Why do you want to be better at public speaking? Who do you want to persuade? What is your desired outcome? Why do you want to speak on a stage?
I have had some people come to me and ask for help to get on a TEDx stage – the smallest and most accessible red dot stage of the TED family. I asked them what their purpose was and why they wanted to speak on the TED stage, the coveted red circle or red dot.
Most have some idea. Some are really focused. Both are fine. I can work with that. But… One answered, “I don’t know; tell me a good topic that will be popular and then teach me to be good at delivering my speech at TED. My TEDTALK.” That conversation didn’t end well.
Whatever stage you are planning on speaking on, you should be clear about your purpose. Your WHY.
Talk with Purpose. Know your WHY.
If you’re not one of the 60 million plus who have already seen Simon Sinek’s TEDx Talk on why leaders MUST lead with WHY, you’ve just been given the link. You should watch it. If you’re a business leader, you and your speechwriters should watch it before drafting every internal and external speech or presentation. You should remember to lead with your WHY every time you deliver a speech or presentation, or you speak to the whole business during an All Hands or an annual End of Year Comms event. There’s a reason why SimonSinek’s TEDx talk must be the most successful TEDx talk ever.
You should be speaking because you want to convince and persuade people. To change your world, your part of the world or maybe even large parts of the world. Maybe you want to change your job, get your first job at your first interview, get an overdue promotion or change your career. Maybe you want to start a business or transform or grow a business or turn around a business.
All these are valid storytelling and speaking purposes and great reasons to learn to speak well in public and improve your presentation and storytelling skills. I love working with people who are focused on their purpose and want help to communicate that purpose and persuade people.
Generally, my favourite is helping graduates get their first job – because that is life-changing. But helping a CEO save a business and loads of jobs is also life-changing for the people in those jobs – although they often are blissfully unaware of how close they were to losing their jobs. Every job in the world comes from a story.
However, I’ve also been incredibly privileged to work with people who want to speak better or well because they are doing things not for themselves but for other people. My truly favourite clients are those who are speaking and using words not for themselves but for other people. People who come to me as a Speaker Coach and say, “Help me achieve my purpose.” People who want storytelling coaching for a purpose that is greater than themselves.
These people speak because they want to change the world of other people. One of these amazing people is Keenan Wyrobek.
Changing the world with Words
Keenan and his incredible team at Zipline have changed peoples’ lives and saved people’s lives. Many will not even know why they are alive and how it happened. Keenan and his Zipline team have prevented preventable deaths from happening (that’s a pretty cool purpose, isn’t it?) in parts of Africa but are now going further and helping save lives around the world. They have done this through their ingenuity, innovation, dedication, ridiculous time and work ethic and their incredible focus. They also did this by discovering and using their voice and telling the stories of others and their story and their struggles to change the life stories of others. Changing lives through their stories and words. I was privileged to work with him on his TEDMED talk.
Later, I worked with Keenan and some of his team on stories, including the tragedy of preventable death in routine childbirth. For many, this is a clinically routine but massive life event. For some, it is both a birth event and a death event. Not because the mother didn’t get to a clinic on time or because there wasn’t a qualified Doctor or Nurse there. But because a sudden and unexpected need for blood came up – and the blood couldn’t get there in time from the central blood banks. So a child is born, and a mother dies. Unnecessarily. This is an immediate and ongoing human tragedy for this mother and a human and economic tragedy for this orphan child and its now-orphaned elder siblings (in Africa, orphan often means the loss of one parent) and the whole extended family – no mother, no income. The Zipline team are working to change that.
You should absolutely watch his talk but also go and see how far his company Zipline has come since then and what they are doing now. (Clue – they’re still saving lives and changing peoples’ worlds). They solve delivery issues of essential drugs and blood – logistics challenges caused by a lack of infrastructure for people living remotely or in areas where transport is vulnerable to the weather. Tech with Purpose.
What’s your storytelling or speaking purpose?
What part of your world do you want to change with the power of storytelling, speaking and words?
Do you want to start or boost your career by winning interviews and securing promotions?
Or do you want to start a business?
Or do you want to turn around or grow an existing business?