How to create your TED Talk
A young man standing on a stage giving a TED Talk-style speech
What’s the secret to creating an engaging TED Talk?
That’s a question we’re helping one of our clients — a well-known financial services company — understand right now.
They’ve brought us in to help five of their senior executives develop TED-style talks for their upcoming leadership conference.
Our challenge? Weaning the presenters off the jargon-filled insider speak and overwordy slides that characterise so many business presentations. Shifting them from a style that’s corporate to one that’s compelling and creative.
Here are three things we’re urging our presenters to do.
Boil your TED Talk down to a single idea
TED Talks are, famously, short — around 15 minutes.
So you won’t have time to explain every detail of your five-year strategy for growth (or whatever it is you’re keen to communicate). And even if there were time, the more you stuff into your presentation, the less your audience is likely to retain.
It’s much more effective to paint a detailed picture of one thing than to provide shallow sketches of five concepts. As a famous piece of writing advice goes:
The bigger the issue, the smaller you write.
So pick an angle. Go narrow and detailed. And if it all feels too complicated, follow this advice from science journalist Tim Radford in his brilliant Manifesto for a Simple Scribe:
if an issue is tangled like a plate of spaghetti, then regard your story as just one strand of spaghetti, carefully drawn from the whole. Ideally with the oil, garlic and tomato sauce adhering to it. The reader will be grateful for being given the simple part, not the complicated whole. That is because (a) the reader knows life is complicated, but is grateful to have at least one strand explained clearly, and (b) because nobody ever reads stories that say "What follows is inexplicably complicated ...
To identify your own strand of spaghetti, ask yourself these questions:
Can I sum up my idea in one simple sentence – one I can say in a single breath, without pause?
A month from now, what is the one thing I want people to be saying to their colleagues about my talk?
If my talk were posted on YouTube, what’s the title that’s going to make people click?
2. Make your TED Talk concrete and visual, not abstract
Another characteristic of successful TED Talks is that they’re incredibly visual.
And not just because TED presenters have to ditch wordy slides for big, powerful pictures. Or even because they sometimes use props (like Bill Gates, who released mosquitoes into the audience to bring home the seriousness of malaria).
It’s also about using visual language to make your point. A wonderful example of this is the TED Talk by statistician Hans Rosling. It’s a talk about female empowerment, international development and literacy. But he never uses those abstract, multisyllabic words.
Instead, he presents the humble washing machine as a symbol for them all. Yes, he uses physical props. But his message — that labour-saving devices free people up to go to the library — is summed up in this beautiful and highly visual statement:
Clothes go in the washing machine, books come out.
We remember Rosling’s message because we can see it. We could even draw it.
Contrast that with the decidedly hard-to-picture nature of so much abstract corporate language, like platforms for excellence and sustainability engagement initiatives.
To add some Hans Rosling energy to your TED Talk, ask yourself these questions:
Where is the jargon? Where am I being abstract? What words am I using that people would find it hard to draw? What can I replace them with?
What is a small, concrete symbol of my big idea? What’s my washing machine?
What’s a story that sums up my idea? What’s that single, small moment that illustrates the larger truth? (For Rosling, it was the day the washing machine arrived.)
3. Be clear on the change you want your TED Talk to deliver
The TED Talk tagline is ideas change everything. So your job as a TED-style presenter isn’t simply to share an idea, but to change something.
And, indeed, every TED Talk presenter, explicitly or implicitly, is seeking a change in their audience — in their hearts, minds or behaviour.
To create a TED Talk that makes change happen, ask yourself:
After my talk, what do I want my audience to think, feel or do (especially do)? How is this different to what they’re thinking, feeling, or doing right now?
How do I take my audience from where they are now to where I need them to be? What steps am I urging them to take? What can I tell them to persuade them of the need and urgency for change?
How do I win my audience over and keep my message alive after the talk? How do I grab people’s attention in the first five seconds? How do I go out with a bang?
Want help creating and delivering a TED Talk? Get in touch!
