Wednesday, June 3, 2009

What Seth Godin does right

Seth Godin is a great example of an outstanding speaker. His latest talk at TED is one of my favorites. Take a look at it and I'll highlight some things he does exceptionally well:

http://www.leadershipnow.com/leadingblog/2009/05/seth_godin_at_ted.html

1. He immediately gets our attention. He opens his presentation with some attention-getting examples of people 'who know what they do for a living'. He compliments these stories with some eye-catching visuals. He gets our attention and leads us directly into the objective of his talk - 'what do we do for a living? I think we try to change everything'. That's gets us listening and curious about what we are going to hear.

2. He then clearly tells us what to expect from his talk - 'What is the process of making important change? I've been studying this for a couple years and I want to share a couple stories with you today.'

3. He gives us some very clear examples of people who are making these kinds of changes and how we can 'change the status quo and make big, permanent, important change' and the process we should go through when trying to do this. These stories are real, interesting and supported by some great visuals that keep our attention.

4. He makes his core message extremely simple, easy to remember and he moves us to his message with something we can understand - the factory stage, the advertising stage and now we are in the leadership stage. If he had simply started talking about the leadership stage, we may not have had something to compare it to and he may have lost some of his audience.

5. He relates his message to his original statement - 'What we do for a living now is find something worth changing and then assemble tribes that spread the idea and it becomes a movement'. Everything is connected in his talk - there is no information that is NOT connected to his core message - this is KEY!

6. He supports his message towards the end with even more examples. This reinforces his message after we have completely understood what he is promoting.

7. He gives us something tangible to think about towards the end with his three questions. The aim is to make your audience think about your talk after the presentation is over and this is a great way to do it

8. He gives us a wonderful summary of his talk. He doesn't say 'I talked about this... blah blah blah'. He tells us what we should remember - ' Challenge, Culture, Commit'. This kind of stuff stays with an audience.

9. He finishes with a call to action. He tells us to do something! 'What I want you to do is create a movement. Start. Do it. We need it.' Nothing could be more motivating than a direct call to action.

10. Above all, Seth is contagiously enthusiastic throughout his talk. He believes in what he's saying and he wants his audience to believe in it. Follow his example and you might even create a movement of your own!

© 2009 Jeanne Trojan. All rights reserved






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