perfect. I could make the point that if we want to transform our relationships, we can change the angle of approach with others and we will get a different reaction. This was extremely easy for an audience to grasp as a concept to transform their relationships. I made this a core message linking each chapter back to the central thesis of “start with changing your angle of approach”.

My final design task was to go back and polish the opening, so that it would grab attention. I selected the conclusion from the report and then denounced it as too obvious. By doing so I have now engaged the audience to anticipate what I am going to say, if I am not accepting this report’s conclusion as sufficient enough to understand relationship building in the 21st century. I wasn’t doing this for dramatic effect. I honestly thought it was all too obvious. If it had delivered some earth shattering insight, then I would have used that instead as an authority reinforcement.

Rehearsal is so critical in giving talks. I soon discovered I had too much material for the time allowed, so one of the human relations principles had to be jettisoned overboard. I had organised the talk into chapters, so each one was complete in itself. Rather than trying to water down the other chapters to squeeze in chapter seven, it was better to keep the others powerful and reduce one chapter. I then took all of that content and then wrote it up a complete script. I don’t normally do this step. However, I knew there was no way I would remember every single word of a thirteen minute talk, but this script gave me the core content to draw on. Obviously, I wasn’t going to read it to the audience – that would be a fake expert! I recorded it and played it over and over to myself about ten times, until I had absorbed flow of the talk in my mind.

I did another three live rehearsals with the cut down materials and kept editing to make sure I could get through it in under thirteen minutes. At the beginning I had toyed with the idea of no slides so that all of the attention would be on me. In the end, I decided that slides would help me with the navigation. This talk goes around the world, so my personal and professional reputations were on the line here, especially when you go around saying you are an expert on public speaking. I thought it was better to be smooth in my delivery and not to lose my place or have a brain whiteout while on live streaming camera, especially as that means no edit rescue capability.

Once I had selected the slides I wanted, I made sure I owned the use of these slide images. I could have just taken some images down off the internet, but there is a copyright issue right there. We all need to respect the IP of the owners of those images. I also made sure I had pictures with people in them where ever possible. This is always of more interest to an audience.

On the day before the talk, I did five full blood, full power rehearsals and recorded them, so I could check how I sounded. On the day of the delivery, I recorded ten full power rehearsals at home, one after another, checking the time to make sure I didn’t go over the thirteen minutes limit. Full rehearsal, full power, with many repetitions is key.

Of course this was very tiring, but I didn’t worry about peaking before the event. I knew my nervous energy would kick in once I was on stage under the lights, facing the live streaming cameras and the assembled audience.

On the day, there was a technical issue with the screen in front of the stage. It is located so that the speaker can see what is being displayed on the main screen behind them. I wasn’t worried. I had confidence thanks to my rehearsals, that I could do the talk without slides, if I needed to. For whatever reason it worked perfectly for me, so I reproduced my delivery as I had practiced it over and over and over.

In the Green Room I didn’t chat with the other speakers. I concentrated on slowing my breathing down to make sure I was calm and quietly read the full script again. When I was being wired up for the talk, I made sure the head attachment microphone was pulled out away from my cheek and mouth, because I knew I would be pr4ojecting a lot of power to my audience. I didn’t want any audio dissonance from my being loud, to find its way on to the recording.

As it turned out, four seconds before I was due to go on, they needed to fix a technical issue, so they decided to show a TED video instead. Naturally I was fully psyched up ready to go and then had to stop everything. This type of stop-start thing can throw your equilibrium off balance. I had had this experience before when I was a karate athlete in competition finals, when there was an interruption and a sudden delay before you go on to the mats to fight.

I immediately moved away from the people there in order to keep my concentration at full peak condition. I happened to notice there was a mirror around the corner of the back stage area. While they ran the video, I began quietly starting my talk while looking at the mirror, so that I could see my gestures etc., as I got ready to go on. We cannot allow anything to cause us to lose our concentration or peak energy levels, before we hit the stage.

I walked confidently to the round red carpet, which was my spot from which to talk, paused to enjoy the applause and create some anticipation. I then hit the opening hard with a strong voice and a big double arm gesture. The rest of the talk went pretty close to my plan. The key thing to note is, only I knew what the plan was! At the end I bowed, stayed there to receive the applause and then unhurriedly, I walked off, again showing confidence. First and last impressions are being formed as soon as we move to and from our positions and we have to have those planned as well. Someone rushing from the stage leaves a different impression to someone staying there momentarily and then walking off with purpose.

Find out how we can become better storytellers to persuade our audiences!