Tell a Story

TED presentations are very different from most presentations at corporations conferences meetings because most corporations have speakers who give big long boring data dumps facts Fact fact fact bullet pie bullet point and the speaker tries to do too much they overwhelm their audience with so much data.

It’s boring.

Everyone is pulling out their cell phones and checking their email and nobody really pays attention.

A Ted speech is different in part they simply impose a discipline on speakers of don’t try to communicate more than a handful of ideas.

I mean really no more than a handful sometimes just one idea because then you have the time to tell a story.

All great TED speakers have stories.

I don’t mean that they’re funny stories.

I don’t mean that they’re necessarily wildly dramatic and involve shootings or death but they’re recounting real experiences.

A recent TED speaker I saw a woman talking about her experiences in the music industry and how the music industry can evolve talks very specifically about her personal interactions with real fans.

One came up to her and said here’s a ten dollar bill I want you to have this.

I feel embarrassed.

I stole your music from a friend’s C.D.

And I didn’t pay you and I want you to have it.

She gave personal stories fleshing out her point.

Her point is people in the music industry have to make their customers care and want to compensate artists.

It can’t be about forcing them here or stopping this download punishing them suing them.

It has to be about getting actual music lovers to care enough to give to the artist and she had compelling story after story after story to make it come alive.

If you want to be a TED speaker or someone who’s good enough to be a TED speaker the biggest difference between awful speakers and TED speakers is TED speakers have great stories not just at the beginning of the speech not just at the end of the speech not just to manipulate people but for every important idea they have a story to flesh it out because people can visualize it in their mind’s eye they can relate to it they can understand it and they can remember it.

So when you’ve come up with your idea and your main mission of what you want to accomplish in your presentation you have got to have stories that involve real conversations with real people about real problems and one of them needs to be you how you felt how it was resolved what the outcome was and you could say well T.J.

is there is no time I only have 12 minutes I really have 17 minutes.

You do have time because the story is not an extra it’s not a frivolous little dessert.

It is the fundamental avenue for really getting people to connect to your ideas to understand it and remember it.

There’s always time for a relevant important story if you have to cut something.

You cut the additional points.

There are many speakers at Ted who are speaking on their book their book.

If they just read it out loud would take 14 hours.

They’ve got to figure out what’s most important and deliver that in twelve or fourteen or 17 minutes.

They’ve got to make tough decisions on editing and it’s got to come up with what’s most important but what is app salute.

Lee essential what is not a luxury are stories that really dramatize the problems you’re solving and showing you’re living it and experiencing that where your audience doesn’t have just an intellectual understanding of the problems you’re dealing with.

They can see it feel it taste touch it and have an emotional connection with it.

That’s what you need to be a TED speaker or a good speaker anywhere anytime.