Semi-submerged frog with a butterfly perched on its head When you present (or give a speech), do you struggle to have the impact you’d like?

If so, you’re not alone – I’d say the vast majority of presenters have that problem.

And I’m one of them!

So I was stoked to see a recent TEDx talk that shares a simple yet powerful tool to fix that issue.

The talk’s by speaker-coach Phil Waknell, who says your presentation should transform your audience – not just inform them.

Phil sees the process like this:

“To take your audience on a transformational journey,
you first need to work out where they are starting from”
Phil Waknell – at 5:35
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Yes! People’s starting point – that’s one of the keys to making your talk truly audience-focused.

A few years ago, Chris Anderson (curator of TED) shared a similar thought:

“You’ve got to start where they are, and you’ve
got to give them a reason to come with you”
Chris Anderson

Phil’s TEDx talk gives you a neat technique that lets you do exactly that. So, want to see his talk?

To save you time, the clip below’s just 4 minutes long, because it jumps straight to Phil’s main point (skipping both the first 5 minutes and last 5 minutes of his talk).

But if you want, you can always click the progress bar to jump to other parts of the full 15-minute video. (For instance, he goes on to finish the example he started.)

What’s in the clip?Scroll to top ↑

Phil walks you through what he calls his Audience Transformation Roadmap, which consists of 4 vital questions to ask yourself while you prepare your talk:

What does your audience…

Know?

Believe?

Feel?

Do?

In Phil’s fantastic approach, you ask those questions twice, to describe:

How people are already – before you speak to them.
How you want people to be afterwards. (This time around, you ask the 4 questions in reverse order.)

I love these 5 points about the questions:

They focus your attention squarely on your audience.
They make you consider people’s emotions, which far too few presenters do.
They make you think carefully (and separately) about:
- people’s attitudes
- people’s actions.
When you reverse the question order, you emphasise what people need to do.
The questions highlight that people’s actions are just supported by knowledge (rather than knowledge transfer being your talk’s main goal).

Over to youScroll to top ↑

I found the video really helpful, but what do you think?
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