What are the Real Secrets to TED Talk Story Telling Akash Karia

Speaking with TJ Walker, dissecting the communication skills and practices of world class leaders.

Thomas Friedman once wrote, the world is flat. I think of that phrase every time I think of our guest, Akash Korea. He is someone who is frankly a competitor of mine. He's a great public speaking coach, trainer, media trainer with major corporations around the world. But he's not based in the US or even London. For years he was based in Tanzania, which I'm ashamed to say I couldn't find on a map till I started talking with him. And he now spends his time between Tanzania, Hong Kong and all over the world. He is the author of a gazillion books, probably more books than most people have read, some 30 plus books. His latest book is 23 Storytelling Techniques from TED Talks. And by the way, almost all of his books are best sellers. I dare you to go to Amazon, type in public speaking and not see half a dozen books of his in the top 1020 list. Aakash, thanks for joining us today.

Thank you for having me, tj.

So Akash, everyone talks about ted, TED talks. People come to me, they come to you saying, oh, I want to give a TED Talk. And then the first thing they do is put up a slide with about 29 bullet points. It appears to me that everyone in the world loves to talk about stories, but few people actually like to tell stories when they're giving a so called serious business speech. Why is that?

Well, I think that the reason that most people jump to PowerPoint presentations immediately is because it's very safe. That's the way that we actually end up creating and planning our presentations. So what's happened is instead of brainstorming on a piece of paper, people have now ended up brainstorming using a PowerPoint. And that PowerPoint then ends up being a crutch which they use as a note card to be able to refer back to and get a sort of, get some sort of information about where to go in their speech. So it basically becomes a crutch for the speaker. Now the reason that stories are not used is because stories are very, very vulnerable. It requires you to be able to, number one, know how to tell a good story and number two, it requires you to have some sort of vulnerability because the structure of a story requires some sort of emotional conflict. And for speakers to be able to share that conflict in is sometimes very difficult to do because we're not used to it.

On the one hand it is difficult, but on the other hand, at least in my experience with colleagues, friends, clients, people Love telling stories. If you're sitting down talking, hey, what's happened in the last month? Or how did you start your business? Aren't people at some level natural storytellers when they're comfortable?

Very good point. So everyone loves to tell stories. We sit down over dinner and we want to share our day and we want to share the most exciting stuff that has happened to us. But the problem is when we get up on stage, we no longer are very conversational. We start thinking and we get into what I call speaker mode, which is basically you get up on stage and you move away from your natural personality and you start being very professional, start being very speaker oriented.

That is boring.

Yes, which is very boring because it doesn't connect with the audience. I think if more people learned how to just be themselves on stage and to take their natural personalities up on stage and share the stories that they normally share and use the gestures that they normally use and be as enthusiastic as they normally are, then their presentations would be much more interesting. And my work and your work generally comes down to how do you take someone's natural personality and put it up on stage so that they can share it very authentically, very conversationally from the stage? What I try and ensure is making sure that the speaker does not go into speaker mode and start giving off scripted lines which obviously, while it feels professional and does not connect with the audience members.

But Akash, I have to give a professional serious formal speech. I can't tell stories.

Exactly. And that's the number one objection I get. Number one is I have to be professional. Now where do we get this idea of professional being? You have to get up on stage and you have to deliver a boring PowerPoint data filled slide. The reason that we do it is because we've always seen other people doing it. It's very, very safe to hide behind data, to hide behind PowerPoint. Professional can still include powerful stories. And in fact, if you look at some of the best professional speakers and some of the best leaders and CEOs, you'll find that they step away from PowerPoint, they step away from being very professional and instead they connect conversationally using humor, using conversational language, and, and using stories.

Can you give us a specific example of someone you think really embodies just great storytelling, who is a business person who is embodying one of your 23 techniques?

Okay, I'm gonna flip this around to you right now. Since we're all involved in the same business. Who do you admire as a natural storyteller?

I think that anyone who's a great speaker basically always uses stories. Bill Clinton, certainly in the political world, Warren Buffet, in the business world. They tell stories. They illustrate key points with stories. Right?

My favorite storyteller would probably be Elon Musk. Now, Elon Musk is a fantastic storyteller, even though he's not a great public speaker. In fact, if you look at Elon Musk, his way of speaking is sometimes very dry because he doesn't seem so enthusiastic. But he's able to paint a very clear vision for where he wants to go. And the way he does it is using a story. So go online, search for Elon Musk speeches, and you'll usually find some sort of story integrated into it, which is why people love his businesses, which is why there's so much of a fan base around Tesla, around Solar X, around SpaceX, because he's able to take this story and the vision that he has and then communicate it to people in a way that they feel part of the story as well.

He's obviously a persuasive public speaker, private speaker, because he's persuaded people to give him billions of dollars. So that does speak for itself at some level. What other techniques can our audience learn from your book? And what's the most surprising technique? So many of the listeners of this program have frankly read a lot of books about public speaking, storytelling. After a while, a lot of them sound the same. What's one or two techniques that people think? You know, I never quite thought of it that way before.

Okay, so I'll share with you the number one insight that I have into storytelling, which is this. When I do my workshops and seminars, I'll usually ask whether it's a group of salespeople or managers or leaders to come up on stage and to share a story. Now, what most of them end up doing is not actually telling me a story. They end up giving me a narrative which is quite boring. It goes something along the lines of, I woke up, then I went to work, then I sold this product to this person who had this problem, and as a result, she's very happy. That's not really a story. That's a.

Well, it is a story. It's an incredibly boring story.

I like to define that as a narrative. To me, a story has one key ingredient, and it is the most important ingredient of a story. In fact, that is exactly what a story is. Without this ingredient, you do not have a story. And that key ingredient is this conflict. Every story must have some sort of emotional conflict. There has to be a tension between two opposing forces. There has to be a character who is fighting and struggling to achieve something that he or she is not quite able to achieve just yet and keeps falling flat on his or her face. So let's have a look at a movie. Have you watched the Titanic?

TJ Absolutely.

Right now, would you watch the Titanic if the two main characters, Jack and Rose, met on this cruise ship, fell in love, and lived happily ever after? If that was the whole movie, would you pay to go back and watch that movie?

Sounds like a snooze.

Yep. The reason that we love the Titanic is because there's so much conflict between the characters and among the characters. So conflict number one is that the ship is sinking. And now that creates tension where we, where you want to know, will they live or will they die? That's the primary conflict. Now, the reason that the Titanic is such a good movie is because they have so many smaller conflicts within that primary conflict. Another conflict is Jack and Rose are from two very different social backgrounds. Even if they do survive, will society allow them to stay together? Will they be married and live together or will society separate them? There's more tension and more conflict where Jack, the main character who's fallen in love with Rose, now also having a fight with Rose's fiance. So the fact that you have a conflict is what makes a story a story. So when you're thinking about. Yeah, go ahead.

One area where there's no conflict is my wholehearted endorsement of your book, 23 Storytelling Techniques from TED Talks. I'd like to thank our special guest today, Akash Kariya. There's a link to the book in the show notes. You can find out more@akashkorea.com you'll find a link to that in the show notes as well. Akash, thanks for being our guest today.

Thank you very much. It was a pleasure being on the show. TJ.

Okay, so stop timeout. Now we go to the part of the show where we dissect what just happened, because that segment, around 10 minutes, a little bit less of your talk time is kind of all the time most of us get when we're promoting books on talk shows podcast. Certainly if you're on a TV talk show, and there's certainly not enough time to go into the whole book, but it's also three times as long, four times as long as the Gettysburg Address. If you're doing an online TED Talk, they limit that to six minutes. So it is a fair amount of time. So, Akash, let's dissect the interview right now. What do you try to accomplish when you are on a talk show and you've got this book that you've spent years in research creating and you've got to distill it down to a few minutes, what are your objectives?

So I think that there's two main objectives. With most people, the way that they approach such a media interview is they'll try and sell the book or the service or the video course that they have. I believe in doing things a bit differently. I don't actually want to specifically be the one who mentions my book or my course or my product. What I try and do instead is demonstrate my expertise and let the host instead share the product or the books. So if I add enough value by sharing something interesting or sharing an insight, then I'm hoping that the listeners will then go ahead and find out and want to get more information on my products, on my books, on my courses.

Great technique. Many people do make the mistake of buy my book, buy my book, buy my book. When ultimately your career is not about any one book, it's about your expertise. And the more people you can draw in, the more we'll want to buy your book.

Exactly. And for me, a media interview or a speaking opportunity, really at the heart of it is about adding value, about sharing, and being able to help the listeners out in some way. So the book or the product is always secondary. My message and the value is always primary.

Now, Akash, most of our listeners, frankly, might not have heard of you if they're not regular purchasers of online books and Kindle books, and for that matter, some of your paperback and hardback books. To me, you're a fascinating case of this new modern world we live in. When I started doing public speaking training and media training in the 1980s, my competition would be people in my own town. At the time, I was in North Carolina when I grew up, and then New York, then Florida. Then my competitors were other trainers in the United States. Now I have to compete across the whole world. I mean, I wrote my first book in the late 1980s when it was really hard. It took me like five years to figure out how to get that thing in print. Now you're seemingly publishing half a dozen books a month sometimes. And you're not just publishing them, you're getting them read by tens of thousands of people all over the world. You did this from an outpost based in Tanzania, which for some of our listeners might not even realize is in Africa. You do speeches, keynote addresses, trainings, workshops all over the globe. And you're not sort of the traditional based in New York, Washington, London, sort of trainer. So it's a new world to me. It's a fascinating example of if you've got a great message and you can speak well, then you can reach the whole world.

Very true. Very, very true. The reason that I started with Kindle Publishing and basically sharing my message online through ebooks was because as someone who's based in Tanzania, I didn't have the contacts, I didn't have the expertise, I didn't have a mentor who could guide me how to get into the speaking business to share my message. So what I did was I went online and I looked at how can I use technology, how can I use blogging, how can I use video logs, how can I use YouTube to get my message in front of millions of people? And from having my work in front of millions of people worldwide using technology, someone will see some value in me and hire me. And it's been working out pretty well so far.

Who were some of your early role models? How did you even get interested in speaking in the first place?

So the reason that I got interested in speaking was because I am not a very good speaker and I wasn't a very good speaker. I do not consider myself a top notch speaker. In fact, I don't like to call myself a speaker. In fact, the reason that I don't like to refer to myself as a speaker is because the moment you get into the speaker mode, you end up being very constrained around what people believe a speaker should be, how he should sound, how, how he should talk. And I don't really like that. What I prefer is instead of seeing yourself as a speaker, to see yourself as a consultant. A speaker is concerned with how do I look, how do I sound, Am I speaking correctly, am I pronouncing the words correctly, am I stumbling over my words? A consultant is instead focused on how do I add value and how do I deliver my message so, so that it connects with the other person. So I got started in this so called speaking industry because I wasn't very good. But I wanted to learn how to be able to get my message and my value across much better. So I remember, I think I was about 14, 15 years old, I would sit in my car and I would listen to tapes by Anthony Robbins.

Certainly a good role model as a public speaker. And by the way, I literally just last night finished watching his new documentary, I am Not a Guru.

Yes. So he was one of my first early virtual mentors in Looking at how do you package a message in such a way that you'll keep your listeners engaged? And then, since then, I've become very much a student of speaking. Even though I don't like the word, I've become a very much a student of speaking and looking at the Best speakers from ted, which is what my book is based on. Looking at the best speakers from Toastmasters and trying to analyze how exactly do they deliver value? How exactly are they able to connect with the audience?

Break down for us your perspective. I've shared this with my audience, but I want to hear from you. Why is TED successful? What is unique about a TED Talk that's different from any other motivational speaker at a convention, a business speech, a keynote, a PowerPoint?

Okay, so I think it comes down to three things. Now, the first two things are nothing to do with speaking. Number one is value. When you look at a TED Talk, you get so much value out of those 18 minutes because we're getting not speakers, not motivational speakers. We're getting experts in their field who've been working on their side of the world, doing research, studying, creating awesome products and breakthroughs. So what you end up with is a ton of value during those 18 minutes. Now, connected to that. Number two, which is very important, is newness. It's something that is different from what you've been hearing all the time. So when you have a speaker who gets up on a TED stage, they've got new information, new insights to offer to the audience. So if you want to be on ted, the first two things that you need to consider are, do I have expertise and value that I can share? And number two, is it something new that is a sort of breakthrough or revolutionary or perhaps provides a whole new perspective around the topic that most other people are speaking about or sharing about now?

So it can't just be the same old same. You can't get up and give a presentation, buy my paper, because it's 2 cents, just cheaper per pound.

Exactly. So those are the first two things. Now, the third thing now comes down to speaking. All of the TED speakers are really, really good speakers. They know how to mold their message into 18 minutes and keep your attention during those 18 minutes. So to me, the least important of those things is how you speak. The most important is the value that you have, and it's the newness that you're offering. The speaking complements that. But it is not the most important part behind the success of TED as a conference.

So I gotta ask you, what do you do if you have a business client who says, akash, I want to be a great speaker, teach me how to give a speech like a TED Talk. I've come in with my speech, you listen to their speech and it's frankly boring. What do you do to help someone like that?

So what we start is, number one, looking at the value that they want to convey and figuring out how do you take a message that will really connect with the audience? We don't even start with the techniques. We start with the message. We start with the value that you're offering. What is it that you want your audience to think, feel or do differently by the end of the presentation? And a lot of the time we have to restructure the message itself so that we're able to convey value. Now the next stage actually comes down to looking at the techniques that you can help them deliver that speech or that presentation or that talk in a very powerful and engaging way. Now there's two things which I really focus on with my clients because it's the number one mistake that they make. Number one is they do not make the audience curious. I'll give you an example. There's something called a knowledge gap. Are you aware of what that is? T.J. i don't know.

I don't have the knowledge.

So a knowledge gap is basically a gap between what the listener knows and doesn't know. And that gap creates curiosity. So it's a gap between what the listener knows and doesn't know and that gap creates curiosity. Most of the time, speakers will try and shove information down their audience's throats without creating that gap or making them curious. So what I teach speakers to do is how to create knowledge gaps. And the best way to create a knowledge gap is with a question.

Akash, so what do you do in the following scenario? A business person comes to you and says, gosh, I want to be a fantastic, interesting, engaging speaker. I want to give a TED Talk. Here's what I've prepared. They stand up, they give their speech. And the problem is not their technique. The problem is the message is the same old, same old boring stuff. That sounds like it came from a marketing page off their website from 18 months ago. How do you put that? How do you dress that up? Can you put lipstick on a pig?

You can't put lipstick on a pig, but you can take a message and make it more interesting. Now what I do with my clients is two things. The first thing that we do when someone comes to me for speech coaching is we start with the message. We don't start with the techniques in terms of how to deliver the speech. We start with looking at how do you make this message more relevant and more interesting to the audience. There are several ways of doing that. So number one, you look at what is it that the audience wants out of this presentation and you meet them halfway by looking at what is it that I want my audience to think, feel or do differently by the end of the presentation. So you start with the end in mind. Now you can take a message that's been talked about over and over and you can make it more interesting by adding in your own perspective. And the way that you do that is you have certain stories, certain experiences, certain perspectives, certain ways of looking at this topic that other people may not have considered. So what we do is we take this marketing jargon that they have and personalize it and make it more conversational by adding in your own experiences, your own stories and sometimes also adding in scientific research so that you approach it from a different, different angle. So yes, the message may have been talked about over and over again, but the angle at which you're approaching it is very different.

In a minute I'm going to ask our guest Akash Kariya to share with us his own personal signature story. But first, a reminder, you're listening to Speaking with TJ Walker. If you like the program, please subscribe. Please review it on itunes, share it on Facebook and tell your friends. For more information on how to be a great storyteller, I'd urge you check out the book 23 Storytelling Techniques from TED talks written by Akash Korea. I've linked to the Amazon page in our show notes so you can check it out there. You can also get more information from Akash Korea by going to his website akashkorea.com and he doesn't call himself a motivational speaker, but I gotta tell you, he is motivational. Anytime I'm feeling smug with myself and satisfied, I go to his web page and I see that he's published about 10 more books since I got up at breakfast time. He is extremely prolific and I should point out he has been nice enough to write the foreword of a new version a re release of my book Secretary to Foolproof Presentation. So we are in cahoots together. I do recommend this man, his work and his books. You can't go wrong and you can get a lot of his books at a very great price on Kindle. Especially if you're part of the unlimited program on Kindle which I use regularly. Akash what is your signature story you do get invited to speak whether it's Geneva, Hong Kong, Tanzania, all over the world. What are you known for on the stage?

So this is a very difficult question. And the reason that it's a difficult question is a story is kind of like a joke. If you tell someone I'm going to tell you a joke, it doesn't really work. And the reason that story is work is because they're almost like a Trojan horse. The person does not expect them and is not actively looking out with entertain me with a story. And so when you do give a story and they're not expecting it, it has more impact. But I'll try and do justice to this question which is when I was back in high school I went through an experience which was very, very difficult for me. If you've ever been bullied as a kid, you know how difficult it can be and how how much of a pain it can be on your self esteem. I remember one particular moment when I was having dinner with my parents at this gorgeous little restaurant. And my parents and I and my sister are sitting at dinner around this table when we notice that one of my cousin sisters who used to be in the same class as me is having dinner with her family on a table next to us. So she very politely gets up, walks over to us and asks me this. She says, Akash, the rest of the class is having a class party. We're going to be celebrating the fact that it's the end of the class year. Everyone has received the invitation via mail. Did you receive yours? It was a very innocent question. But what she did not realize was that I was the only one in the entire class who had not been invited to this class party.

Oops.

And at that point I was so embarrassed that I said yes, I received my invitation. I was feeling so humiliated in front of my parents that I was the only boy in the entire class who did not get invited by his own peers to attend what was supposed to be a class gathering. And that's when I realized that my lack of social skills, my inability to talk to people, to connect with them, to be able to develop relationships with them would interfere with me in my future life. So at that point forwards is when I started learning how to communicate. My objective was not to be a professional speaker. My objective was basically to learn how do I connect and build meaningful relationships with people one on one. And as I was studying and reading books like how to Win friends and Influence People I realized that many of the techniques that we use to connect with people one on one are the same techniques that we use on stage to give public speeches. I think it was Dale Carnegie who said that a public speech is nothing more than a one on one conversation with 99 other people listening in. A public speech is nothing more than a one on one conversation with 99 other people listening in. So it was that painful experience which then caused me to get into this field of social dynamics and relationships and public speaking.

So what I really like about your story is it's certainly personal, it certainly seems real, and I believe it to be real, but does follow the classic arc of what you look for in great motivational speech. Because all great motivational speakers start off with not. I was great born, wealthy, powerful, smart, good looking and was always a success. It's always about, I started out even lower than you. I overcame my challenge, so can you. Anthony Robbins famously talks about, I was in the studio apartment washing dishes in my bathtub and my 400 square foot apartment. What he talked about in his infomercials for so many years was compelling. Now, were you just the classic bookworm and you didn't talk to anyone or what made you such a pariah with your classmates?

I was very much a bookworm. So I was very, very focused on being very internal. So I cared more about the knowledge that I was receiving and the world of books, whether it was fiction or nonfiction. And that was really where I found my comfort in reading books. So as a result, I became the sort of kid who would be always reading rather than talking to my friends. I remember during lunchtime I would be sitting in the library while the rest of my classmates were out playing soccer or enjoying a certain sport, or talking to each other. I would rather read a book than watch a movie. So that turned out to be very good for me because once I did learn how to communicate with people, I was able to have the best of both worlds. I was able to become an extrovert when I need to be on stage and and to talk to 2,000 people and deliver a dynamic presentation and be very lively and connect with people one on one as well as in group presentations. But I'm also able to extract knowledge from being very internal and focusing on the knowledge that you get from books.

Now you mentioned when you were young, one of your first experiences with speaking was watching or listening to Anthony Robbins. We mentioned him earlier. I'm interested. What was your perspective of him when you were young and you first encountered him? What's your perspective now? And did you see this Recent movie. I'm one of the, I guess, few people. I have a nuanced view or mixed view of Anthony Robbins. I think he's mostly a force for good, but I think there are an awful lot of cheesy, tacky, manipulative things he does, too. But I want to hear your take.

So when I first came across Anthony Robbins, I was astounded that there was this whole world of personal development that I did not realize existed. And when I came across his stories, especially about how he was so terrible and he was overweight and he didn't have the success, and he was this janitor who was struggling with the job that he had, it motivated me to realize that I could do so much more with my life. Now, over the years, I've actually become a bigger fan of Anthony Robbins because as I've studied him, I've actually taken a course by him called Strategic Intervention, which is how he coaches people through depression, through anxiety, and he creates breakthroughs in people. So I took this course, very expensive course, went through about a hundred hours of training on the methodology that he uses. I came to realize that there's one specific thing that he does. Basically everything that Tony Robbins does, including in the movie, in the documentary, I am not your guru. Comes down to one thing. He is very good at reframing negative and difficult past experiences as being something that sets you up for success later down the line. So it is not that you are broke because you were brought up in a poor family. It is that because you were brought up in a poor family, you now have the motivation to be able to drive yourself towards greater success. So he takes any negative experience that you've had and reframes it as something good that empowers you rather than disempowers you.

He's certainly a compelling speaker to many. As I mentioned, I think he's primarily a force for good. But I personally don't like it when every two seconds someone has to say, all right, now, say I. I mean, the way he gets his audience to agree with him. Again, I don't think he's a force for evil in the world, but I do think he could convince an audience to do anything. Burn down the city, execute people. I mean, he. He can get them to say yes to anything he asks, which is a testament to his speaking skills, but also a little bit scary. And to me, sort of counter to the whole argument of personal development. If you're just going to say yes to whoever is persuasive in front of you, then you're not really developing yourself. But let's move on to other speakers. Who do you personally admire and as the best in style and substance when it comes to public speaking in the world today?

So I will bring across a name that you may not have heard before. Jason Silver. Have you heard of him?

No, I haven't. Sure.

So Jason Silva is the host of a National Geographic show called Brain Games, and I came across his YouTube videos. Now, Jason Silva is kind of the opposite to Anthony Robbins. So Anthony Robbins has this raw power and charisma that just pulls people towards him. And he's very enthusiastic, very powerful, and he's got a very manly sort of energy around him. Now, Jason Silver is slightly different in the sense that he's a lot looser with his gestures. His words are more poetic. So if you watch any one of his videos, you'll find that instead of being very motivational, he talks a lot about consciousness, and he talks a lot about connecting with your higher self. So Jason Silva is someone that I really admire because he's found a style of speaking that works really well for him. Now, coming back to Anthony Robbins, the mistake that I made initially in my speaking career was I tried to emulate.

Him, because you weren't alone. There are a lot of Anthony Robbins imitators out there.

Because I admired him, I wanted to be like Anthony Robbins. I wanted to get the same sort of reactions from him. But I realized that it wasn't working very well for me because even though my audience did enjoy it at times, I just didn't feel like it was the natural version of me. And then I came across Jason Silva, who has a very different style, who's a lot more looser with his gestures, who's a lot more poetic with his words. Very, very different style. And I liked him so much that I tried to emulate him as well. So it was a very conflicting style. And in between those two styles, I realized that there's no one specific style of speaking that is the best style of speaking. It just comes down to who are you as a person? What is your natural personality when you're talking to your friends, to your family members, then expanding that up on stage. So now I believe I've become a lot more cash, a lot less Anthony Robbins, a lot less Jason Silver, and a lot more of me, so I can offer my uniqueness to the world.

So there's a synthesis. I always tell people, if you're a copycat in imitation, it's horrible. But all great speakers, like all great painters all great musicians have influences. So the more you can expose yourself to great speakers and admire parts of them, it can only make you a better speaker.

Yes, I think the key comes down to initially you do want to try and imitate, not necessarily publicly, but you want to imitate different styles and sort of role model and get into their skin and feel how it feels to deliver a speech like them and do it with a variety of different speakers. And as you do this, you'll discover the right speaking style for you. So you might find something about Anthony Robbins that really connects with you, but then you gel it and mix it with something that you have. Then you take something from Jason Silva in terms of his enthusiasm and you find that really works for you. So you take that, maybe you find the humor of someone like George Carlin and you interpret that and you molded so that all these different experiences are shaped by your own perspective and you end up with something very unique and wow.

You mentioned George Carlin. Talk about someone with a love of language and intense intelligence brought to his stand up act. He's certainly an artist that many of us do miss. You mentioned charisma a moment ago. I have a contrarian view on charisma, but I want your opinion. My opinion is there's actually no such thing as charisma. Charisma is just a shorthand for good public speaking. I get into debates with people. I've actually been asked to appear on panels to dissect charisma. The question I have that no one can ever answer is if charisma is really something wholly distinct from public speaking, then name a politician that you really like and respect his policies and who everybody says is charismatic, who isn't a good public speaker. And no one can ever name that. And I also say, now name for someone. Now name me someone who is universally perceived as a bad speaker, but whose politics you like. But everyone says that person is charismatic. No one can do that either. So do you agree or do you disagree? Is charisma really just a function of good public speaking?

I think public speaking is a skill. So you can still be charismatic without mastering the skill. However, it's very likely that if you're charismatic in one on situations that you're also very good at the beginning. Now there is actually a of dissecting charisma. There was research done at MIT where they have this device called a sociometer, which is basically like a watch that you wear around your wrist. And what it does is it tracks your hand gestures and it tracks the energy as you Speak. So the more enthusiastic you gesture and, and the more enthusiastically you move about, the more it perceives as having higher energy levels. So as part of this research, there were a group of business executives who were told to wear this sociometer and then deliver a business plan pitch to a panel of judges. So imagine a group of executives who have to deliver a business plan to a panel of judges as a part of a business plan competition. Now, behind the scenes, the researchers were able to predict who would win the business plan competition without knowing anything about the business plan or knowing anything about the speakers. They were able to predict who would win this business plan competition without knowing anything about the business plan or knowing anything about the speaker. And the way they did it is they looked at who was the person that gestured most enthusiastically, moved about with enthusiasm, and spoke with enthusiasm. So to me, charisma comes down to enthusiasm. Charisma to me is basically enthusiasm. If you're very excited and enthusiastic within your own natural range, then you are charismatic. I cannot find a charismatic person who has low energy. So anyone with high energy is likely to be charismatic.

And of course, the problem is a lot of people are very high energy when they're comfortable and they're talking to one person or five people sitting down. And now you say you've got to speak to 10 people standing up. They completely altered, alter their energy levels because they're nervous. Now, the study you just mentioned to me, I take away something different to me.

Go ahead.

Again, the problem I have with, once you say there's this thing called charisma, it kind of gives everybody an excuse not to learn new skills because it's kind of like, oh, that's something you're either born with or you're not. What I heard from the way you summarized it, that survey is it is a technical function of hand movement, which, unless you have severe physical problems, all of us are capable of moving our hands. And if you hold your hands in your pocket or you hold a clicker or you hold a lectern, you're going to be seen as low energy and not excited and not passionate and therefore boring and less likely to get your business planned approved. But if you actually move your hands, you'll be perceived much better. Literally, just yesterday, I'm in a training with a couple of executives over in New Jersey, and one woman was a competent speaker, was smooth, polished, professional, but kept her hands clasped together, not noticeably, nervously clenched, but definitely not gesturing. And I, of course, taped that. She told me that she doesn't. She said, oh, I Just, I like the way my colleague moves her hands because her other colleague was moving her. She seems much more interesting, engaging, passionate and. But I never move my hands. And of course, while she's saying this, her hands are moving all over the place. So we get up and practice again. I have her give her speech. She again holds her hands tightly together. I then turn the light off, drop the microphone and say, well, how did that feel? Instantly, her hands are expansive, moving. Oh, it was awful. And her hands are not distracting, but wildly expansive. So as we're playing back the video, we get near the end of the prepared part and I said, what would you say for the next 30 seconds? I can prove you to be a complete liar. SHE LAUGHS But I want to see proof.

Yes.

We then just go to the part of the video where she doesn't think she's being recorded. Her hands are as expansive and demonstrative and full range as anything you've ever seen Anthony Robbins do. And. And her jaw dropped. She's like, I had no idea I did that. So I guess my point is, in my own experience, all human beings move their hands when they talk, when they are comfortable. It's just that most people get nervous in front of a certain threshold of an audience and they stop moving their hands. But it's relatively easy to get them to move their hands again if it's just practiced.

We agree 100% with that. 100%. And I love that exercise that you did with your client. What I would say is, I think it's also more than just a function of hand gestures. I think enthusiasm comes down to hand gestures as well as facial expression, as well as the tone of voice. But the cool thing is, once you can get someone to learn how to use their hand gestures and gesture more naturally, then automatically, unconsciously, the voice and the facial expressions also follow. So I think there's a very close correlation. You get someone to be a bit more enthusiastic and energetic in terms of hand gestures and everything else, with their facial expressions and their voice and their body language will follow along naturally.

Absolutely. It's all linked in both directions because if you freeze your hands, you're grabbing a lectern or a remote control or a pen, you tense up your hands, your arms, that gets into your vocal cords, your face, and it causes a negative spiraling reaction downwards. The opposite is true too. Move the hands, the face moves, the energy level moves as well. You're listening to Speaking with TJ Walker. Our special guest today is Akash Kariya. He is one of the Foremost public speaking experts, authors, trainers in the world, has an international practice, has trained more than 100,000 people all over the world, has written dozens and dozens of books, most of them atop the Amazon best seller list. His most recent book is 23 Storytelling Techniques from TED Talks. Now, Kaj, you've been at this for quite a while. We've all had some successes, we like to talk about that, but sometimes we learn the most from our failures. What's the worst speech you ever gave? I mean, I've been booed off stages, but I want to hear about yours.

So the worst speech that I ever gave, it would have to be when I was just starting off in my professional career and what I did was this was never meant to be a career where I made money. This was supposed to be a career where I simply did it because I loved it. And I was planning to have a second business, which was for the financial aspect. I first started training high school students and the most difficult experience I had was with a group of about 25 Chinese girls aged about 14 to 15 years old. And I would teach this class once a week, about two hours per session. And I found it very, very difficult to engage with them, partly because I was trying to be very, very Anthony Robbins style, because that was the person that I admired back then and that didn't really connect with a group of 14, 15 year old Chinese girls. They could sense the inauthenticity. The second thing that I made a.

Mistake was I can tell you, I live with a Chinese woman, my wife is Chinese, she's not impressed by Anthony Robbins or by me half the time.

The second mistake that I made was I was very much eye focused. So I was focused on how do I sound, how do I look, is my voice perfect, is my shirt ironed? Well, am I making the right sort of impression? And my whole motivation came from I want to be good as opposed to I want to help them. It was only when I switched that and I stopped caring about am I stumbling over my words? Is my pronunciation correct? And I really started focusing on them and helping them improve their speaking skills. That's when I really started connecting, connecting with them. And what made that breakthrough, were they.

Just ignoring you, laughing at you? How did you figure out it just wasn't working?

Yeah, you can tell when someone's zoning off. You can tell when an audience is not engaged. So if you look at the body language and they're slumped backwards and they're not really making eye contact and they're not leaning forward and they're not taking notes. Especially in a classroom setting, you know that you've lost them. I mean, it's very difficult to lie to yourself at that point in time, thinking that I'm connecting with them. It was only when I made a conscious decision that let me try and focus on them and ask them questions and see how I can add value to them. That's when I could see their body language beginning to change.

Now, you just mentioned something very important. Eye focused. You stopped being eye focused. And I sometimes, I guess I'm guilty of being impatient when people tell me they have a fear of public speaking. Because my first reaction is, stop being such a selfish, you know what, if you're so nervous about public speaking, but what you're really saying is, oh, it's all about little me. How do I look? You're not caring about helping your audience. It's easy for me to say that, but how do you actually help your own clients make that transition from focusing on themselves to their audience?

So I like to do it through questions. So my coaching methodology is not about telling them that they should focus on themselves. It's more about asking them. And I like to tap into their previous experiences of success. So I'll ask the client a question as, how long have you been involved in this field of yours? And they'll say, I've been doing this for 10 years. I'll ask them, so do you consider yourself an expert in this field? Yes, I do. On a scale of 0 to 10, how much knowledge do you have compared to your audience? 0 being you don't have much knowledge and they're way smarter than you are. And number 10 being I definitely have a lot more expertise than they do. And so asking these questions turns them into a bit more confident because they realize that they're an expert in the topic. And then the next question that I ask them is, what is it that you want your audience to think, feel, or do differently by the end of the presentation? And that very question takes the focus away from how do I want to sound? To what is it that I want them to do? And my constant reinforcement to them is to focus on that end goal, not on the process of how you're going to get there, but just on that end goal. It's like a missile where you're focused on. Even if you go off balance and you skip and you stumble over a certain word, your endpoint is still the same and you just divert back towards giving them value. Does that make sense?

Absolutely. Great approach. I try to do something pretty much the same. I ask executives I'm working with, what is the number one thing you want this audience to do after listening to you now? What are the at most five ideas messages that will motivate them to do that? And they'll say, oh, tj, that's a great approach. But my staff has worked for six months on this deck and the deck has gone through legal approval, investor relations approval. Our investment bankers have approved it. So it's too late to change anything. But I intellectually, I think you have a great approach. What do you do in a situation like that?

The first thing is there's a lot of bureaucratic hoops that you have to go through in that kind of client situation. But I'll give you an easier situation that I've worked with where it's been less about getting the approval process and more about getting the client to see the value in the you focus versus the I focus. So client number one was a mother who was going to be delivering a speech about parenthood. Now, she was very, very passionate about parenthood. She was very focused on adding value to the community by teaching them exactly how to be a good parent, how to encourage your child and how to get them to succeed not just in academics, but also in sports. When she got up on stage, she had a PowerPoint presentation along with a script that she had written out. And it seemed very much like a PR sort of speech where it was a lot of buzzwords and she really wasn't connecting. So what I did with her was I said, why is it important for you to give this speech? And she said, I want to make sure that I contribute to the community and show them exactly why they should raise not just academically successful kids, but also kids who have the whole aspect of sports and culture and consciousness. Then I said, imagine that your child or your son or your daughter is sitting in this audience. Imagine that you have to give this speech. And as you're giving this speech, your children are listening to your philosophy. Would you use these words and would you use these experiences to connect with the audience? And she said, no, I'd use a lot more personal experiences. I'd share more about how I raised them the way that I wanted them to grow up. So just asking her to visualize her kids in the audience changed her whole approach from being very much eye focused to focused more on the value that she wanted to give the audience. Great approach, Akash.

I know I've got a number of listeners who are going to be sending me nasty Emails if I don't ask you the following questions because. Because so many people I deal with are constantly asking me, TJ, how do I speak at ted? I want to give a TED Talk. I want to speak. You are the expert on TED. You've written not just 23 storytelling techniques from TED Talks. You've written numerous other books analyzing best beginnings, best closings, best elements of TED Talks. What is your advice to people who, number one, really do want to speak at TED, or at least TEDx, and number two, how they can speak more like a TED Talk for all of their speeches in their life?

So, two questions. Number one, how do you get on TED or TEDx? So the application process is something very rigorous and not something that I have experience with. So I can't really help you there because what I'm focused on is more about the messaging and helping you craft your message. Once you are going to go to TED, but I can give you one piece of advice. Start at TEDx, which is the local version of TED. Go online on Google, type in TEDx, and then followed by the area that you live in. You'll find a number of conferences. Contact the conference organizers and give them the topic that you want to talk about. And it should be something that is, number one, valuable to the audience and number two, new. So you can't just talk about how to set goals, because that's been done over and over and over again. If that's what you're going to talk about, you don't have anything new, in which case you're not likely to get accepted. So find a, perhaps a new way of looking at goal setting where you might say why goal setting doesn't work and the research behind it. So an unconventional, an unconventional approach to a commonly done topic. Or perhaps you are an expert in your field and you've had some major scientific breakthrough, in which case I'm sure TED would love to hear from you. Now. If you want to learn to speak like ted, start off by watching TED Talks and analyzing how exactly are these speakers delivering their message in a way that engages the audience? Once you watch about a hundred of them, 200 of them, you'll find similarities in the structure of a TED Talk, which is what I do in my books. So I've got three books on TED. One is 23 Storytelling Techniques from TED Talk, which is where I analyze what do the best TED talks have in common? And I find that they have stories and what's the common structure behind a story. The second book I have is how to Deliver a great TED Talk where I analyze about 200 TED talks and break them down in terms of structure, in terms of delivery. And then the third book that I have is how to Deliver TED Worthy Presentation Slides which looks at what do the most successful TED talks have in common in terms of the visuals that they present. So even if you don't buy my books, which is fine, go to ted.com and analyze the talks for yourself and try and find these commonalities. And when you find something that really resonates with you, use that for your approach to public speaking.

Now Akash, I've read many, many of your books, but I haven't read the book on the TED slides. In my own observation with successful TED slides and what I've been practicing and preaching to my own students for decades is if you want to use a slide, focus on one idea per slide. Make it a visual, preferably a picture. If it's an image or a graph, make sure it focuses on just one idea and at most a relationship between two variables. Don't use text. Are those the basics you stress too or am I missing something?

You summarize my book in about two sentences. So that's what I talk about in my book. The reason that I wrote an entire book is everyone knows these things, but the book really persuades people to use those things. So you see all these things in action, plus a few more points. I had a professional speaker who wrote me a testimonial, unsolicited testimonial. I do not know her, I did not ask her for a testimonial and she said I've been a professional speaker for 30 years and this book changed my presentation skills for the better. So as you go through these case studies, you see exactly how to apply the things that you mentioned and you see examples of them and that really not just hits you intellectually but also hits you emotionally and you start actually making a real difference in your presentation. So it's not about just knowing the things, it's about feeling it and connecting with it emotionally and making an actual difference in your presentations.

Akash Kariya, thanks for being our guest today. The book is 23 Storytelling Techniques from TED Talks. The link is in the show notes below. For more information go to akashkorea.com I'm TJ Walker.

Thanks for listening to speaking with TJ Walker where the communication skills in practice of world class leaders are dissected.