We can help you master public speaking Chris Anderson
Public speaking is an ancient art
wired deeply into our minds.
In every culture on Earth,
as language developed,
people learned to share their stories,
hopes, and dreams.
Imagine a typical scene:
It’s after nightfall, the campfire
is ablaze, an elder rises,
eyes lock
onto the wise, wrinkled face,
and as the storyteller speaks,
each listener imagines the events
that are being described.
What happens next is astounding:
The brains inside the heads
of independent individuals
start to behave very strangely.
They begin to sync up— they gasp together,
laugh together, weep together—
and as they do so, something else happens.
Rich neurologically encoded patterns
of information inside the woman’s brain
are somehow copied and transferred
to the brains in the audience.
These patterns will remain in those brains
for the rest of their lives,
potentially impacting their behavior
years into the future.
Every meaningful element of human progress
has happened only because humans
have shared ideas with each other
and then collaborated to turn
those ideas into reality.
From the first time our ancestors teamed
up to take down a mammoth,
to Neil Armstrong’s first step
onto the moon,
people have turned spoken words
into astonishing shared achievements
The same is true today—
as a leader or as an advocate,
public speaking is the key
to unlocking empathy, stirring excitement,
sharing knowledge and insights,
and promoting a shared dream.
Indeed the spoken word
has actually gained new powers.
Our campfire is now the whole world.
Thanks to the internet, a single talk can
end up being seen by millions of people.
Just as the printing press massively
amplified the power of authors,
so the web is massively amplifying
the impact of speakers.
What is more, we can enhance these skills
in ways the ancients could
never have imagined:
the ability to show right there
in beautiful, high resolution,
any image that a human
can photograph or imagine;
the ability to weave in video and music;
the ability to draw on research tools that
present the entire body of human knowledge
to anyone in reach of a smart phone.
Suddenly, an ancient art has global reach.
We need that now more than ever.
Ideas that could solve our toughest
problems often remain invisible
because the brilliant people
inside whose minds they reside
lack the confidence or the know-how
to share those ideas effectively.
At a time when the right idea
presented the right way
can ripple across the world
at the speed of light,
there’s huge benefit to figuring
out how best to set it on its way,
both for you, the speaker in waiting,
and for the rest of us, who need to know
what you have to say.
The good news is these skills
are teachable.
They absolutely are.
And that means that there
is a new superpower that anyone,
young or old, can benefit from.
It’s called presentation literacy.
I’ve become convinced that tomorrow,
even more than today,
learning to present your ideas
to other humans will prove to be
an absolutely essential skill for
any child who wants to build confidence,
anyone who wants to progress at work,
anyone who wants to leave a legacy,
anyone period.
The campfires of old have spawned
a new kind of fire—
a fire that spreads from mind to mind,
screen to screen,
the ignition of ideas whose time has come.
This matters.
Let’s go light a fire.