Talk Like TED
Carmine Gallo
Talk Like TED is Carmine Gallo's analysis of the most-watched TED talks, reduced to nine habits: unleash a passion you actually have, tell stories, hold a conversation rather than give a speech, teach something new, deliver a jaw-dropping moment, use humour, stay within eighteen minutes, engage more than one sense, and stay authentic. For a work presentation the usable core is smaller: open with a story, organise in threes, keep it short, use one image that lands, say the whole thing in one sentence, and rehearse out loud until it sounds unrehearsed.
Your next presentation opens with an agenda slide. The room decides within the first minute or so whether to listen. A coach who took apart the talks people actually watch explains what goes into that minute.
The book in essence
Gallo, a communication coach who had earlier written on Steve Jobs's presentations, studied hundreds of TED talks (more than 150 hours, by his account) and interviewed speakers and neuroscientists to find what the most-shared ones had in common. Many opened with a story, often a personal one, which engaged the audience before any argument arrived. Many organised the content in threes; working-memory research suggests listeners hold only about three or four new items at once. They stayed within eighteen minutes, TED's limit, which Gallo argues is about as long as an audience can absorb new material. The most memorable had a moment, an image or a demonstration, that the audience described afterwards instead of the argument. And, least glamorously, the speakers who seemed most natural had often rehearsed the most. Gallo frames it all as passion and authenticity, which suits the stage; for a Tuesday meeting the transferable parts are the order, the count, the length and the rehearsal.
Published in 2014, it sits with Made to Stick as the practical half of a pair: the Heaths explain why stories and concreteness stick, Gallo shows the best speakers using them.
Who it's for
- Anyone who presents to a room and opens with an agenda slide
- Specialists who know their material and lose the room anyway
- Readers who want a short, usable rule set rather than a theory of rhetoric
Who it's not for
- — Readers who find the TED register grating; Gallo admires it without reservation
- — Anyone wanting the science in depth; it is cited to support the habits, not examined
Key lessons
01
Open with a story, not an agenda
A story is a simulation the listener runs; an agenda is a list they skip. The first minute largely decides whether the room listens, and one person's experience of the problem earns that minute.
A team lead opens the payments incident review with a customer in Antalya charged twice on a Saturday. The chief executive's first question is about the customer, not the charts.
02
Say three things, and say there are three
Listeners hold about three new points comfortably without writing them down. Organise the content in three parts, announce the count, and cut the fourth however much you like it.
What broke, what it cost, what changes. The engineer is approved before the evidence slides are reached.
03
Say the whole talk in one sentence
If you cannot say the talk in one sentence, you do not yet know what it is about. Write the sentence first, build the deck to serve it, and repeat it at the end.
'One weekend bug cost us forty support hours, and one engineer for a month will prevent the next one' is the talk; eleven charts were not.
04
Rehearse out loud until it sounds unrehearsed
The most natural-seeming speakers had often practised the most. Say the talk out loud, start to finish, at least once before the room; you will hear the sentence that does not work.
A manager rehearses in the car on the way in and finds the opener is a warm-up and the ask is missing. Both are fixed before the meeting.
Try this today
For your next presentation, write the one sentence it is about and the sixty-second opening story before you touch a slide, then say both out loud once.
Quick check
Why do the best talks open with a story?
What did Gallo find about the most natural-seeming speakers?
Selected quotes
“Ideas are the currency of the twenty-first century.”
“Maybe stories are just data with a soul.”