How to survive your first TEDx talk
[Applause]
a couple of years ago i received an
invitation from a business client
i’m working as a trainer for franklin
covey maybe you heard of the founder
stephen r covey he’s the author of the
book
the seven habits of highly effective
people
who’s familiar with that book oh wow
you can imagine that it’s a privilege
for me to
help people in organizations with their
personal and leadership development
but this time they did not ask me to do
a training
with 12 people they asked me to deliver
in a keynote at an annual meeting
at 800 of their employees
at first it seemed like a good idea
sharing our knowledge
to so many but looking back now
everything that could go wrong
went terribly wrong first of all what do
you do when you need to prep for a
presentation
yes i opened up powerpoint
we’ve all been there right never ending
presentations
slides full of information the
well-known
death by powerpoint well i stepped in
the same pitfall
creating 84 slides for a 40-minute
presentation
like what’s 84 slides but back then it
seemed like a good idea
using it as a cheat sheet while doing
the presentation
and even though i asked to put some
front screens
at the front of the stage when i arrived
at the venue there weren’t any front
stage screens
instead in order for me to see the
slides i need to turn my back to the
audience
and look to the backdrop
while i was waking waiting backstage all
of a sudden a
nerf wrecking anxiety popped up
believe me i tried multiple things i
tried walking around
i tried listening to some music i tried
even some meditation but that did not
help at all
my nerves took over control
i remember it was so hot backstage that
i wanted to undress my jacket but
i had these big circles of sweat so i
couldn’t
oh minutes felt like hours and i
thoroughly wished i had this magical
cloak from harry potter
so i could disappear
if it not could get any worse five
minutes before the presentation started
the producer came to me and said glenn
we’ve got a problem due to some delay in
previous presentations we have a time
schedule problem
and you’re the last speaker and
afterwards we’re going to dinner
but dinner cannot wait so could you do
your 40-minute talk into
20 minutes what 20 minutes i did not
prepare for that and
what about those 84 slides i can’t
change them around anymore
and and two minutes later he stands next
to me again saying glenn are you ready
now
let’s go and i can remember
i was walking near the stage and already
heard the presenter sharing my name
all of a sudden i thought i was getting
sick and while i moved through the
curtains and i saw this
big room with 800 people
i i
would you like to know how the story
ends yes
yes well maybe i will come back to that
at the end of this talk
but what i want to bring across right
now is that that specific day
opened up my eyes all of the sudden i
saw
everywhere people stressing
for the fear of public speaking
colleagues
with never ending presentations i saw
salesmen
that became billboards full of
information and an executive
that does not know how to bring his
vision
across stage in today’s world
the attention span of an adult is
depleting rapidly
and the inability to engage
or persuade an audience is one of the
biggest hidden costs
so i was thinking how are the best
public speakers of the netherlands
coping with this do they have a
fear for public speaking could we learn
from them
but if i would just send them a personal
message or
call them i believe the chances were
very low that they would spend an
afternoon
or evening with me so that’s where the
idea was born
what if i could create a professional
podcast
a podcast where we would crush the fear
of public speaking and learn how to
speak with more impact
maybe then they would say yes and
fortunately
almost everyone i asked said yes to the
proposal
and in the past one and a half year i
interviewed over 50 experts in the
fields of public speaking
you know the good news it’s a learnable
skill
everyone has the potential to inspire
and engage in audience just like a good
movie
and you know what all the great speakers
have in common
they practice the skill of connection
and they connect
on three different levels they connect
with themselves
they connect with the audience and they
connect with their message
and after this talk you will know how to
connect on these three levels
so your presentations will be more easy
more fun
and more interesting let’s start with
that first one
how to connect with yourself because the
most difficult thing
communicating on stage is not with the
audience
it’s with that internal voice in your
head
that internal voice in your head that’s
saying
i’m not good enough
i’m not smart enough
i’m definitely not pretty enough
i’m not good enough you have these
voices
i have these voices as well right here
right now
we have a saying where focus goes energy
flows
so if i would focus on that voice right
now then
yes yes i can hear it he’s like shouting
glenn here you’re standing on the stage
again
and now i see you looking at me don’t
look at me what did i wanted to say
glenn don’t don’t don’t black out don’t
don’t black out oh no no this is a bad
suggestion
no no don’t black out don’t say
that
where focus goes energy flows right so
if i would focus on that voice then
probably the bad suggestion would become
a self-fulfilling prophecy
so what should we do with that voice
then
bad presentation work workshops say that
we need to get rid of that voice
dear friends i think we’re not able to
a best practice for a lot of speakers is
try to become
friends with that voice not neglect it
but try to accept it hey
voice i hear you and it’s
okay
you will experience the feeling of
relaxation
from the moment we try to accept that
internal voice
but if we neglect it or even worse try
to push it away it
becomes this skippy ball that pops up
eventually
probably at the moment we don’t want it
to
so let’s shake hands with that voice and
say hey voice
good that you’re here but there’s your
chair thank you very much
i interviewed paschal of ahutum and
pachella vagutem is a
persuasion expert he did a lot of
research in order
how to be persuasive you know
relaxation is the number one skill
in order to be persuasive but what we
see around us
is that people stress out and they step
in these pitfalls
these primitive reactions such as fight
flight or freeze
together let’s take a deep breath in
relax and let’s slow down in order to
speed up
and that brings us to the second level
of connection
how to connect with the audience
and that’s where a lot of people get the
fear of public speaking right they don’t
feel that anxiety when they talk
one-on-one
but in a group and experts ghost wolkens
and janet berghardt
share with me it’s all about connection
as well
and they study public speaking through
the lens of relational presence
which basically means the ability to
connect
with one person at a time
and this really feels like an open door
what about one person at a time
but don’t misunderstand me common
knowledge is
often not common practice if i would
only need to connect with one person at
a time
that means that it doesn’t matter if i’m
with one with 10
with hundreds or 800 people
and the first time i met goes in yanet i
realized that they were connecting with
me in a different way
i felt an openness and curiosity
and feeling of equality
a mutual respect it was quite refreshing
actually
when i practiced this the ability to
connect with
one person at a time the results were
quite magical
because i realized it’s also in a way
of non-verbal listening and i thought
that if we look to our daily life
normally we don’t listen in order to
bring the best in ourselves or each
other
we listen with the intent to reply
we listen from our own frame of
reference
we we listen because probably we neglect
that little voice in our heads that
wants to be heard
you know what’s the best thing about
this skill
we have these things in our head that’s
called mirror neurons
which means that i if i thoroughly
connect with one person at a time
the rest of the audience will feel that
as well
and that’s what i want you to remember
connect with one
but engage with everyone
okay i i realized that we did not share
anything yet
right but but we did two very important
things we
we connected with ourselves and we
connected
with the audience but how can we connect
to our message then
what does it mean to connect with your
message well it means that you
really believe what you’re sharing and
you’re sharing it
with passion and purpose i really love
this quote
people don’t care how much you know
until they know how much you care
and if i can be very honest with you
preparing this specific that talk was
quite a struggle for me
because i was thinking about that theme
question of
tonight what really drives you
what really drives me that’s a difficult
question to answer right
but i think taking some time to
thoroughly
find your own answer or doing some soul
searching really can help to elevate
the power in your message because if you
don’t know
what’s really important then everything
seems important right
you know what all great speakers such as
kremko classes josh burgess john von
setter or yitzke kramer have in common
they transform information into
stories all great speakers
are great storytellers
remember that time back in the days when
we were a kid
and our mom and dad shared the bedtime
story
we were hypnotized and while we leaned
forward we really wanted to know how the
story ends
well interesting enough the way we like
to get informed and persuaded
is not very differently now in grown-ups
so what is a story then right
well every story has either a conflict
or a challenge remember frodo beckons
who becomes ring barrier and needs to
destroy the ring and mount doom
right or luke skywalker who wants to
become a jedi knight
or romeo falls in love with gilead
all stories have a conflict or a
challenge
so if you want to persuade your audience
share your struggles share your pain
challenge yourself to be vulnerable
shall we get back to that cliffhanger
while i walked near the stage i could
hear the presenter already sharing my
name
and i thought i was getting sick and
while i moved through the curtains and i
saw this big room
with 800 people i
i i blacked out
i did not have any clue what i wanted to
share why i wanted it to share it
it really felt horrible it felt
basically like
dying on stage but
i realized now looking back the mistakes
i made
the first mistake i made is that i did
not connect thoroughly with my message
i start prepping my my presentation in
powerpoint
don’t get me wrong powerpoint can be a
very strong tool
but inspiration isn’t born in powerpoint
emotional engagement is not founded in
powerpoint
speaking from the heart does
the second mistake i made is that i did
not connect with myself i was
forcing against the nurse instead of
accepting them and adding those two
mistakes
i did not connect with the honeys as
well i i placed a dot
in the end of the room and i was
focusing
on that dot so i would not die
and probably you feel that i’m doing
this right now that i’m not
really connecting with all of you and
that’s true
because i’m not connecting at all
it sounds really like a silly metaphor
right that if i want to search something
in google i need to go online
first if i don’t have any connection i
don’t get any results well
we people work the same
so go online first
go online because the power
lies in connecting in three different
levels
connect with yourself connect with the
audience
and connect with your message
but i’m happy that i made these mistakes
because these mistakes give me the
energy that i really wanted to learn
about this topic about public speaking
and and those mistakes led to the
podcast and the podcast
led to meeting more than 50 brilliant
experts
and those interviews led to my final
test
delivering this ted talk in front of you
right now i really
thoroughly believe that we all have a
story worth telling
we all have an idea where it’s spreading
and i realize now that it’s my drive
to help and inspire others finding their
own voice
and even if you don’t give presentations
in your professional life
that doesn’t matter see this as a
metaphor for conversations you have
every day
the story you tell at a dinner table
the information you share at a
conference call
that important lesson you want to share
to someone important
or as simply as saying to your husband
or wife
i love you thank you