How to Get Your TED Talk Banned: Free book serialisation, Part 1

This book tells the story of how doing an 11-minute TED talk changed my perspective of myself and other people, almost got me slammed up in jail, and could have cost me my job. 

Meet the Freaks

I’ve always been one of those weird people who get a kick out of speaking in public. Perhaps it was my way to become famous. At the age of fourteen, my five-minute speech about zip fasteners took me to the dizzying heights of the Buxton Opera House for the North-West England regional finals of Youth Speaks, a competition run by the Rotary Club. Leftwich High School’s 1987 dream team of Sarah, Ruth, and I were narrowly beaten by three posh girls from Altrincham who spoke about France. I guess the judges didn’t consider a podgy blond kid with a broad Cheshire accent talking on the topic of zip fasteners quite high-brow enough.

So, many years later, when I received a call in the winter of 2015 from my friend Martin Daubney asking if I would consider talking at TEDxBasel, I immediately said yes, without giving it a moment’s consideration. TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) is a non-profit organisation that is “devoted to spreading ideas”. This is usually in the form of short, powerful talks, which have become incredibly popular online in recent years. TED holds global conferences and provides licences for independently-run TEDx events in communities around the world.

I had watched many TED talks in my capacity as a communication trainer and used some in my training courses. I had long admired thought-provoking and entertaining TED speakers such as Sir Ken Robinson and Benjamin Zander, whose online views number in the millions.

“We’d like you to do a three-minute funny spot”, said Martin, “a kind of palate cleanser at the event”. Martin was on the organising committee of TEDxBasel. TEDx events are independently organised, with the US-based TED organisation granting licences for volunteers to set up local events under certain rules. Basel is tucked into the North-West corner of Switzerland and has an active community of English-speaking expats, of which I have been a member since 2001.

I started thinking about the topic I might tackle for a “three-minute funny spot”. I’m no stand-up comedian so hadn’t a routine already prepared. Ever since the zip fastener runner-up incident, I’ve always said it’s far better to talk about something you know well. Having worked in communications for twenty-odd years, mainly within large corporations, I decided to tackle the topic of pompous, deliberately baffling language used by self-important people in the business world. I know many such people and have plenty of examples. I had no qualms about a polished delivery, with countless Master of Ceremonies and corporate event moderation jobs under my belt.

I started writing some notes on the back of an empty cigarette packet during a smoke break and the beginnings of my idea for a speech were forming.

Martin had arranged an audition for me in front of the lead organisers of TEDxBasel, Harrison and Jane (not their real names: you will see why as the story unfolds).

It was a wintry evening in a meeting room they had commandeered from the Legal Department of Basel University. I felt the nerves building up inside me as I smoked my last cigarette before going into the building with my embryonic ideas on the back of a cigarette packet. Inside, I explained the concept for my “palate cleanser” to Harrison and Jane.

They must’ve been amused by my first ideas because a few days later Martin called to invite me to the first TEDxBasel wannabe speakers’ meeting. This took place on a frozen January evening in the top-floor meeting room of a former factory in the trendy post-industrial area of Basel. Around nine other TEDx hopefuls were at the event, including a colleague from the company I then worked for.

It was an evening of exchanging pleasantries with the other potential speakers and being briefed by Harrison and Jane on the formidable TED process they were about to take us through. It would all start with “the idea”, which they and their volunteer coaches would help us to develop, right through to reciting our speech in front of 700 people at Basel’s Musical Theatre that coming May.

There was a sharp gasp from everyone when Jane projected a picture of the Musical Theatre seen from the stage outwards, its rows of empty red seats striking fear and excitement into this group of would-be performers. I doubt any of us had ever been on stage at such a prestigious venue before, except, of course, for me at the Buxton Opera House.

Getting It On

I was pleased to learn that my coach would be Martin. I knew he’d be honest with his feedback. He’d tell me what works and what doesn’t. We all need to know what we’re doing well because sometimes we get obsessed with our own faults. That said, we do need to know what’s not working. As another trainer I work with puts it: “It’s the poppy seed effect. If you’re at a cocktail party and you eat one of those canapés with black seeds on top, then have a poppy seed stuck in your teeth, you’d rather someone told you than smile at everyone all evening with it.”

Martin and I got together several times to flesh out my idea of “piercing the pomposity of people who take themselves too seriously”. By now, we had realised that this topic couldn’t be tackled adequately in a three-minute “palate cleanser” spot, and Jane and Harrison agreed to upgrade me to a full speaking slot. The TED guidelines state that 18 minutes is the maximum length for a standard talk, but in recent years they’ve discovered that less is more in terms of online views. I was allocated 11 minutes by TEDxBasel.

I had already been through several drafts of the speech by the date all speakers had been instructed to submit their scripts. The speeches would then be vetted and edited by the two people at the head of TEDxBasel, something I’d not expected from an organisation affiliated with TED, which is devoted to “spreading ideas”. You don’t imagine anyone taking a red pen to Al Gore.

By this time, I had already decided to put aside my pre-conceived ideas as a communication and presentation trainer myself. This time, I would take on the TED experience from the inside, as a speaker. I reckoned that immersing myself in the process the TEDxBasel organisers were about to put me through would be a learning experience for me as a speaker, as well as a trainer afterwards.

I was on my way to a friend’s Eurovision night when I had an appointment at Jane and Harrison’s apartment in the trendiest area of Basel to go through the latest version of the script and decide on the final direction of the talk. They gave me some feedback and the three of us came up with some further ways of developing the talk. Overall they were pleased with how it was progressing.

After a couple more sessions with Martin, my script was shaping up well. I had dropped one of the initial concepts that seemed to be constricting the shape of the talk, as well as one or two anecdotes that were taking up time but not adding to the idea. Here’s one:

My ten-year-old daughter is a fabulous literal thinker. I once asked her “Patti, if frankfurters are from Frankfurt, and hamburgers are from Hamburg, where is Wiener Schnitzel from?” She thought for a moment and then said “Venus?”

Every sentence matters when you have a limited time to talk, and even though a tale like that might get an audience to smile, you need to be ruthless with your words.

I’ve mentioned the importance of getting feedback so that you can uncover blind spots and amplify strong points. I’d decided that my talk was now in such an advanced stage as to be tested on a virgin audience, one who had not yet been exposed to my speech at all.

I’d been running a series of presentation training courses alongside an expert speaker trainer, Olivia Schofield. With the permission of her training group, I performed my talk in front of them. I say “performed” but it was more like “read out aloud”.

You see, according to the strict TED process Jane and Harrison had instructed us to follow, we were required to recite the entire script word for word. Parrot-fashion is something I have never asked the people I’ve trained to do. I’ve always found that speakers who aren’t trained actors can get hung up on memorising scripts. Memorised speeches can often lack freshness, authenticity, and a sense of spontaneity. But I’d agreed to go along with the TEDxBasel process and adhere to it, so I would.

My audience gave me some valuable points of feedback. Olivia then reviewed my script and did something that transformed my ramblings into sharpened prose: she took a red pen and ruthlessly struck out every unnecessary word or phrase. It gave the words space and drama.

Here’s an example, from my opening lines:

Before…

I was at BBC Television Centre in London. They used to call it the concrete doughnut. A big, grey sixties building that dominated Shepherd’s Bush. The studio lights were about to go up on a prestigious TV debate show. I had always wanted to be on the telly, ever since I was a child. I was in my suit and tie feeling really important, sweating with nerves and anxiety, sitting… in the audience, watching.

After…

BBC Television Centre, London. The studio lights dimmed on a prestigious TV debate show. I was in my suit and tie feeling really important, sweating with nerves and anxiety, sitting… in the audience.

Now my speech was really getting into shape. It was shorter, sharper, and stronger. I’d been lucky enough to have had feedback from some of the world’s finest presentation trainers: Olivia had passed it to a couple of trainers she works with and they had provided some excellent guidance.

To be continued tomorrow...