Don’t get overwhelmed by TED talks

On December 17th at her Speak Up for Success blog Jezra Kaye posted her Public Speaking Tip 82: Don’t Let the “TED Talk” Style Intimidate You or Stand Between You and Making a Good Enough Speech.

She pointed out that you should not judge a talk by comparing it with a TED Talk. Why not?

Those talks are prepared (and recorded) via an elaborate process calling for much more time and effort than a typical speech like a business presentation. They sometimes even are “the speech of a lifetime” and result from a lot of hard-won experience.

I previously blogged about Chris Hadfield’s TED Talk on What I Learned from Going Blind in Space. Last March Carmine Gallo wrote about How Steve Jobs Made Presentations Look Effortless. He mentioned:

“You might assume that a particular speaker is naturally gifted, confident, and polished on stage. What you don’t see is that it took them years of practice to get there. When I interviewed astronaut Chris Hadfield who became a social media sensation with his weightless version of David Bowie’s Space Oddity, I complimented him on his TED talk and the strength of his delivery. ‘I’ve been speaking for about 25 years,’ he reminded me.”
 
You can see Chris Hadfield's optimistic revised version of the late David Bowie's song Space Oddity here .