Open with an object#
Hold up something people can’t immediately explain. A cigarette. A piece of fruit standing in for something else. Anything that makes a room think what’s that for.
It feels hokey written down. It works anyway, including in rooms full of people who’d say they’re too serious for it. Curiosity isn’t optional in humans — you can’t decide not to wonder what the thing is.
Then make them do something#
Within that first minute, the room needs to move, speak, or respond. A show of hands is the oldest version and still works, though a genuinely provocative question is better.
The point isn’t the answer. It’s that an audience which has physically done something is an audience that’s participating rather than watching. Those are two different states and you can feel the difference from the front.
Get a real laugh in there too. Not a warm-up gag — something that earns an actual laugh, because a room that has laughed together is a different room.
Slow down, and let it be uncomfortable#
The most common tell of an inexperienced speaker is pace. Deliberate, unhurried delivery reads as command of the room, and pausing where you’d normally rush is what makes people lean in.
You will feel like you’re going too slowly. You are almost certainly not.
The body of it has to be stories#
However dry your subject, the middle of your talk needs people in it.
Nobody is moved by millions and billions. The brain doesn’t have a setting for that, and large numbers reliably produce a kind of respectful blankness. One person’s story does what the number can’t.
And when you tell it, you’re performing, not summarising:
- Get out from behind the lectern.
- Present tense — it’s happening now.
- Play the people in it. Actually do their voices, actually take their posture.
A son who spends years trying to impress a father who won’t be impressed, finally gets straight A’s, phones to ask are you proud of me — and is told, I’ll have to call you back, I’m busy. Told flat, that’s a sad anecdote. Acted out, in the present tense, it takes a room apart.
Save your actual point for the end#
Once the stories have opened people up, land the one thing you came to say. Not before. An insight delivered to a room that hasn’t been softened just bounces.
Returning to the object you opened with is the classic close, and it’s popular for a reason. It’s also the most over-used move in the format, and a forced callback is worse than no callback. If it lands naturally, do it. If you’re bending the ending to reach it, don’t.
The uncomfortable part of all this#
There’s a claim underneath the whole method: stories persuade and statistics don’t. That’s true, and it’s worth being slightly uneasy about.
An individual story is, strictly speaking, weak evidence. The reason it moves people isn’t that it’s more true — it’s that we’re built to respond to one person and not to a number. Which means the same technique that makes a good case land makes a bad one land just as well. A convincingly delivered nonsense argument fools a room comfortably, and the fact that you can demonstrate that on stage in ninety seconds should give anyone using these tools some pause.
Use them for things that are actually true. The techniques don’t check.
A few small things to try:
- Cut your first sentence and replace it with an object or a question.
- Put a show of hands in the first sixty seconds.
- Rewrite your best example so it happens to one named person, in present tense.
- Move your main point to the last two minutes.
