Communication
by Chris Anderson
How do you get an idea across?
Chris Anderson, who runs TED, says a talk has one job. It has to rebuild an idea from the speaker's mind inside the listeners' minds, using little more than words. He calls the skill presentation literacy, and he argues that anyone can learn it.
Hear a sample · read by Laura
Anderson's word for the backbone of a talk is the throughline, the one idea that every part of it connects to. Try saying yours in fifteen words or fewer, he suggests. If you can't, you don't yet know what the talk is for, and the audience won't either.
Anderson names the tools speakers reach for. Connection earns trust. Narration tells a story. Explanation builds a new idea step by step. Persuasion takes apart a way of seeing that isn't working so a better one can replace it. Revelation shows something astonishing, like a demo or new images.
To explain something new, begin with what the audience already knows. Spark their curiosity, then bring in one concept at a time, with metaphors and examples to hold each one in place. Anderson warns about the curse of knowledge, which is forgetting what it was like before you understood.
Some speakers memorise every word and some talk from bullet points. Anderson says both can work. What fails is the halfway house. A half-learnt script puts you in an uncanny valley where you sound like you're reciting, so learn it until it feels natural again, or don't memorise at all.
The gift
A talk's real job is to build an idea in the minds of the people listening.
Traps
Don't use the stage to sell your company or product. Audiences switch off fast.
Throughline
Pick one idea and build the whole talk around it. Anderson calls it the throughline.
Connection
Connect as a person first. Eye contact and a little honesty earn trust.
Explaining
Explain by starting from what the audience already knows, one step at a time.
A story from the book
Anderson tells the story of Richard Turere, a Maasai boy from Kenya who rigged flashing lights around his family's cattle pen to keep lions away at night. On the TED stage he was nervous. But he had a real idea and told it simply, and the audience was with him.
One thing to try
Pick one idea from your work and explain it in five minutes to a friend outside your field. Watch for the moment their eyes glaze and note the word you used just before. Then ask them to tell you your point in one sentence.
Knotd has the key ideas from 250+ non-fiction books, each in a few minutes, in plain words. TED Talks comes with a Spot the Trap case to make it stick.
Get the whole book on KnotdOpen in the appHow do you get an idea across? Chris Anderson, who runs TED, says a talk has one job. It has to rebuild an idea from the speaker's mind inside the listeners' minds, using little more than words. He calls the skill presentation literacy, and he argues that anyone can learn it.
Find your throughline; Five tools for a talk; Start where they are; Script or notes?.
Pick one idea from your work and explain it in five minutes to a friend outside your field. Watch for the moment their eyes glaze and note the word you used just before. Then ask them to tell you your point in one sentence.
Yes. Knotd has the key ideas from TED Talks in a few minutes, in plain words, plus a Spot the Trap case to test them. It's one of 250+ non-fiction books in the app.
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