Chris Anderson on Public Speaking
The first TED Talk that I watched and analyzed was Chris Anderson's talk about TED's secret to great public speaking. Anderson starts off the TED talk in a very intimate environment. The room that he is sitting in and the way that he speaks makes it seem as though he is talking one on one with you, the listener, and makes it seem very personal. In the opening he makes the viewer feel as though he personally cares about them and wants to do everything that he can to help them succeed in becoming better as a public speaker. In his opening he also utilizes humor by being sarcastically hypocritical when talking about how perhaps sitting in a room with a little red rug is the key to giving a great presentation, while he sits in a room with a little red rug. Additionally, he shows that his opinion in the matter is worth listening to by telling how he has viewed a number of TED Talks and thus knows what makes a good one and what doesn't. Finally, in his opening, Anderson's use of repetition and vagueness help to build up a sense of curiosity as to what he has to say, which is very effective.
Once he gets into the meat of the presentation, Chris Anderson's main message is that the biggest key to giving a good TED Talk is "to transfer into your listener's minds an extraordinary gift - a strange and beautiful object that we call an idea." In other words, what Anderson is saying is that the main goal of a successful TED Talk is to leave the listener with a new idea. He gives a number of examples of presenters successfully imparting the crowd with the main idea that they wish for them to leave with. In all, his message, how he presents it, and the examples that he provides that show how other successful TED Talks have used this formula are all fairly powerful and show that he is right.
In his closing, Anderson lays out what he believes are the four most important guidelines as far as how to build an idea in the mind of the listener. The four principles are to limit your talk to just one major idea, give your listeners a reason to care about what you have to say, build your idea, piece by piece, out of concepts that your audience understands, and to make your idea worth sharing. Anderson also includes an explanation about exactly what he means by each of these and how they can be implemented in real life. In a way the four guidelines serve as Anderson's call to action for the listener in that he is telling them exactly what they need to do if they wish to give a successful TED Talk. The closing is certainly effective in the sense that it ties everything together and gives a call to action, but in my opinion the end is a little abrupt. In all though I believe that this is a very effective TED Talk.
Adam Galinsky on Speaking Up for Yourself
The second TED Talk that I analyzed was Adam Galinsky's talk on how to assert yourself, navigate tricky social situations, and expand your personal power. Galinsky begins his TED Talk almost immediately with a personal story about how he and his wife recently became parents and failed to speak up by calling the doctor when they were unsure if their baby was dehydrated. He then follows that up right away with a second story about how he spoke up and told his brother to make a counter offer for his dream job which resulted in him losing the job altogether. Galinsky then ties all of this together by explaining how the stories relate and what can be learned from them. I personally didn't find this to be very effective as it felt to me like Galinsky was talking down to the audience a lot while telling these stories and explaining how they relate. One thing that Galinsky definitely did really well in, both in the introduction and throughout the duration of the TED Talk, was using hand gestures to highlight what he was saying and emphasize his messages.
Galinsky's main messages in his TED Talk can b divided into three main categories: discussion about range of acceptable behavior, how to effectively advocate for yourself, and how to ask other people for advice. After the opening Galinsky immediately goes in to discussion about range of acceptable behavior, which he defines as the scope of different behaviors that are considered normal for a given person, and how we must stay inside that range by not being too aggressive or too timid. He then discusses how a person can effectively advocate for themselves, a skill which many people are lacking in. He explains how being an advocate for yourself is a good way to expand your range of acceptable behavior. Finally, Galinsky goes on to give some suggestions on how to effectively seek out advice from others. He explains how asking others for help is a good way to flatter them because it shows that you consider them an expert in the matter. In my opinion, Galinksy's main points were articulated very clearly and flowed in an extremely logical way, making his TED Talk highly effective.
The TED Talk ends with a very personal story about some words that his late father shared at his brother's wedding. In essence, the words echo what Galinsky said all throughout his TED Talk, particularly about the importance of understanding your range of acceptable behavior and working to expand it by advocating for yourself. He then ultimately ties everything together by imploring that his audience be aggressive when necessary and know when to humbly seek out advice. In all, this is one of the most effective TED Talks I have ever watched and I walked away from it feeling like I could really use what he had to say to make a profound difference in my life.
Martin Reeves on How to Build a Business that Lasts 100 Years
Another TED Talk that I analyzed was Martin Reeves' talk on how to build a business that will last at least one hundred years. Part of what makes Reeves' TED Talk so interesting and unique is that in it he continuously compares businesses and business models to parts of the human immune system. Reeves starts out his TED Talk by immediately cutting to the chase and introducing the idea of a business modeled after the immune system. He presents a hypothetical situation where a product designer pitches a simplified version of the immune system and explains why it would be ineffective, while highlighting the brilliance of the human immune system as it is constituted. While the hypothetical is definitely funny and draws in the audience, in my opinion it slightly detracts from the main message of the TED Talk by being too distracting. I also think that Martin Reeves could have done a slightly better job proving his knowledge and that what he had to say was relevant in his opening remarks instead of waiting until later to do so.
Reeves then transitions into the body of his TED Talk by presenting his main arguments. His main message is that there are six principles that make up key components of the human immune system that could be implemented into business strategy in order to make a long lasting business. Reeves uses firms that failed prematurely and due to entirely avoidable problems as evidence to back up his claims. He then goes on to discuss why these principles aren't commonly followed in business today. One of his biggest claims is that businesses today are too focused on short term goals and thus are unable to adapt to the fluid and dynamic reality that is the environment we live in. Reeves is effective in convincing the viewer of how businesses are not built in a way that is conducive to long-term success; however, his talk would be much more powerful if he went more in depth into the matter of how practices could be changed to make businesses more like the immune system.
The conclusion of Reeves' TED Talk is relatively short and is mainly him summarizing the ideas that he discussed previously. He includes a somewhat vague call to action, imploring that listeners think about how good our competitive game is and how long it will last. In all, Reeves' TED Talk is one of the less effective ones I've watched, which surprised me because the title and his opening did a lot to capture my attention. In order to make it better he could have focused a lot more on what would need to be changed in order to make business more like the human immune system and use more concrete examples of how this could be done.
Elizabeth Gilbert on Success, Failure, and the Drive to Keep Creating
The fourth TED Talk that I analyzed was a talk by Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of the novel Eat, Pray, Love, about how to carry on with your goals regardless of whether you succeed or fail. This talk caught my eye due to its relationship to the characteristic of drive that I identified as one of my weaknesses after taking the REFLECT assessment and then worked to improve throughout the course of the semester. Gilbert begins her TED Talk with a personal story that leaves her vulnerable to the audience about how she was in JFK airport and someone identified her as the "girl who wrote the book based on the movie." She goes on to explain how she felt that no matter what she did after writing her most famous book people would be disappointed, whether they were people who loved her first book that didn't think her later work compared to it or they didn't like her first book and were reminded of her existence by her second. She then goes on to explain how this was extremely powerful for her and convinced her to keep writing. In my opinion the opening of this TED Talk does a great job of making the viewer relate to Gilbert and drawing their interest enough to make them keep watching.
Gilbert then goes on to present her main points, which are mostly about continuing to chase your dreams even if you don't succeed at first, and especially to continue chasing them if you do succeed. She reinforces this by giving personal examples of how she has either kept fighting and it paid off or how she gave up and regretted it. The body section of her TED Talk is largely convoluted and, in my opinion, doesn't do a great job of getting her points across in a concise and convincing manner. She alternates back and forth between giving advice and offering personal anecdotes which can be confusing at times, and other times her ideas seem disjoint and don't flow well.
Gilbert's closing section of her TED Talk isn't much better. She keeps her ideas unbelievably vague and her call to action is very weak. She tells her listeners a huge number of things she wants them to take away from her talk, but describes none of them in detail and does a poor job articulating exactly what they are. Her calls to action sound intriguing at first but once you go deeper and try to consider how you would actually implement them you realize that they are just sentences filled with buzz words like devotion and love and infatuation that are meant to make you feel good about yourself, but have no real meaning beyond that. In all, I found Elizabeth Gilbert's TED Talk to be extremely weak and ineffective, outside of her opening remarks.
Jim Hemerling on How to Lead in an Era of Constant Change
The next TED Talk that I watched and analyzed was Jim Hemerling's talk outlining 5 ways to effectively lead a team in today's era of constant change. Hemerling begins his TED Talk with much more energy than some of the other TED Talks I've seen and really used that energy as a tool to draw in the interest of the audience. He also used humor very effectively in the early portions of his talk and was really good about pausing and giving the audience time to laugh at his joke. In terms of demeanor he seemed extremely comfortable with being on the stage and being the center of attention, which I believe made his introduction even better. He was also sure to make everything he said in the beginning universally relatable. All of these aspects contributed to Hemerling's opening portion of his TED Talk being very effective and keeping the audience interested.
Hemerling then delved into his main points, which were five ways that a person can effectively lead a group in today's era of constant change. His five methods are to acknowledge that change is hard, going all in when making a change, enable people with the capabilities that they need to succeed during the change and beyond, instill a culture of continuous learning, and to have a clear road map of your goals as a leader. Hemerling also does an excellent job of further breaking down his points into clear and easy understand concepts. Throughout the body of his presentation he mixes in the occasional personal anecdote in an effort to keep the audience interested and has a few one liners that also serve to pique people's interest when things are starting to get a little bit dull. In my opinion, Hemerling does a very good job of using a number of different strategies to keep the audience interested and effectively get his points across.
If there was one weak point to Hemerling's TED Talk it would definitely be his closing. He keeps his closing remarks extremely brief and doesn't do a great job transitioning from the body of his presentation to the closing. He simply goes from an anecdote about the Golden State Warriors to a very brief summary of some of the topics he covered in his talk. He then makes a lukewarm call to action, asking that his listeners consider putting people first, but not really going into how they might do that or any other description. In my opinion though, the weak closing can be forgiven due to the fact that all five of his methods essentially serve as calls to action and other than that his talk was so strong and convincing.
Uri Hasson on The Effects of Communication on the Brain
Another TED Talk that I watched and did some analysis of was Uri Hassan's TED Talk on the basis of human communication and how communication allows us to transmit brain patterns, sharing ideas, stories, and knowledge. Hassan begins his TED Talk by asking his listeners to imagine a hypothetical situation where they invented a device that essentially allows them to transmit any thoughts that someone has directly to their own brain. He lets that sink in for a moment and then goes on to state that we already possess that seemingly incredible technology in the form of interpersonal communication. He also discusses his experience with studying the human brain, specifically how we communicate with one another. In the opening of his talk he also effectively uses humor in the form of a recording to draw the audience in and show them that, while his topic is fairly technical, he intends to simplify it to a level that everyone can understand, even if they aren't a neuroscientist. In all of this I believe that he succeeds, as I found the introduction to be intriguing and felt that his message would be relatable and relevant.
Hassan then delves into his main points, which center around the basis of human to human verbal interaction, particularly in the form of story telling, and the effects that listening to and telling a story have on the brain. I was somewhat surprised by the direction that Hassan took his TED Talk, as his introduction and the title led me to believe that he was going to be discussing how we could improve interpersonal communication and storytelling, but instead he focused mainly on the science of brain chemistry while someone tells or listens to a story. I honestly didn't find his message to be as impactful as the introduction led me to believe it would be. He spent over three quarters of his TED Talk discussing the results of different fMRI images that were taken while stories were told in different languages and environments, and while it was interesting to hear to a certain extent, it got very repetitive. It also wasn't very relatable and didn't feel like something that I would be able to use to my advantage. That said, he continued to do a good job of breaking down advanced concepts into understandable terms and didn't seem to be talking down to the audience at any point, which was impressive because of just how technical the topics were.
The conclusion of Hassan's TED Talk doesn't improve much on his relatively weak presentation of his main points. He begins it by telling the audience that he intends to summarize everything he said, and then goes on to do just that in nearly the exact same words as he originally used. To me it sounded more like something that one might write as the conclusion of a five paragraph essay than an effective way to end a speech. He then followed up with one final personal story about his son and how communication will shape who he grows up to be, but the story didn't relate all that much to the main points of the TED Talk. Finally, Hassan's call to action was actually a strong point of his closing. He implored that his listeners spread their ideas so that as a society we can become greater than the sum of our parts. In all, this wasn't one of my favorite TED Talks and I didn't find it to be overly effective in getting it's main messages across both due to the fact that it didn't end up being what I expected and that the examples tended to be convoluted and unrelated.
Scott Dinsmore on How to Find Work You Love
The seventh TED Talk that I watched and analyzed was Scott Dinsmore's talk about how to find work that you find joyful and meaningful as opposed to working at a job that you don't enjoy. Dinsmore starts off his TED Talk slightly nervous and it is pretty apparent, but once he begins to get into it he clearly gets a lot more comfortable. He begins with a personal story about how he began his professional career in a huge Fortune 500 company and initially thought that he would make a huge impact on the world but quickly came to realize that he hated his job. This message is very powerful, both in that it is something that is highly relatable and that he is able to speak about it from experience. He is also very clearly passionate about what he is saying and believes that it had a profound impact on his life, which makes the talk even more powerful.
Dinsmore effortlessly transitions from his introduction into his main points. He relates a lot of what he has to say back to his personal experience and uses it as a tool to help reinforce what he is saying. His main points that he focuses most center around the fact that nearly 80% of people are dissatisfied with their jobs and how people can use self-reflection to determine what they are passionate about and then use that knowledge to find a career that makes them happy and fulfilled. He outlines a three step framework that anyone can use to determine what they are passionate about. The steps are to find out what your unique strengths are, reflect on what experiences you have and how they've affected you, and what your framework or hierarchy for making decisions is. Dinsmore also provides relevant input on how exactly this can be done and gives some examples of how he used these steps to discover what his own personal passions are. Dinsmore's effective use of personal storytelling, as well as the universal reliability of his messages makes his TED Talk extremely effective and help to make it something that a listener might actually use in their life.
Dinsmore follows up a very long, albeit interesting and informative discussion of his main points with a fairly short conclusion that mainly just outlines what he discussed, with a brief call to action at the end. Dinsmore asks his listeners to ask themselves to think about the question: what is the work that you can not do? This is a pretty decent call to action because if the listener truly looks into themselves to reflect on what they really love to do they are more likely to use that to change something about their life. In my opinion, Dinsmore's decision to keep his conclusion short and sweet doesn't take away from the main messages, and in all the TED Talk is highly effective.
Roselinde Torres on What it Takes to Be a Great Leader
The next TED Talk that I analyzed was Roselinde Torres' talk on what makes someone an effective leader and what it takes to gain these attributes. In her opening she jumps right in to what defines an effective leader. She discusses the preconceived notions that many people have about good leaders and how they aren't all based in reality. She then establishes herself as an authority figure in the matter by talking about how she has spent over 25 years studying and observing what makes leaders effective and has led studies of over 4000 companies to determine the effectiveness of their leadership development programs. While she is undoubtedly an expert in the matter, her introduction comes across as talking down to the audience, as well as being very bland and boring. She spends too much time bragging about her credentials and not enough time actually building up to her main points. In that sense I do not find Torres' opening to be very effective.
Torres doesn't really have a clearly delineated opening versus body section of her presentation, but if I had to pick a point that represents the start of the body it would be after she establishes her knowledge on the topic. Torres provides some specific examples of good and bad leadership and poses three questions. The questions that she says are important to consider are where are you looking to anticipate the next change in your business model in your life, what is the diversity level of your personal and professional stakeholder network, and are you courageous enough to abandon a practice that has made you successful in the past. In my opinion these questions are far too in depth and complex to ask an audience. After reading the first question that Torres poses multiple times, I still don't understand what it is asking, and her elaboration does no justice in making it easier to understand. The fact that these are her main points leads me to the conclusion that this is a terrible TED Talk. Her main ideas are far too complex and her explanations are extremely poor. There were numerous times when I had to rewind and watch what she said again, or pause to re-read what was on the screen. For that reason I found the talk largely ineffective and got very little out of it.
One could argue that Torres follows up an unbelievably weak body of her talk with an even worse closing. She goes directly from talking about her third question to pose into her exceedingly brief closing. In the closing she asks what makes a leader great but then fails to provide an adequate answer to her question. She includes absolutely nothing that remotely resembles a call to action. In all, this was probably the worst TED Talk I watched and I found it completely and utterly ineffective. I do not feel that I got anything out of it and frankly wish that I could have back the nine-plus minutes of my life that I wasted watching it.
Derek Sivers on Keeping Your Goals to Yourself
The ninth TED Talk that I watched and analyzed was Derek Sivers' presentation on how sometimes it is better to keep your plans to yourself as opposed to telling them to everyone immediately. I thoroughly enjoyed how Sivers began his TED Talk with an exercise for the audience. He asked that they think of their biggest goal and then imagine themselves sharing it with someone they are close to in order to illustrate how good it feels to share your goal. He then pivoted from his positive message to say that instead of telling someone they would have been better off keeping it to themselves. This stark contrast was striking and had a powerful effect on me personally, as it was not the direction that I expected him to take the presentation.
Sivers then gets right into his main point, which is that even though you might be excited about a new plan or goal, in many cases you are better off keeping it to yourself instead of sharing it with others. He provides a number of relevant examples that reinforce the point that he's making by showing instances where people shared their goal and ultimately failed or didn't share their goal and went on to succeed. His style and delivery add a great deal to his message, as he comes off like a friend with a genuine, vested interest in your well-being. His jokes and easy-going demeanor also help to add to his message. In all I found his main points and methods of delivering them to be very effective.
As this was on the shorter side of most TED Talks in terms of length, Sivers' closing seems to come very quickly after his opening, and is also over right away. Although it was very brief I still thought it was pretty effective. He includes a call to action, asking listeners to resist the temptation to announce their goal to others, and quickly summarizes his main points. In my opinion, even though it was over quickly it still got the job done. In all I found the TED Talk to be powerful despite its shorter length.
Kare Anderson on Being an Opportunity Maker
The tenth and final TED Talk that I analyzed was Kare Anderson's talk about how we can use our talents to create something meaningful in our lives, and in particular how to start doing it. Anderson starts her TED Talk with a deeply intimate personal story about how she was extremely shy as a kid due to her stutter. She goes on to describe the profound impacts that this had on her growing up, and continue to have on her today, as well as discussing how we need to focus more on others and less about ourselves. I found Anderson's story, as well as her style of talking to be very interesting and they served to draw me in to her talk and give me a vested interest in what she had to say.
Anderson begins to present her main points immediately after her personal childhood story. She lays out a number of ideas and strategies about how one can become what she calls an opportunity maker. In a lot of ways this reminded me of the definition that the REFLECT assessment gave for drive; being self-directed and a go-getter. She goes on to back up her main points with several relevant stories and anecdotes, including a few personal ones that further show that she is qualified to talk about the subject and present on it to a crowd. In my opinion the methods for sharing her main ideas that Anderson uses are largely effective and keep the listener enticed and interested in what she has to say.
She concludes her TED Talk with a very clear call to action: to reimagine a world where we can all use our best talents together more often to accomplish greater things together than we can do on our own, and then make that world a reality whenever we possibly can do so. She ultimately concludes with a quote that is both relevant and humorous and serves the purpose of leaving the audience with a distinct memory of her talk. In all, I found Anderson's TED Talk to be one of the better ones I watched and feel that I could implement a lot of the things she discusses into my everyday life.
The first TED Talk that I watched and analyzed was Chris Anderson's talk about TED's secret to great public speaking. Anderson starts off the TED talk in a very intimate environment. The room that he is sitting in and the way that he speaks makes it seem as though he is talking one on one with you, the listener, and makes it seem very personal. In the opening he makes the viewer feel as though he personally cares about them and wants to do everything that he can to help them succeed in becoming better as a public speaker. In his opening he also utilizes humor by being sarcastically hypocritical when talking about how perhaps sitting in a room with a little red rug is the key to giving a great presentation, while he sits in a room with a little red rug. Additionally, he shows that his opinion in the matter is worth listening to by telling how he has viewed a number of TED Talks and thus knows what makes a good one and what doesn't. Finally, in his opening, Anderson's use of repetition and vagueness help to build up a sense of curiosity as to what he has to say, which is very effective.
Once he gets into the meat of the presentation, Chris Anderson's main message is that the biggest key to giving a good TED Talk is "to transfer into your listener's minds an extraordinary gift - a strange and beautiful object that we call an idea." In other words, what Anderson is saying is that the main goal of a successful TED Talk is to leave the listener with a new idea. He gives a number of examples of presenters successfully imparting the crowd with the main idea that they wish for them to leave with. In all, his message, how he presents it, and the examples that he provides that show how other successful TED Talks have used this formula are all fairly powerful and show that he is right.
In his closing, Anderson lays out what he believes are the four most important guidelines as far as how to build an idea in the mind of the listener. The four principles are to limit your talk to just one major idea, give your listeners a reason to care about what you have to say, build your idea, piece by piece, out of concepts that your audience understands, and to make your idea worth sharing. Anderson also includes an explanation about exactly what he means by each of these and how they can be implemented in real life. In a way the four guidelines serve as Anderson's call to action for the listener in that he is telling them exactly what they need to do if they wish to give a successful TED Talk. The closing is certainly effective in the sense that it ties everything together and gives a call to action, but in my opinion the end is a little abrupt. In all though I believe that this is a very effective TED Talk.
Adam Galinsky on Speaking Up for Yourself
The second TED Talk that I analyzed was Adam Galinsky's talk on how to assert yourself, navigate tricky social situations, and expand your personal power. Galinsky begins his TED Talk almost immediately with a personal story about how he and his wife recently became parents and failed to speak up by calling the doctor when they were unsure if their baby was dehydrated. He then follows that up right away with a second story about how he spoke up and told his brother to make a counter offer for his dream job which resulted in him losing the job altogether. Galinsky then ties all of this together by explaining how the stories relate and what can be learned from them. I personally didn't find this to be very effective as it felt to me like Galinsky was talking down to the audience a lot while telling these stories and explaining how they relate. One thing that Galinsky definitely did really well in, both in the introduction and throughout the duration of the TED Talk, was using hand gestures to highlight what he was saying and emphasize his messages.
Galinsky's main messages in his TED Talk can b divided into three main categories: discussion about range of acceptable behavior, how to effectively advocate for yourself, and how to ask other people for advice. After the opening Galinsky immediately goes in to discussion about range of acceptable behavior, which he defines as the scope of different behaviors that are considered normal for a given person, and how we must stay inside that range by not being too aggressive or too timid. He then discusses how a person can effectively advocate for themselves, a skill which many people are lacking in. He explains how being an advocate for yourself is a good way to expand your range of acceptable behavior. Finally, Galinsky goes on to give some suggestions on how to effectively seek out advice from others. He explains how asking others for help is a good way to flatter them because it shows that you consider them an expert in the matter. In my opinion, Galinksy's main points were articulated very clearly and flowed in an extremely logical way, making his TED Talk highly effective.
The TED Talk ends with a very personal story about some words that his late father shared at his brother's wedding. In essence, the words echo what Galinsky said all throughout his TED Talk, particularly about the importance of understanding your range of acceptable behavior and working to expand it by advocating for yourself. He then ultimately ties everything together by imploring that his audience be aggressive when necessary and know when to humbly seek out advice. In all, this is one of the most effective TED Talks I have ever watched and I walked away from it feeling like I could really use what he had to say to make a profound difference in my life.
Martin Reeves on How to Build a Business that Lasts 100 Years
Another TED Talk that I analyzed was Martin Reeves' talk on how to build a business that will last at least one hundred years. Part of what makes Reeves' TED Talk so interesting and unique is that in it he continuously compares businesses and business models to parts of the human immune system. Reeves starts out his TED Talk by immediately cutting to the chase and introducing the idea of a business modeled after the immune system. He presents a hypothetical situation where a product designer pitches a simplified version of the immune system and explains why it would be ineffective, while highlighting the brilliance of the human immune system as it is constituted. While the hypothetical is definitely funny and draws in the audience, in my opinion it slightly detracts from the main message of the TED Talk by being too distracting. I also think that Martin Reeves could have done a slightly better job proving his knowledge and that what he had to say was relevant in his opening remarks instead of waiting until later to do so.
Reeves then transitions into the body of his TED Talk by presenting his main arguments. His main message is that there are six principles that make up key components of the human immune system that could be implemented into business strategy in order to make a long lasting business. Reeves uses firms that failed prematurely and due to entirely avoidable problems as evidence to back up his claims. He then goes on to discuss why these principles aren't commonly followed in business today. One of his biggest claims is that businesses today are too focused on short term goals and thus are unable to adapt to the fluid and dynamic reality that is the environment we live in. Reeves is effective in convincing the viewer of how businesses are not built in a way that is conducive to long-term success; however, his talk would be much more powerful if he went more in depth into the matter of how practices could be changed to make businesses more like the immune system.
The conclusion of Reeves' TED Talk is relatively short and is mainly him summarizing the ideas that he discussed previously. He includes a somewhat vague call to action, imploring that listeners think about how good our competitive game is and how long it will last. In all, Reeves' TED Talk is one of the less effective ones I've watched, which surprised me because the title and his opening did a lot to capture my attention. In order to make it better he could have focused a lot more on what would need to be changed in order to make business more like the human immune system and use more concrete examples of how this could be done.
Elizabeth Gilbert on Success, Failure, and the Drive to Keep Creating
The fourth TED Talk that I analyzed was a talk by Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of the novel Eat, Pray, Love, about how to carry on with your goals regardless of whether you succeed or fail. This talk caught my eye due to its relationship to the characteristic of drive that I identified as one of my weaknesses after taking the REFLECT assessment and then worked to improve throughout the course of the semester. Gilbert begins her TED Talk with a personal story that leaves her vulnerable to the audience about how she was in JFK airport and someone identified her as the "girl who wrote the book based on the movie." She goes on to explain how she felt that no matter what she did after writing her most famous book people would be disappointed, whether they were people who loved her first book that didn't think her later work compared to it or they didn't like her first book and were reminded of her existence by her second. She then goes on to explain how this was extremely powerful for her and convinced her to keep writing. In my opinion the opening of this TED Talk does a great job of making the viewer relate to Gilbert and drawing their interest enough to make them keep watching.
Gilbert then goes on to present her main points, which are mostly about continuing to chase your dreams even if you don't succeed at first, and especially to continue chasing them if you do succeed. She reinforces this by giving personal examples of how she has either kept fighting and it paid off or how she gave up and regretted it. The body section of her TED Talk is largely convoluted and, in my opinion, doesn't do a great job of getting her points across in a concise and convincing manner. She alternates back and forth between giving advice and offering personal anecdotes which can be confusing at times, and other times her ideas seem disjoint and don't flow well.
Gilbert's closing section of her TED Talk isn't much better. She keeps her ideas unbelievably vague and her call to action is very weak. She tells her listeners a huge number of things she wants them to take away from her talk, but describes none of them in detail and does a poor job articulating exactly what they are. Her calls to action sound intriguing at first but once you go deeper and try to consider how you would actually implement them you realize that they are just sentences filled with buzz words like devotion and love and infatuation that are meant to make you feel good about yourself, but have no real meaning beyond that. In all, I found Elizabeth Gilbert's TED Talk to be extremely weak and ineffective, outside of her opening remarks.
Jim Hemerling on How to Lead in an Era of Constant Change
The next TED Talk that I watched and analyzed was Jim Hemerling's talk outlining 5 ways to effectively lead a team in today's era of constant change. Hemerling begins his TED Talk with much more energy than some of the other TED Talks I've seen and really used that energy as a tool to draw in the interest of the audience. He also used humor very effectively in the early portions of his talk and was really good about pausing and giving the audience time to laugh at his joke. In terms of demeanor he seemed extremely comfortable with being on the stage and being the center of attention, which I believe made his introduction even better. He was also sure to make everything he said in the beginning universally relatable. All of these aspects contributed to Hemerling's opening portion of his TED Talk being very effective and keeping the audience interested.
Hemerling then delved into his main points, which were five ways that a person can effectively lead a group in today's era of constant change. His five methods are to acknowledge that change is hard, going all in when making a change, enable people with the capabilities that they need to succeed during the change and beyond, instill a culture of continuous learning, and to have a clear road map of your goals as a leader. Hemerling also does an excellent job of further breaking down his points into clear and easy understand concepts. Throughout the body of his presentation he mixes in the occasional personal anecdote in an effort to keep the audience interested and has a few one liners that also serve to pique people's interest when things are starting to get a little bit dull. In my opinion, Hemerling does a very good job of using a number of different strategies to keep the audience interested and effectively get his points across.
If there was one weak point to Hemerling's TED Talk it would definitely be his closing. He keeps his closing remarks extremely brief and doesn't do a great job transitioning from the body of his presentation to the closing. He simply goes from an anecdote about the Golden State Warriors to a very brief summary of some of the topics he covered in his talk. He then makes a lukewarm call to action, asking that his listeners consider putting people first, but not really going into how they might do that or any other description. In my opinion though, the weak closing can be forgiven due to the fact that all five of his methods essentially serve as calls to action and other than that his talk was so strong and convincing.
Uri Hasson on The Effects of Communication on the Brain
Another TED Talk that I watched and did some analysis of was Uri Hassan's TED Talk on the basis of human communication and how communication allows us to transmit brain patterns, sharing ideas, stories, and knowledge. Hassan begins his TED Talk by asking his listeners to imagine a hypothetical situation where they invented a device that essentially allows them to transmit any thoughts that someone has directly to their own brain. He lets that sink in for a moment and then goes on to state that we already possess that seemingly incredible technology in the form of interpersonal communication. He also discusses his experience with studying the human brain, specifically how we communicate with one another. In the opening of his talk he also effectively uses humor in the form of a recording to draw the audience in and show them that, while his topic is fairly technical, he intends to simplify it to a level that everyone can understand, even if they aren't a neuroscientist. In all of this I believe that he succeeds, as I found the introduction to be intriguing and felt that his message would be relatable and relevant.
Hassan then delves into his main points, which center around the basis of human to human verbal interaction, particularly in the form of story telling, and the effects that listening to and telling a story have on the brain. I was somewhat surprised by the direction that Hassan took his TED Talk, as his introduction and the title led me to believe that he was going to be discussing how we could improve interpersonal communication and storytelling, but instead he focused mainly on the science of brain chemistry while someone tells or listens to a story. I honestly didn't find his message to be as impactful as the introduction led me to believe it would be. He spent over three quarters of his TED Talk discussing the results of different fMRI images that were taken while stories were told in different languages and environments, and while it was interesting to hear to a certain extent, it got very repetitive. It also wasn't very relatable and didn't feel like something that I would be able to use to my advantage. That said, he continued to do a good job of breaking down advanced concepts into understandable terms and didn't seem to be talking down to the audience at any point, which was impressive because of just how technical the topics were.
The conclusion of Hassan's TED Talk doesn't improve much on his relatively weak presentation of his main points. He begins it by telling the audience that he intends to summarize everything he said, and then goes on to do just that in nearly the exact same words as he originally used. To me it sounded more like something that one might write as the conclusion of a five paragraph essay than an effective way to end a speech. He then followed up with one final personal story about his son and how communication will shape who he grows up to be, but the story didn't relate all that much to the main points of the TED Talk. Finally, Hassan's call to action was actually a strong point of his closing. He implored that his listeners spread their ideas so that as a society we can become greater than the sum of our parts. In all, this wasn't one of my favorite TED Talks and I didn't find it to be overly effective in getting it's main messages across both due to the fact that it didn't end up being what I expected and that the examples tended to be convoluted and unrelated.
Scott Dinsmore on How to Find Work You Love
The seventh TED Talk that I watched and analyzed was Scott Dinsmore's talk about how to find work that you find joyful and meaningful as opposed to working at a job that you don't enjoy. Dinsmore starts off his TED Talk slightly nervous and it is pretty apparent, but once he begins to get into it he clearly gets a lot more comfortable. He begins with a personal story about how he began his professional career in a huge Fortune 500 company and initially thought that he would make a huge impact on the world but quickly came to realize that he hated his job. This message is very powerful, both in that it is something that is highly relatable and that he is able to speak about it from experience. He is also very clearly passionate about what he is saying and believes that it had a profound impact on his life, which makes the talk even more powerful.
Dinsmore effortlessly transitions from his introduction into his main points. He relates a lot of what he has to say back to his personal experience and uses it as a tool to help reinforce what he is saying. His main points that he focuses most center around the fact that nearly 80% of people are dissatisfied with their jobs and how people can use self-reflection to determine what they are passionate about and then use that knowledge to find a career that makes them happy and fulfilled. He outlines a three step framework that anyone can use to determine what they are passionate about. The steps are to find out what your unique strengths are, reflect on what experiences you have and how they've affected you, and what your framework or hierarchy for making decisions is. Dinsmore also provides relevant input on how exactly this can be done and gives some examples of how he used these steps to discover what his own personal passions are. Dinsmore's effective use of personal storytelling, as well as the universal reliability of his messages makes his TED Talk extremely effective and help to make it something that a listener might actually use in their life.
Dinsmore follows up a very long, albeit interesting and informative discussion of his main points with a fairly short conclusion that mainly just outlines what he discussed, with a brief call to action at the end. Dinsmore asks his listeners to ask themselves to think about the question: what is the work that you can not do? This is a pretty decent call to action because if the listener truly looks into themselves to reflect on what they really love to do they are more likely to use that to change something about their life. In my opinion, Dinsmore's decision to keep his conclusion short and sweet doesn't take away from the main messages, and in all the TED Talk is highly effective.
Roselinde Torres on What it Takes to Be a Great Leader
The next TED Talk that I analyzed was Roselinde Torres' talk on what makes someone an effective leader and what it takes to gain these attributes. In her opening she jumps right in to what defines an effective leader. She discusses the preconceived notions that many people have about good leaders and how they aren't all based in reality. She then establishes herself as an authority figure in the matter by talking about how she has spent over 25 years studying and observing what makes leaders effective and has led studies of over 4000 companies to determine the effectiveness of their leadership development programs. While she is undoubtedly an expert in the matter, her introduction comes across as talking down to the audience, as well as being very bland and boring. She spends too much time bragging about her credentials and not enough time actually building up to her main points. In that sense I do not find Torres' opening to be very effective.
Torres doesn't really have a clearly delineated opening versus body section of her presentation, but if I had to pick a point that represents the start of the body it would be after she establishes her knowledge on the topic. Torres provides some specific examples of good and bad leadership and poses three questions. The questions that she says are important to consider are where are you looking to anticipate the next change in your business model in your life, what is the diversity level of your personal and professional stakeholder network, and are you courageous enough to abandon a practice that has made you successful in the past. In my opinion these questions are far too in depth and complex to ask an audience. After reading the first question that Torres poses multiple times, I still don't understand what it is asking, and her elaboration does no justice in making it easier to understand. The fact that these are her main points leads me to the conclusion that this is a terrible TED Talk. Her main ideas are far too complex and her explanations are extremely poor. There were numerous times when I had to rewind and watch what she said again, or pause to re-read what was on the screen. For that reason I found the talk largely ineffective and got very little out of it.
One could argue that Torres follows up an unbelievably weak body of her talk with an even worse closing. She goes directly from talking about her third question to pose into her exceedingly brief closing. In the closing she asks what makes a leader great but then fails to provide an adequate answer to her question. She includes absolutely nothing that remotely resembles a call to action. In all, this was probably the worst TED Talk I watched and I found it completely and utterly ineffective. I do not feel that I got anything out of it and frankly wish that I could have back the nine-plus minutes of my life that I wasted watching it.
Derek Sivers on Keeping Your Goals to Yourself
The ninth TED Talk that I watched and analyzed was Derek Sivers' presentation on how sometimes it is better to keep your plans to yourself as opposed to telling them to everyone immediately. I thoroughly enjoyed how Sivers began his TED Talk with an exercise for the audience. He asked that they think of their biggest goal and then imagine themselves sharing it with someone they are close to in order to illustrate how good it feels to share your goal. He then pivoted from his positive message to say that instead of telling someone they would have been better off keeping it to themselves. This stark contrast was striking and had a powerful effect on me personally, as it was not the direction that I expected him to take the presentation.
Sivers then gets right into his main point, which is that even though you might be excited about a new plan or goal, in many cases you are better off keeping it to yourself instead of sharing it with others. He provides a number of relevant examples that reinforce the point that he's making by showing instances where people shared their goal and ultimately failed or didn't share their goal and went on to succeed. His style and delivery add a great deal to his message, as he comes off like a friend with a genuine, vested interest in your well-being. His jokes and easy-going demeanor also help to add to his message. In all I found his main points and methods of delivering them to be very effective.
As this was on the shorter side of most TED Talks in terms of length, Sivers' closing seems to come very quickly after his opening, and is also over right away. Although it was very brief I still thought it was pretty effective. He includes a call to action, asking listeners to resist the temptation to announce their goal to others, and quickly summarizes his main points. In my opinion, even though it was over quickly it still got the job done. In all I found the TED Talk to be powerful despite its shorter length.
Kare Anderson on Being an Opportunity Maker
The tenth and final TED Talk that I analyzed was Kare Anderson's talk about how we can use our talents to create something meaningful in our lives, and in particular how to start doing it. Anderson starts her TED Talk with a deeply intimate personal story about how she was extremely shy as a kid due to her stutter. She goes on to describe the profound impacts that this had on her growing up, and continue to have on her today, as well as discussing how we need to focus more on others and less about ourselves. I found Anderson's story, as well as her style of talking to be very interesting and they served to draw me in to her talk and give me a vested interest in what she had to say.
Anderson begins to present her main points immediately after her personal childhood story. She lays out a number of ideas and strategies about how one can become what she calls an opportunity maker. In a lot of ways this reminded me of the definition that the REFLECT assessment gave for drive; being self-directed and a go-getter. She goes on to back up her main points with several relevant stories and anecdotes, including a few personal ones that further show that she is qualified to talk about the subject and present on it to a crowd. In my opinion the methods for sharing her main ideas that Anderson uses are largely effective and keep the listener enticed and interested in what she has to say.
She concludes her TED Talk with a very clear call to action: to reimagine a world where we can all use our best talents together more often to accomplish greater things together than we can do on our own, and then make that world a reality whenever we possibly can do so. She ultimately concludes with a quote that is both relevant and humorous and serves the purpose of leaving the audience with a distinct memory of her talk. In all, I found Anderson's TED Talk to be one of the better ones I watched and feel that I could implement a lot of the things she discusses into my everyday life.