How to start a speech | Simon Lancaster | TEDxUniversityofHertfordshire

[Music] [Applause] who wants to get high yeah you up for some shall we really get this party started shall we you're in the mood excellent I've got tons you're up for it and there's loads there look at this I've got cocaine ecstasy speed yeah but mine are all Fairtrade organic and 100% legal ted approves I checked so don't worry today I'm going to talk about how to start a speech and that is how every speaker should start their speech by getting the audience high because let's face it when most speeches starts delighted to be here ahead groups our heart sings of God's sake studies of students at universities show their brain activity levels during lectures are actually lower than they are when they're asleep actually lower not the same as or a bit higher actually lower and no speaker wants that we want a speaker's high not low right from the get-go and we want to lift their heart right from the start so today I am going to set out three ways that you can start your speech three different drugs that you can deal depending on how you want your audience to feel the first drug that we can deal is dopamine this is the one that we want to go for if we want our audience to feel like that dope dopamine is the pleasure drug it makes us feel strong satisfied wonderful it's the drug that's released naturally when we finish a Sudoku or start taking things off a list so how do we get that going in a speech simple we start with a joke there are heaps of websites and books full of one-liners and anecdotes just waiting to be reused and recycled most speakers have one or two of these up their sleeve that they're just ready to shove allows anytime that they want to and it doesn't matter whether it's an old shaggy-dog story or a Churchill anecdote or a Seinfeld one-liner as long as it makes people laugh that's all that matters so my own go-to gag if I can try it on you is is is is one about Einstein so Einstein during the 1920s he was going basically all over Europe making the same speech over and over again about the theory of relativity on one of these occasions it's driver was taking him there and his driver said Oh God's sake you doing that same bloody speech again today I swear over to do this so many times now I could deliver it myself word-for-word and Einstein who had a mischievous sense of humor said okay then I've got an idea why don't I dress like the driver and I'll stand at the back of the room and you go you deliver my lecture and we'll see how your door rights drivers law would give it a go give it a go and Einstein stood at the back of the room and he watched with Wonder as his driver delivered this incredibly complicated lecture absolutely WordPerfect but then someone in the audience asked this humdinger of a question so complicated no layman could have dared to understand it but the driver he did not miss a beat he said very good question and of course it sounds very complicated but the answer to it is so simple even my driver can tell you so anyone can learn a gag like that but it's also worth having a few one-liners up your sleeve just for in case anything goes wrong at the beginning as it invariably does so someone laughs it will Cheers embarrassingly loudly so glad you came mum a phone rings halfway through your speech can you tell Barak I'm busy right now but I'll call him straight back there's a crash at the back of the room look I don't mind people checking their watch when I get up to speak I do objects when they collapsed to the floor or the technology fails as he variably happens and you can always use every blokes ultimate fallback line I'm so sorry this has never happened to me before the power of self-deprecating humor is immense it reduces even the most pompous speaker and elevates the audience making them feel superior which is why of course they love it it's also a sign of supreme confidence on the part of the speaker and so the the late comedian the late great Bob Monkhouse was a master of this everybody laughed when I said I wanted to be a comedian ha they're not laughing anymore are they or I saw a businessman start his speech the other day where he opened up remember in this conversation that had had with his wife at the breakfast table this morning where he turned her and said did you ever in your wildest dreams imagined that one day I would be running one of the largest companies on the planet to which she replied darling you never featured in any of my wildest dreams or the politician I saw given his speech the other day where he opened up sin last week I dreamt I was given a speech to the House of Lords and then I woke up discovered I actually was given a speech to the House of Lords so these are the kind of ways we want to open if we want our audience looking like that but we don't always want our audience looking like that sometimes we want our audience looking a little bit like this if that's the case the drug we deal is oxytocin oxytocin is the empathy drug the love drug it makes us feel all warm fuzzy and gooey it's the same hormone that's released naturally when mothers are breastfeeding when we're holding hands cuddling making love or when we're listening to a great speech because great speeches always include stories you think about any of the great speeches that you've seen over the last year and I'm thinking what / Winfrey pink Michelle Obama Emma Watson people like this they're all telling stories and you see this is the thing there's a myth about speech making that you tell them what you're gonna tell them then you tell him it and then you tell them what you've just told him and that is like tell your audience you're gonna be boring then be boring and then tell your audience you have just been boring you can't stamp a point into someone's head and in fact the only reaction that that is likely to get is it's gonna make them want to stamp you on the hitch in return simply a certain to an audience something like our values matter our corporate values matter has zero persuasive value so what you find the best speakers will do is they'll make their points but they'll be wrapped up in a story and I'm in a good story like a movie or a novel where you have a strong hero scary antagonists and a big big goal the story might be metaphorical like Churchill's Iron Curtain or Hillary Clinton's smashing through the glass ceiling or Donald Trump draining the swamp the story might be historical from someone we admire like Cleopatra to Confucius Malala to Mandela Jane Austen to John Lennon but for me the best stories are the personal ones so I'm gonna tell you got on its truth as I was coming here today I had a call with my wife where my wife was in tears because this afternoon her sister had a baby boy and this is absolutely food so can we please have a round of applause for my sister-in-law Zoey and she's in truth Brie at the moment and a bit of my heart is there now because I've got two daughters I've got Charlotte who's nine and Alice who six and and Zoe was with us when both of those little girls were born and I tell you I remember when Alice was born Charlotte was born and it was a doddle when Alice was born it was very very difficult the maternity ward was understaffed and she ended up being born very very quickly and as a result when she was born she was struggling to breathe and so she went into the special care unit for the first nine days of her life and she's absolutely fine now before anyone worries back at school today but the thing was was that this was the worst time of my life because we didn't know whether she was going to make it through or not me and my wife will literally go into the hospital every waking hour and checking on her I was drawing pictures of her because we thought that that was all that we might have you know my mother-in-law came down to stay to look after our eldest daughter so as if things weren't hard enough but the thing that I really remember about this is that all of the time when I was going in there to see Alice in the incubator next to her there were two twins and they were the tiniest babies that I have ever seen before in my whole life and they were so small you could hold them in the palm of your hand like that it was a miracle they were alive and all the time me and my wife were going in to see Alice no one came in to see these twins no one not once and whereas Alice had her name on her incubator Alice Elizabeth Lancaster these twins the charts marking their progress were simply marked a and B I asked the doctor who ran the ward what the story was and she said oh they were born to a teenage girl from the valleys had given them up for adoption and so you see I think back to that and I think about how Alice we had everything ready for her her cot was ready her room was ready her sister couldn't wait to play with her Auntie Zoey couldn't wait to play with her grandparents couldn't wait to take her out to the park you know we knew what school she was going to everything was sorted out and for these two little twins what did they have what future lies ahead for them so if there's one thing I think we should all be trying to do it's trying to make sure that kids like that have the same opportunities we would wish for our own children don't you so was that more persuasive forgive me share in the story but you kind of do have to do it to demonstrate what's happened and the thing is is that if we went round now and we checked all of your blood levels what we would find for most of you would be higher levels of oxytocin because we've connected your shared my story you've seen the world through my eyes not for all of you on the balance of probability at least six of the people in this room are actually psychopathic and incapable of empathy and by the way I think I've got you I've got you I know which ones you are but for the rest of you you would have higher levels of oxytocin and this is critical the neuroscientist Paul Zak has shown there's a direct correlation between our oxytocin levels and our susceptibility to persuasion and he's carried out a series of fascinating experiments in this including one where people were asked to lend money to a stranger and he found that not only could you predict who would give money to strangers based on nothing more than their oxytocin levels you could even predict how much money they would give them absolutely extraordinary so there's the real clinch you know stories entertain stories persuade but stories get people to you money you know and this of course is why children in need is so successful it's why stories feature so prominently within advertising campaigns and it's why stories are a great way for you to start your speech if you want your audience to look a little bit like that but we don't always want our audience looking like that sometimes we want our audience looking a little bit like this so how do we do that how do we do that how do we make them look like that what's the answer how do we do it come on how do we do it for goodness sake well just like that we ask a question all of your faces absolutely right like that this is that this is the the University lecture how to wake up your audience and the thing is is that when you ask an audience a question like that they have increased levels of cortisol cortisol is the stress drug the fear drug it raises our heartbeat focuses our attention increases our energy levels it gets us ready for fight or flight very very instinctive and you get it by asking questions and so this is why asking questions is something you'll see real high-pressure speakers do like we're you know evangelists or salesman or stand-up comedians if they want to shut up the audience they'll just flip it back on them and you see very powerful speakers doing it as well so it might be an emotional question you could ask an emotional question how many of you have lost someone that you really loved it could be a factual question did you know that the rural richest 46 people on the planet have the same wealth as the poorest 50% of people on the planet you could fit the richest people on a double-decker bus it could be a kind of philosophical question why are we all here today while we meet in today nor yesterday not tomorrow but here and now what is it that's brought us together what magical force is it that's brought us together are we just here to swap business cards or are we here because we've got something deeper in common the best speakers though the best speakers were last kind of prolonged questions which present like a moral dilemma and there's one guy I saw do this absolutely amazingly not so long ago and so he opened up like this he said right it's 1935 India and you're Mahatma Gandhi you are running to catch a train just as the train is leaving the station and as you board the train one of your sandals comes off and falls under the train onto the track what do you do do you board the train carry on getting on the train or do you go back to the platform so you can retrieve your sandal I'd like you just to think about that we'll come back to that at the end what completely threw us and then he went into the body of his speech where he started talking about leadership his theories on leadership and it was all stories and questions and jokes and all the time I couldn't get this image of Gandhi out of my mind it is just absolutely it was wedged in my mind and then it got to the end of his speech and almost as an afterthought he said oh yes Gandy the station he asked for a show of hands so how many people would have got on the train just for show of hands how many of you would have gone back to retrieve your sandal fantastic well let me tell you what Gandhi actually did what he did was he took off his remaining sandal and he threw it onto the track under the Train and when his companion said why did you do that Gandhi replied well so whoever finds them has a complete wear pair of sandals for them to wear genius a question and a story and it makes so many points doesn't it like about values about compassion thinking rationally under pressure you know about showing there's always an alternative to fight all or flight's but critically it creates feelings and that's what all of this is about questions stories jokes they create feelings as mayor Angelou wrote people will forget what you said they'll forget what you did but they will never ever forget how you made them feel and this guy he made us feel amazing we felt connected we felt as one and this is what great speakers do and it's how they create followers and it's how they builds movements with the promise of feelings making us feel joyful making us feel proud making us feel connected making us feel like we belong making us feel part of something bigger than ourselves that's what keeps us coming back and that's what gets us evicted because we are always craving more and great leaders always keep us wanting more which takes me to my final point how do you end a speech well there's only one way to do that

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 123,785

Rating: 4.8038278 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Education, Humor, Speech

Id: Bh3iM--2AW4

Length: 20min 34sec (1234 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 08 2018