Style AND Substance are Essential

When you’re giving a TED Talk the stagecraft of how you come across is very important your performance skills your platform skills are critically important.

For example it is very rare to see any speaker at TED like this holding notes.

The problem with holding notes is it makes the whole thing seem like a tedious exercise listening to a boring assistant professor in college who’s nervous and uncomfortable.

You destroy the eye contact you make it seem less like a conversation and it’s a lot more likely to be a data dump because there’s so many points here so the notes cannot be visible in your hand.

Get right now you also don’t want to write him on your hand like Sarah Palin either.

You also can’t beat sort of turning your back and reading a PowerPoint bullet point that doesn’t work either.

The other thing that you see in most business settings most conventions conference is you have elected what people call a podium but a podium is actually what you stand on the thing where there’s a barrier between you and the audience and something to put your notes on.

The president of the United States uses one for example.

Ted doesn’t allow that.

I commend Ted for that because once you give someone a lectern you make them passive.

You hide them you immobilize them.

You’re creating a barrier between you and the audience.

Ted is very smart and that they get rid of all the trappings that people associate with awful boring speakers and they instead do the things that the highest level professional speakers do.

People who are really true true performance artist on the stage they’re also doing the things that Oprah and other great communicators on TV do you don’t see.

Oprah Winfrey when she’s on her TV show standing behind a lectern and looking like some pompous college professor.

So you need to know that going in you can say to them Well you know this is how I always give my speech.

They don’t care and high praise the TED organizers for telling people they don’t care.

They care about what works for their audience and they know there’s no one in the world better at bringing in huge massive massive audiences to listen to speakers talking about serious things.

Short You can be TMC and show pictures of half naked celebrities and get a lot of views and clicks an audience that’s relatively easy but actually getting people to listen to serious experts academics entrepreneurs people who’ve devoted their life to really accomplishing something to get masses of people to listen to them.

That’s a huge accomplishment.

So Ted does it by basically forcing you to not do all the awful things that remind people of how much they don’t like speakers and how boring most speakers are.

So that’s why you don’t see the lectern.

You also and there may be a few exceptions none of this teleprompter stuff.

Here’s the problem with teleprompters unless you’re used to using a teleprompter every day.

Most people do something like this.

Good morning.

I am happy to be here today.

My name is T.J.Walker as president of Media Training Worldwide.

I coach CEOs and top leaders how to give speeches at TED and other famous forum how awful that is what I’m doing is what most people do when they’re reading a teleprompter and they’re not professional newsreaders.

They read at the same speed the same volume the same tone and their body and their heads freeze.

So if you’re in a TED X or some smaller group somewhere and maybe you feel I can get away from with something don’t try it teleprompters are great.

If you’re the president of the United States and you have to give 10 speeches a day on complicated foreign policy issues and one wrong slip causes an international incident or a war.

But if you are giving a TED talk and you’re speaking about something that you’ve devoted a lifetime to or at least two years of working in it and you know it in and out and you’ve experienced it you shouldn’t need a teleprompter.

You should simply be sharing your experiences.

And that’s what great speakers do all the time whether they’re at TED or anyplace else they share experiences and that’s what allows them to walk around.

No I’m not walking around because I just have one little camera on me now.

But Ted has a fancier production and they’re going to have a camera person following you and they may have multiple cameras so use the stage.

Sometimes it’s just around a little circle.

But just taking a step one direction a step back occasionally forward a little bit.

It creates tremendous variety and will make you look more comfortable more confident more relaxed and authoritative and it will distinguish you from all the boring awful speakers out there.

Now there are plenty of Ted speakers who you can tell are somewhat nervous.

They’re not professional speakers.

They just happen to be the world’s greatest expert on these or some other very specific aspect of science or mathematics or design.

You don’t have to be the world’s greatest speaker but you do have to pay attention to the stage craft into basic performance skills.

And as we’ll talk about later you’re going to have to rehearse and you’re going to have to rehearse in a specific way on video but before you even worry about rehearsing You got to get rid of the crutches that allows the speakers used that don’t really prop you up and reading trying to read a speech word for word of paper disaster trying to read a teleprompter.

For most people most of the time the disaster.

They’re not going to have it and trying to rely on PowerPoint slides that have text pathetic horrible disaster.

Don’t even try it.

You’ve simply got to speak now.

I’m not opposed to you having some outline but if you’re going to have an outline what I recommend for my own clients which you can occasionally do is have a single sheet of paper really large text that can be on the floor.

You don’t want to be seen touching notes on the floor.

No one will notice it if there is a teleprompter on the floor and it’s a screen.

I would have it so that it’s not scrolling.

So on the teleprompter you have maybe five points and it’s up the whole time.

And that way you don’t have to worry about the teleprompter operator going too fast or too slow.

But fundamentally you’re sharing your life story your life’s work.

It’s not about remembering any one fact or any one number it’s about really connecting with people your passion telling them what’s most important.

And if you have something to show in the form of glaciers that are melting.

Put it up there.

Really talk about the significance beyond that you’re going to have to do the things that you see great speakers to great speakers move their hands.

They do not hold a pen if you’re holding a pen or a brush or something then you’ve immobilized your hands part of your body.

You want your hands to move.

You want your face to move your eyebrows to move you want your height to change sometimes because you’re leaning forward.

You want movement now not all movement is good.

If you’re going like this the whole time and pacing in a highly consistent way that will seem like you’re nervous if you’re fidgeting with your ring on your finger the whole time.

That will make you seem nervous.

All of those things can be eliminated in rehearsal.

If you rehearse on video as we’ll talk about shortly but you do need some movement you do need pauses.

You do need eye contact with people in the audience even though the people watching you on their computer can’t necessarily see that you don’t want to just be seen like you’re staring straight ahead.

Because even if you’re not reading a teleprompter or a script people will think that you are.

You need natural movement.

Now you’ve heard people say well just be yourself.

The problem with that advice is it’s not particularly helpful because if you’re not used to standing up on a stage.

Bright lights on your face all sorts of powerful successful people staring at you and knowing millions of people are going to watch you later.

If you’re not doing that every day then the natural thing for you to do is to be scared.

Oh my gosh I’m scared.

I could look like a fool up here.

So when people give you advice just be yourself.

That’s not particularly helpful.

What you have to do is figure out how do you come across when you are at your most comfortable situation when you’re talking to three friends at a restaurant over wine.

How do you act when you’re speaking to five colleagues that you know and trust in your office and you’re explaining something.

How do you come across.

Chances are you’re not stiff and frozen and holding your hands.

Chances are you’re gesturing your movie.

Your voice goes up and down.

There’s animation in your voice.

There’s movement in your face.

That’s what you want when you are giving your speech you have to pay attention to the stage craft and you’ve got to pay attention to everything you’re sending out there for people to see and hear.

That includes dress.

You’ve got to figure out how you want to dress.

Now not everyone has to dress in a conservative business suit and tie.

You need to dress in a way that’s consistent with who you are and what you’re about.

If you’re an artist you don’t want to wear a conservative business suit.

If you are a bank regulator and you’re talking about how we’ve got to bust up the big banks you probably don’t want to be seen in jeans and t shirt.

So how you dress is an important part of what your message is there’s no one perfect way of dressing but you do need to dress in a way that’s consistent with what you’re all about.

Every little detail will be scrutinized and you don’t want anything to distract.

If I started this video like this and I said everything exactly the same way but my ties like this I think a lot of you would be saying oh that’s weird why you’d be focusing on the tie rather than what I’m saying.

You don’t have to wear a tie but you’re better off having no tie than having one that’s crooked like that.

So pay attention to every detail and the biggest way to do that is you have to rehearse on video.