By David Thill
Giving an effective talk doesn’t mean saying everything you can in as little time as possible. In fact, it might be just the opposite.
Editor’s note: Whether selling a product, training hospital staff, or presenting to the board of directors, the quality of the presentation matters just as much as the content. Chris Anderson, president of TED – the nonprofit organization dedicated to spreading innovative ideas, and sponsor of worldwide TED conferences – recently published the book Ted Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking. In this continuing series, we offer some of Anderson’s main ideas to help make your next presentation an effective one.
Movies, plays, and novels share a common component called the throughline: “the connecting theme that ties together each narrative element,” according to Chris Anderson, president and head curator of TED, in his book TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking.
Anderson believes every talk should also have a throughline, “a strong cord or rope, onto which you will attach all the elements that are part of the idea you’re building.
“This doesn’t mean every talk can only cover one topic….It just means that all the pieces need to connect.”
Here are two examples of talk introductions he gives, one displaying a clear throughline, one displaying a clear absence of a throughline.
Example number one:
“I want to share with you some experiences I had during my recent trip to Cape Town, and then make a few observations about life on the road…”
Example number two:
“On my recent trip to Cape Town, I learned something new about strangers – when you can trust them, and when you definitely can’t. Let me share with you two very different experiences I had…”
While the former might work with family, he notes, the latter provides a visible throughline from the get-go, making it appealing to a general audience.
A good exercise is to “try to encapsulate your throughline in no more than 15 words….What is the precise idea you want to build inside your listeners? What is their takeaway?” And while it’s not necessary to explicitly state the throughline at the beginning of the talk, “when the audience knows where you’re headed, it’s much easier for them to follow.”
Keeping it tight
“So, how do you figure out your throughline?”
The first step is to know the audience, which means answering several questions: “Who are they? How knowledgeable are they? What are their expectations? What do they care about? What have past speakers there spoken about?…If you’re going to speak to an audience of taxi drivers in London about the amazingness of a digitally powered sharing economy, it would be helpful to know in advance that their livelihood is being destroyed by Uber.”
The biggest obstacle, however, is figuring out how to say everything one wants to say in the limited time allotted. At the TED conference, the magic number for a talk is 18 minutes: short enough to hold people’s attention but long enough to say something of value. Granted, 18 minutes might not be sufficient in every situation, but whether presenting at a multi-day vendor fair, or to a doctor whose day is filled with appointments – and especially in the smartphone age – it is useful to remember that in general, shorter is better.
“Overstuffed equals underexplained,” says Anderson. Don’t try to cover every seemingly important topic in your talk. Instead, “slash back the range of topics you will cover to a single, connected thread – a throughline that can be properly developed.” Discussing fewer topics but going deeper into each one, he says, will have greater impact.
“Author Richard Bach said, ‘Great writing is all about the power of the deleted word.’ It’s true of speaking too.”
Scholar and speaker Brené Brown: “Plan your talk. Then cut it by half. Once you’ve grieved the loss of half of your talk, cut it another 50 percent. It’s seductive to think about how much you can fit into 18 minutes. The better question for me is, ‘What can you unpack in a meaningful way in 18 minutes?’”
“This same issue applies to talks of any length,” Anderson points out.
The idea might best be summed up later in the book, when the issue of time limits arises again, and he relates this anecdote: “Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address clocked in at just over 2 minutes. The speaker before him droned on for 2 hours; what he said is long forgotten.”
David Thill is a contributing editor for Repertoire.
Figuring out the throughline
In his book TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking, TED President Chris Anderson provides a checklist of questions for speakers to ask themselves as they prepare their talk:
- Is this a topic I’m passionate about?
- Does it inspire curiosity?
- Will it make a difference to the audience to have this knowledge?
- Is my talk a gift or an ask?
- Is the information fresh, or is it already out there?
- Can I truly explain the topic in the time slot allocated, complete with necessary examples?
- Do I know enough about this to make a talk worth the audience’s time?
- Do I have the credibility to take on this topic?
- What are the 15 words that encapsulate my talk?
- Would those 15 words persuade someone they’d be interested in hearing my talk?