TED’s secret to great public speaking | Chris Anderson

Jody’s Reflections:

I am a writer, published author, public speaker (TEDx – OakLawn in Dallas, conferences, companies) and a coach.

I write talks for people and show them how to get asked to speak at numerous types of events.

What I love about this TED advice from #ChrisAnderson is that he shares the essence of the whole TED Talk Experience.

Having gone through it myself, it’s all about that one great message you and only you can share.

It’s not how long you speak, it’s how clear and helpful your message is for others.

A TED Talk is actually not about you at all. You’re just the spark, the story, the vessel that helps others realize their dreams, inspirations and gives them the courage to speak out too.

So read and enjoy, and know that you too can give a talk like a TED talk. Anyone can if that is your dream and you’re willing to put in the work to make it the best story you’ve ever told.

Jody B. Miller is a public speaker, author, consultant and coach. In addition to focusing on Work Happiness for corporations, she hosts a top ranked podcast, contributes to numerous publications and, in addition to her work related to www.jodybmiller.com, she runs the following businesses
www.weleap.net
www.contentconversionmarketing.com
www.writeabestseller.net
www.raisinggreatkidz.com

TED’s secret to great public speaking | Chris Anderson

Some people think that there’s a TED Talk formula: “Give a talk on a round, red rug.” “Share a childhood story.” “Divulge a personal secret.” “End with an inspiring call to action.

” No. That’s not how to think of a TED Talk. In fact, if you overuse those devices, you’re just going to come across as clichéd or emotionally manipulative. But there is one thing that all great TED Talks have in common, and I would like to share that thing with you, because over the past 12 years, I’ve had a ringside seat, listening to many hundreds of amazing TED speakers, like these.

I’ve helped them prepare their talks for prime time, and learned directly from them their secrets of what makes for a great talk. And even though these speakers and their topics all seem completely different, they actually do have one key common ingredient.

And it’s this: Your number one task as a speaker is to transfer into your listeners’ minds an extraordinary gift — a strange and beautiful object that we call an idea. Let me show you what I mean.

Here’s Haley. She is about to give a TED Talk and frankly, she’s terrified. (Video) Presenter: Haley Van Dyck! (Applause) Over the course of 18 minutes, 1,200 people, many of whom have never seen each other before, are finding that their brains are starting to sync with Haley’s brain and with each other.

They’re literally beginning to exhibit the same brain-wave patterns. And I don’t just mean they’re feeling the same emotions. There’s something even more startling happening. Let’s take a look inside Haley’s brain for a moment.

There are billions of interconnected neurons in an impossible tangle. But look here, right here — a few million of them are linked to each other in a way which represents a single idea. And incredibly, this exact pattern is being recreated in real-time inside the minds of everyone listening.

That’s right; in just a few minutes, a pattern involving millions of neurons is being teleported into 1,200 minds, just by people listening to a voice and watching a face. But wait — what is an idea anyway? Well, you can think of it as a pattern of information that helps you understand and navigate the world.

Ideas come in all shapes and sizes, from the complex and analytical to the simple and aesthetic. Here are just a few examples shared from the TED stage. Sir Ken Robinson — creativity is key to our kids’ future.

(Video) Sir Ken Robinson: My contention is that creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status. Chris Anderson: Elora Hardy — building from bamboo is beautiful.

(Video) Elora Hardy: It is growing all around us, it’s strong, it’s elegant, it’s earthquake-resistant. CA: Chimamanda Adichie — people are more than a single identity. (Video) Chimamanda Adichie: The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete.

CA: Your mind is teeming with ideas, and not just randomly. They’re carefully linked together. Collectively they form an amazingly complex structure that is your personal worldview. It’s your brain’s operating system.

It’s how you navigate the world. And it is built up out of millions of individual ideas. So, for example, if one little component of your worldview is the idea that kittens are adorable, then when you see this, you’ll react like this.

But if another component of your worldview is the idea that leopards are dangerous, then when you see this, you’ll react a little bit differently. So, it’s pretty obvious why the ideas that make up your worldview are crucial.

You need them to be as reliable as possible — a guide, to the scary but wonderful real world out there. Now, different people’s worldviews can be dramatically different. For example, how does your worldview react when you see this image: (Video) Dalia Mogahed: What do you think when you look at me? “A woman of faith,” “an expert,” maybe even “a sister”? Or “oppressed,” “brainwashed,” “a terrorist”? CA: Whatever your answer, there are millions of people out there who would react very differently.

So that’s why ideas really matter. If communicated properly, they’re capable of changing, forever, how someone thinks about the world, and shaping their actions both now and well into the future.

Ideas are the most powerful force shaping human culture. So if you accept that your number one task as a speaker is to build an idea inside the minds of your audience, here are four guidelines for how you should go about that task: One, limit your talk to just one major idea.

Ideas are complex things; you need to slash back your content so that you can focus on the single idea you’re most passionate about, and give yourself a chance to explain that one thing properly. You have to give context, share examples, make it vivid.

So pick one idea, and make it the through-line running through your entire talk, so that everything you say links back to it in some way. Two, give your listeners a reason to care. Before you can start building things inside the minds of your audience, you have to get their permission to welcome you in.

And the main tool to achieve that? Curiosity. Stir your audience’s curiosity. Use intriguing, provocative questions to identify why something doesn’t make sense and needs explaining. If you can reveal a disconnection in someone’s worldview, they’ll feel the need to bridge that knowledge gap.

And once you’ve sparked that desire, it will be so much easier to start building your idea. Three, build your idea, piece by piece, out of concepts that your audience already understands. You use the power of language to weave together concepts that already exist in your listeners’ minds — but not your language, their language.

You start where they are. The speakers often forget that many of the terms and concepts they live with are completely unfamiliar to their audiences. Now, metaphors can play a crucial role in showing how the pieces fit together because they reveal the desired shape of the pattern, based on an idea that the listener already understands.

For example, when Jennifer Kahn wanted to explain the incredible new biotechnology called CRISPR, she said, “It’s as if, for the first time, you had a word processor to edit DNA. CRISPR allows you to cut and paste genetic information really easily.

” Now, a vivid explanation like that delivers a satisfying aha moment as it snaps into place in our minds. It’s important, therefore, to test your talk on trusted friends, and find out which parts they get confused by.

Four, here’s the final tip: Make your idea worth sharing. By that I mean, ask yourself the question: “Who does this idea benefit?” And I need you to be honest with the answer. If the idea only serves you or your organization, then, I’m sorry to say, it’s probably not worth sharing.

The audience will see right through you. But if you believe that the idea has the potential to brighten up someone else’s day or change someone else’s perspective for the better or inspire someone to do something differently, then you have the core ingredient to a truly great talk, one that can be a gift to them and to all of us.

Source : Youtube

How to Actually Work…When You’re Working from Home

HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW ADVICE…

Source : Youtube

Today, more and more people are getting the opportunity to work from home, which is great. But sometimes, like what’s happening right now with the coronavirus, certain circumstances may actually force people to work from home.

And while working from home does come with a lot of perks– you get to work in your pajamas. You have no commute. You get to hang out with your dog. I love you. It also does have some real challenges.

Because there’s less structure, you may actually work too much and focus too hard and get burned out. What’s the answer? The second is actually kind of the opposite. It might just be hard to focus and get as much done as you really want to do.

The key to overcoming both of these challenges is to set boundaries around your time and space. So when you’re working, you’re working. And when you’re not working, you’re not. Here’s how.

The first thing you’re going to want to do is give yourself a dedicated workspace away from distraction, meaning away from the TV, away from any music or the kitchen. One thing that’s really helpful is to be able to shut the door, so that you’re out of sight.

The second thing you want to do is make a schedule and stick to it. And it may sound silly, but you actually want to pretend that you’re not working from home. So get up as you normally would.

Pour yourself a cup of coffee. Sit down with your computer. It’s good practice to play out for yourself what’s acceptable and not acceptable to do during office hours. So for example, when you’re at work, you’re not going to play with your dog or listen to music.

So don’t do them while you’re at home actually focusing on your work. Finally, you’re going to want to quit at quitting time. Even if you’re in the middle of a project, put it down, because it will help you get jumpstarted the next day.

Do you want to get me sipping my coffee?

The third thing you’re going to want to do is set boundaries. The people or animals in your life are going to see you at home and think you’re taking the day off.

But that’s not the case. Buddy, I need you to listen to me. I know what this looks like, but it’s not what it seems. You’re going to want to explain to them, unapologetically, that you’re working from home.

We’ll go on a walk at lunch. We’ll go to the park. And the more they see you around the house doing your thing, the more they’re going to begin to understand that this is your time to focus.

So at the end of the day, you might feel like you just didn’t get enough done. This is pretty normal, and a lot of people feel this way when they work from home. That’s why the last thing that’s really important to do is celebrate your wins.

Maybe write them down and go over everything you did that day. These daily reminders are really good, because they can create a virtuous cycle. And the next time you work from home, you might feel a little bit more focused and just better about your day when it’s over.

Because it’s not easy.

Source : Youtube

Jody’s Reflections:

Working from home can be great fun. But you have to focus. Here are some things I’ve been doing for the past 6+ years. They work for me. I hope you find them helpful.

I set a timer for 30 minutes to 1 hour depending on what I am working on. I work until it ends.

I play soothing meditation music with no lyrics (less distraction, more focus).

I have motivating phrases that pop up on my computer.

Finish the Task at Hand

Do the Worst First

Do it Now

I reward myself when I finish a task.

  • A cup of coffee, a snack, a walk, look at my email, do a post, write a little in my next book

Rinse and Repeat until it’s time to put work away and engage in conversation and activities with others.

 

Leadership Skills During COVID-19: How to Keep Employees Connected

The one thing that is incredibly important is the power of human connection. Leadership right now is particularly important. You know people are working from home, people are feeling insecure, many of us have become caretakers, and so there’s a lot of stress, there’s a lot of pressure, which is why communication is so critical right now. In the absence of communication, people allow their own stories to form, or they start to form their own version of reality.

It’s important to be transparent. It’s important to be open. It’s also important to share what you know now, knowing that it may change.

Part of communication is also listening. That Friday afternoon kind of show-and-tell session, making sure that we continue to have this human connection, one to one, to small groups.

One to many is really critical: Employees, customers partners gravitate towards people who show up authentically and are true to themselves through all of this.

Marie Rosecrans, SVP and SMB Marketing expert at Salesforce, reveals there’s no option to opt out of communication and human connection in order to be an effective leader during COVID-19.

Source : Youtube

The happy secret to better work | Shawn Achor

Shawn Achor’s TEDx Talk.

When I was seven years old and my sister was just five years old, we were playing on top of a bunk bed. I was two years older than my sister at the time — I mean, I’m two years older than her now — but at the time it meant she had to do everything that I wanted to do, and I wanted to play war.

So we were up on top of our bunk beds. And on one side of the bunk bed, I had put out all of my G.I. Joe soldiers and weaponry. And on the other side were all my sister’s My Little Ponies ready for a cavalry charge.

There are differing accounts of what actually happened that afternoon, but since my sister is not here with us today, let me tell you the true story — (Laughter) which is my sister’s a little on the clumsy side.

Somehow, without any help or push from her older brother at all, Amy disappeared off of the top of the bunk bed and landed with this crash on the floor. I nervously peered over the side of the bed to see what had befallen my fallen sister and saw that she had landed painfully on her hands and knees on all fours on the ground.

I was nervous because my parents had charged me with making sure that my sister and I played as safely and as quietly as possible. And seeing as how I had accidentally broken Amy’s arm just one week before — (Laughter) (Laughter ends) heroically pushing her out of the way of an oncoming imaginary sniper bullet, (Laughter) for which I have yet to be thanked, I was trying as hard as I could — she didn’t even see it coming — I was trying hard to be on my best behavior.

And I saw my sister’s face, this wail of pain and suffering and surprise threatening to erupt from her mouth and wake my parents from the long winter’s nap for which they had settled. So I did the only thing my frantic seven year-old brain could think to do to avert this tragedy.

And if you have children, you’ve seen this hundreds of times. I said, “Amy, wait. Don’t cry. Did you see how you landed? No human lands on all fours like that. Amy, I think this means you’re a unicorn.

” (Laughter) Now, that was cheating, because there was nothing she would want more than not to be Amy the hurt five year-old little sister, but Amy the special unicorn. Of course, this option was open to her brain at no point in the past.

And you could see how my poor, manipulated sister faced conflict, as her little brain attempted to devote resources to feeling the pain and suffering and surprise she just experienced, or contemplating her new-found identity as a unicorn.

And the latter won. Instead of crying or ceasing our play, instead of waking my parents, with all the negative consequences for me, a smile spread across her face and she scrambled back up onto the bunk bed with all the grace of a baby unicorn — (Laughter) with one broken leg.

What we stumbled across at this tender age of just five and seven — we had no idea at the time — was was going be at the vanguard of a scientific revolution occurring two decades later in the way that we look at the human brain.

We had stumbled across something called positive psychology, which is the reason I’m here today and the reason that I wake up every morning. When I started talking about this research outside of academia, with companies and schools, the first thing they said to never do is to start with a graph.

The first thing I want to do is start with a graph. This graph looks boring, but it is the reason I get excited and wake up every morning. And this graph doesn’t even mean anything; it’s fake data.

What we found is — (Laughter) If I got this data studying you, I would be thrilled, because there’s a trend there, and that means that I can get published, which is all that really matters. There is one weird red dot above the curve, there’s one weirdo in the room — I know who you are, I saw you earlier — that’s no problem.

That’s no problem, as most of you know, because I can just delete that dot. I can delete that dot because that’s clearly a measurement error. And we know that’s a measurement error because it’s messing up my data.

(Laughter) So one of the first things we teach people in economics, statistics, business and psychology courses is how, in a statistically valid way, do we eliminate the weirdos. How do we eliminate the outliers so we can find the line of best fit? Which is fantastic if I’m trying to find out how many Advil the average person should be taking — two.

But if I’m interested in your potential, or for happiness or productivity or energy or creativity, we’re creating the cult of the average with science. If I asked a question like, “How fast can a child learn how to read in a classroom?” scientists change the answer to “How fast does the average child learn how to read in that classroom?” and we tailor the class towards the average.

If you fall below the average, then psychologists get thrilled, because that means you’re depressed or have a disorder, or hopefully both. We’re hoping for both because our business model is, if you come into a therapy session with one problem, we want to make sure you leave knowing you have ten, so you keep coming back.

We’ll go back into your childhood if necessary, but eventually we want to make you normal again. But normal is merely average. And positive psychology posits that if we study what is merely average, we will remain merely average.

Then instead of deleting those positive outliers, what I intentionally do is come into a population like this one and say, why? Why are some of you high above the curve in terms of intellectual, athletic, musical ability, creativity, energy levels, resiliency in the face of challenge, sense of humor? Whatever it is, instead of deleting you, what I want to do is study you.

Because maybe we can glean information, not just how to move people up to the average, but move the entire average up in our companies and schools worldwide. The reason this graph is important to me is, on the news, the majority of the information is not positive.

in fact it’s negative. Most of it’s about murder, corruption, diseases, natural disasters. And very quickly, my brain starts to think that’s the accurate ratio of negative to positive in the world.

This creates “the medical school syndrome.” During the first year of medical training, as you read through a list of all the symptoms and diseases, suddenly you realize you have all of them.

(Laughter) I have a brother in-law named Bobo, which is a whole other story. Bobo married Amy the unicorn. Bobo called me on the phone — (Laughter) from Yale Medical School, and Bobo said, “Shawn, I have leprosy.

” (Laughter) Which, even at Yale, is extraordinarily rare. But I had no idea how to console poor Bobo because he had just gotten over an entire week of menopause. (Laughter) We’re finding it’s not necessarily the reality that shapes us, but the lens through which your brain views the world that shapes your reality.

And if we can change the lens, not only can we change your happiness, we can change every single educational and business outcome at the same time. I applied to Harvard on a dare. I didn’t expect to get in, and my family had no money for college.

When I got a military scholarship two weeks later, they let me go. Something that wasn’t even a possibility became a reality. I assumed everyone there would see it as a privilege as well, that they’d be excited to be there.

Even in a classroom full of people smarter than you, I felt you’d be happy just to be in that classroom. But what I found is, while some people experience that, when I graduated after my four years and then spent the next eight years living in the dorms with the students — Harvard asked me to; I wasn’t that guy.

(Laughter) I was an officer to counsel students through the difficult four years. And in my research and my teaching, I found that these students, no matter how happy they were with their original success of getting into the school, two weeks later their brains were focused, not on the privilege of being there, nor on their philosophy or physics, but on the competition, the workload, the hassles, stresses, complaints.

When I first went in there, I walked into the freshmen dining hall, which is where my friends from Waco, Texas, which is where I grew up — I know some of you know this. When they’d visit, they’d look around, and say, “This dining hall looks like something out of Hogwart’s.

” It does, because that was Hogwart’s and that’s Harvard. And when they see this, they say, “Why do you waste your time studying happiness at Harvard? What does a Harvard student possibly have to be unhappy about?” Embedded within that question is the key to understanding the science of happiness.

Because what that question assumes is that our external world is predictive of our happiness levels, when in reality, if I know everything about your external world, I can only predict 10% of your long-term happiness.

90 percent of your long-term happiness is predicted not by the external world, but by the way your brain processes the world. And if we change it, if we change our formula for happiness and success, we can change the way that we can then affect reality.

What we found is that only 25% of job successes are predicted by IQ, 75 percent of job successes are predicted by your optimism levels, your social support and your ability to see stress as a challenge instead of as a threat.

I talked to a New England boarding school, probably the most prestigious one, and they said, “We already know that. So every year, instead of just teaching our students, we have a wellness week. And we’re so excited.

Monday night we have the world’s leading expert will speak about adolescent depression. Tuesday night it’s school violence and bullying. Wednesday night is eating disorders. Thursday night is illicit drug use.

And Friday night we’re trying to decide between risky sex or happiness.” (Laughter) I said, “That’s most people’s Friday nights.” (Laughter) (Applause) Which I’m glad you liked, but they did not like that at all.

Silence on the phone. And into the silence, I said, “I’d be happy to speak at your school, but that’s not a wellness week, that’s a sickness week. You’ve outlined all the negative things that can happen, but not talked about the positive.

” The absence of disease is not health. Here’s how we get to health: We need to reverse the formula for happiness and success. In the last three years, I’ve traveled to 45 countries, working with schools and companies in the midst of an economic downturn.

And I found that most companies and schools follow a formula for success, which is this: If I work harder, I’ll be more successful. And if I’m more successful, then I’ll be happier. That undergirds most of our parenting and managing styles, the way that we motivate our behavior.

And the problem is it’s scientifically broken and backwards for two reasons. Every time your brain has a success, you just changed the goalpost of what success looked like. You got good grades, now you have to get better grades, you got into a good school and after you get into a better one, you got a good job, now you have to get a better job, you hit your sales target, we’re going to change it.

And if happiness is on the opposite side of success, your brain never gets there. We’ve pushed happiness over the cognitive horizon, as a society. And that’s because we think we have to be successful, then we’ll be happier.

But our brains work in the opposite order. If you can raise somebody’s level of positivity in the present, then their brain experiences what we now call a happiness advantage, which is your brain at positive performs significantly better than at negative, neutral or stressed.

Your intelligence rises, your creativity rises, your energy levels rise. In fact, we’ve found that every single business outcome improves. Your brain at positive is 31% more productive than your brain at negative, neutral or stressed.

You’re 37% better at sales. Doctors are 19 percent faster, more accurate at coming up with the correct diagnosis when positive instead of negative, neutral or stressed. Which means we can reverse the formula.

If we can find a way of becoming positive in the present, then our brains work even more successfully as we’re able to work harder, faster and more intelligently. We need to be able to reverse this formula so we can start to see what our brains are actually capable of.

Because dopamine, which floods into your system when you’re positive, has two functions. Not only does it make you happier, it turns on all of the learning centers in your brain allowing you to adapt to the world in a different way.

We’ve found there are ways that you can train your brain to be able to become more positive. In just a two-minute span of time done for 21 days in a row, we can actually rewire your brain, allowing your brain to actually work more optimistically and more successfully.

We’ve done these things in research now in every company that I’ve worked with, getting them to write down three new things that they’re grateful for for 21 days in a row, three new things each day.

And at the end of that, their brain starts to retain a pattern of scanning the world not for the negative, but for the positive first. Journaling about one positive experience you’ve had over the past 24 hours allows your brain to relive it.

Exercise teaches your brain that your behavior matters. We find that meditation allows your brain to get over the cultural ADHD that we’ve been creating by trying to do multiple tasks at once and allows our brains to focus on the task at hand.

And finally, random acts of kindness are conscious acts of kindness. We get people, when they open up their inbox, to write one positive email praising or thanking somebody in their support network. And by doing these activities and by training your brain just like we train our bodies, what we’ve found is we can reverse the formula for happiness and success, and in doing so, not only create ripples of positivity but a real revolution.

Thank you very much.

Source : Youtube