Speak Clear Blog

Sir Ken Robinson is hands down one of the world’s greatest speakers.  I defy you not to be immensely entertained and enlightened by this twenty minute speech.

Almost every moment here is a gem.  Let’s start with his body language.  Notice how still he is.  Of course, one should feel free to move throughout a speech, there are no hard and fast rules about body language, but few among us have the tolerance to explore stillness while speaking the way Sir Robinson does.

Now let’s take a look at his language…every word is articulated clearly, and he uses an abundance of inflection and pitch.  He hits his content words, and makes every point clear, yet never over-articulates.  Because he is physically relaxed, we are not distracted by his gestures from the most important component of his speech, his ideas.

He uses his wit to wonderful effect in this speech, eliciting a laugh a minute.  Every trick in the public speaking book is used here, analogies, stories, quotes (including a gem from Abraham Lincoln), one-liners…. the speech is crammed with interest.  It’s no wonder his last TED speech was downloaded over 10 million times!

Notice the structure of the beginning of his speech; an attention getter at the top that elicits a big laugh, then a clear thesis statement outlying his topic, than a wonderful analogy is made playing off of the public’s fascination with “resources”.  Now we are hooked, and we know where we are going.  The discussion section of the speech is a series of short, pithy stories.  The story he tells about the child who wants to be a fireman, and is humiliated for not wanting to go to college, is one of the best, most appropriate, and powerfully told stories I have ever heard.  Watch when he polls the audience as to who is wearing wristwatches… he manages to make a point, and leave everybody in stitches at the same time.

I could go on, and on.  Each brilliantly told story weaves effortlessly into his main point: education is in need of reform.  He culminates with a lovely quote from W.B Yeats.

A colleague of mine once said to me; “You know a standing ovation is authentic if the audience stands as one unit, immediately after the speech has finished”.  Sir Robinson’s authentic ovation here was well deserved.