Student blog

For those who want to hone their public speaking skills, the TEDx platform offers an enriching experience. TEDx are independently organised events with a similar format to the TED Talks, i.e., 20-minutes extempore speech in a darkened hall focused on a relevant topic. Recently, I delivered a TEDx talk at the TEDx UWE event in Bristol. Here are some tips to aspiring speakers based on that experience.

Proactiveness

You can only work on something once you have it in the bag! In a competitive space where there is no dearth of people wanting to make their voices heard, each TEDx event sees hundreds of folks approaching organisers. It is important to proactively approach organisers well in advance and think about what would make a relevant and novel pitch – of the topic and yourself.

I started by tracking the TEDx platforms in the south of England that I knew would be easy to travel to. I noted the nature of topics their speakers had focused on in the past, and which of those videos had more likes or engagement on YouTube.

Novelty

Why should the audience listen to you? Naturally, it is best if it is a topic where you have some expertise or experience, since that adds credibility to your delivery. But it is more important that the topic is relevant to the audience. The best way to assess this is by reading the newspapers and talking with people to gauge contemporary issues.

However, relevance alone does not make it novel. There are two ways to add novelty factor. One way is to select a novel topic which nobody has heard of, say an innovation. The other, and more common way, is to think how you may approach a known topic differently.

For example, I have been working at the intersection of climate and business for some time. But most of the narrative in climate action has been from the perspective of suppliers, i.e., those supplying products that cause emissions and climate change. Rarely is it spoken from the demand side, i.e., consumers whose choices determine what businesses would supply. If we continue to buy products that cause high carbon emissions, then businesses will continue to produce those. But if we change preferences, businesses are compelled to change gears too; and as the supply of climate-friendly products increases, their prices will fall and become as affordable as the carbon-intensive products we buy today. This difference in how the often spoken about topic of climate action was approached, created that novelty factor.

The first 10-seconds

The start to a talk is crucial to getting the audience hooked. I started by going against a popular adage most people have heard of while growing up, ‘listen to your parents….’ I started with ‘do not listen to your parents….’ That made the folks sit up and wonder why I was saying something so radically different. The reason I used that tactic was to highlight that certain issues were not confronted or thought about by previous generation.

Make it personal

It is important to connect your topic with the audience. If you are talking about a problem, make it personal so that, by the time you are done speaking, folks are squirming at the thought that this issue will not spare them. This helps keep people’s attention and it breaks the assumption that the issue does not affect us, or that someone else would clean up the mess.

In my talk, I started by highlighting a simple data that concerns all of us, the growing heat every passing year. Thankfully, it was hot in Bristol that day, so I was able to refer to that. There was no complicated science or business jargon, but just highlighting a simple experience all of us have in our daily lives. I used several other connectors from our daily lives as well, like choices we make in supermarkets, or in clothing stores.

Simple solutions

When structuring a talk, the simple formula is to focus on the situation that is currently occurring, the challenge arising from that situation, and the solution to fix that challenge. It is the last bit that is most important, because that is the reason folks are investing 20 minutes to listen to you. However, the solution to a problem is not in complicating it, because that is counterproductive to corrective action. Rather, ideate on what may make a simple solution, which folks will relate to.

In my talk, I focused on behavioural nudges to influence consumption choices, across rational and irrational aspects. These include leveraging concepts like social mirroring for desirable changes, the default option that plays on inertia, incentives that we can measure, and conscious decisions where we think and evaluate. All these tactics are used today by consumers while making their choices; it was just not often done for climate-conscious decisions. The talk nudged folks towards the thought that these concepts that they have heard of, or used before knowingly or unknowingly, could be the simple solution to the problem. Each person is capable of this action, and collectively that could make a material difference.

It is worth it!

A talk should end with the thought that the solution is worth fighting for. This makes the audience sit up thinking they hold the key to the solution, and their action would make the difference. Importantly, it helps to end the talk on a high note. I did this by connecting the hassles that folks face in their daily lives with the conscious choices they could make, becoming more responsible for their decisions and thus making our coming years on this planet liveable and easy, because that is something worth fighting for!

In conclusion, these are some tips I believe might be helpful to those aspiring to try public speaking. My TEDx talk is currently being edited, and will be available soon on the organiser’s page.  

Sourajit studies Sustainable Finance as his passion lies in climate change. He loves sunny days, sunny moods and sunny strolls, but is also game for a serious talk when needed.

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