Convey One Big Idea

Avoid sales pitches or talks that focus on what your organization does.

For the visuals, No slides = better than bad slides. For each slide, convey just one idea and remember that less is more. For photos, have them take up the entire slide. Use only one typeface and 3 fonts throughout the ...

Enhance your persuasion by offering a counterintuitive idea that convinces the audience that their worldview isn’t exactly right. If you can effectively prime people, add humour, and leverage anecdotes, you will increase your chances of success.

Rehearsals help shape the talk. Ask for advice on clarity, tone, variety, and examples.

Structure: One potential structure for your talk: introduction, context, main concepts, practical applications, conclusion.

• When you build trust and connection with your audience, your idea will resonate. To do so, consider the following tactics.
• Make eye contact as you walk confidently onto the stage.
• Show vulnerability.
• Drop the ego – consider being self-deprecating.

Script the opening minute and the closing lines. These are the most important parts of the talk. Use good images and stories to ignite curiosity and reflection. How people remember something is largely influenced by how it ends.

Zoom out to the vision of your talk. Show the possibilities that your idea unlocks. Have a clear call to action to help people engage with your idea or pay it forward. Paint a vision of what the world looks like when the idea spreads.

Our minds co-evolved with storytelling, a byproduct of fire; elders were often the best storytellers that helped us imagine, dream, and understand the minds of others.

Stories are easy to follow, and they give us the ability to understand complex ideas and understand imagined realities. Ad...

• With whatever you set out to explain, you need to incite curiosity. Make the audience care. You also should be incremental with new concepts.
• Don’t confuse everyone with too many concepts. Use metaphors to help people understand.
• Finally, show people drafts of your talk to ...

Wear something that makes you feel good, and rehearse your talk in that clothing. Ensure it is comfortable and you feel confident wearing it.

Have a mantra to keep you focused on why your talk counts, “This idea matters.”

Five minutes before your talk, breathe, do push-ups, and drink water. Remember the power of vulnerability. If you screw up, say, “Oops, sorry, a little nervous here.” Look at the audience for sympathetic and en...

You have three options: write out a full script, write out a structure, or go unscripted.

With a script, it’s sometimes difficult to translate written words into a talk. You also don’t want to sound too rehearsed, so if you go with a script, you need to fully master your me...