Ways to Ruin a Presentation
creating a tool. It ulustrated his point far better than anything he could have said.
Used well, video can be very effec- tive, but there are common mistakes that should be avoided. A dip needs to be short—if it’s more than 60 seconds, you risk losing people. Don’t use videos—par- ticularly corporate ones—that sound self-promotional or like infomercials; people are conditioned to tune those out. Anything with a soundtrack can be dangerously off-putting. And whatever you do, don’t show a dip of yourself being interviewed on, say, CNN. I’ve seen speak- ers do this, and it’s a really bad idea—no one wants to go along with you on your ego trip. The people in your audience are already listening to you live; why would they want to simultaneously watch your taUdng-head dip on a screen?
Putting It Together We start helping speakers prepare their talks six months (or more) in advance so that they’ll have plenty of time to practice. We want people’s talks to be in finid form at least a month before the event. The more practice they can do in the final weeks, the better off they’ll be. Ideally, they’ll pracdce the talk on their own and in front of an audience.
The tricky part about rehearsing a pre- sentation in front of other people is that they will feel obligated to offerfeedback cind constructive criticism. Often the feedback from different people wul vary or directly conflict. This can be confus- ing or even paralyzing, which is why it’s important to be choosy about the people you use as a test audience, and whom you invite to offer feedback. In general, the more experience a person has as a presenter, the better the criticism he or she can offer.
I leamed many of these lessons myself in 2011. My colleague Bruno Giussani, who curates our TEDGlobal event, pointed out that although I’d worked at TED for nine years, served as the emcee at our conferences, and introduced many of the speakers, I’d never actually given a TED
As hard as it may be to give a great talk, it’s really easy to blow it. Here are some common mistakes that TED advises its speakers to avoid.
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Take a really long time to explain what your talk is about.
Speak slowly and dramatically. Why talk when you can orate?
Make sure you subtly let everyone know how important you are.
Refer to your book repeatedly. Even better, quote yourself from it.
Cram your slides with numerous text bullet points and multiple fonts.
Use lots of unexplained technical jargon to make yourself sound smart.
Speak at great length about the history of your organization and its glorious achievements.
Don’t bother rehearsing to check how long your talk is running.
Sound as if you’re reciting your talk from memory.
Never, ever make eye with anyone
audience.
Talk myself. So he invited me to give one, and I accepted.
It was more stressful than I’d expected. Even though I spend time helping others frame their stories, framing my own in a way that felt compelling was difficult. I decided to memorize my presentation, which was about how web video powers global irmovation, and that was really hard: Even though I was putting in a lot of hours, and getting sound advice from my colleagues, I definitely hit a point where I didn’t quite have it down and began to doubt I ever would. I really thought I might bomb. I was nervous right up until the moment I took the stage. But it ended up going fine. It’s definitely not one of the all-time great TED Talks, but it got a posi- tive reaction—and I survived the stress of going through it.
Ultimately I leamed firsthand what our speakers have been discovering for three decades: Presentations rise or fall on the quality of the idea, the narrative, and the passion of the speaker. It’s about sub- stance, not speaking style or multimedia pyrotechnics. It’s fairly easy to “coach ‘* out” the problems in a talk, but there’s no way to “coach in” the basic story—the presenter has to have the raw material. If you have something to say, you Ccin buud a great talk. But if the central theme isn’t there, you’re better off not speaking. Dedine the invitation. Go back to work, and wait uhtü you have a compelling idea that’s really worth sharing.
The single most important thing to remember is that there is no one good way to do a talk. The most memorable talks of- fer something ftesh, something no one has seen before. The worst ones are those thai feel formulaic. So do not on any account try to emulate every piece of advice I’ve offered here. Take the bulk of it on board, sure. But make the talk your own. You knov/what’s distinctive about you and your idea. Play to your strengths and give a talk that is truly authentic to you. Ö
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Chris Anderson is the curator of TED.
June 2013 Harvard Business Review 125
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