Picture Credit: Tammy McConaty
Check out my TEDx talk by clicking here.
This is Episode 11 in my TEDx journey series. In case you missed them, here are the previous entries:
- Episode 1: My Secret to Becoming a TEDx Speaker: The Event Theme
- Episode 2: How I Became a TEDx Speaker: Getting The Acceptance Letter
- Episode 3: Why I Hated My First TEDx Talk Draft: What Was Missing
- Episode 4: Why My Second TEDx Draft Was Worse Than The First
- Episode 5: My TEDx Draft 3: Even Worse than Versions 1 and 2
- Episode 6: My TEDx Draft 4: How I Completely Overhauled My Talk
- Episode 7: How to Write a TEDx Talk You’re Proud Of: The Final Draft
- Episode 8: How I Rehearsed (Unconventionally) For My TEDx Talk
- Episode 9: What to Do The Day Before Your TEDx Talk: Master the Venue
- Episode 10: How I Freaked Out Right Before Giving My TEDx Talk
The introduction makes or breaks any talk, but especially a TEDx talk.
Because think about how many TEDx talks there are out there. According to the official TED website, there have already been over 13,000 TEDx events around the world.
If you don’t make it clear why people should listen, they have plenty of other options.
In this article I overview how I came up with the introduction for my TEDx Logan Circle talk and the ingredients you need for a memorable presentation opening:
There’s a lot of advice out there on presentation intros:
1. Tell them what you’re going to tell them
Traced back to the Greek philosopher Aristotle, this tip is a pillar of rhetoric. If you want people to remember something, you need to repeat it.
- In the intro, tell them what you’re going to tell them
- In the body, tell it to them
- Then in the conclusion, tell them what you told them
2. Introduce yourself
To establish your credibility, you need to say who you are and why you’re the expert to listen to.
3. Make it catchy
To convince people to listen to the rest of your presentation, you need to grab their attention. This can be achieved through:
- A shocking statistic
- Personal story
- Captivating visual
- Audience participation
- The list could really go on…
I disagree with these common tips. Here’s why:
1. Tell them what you’re going to tell them
If your first slide is an agenda, “Today I’m going to talk about A, B, and C” you are certainly “telling them what you’re going to tell them”. But nobody cares yet about anything you have to say.
2. Introduce yourself
If the first thing you say is, “Hi! I’m Chris, I’m a data storytelling trainer for companies around the world and I’m excited…” you are certainly introducing yourself. But nobody cares about you (sorry) until you tell people what’s in it for them.
3. Make it catchy
Given points 1 and 2, that’s why, logically, we need to make the beginning catchy, right?
Well, consider this…ads are “catchy”. But most of the time I’m sure you click away, hit “Skip”, or change channels. You hate when they use gimmicks like loud sounds, contrived weirdness, or a forced “human” story to get you. If you want your presentation intro to stick, grabbing attention isn’t enough…
So what in the world do we do?
You need to create an emotionally relevant question
Let’s break that down one piece at a time:
“Question”
Your introduction must pose a meaningful question that is answered by the end of your talk. That’s how you not only grab attention but sustain it.
As the talk progresses, you give clues and hints that point the audience in the direction of the final answer. And when you finally give it to them, the payoff is tremendous because you’ve built that earned anticipation.
“Relevant”
The question you pose must be meaningful to the people you’re speaking to. That’s why “understanding your audience” (i.e. what is their level of technical proficiency, what information have they seen about this topic before, what action do they need to take on this subject in the future) is crucial before preparing any portion of your talk.
A TEDx talk is more challenging because you don’t know who your audience is. (It could be anyone around the world!)
But you can aim to tie your ideas to the most essential human needs (i.e. desire for belonging, desire for recognition, desire for self-actualization, etc.)
“Emotional”
As the poet Maya Angelou once wrote:
“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel”
Once you have the relevant question to ask, it will be forgotten unless you make it emotional.
For example, let’s say you’ve come up with this super relevant question for your audience:
- “How do we make sales go up next quarter?”
And you just say that as your presentation introduction…
That’s nice, and some people in the room might already care. But how can we amplify desire for the answer so *everyone* is on the same page?
What if you showed a graph providing *context*, showing how sales were doing fantastic, until something catastrophic happened last quarter. Emotions of frustration, bewilderment, and maybe even anger manifest.
Now your idea sticks.
If the “relevant question” of your presentation is:
- “How can introverts succeed in workplaces that value verbal participation?”
What if you told a story about how you struggled in your career for the exact same reason? And how you saw colleagues who worked much less than you get the promotions you deserved – because they could speak? Emotions of sadness, sympathy, maybe even empathy arise.
Now your idea sticks.
When I was brainstorming ideas for my TEDx talk introduction I came up with this relevant question:
- “How can we communicate data in a more engaging way?”
That’s a question technical people may already care about (because they have to do the communicating), but a question non-technical people may also care about (because they receive the bad communication).
To make this relevant question emotional, I aimed to tell a relatable story that put the idea in context. I chose to describe a time I saw a really bad executive presentation with data. And to make it extra emotional, I force the audience to sit through me role-playing the monotone delivery.
Now even if you never experienced that at work before, you knew what it felt like
To drive the emotion even further, I slam my piano keyboard to indicate how bad data presentation *feels* – and hint at the musical connection to come.
And to stick the emotion so deep that it became undeniably reverberant, I planned my first line to stand out like a sore thumb and weave into the story.
It was:
“This is going to be the most boring start to a TEDx talk you’ve ever heard”
I did not want this to be gimmicky like an ad. Instead, I did this purposefully. I wanted the beginning to be really, really, really boring to show the existing gap in data communication. Then by the end, when I propose my alternative, it would make even more sense and be even more desirable.
One of the first YouTube comments when my talk was released was: “Terrific talk and love that intro haha”
There were many other intros I played around with. But this one really stuck because it was an emotionally relevant question.
Coming up next in the series is Episode 12: “The Number One Tip for Writing a TED Style Talk”...
Before getting to the end of the series, you can also check out the TEDx talk below!
