Analysis on Dan Pink's Speech at TED

The following article was written as an assignment for the Public Speaking class.

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Dan Pink, who is a famous career analyst, bestseller, and also known as an ex-speech writer of Al Gore, gave a speech at the TED Global 2009 conference in July, 2009 on "The surprising science of motivation." He gave a brilliant speech there using a variety of speech techniques and fascinated the audience within 18 minutes and 40 seconds. These techniques can be examined in four aspects: structure, speaking, phrasing, and interacting with the audience. The following analysis shows how effectively they are used to entertain the audience (Listening to his speech is recommended before read the following article).

Dan Pink's speech has a good hook in introduction and a concise summary in conclusion. It is composed of roughly four parts: Introduction, examples, explanations, and conclusion. He starts his speech with a "confession," which is a great hook to draw the audience's attentions at the beginning. He then briefly tells his academic career that he went to a low school. Because of this information, he creates an imaginary situation with the audience on the stage as if they were in the court room ("I want to make case" and "ladies and gentlemen of the jury") so that the audience is forced to play an imaginary role as a jury to examine what he is going to say. He continues to remind the audience of this fictional situation throughout the speech. Presenting a speech in such a conceptual form can be too exaggerated or funny, but he has done it very intellectually without any negative aftertaste. He makes the audience laugh at least four times in the first one and a half minutes, which suggests that he was successful in making them relax and feel comfortable to listen to him. With the strong hook, he totally grasps the audience's attentions at the very beginning of his speech. He sums up his idea in the last one minute and ten seconds of his speech. In conclusion, he summarizes his speech in three points with the key words that he mentions earlier. Since the audience became very familiar with the key words by then, it was quite easy for them to reconfirm his idea in sorted forms. This brief summary and short conclusion leave strong impression to the audience.

There are less content-related speaking techniques used in Pink's speech. For example, he makes the audience laugh at least 13 times in total (One in every one and a half minutes). There are several kinds of jokes he makes:

1. Mismatched phrases. To say unexpected words or phrases contrasted to the previous words such as "George Soros and Friedrich Hayek" and "Mick Jagger."
2. Irony or exaggeration. Jokes about American politics like "as we say in my hometown of Washington D.C., a true fact" and about American characteristics like "I'm American. I believe in free markets."
3. Funny description or modification such as "some kind of touchy feely sociologist conspiracy."

These jokes are not so relevant to his main story, but they produce the audience's responses each time and make the speech more interactive with the audience. Another speaking technique is to indicate the audience what he is going to tell next. There are three types of indicators in his speech:

1. Simply indicating what he is going to tell next such as "Let me wrap up."
2. Indicating to give examples of what he just said such as "Let me give you an example of …."
3. Indicating that an important statement will come next like "And here's the best part."

These indicators help the audience greatly to follow the direction of his speech and prepare for the next topic. The other speaking technique is short sentences such as "Doesn't work." He drops the subjects and other parts of the sentences so that he can save much time and keep the flow of the speech. The speech becomes more powerful. The audience also feels the quick pace of the speech and this forces them to follow the speech. This is one of the most obvious characteristics of his speech. It goes very well with his fast and energetic speaking. These speaking techniques make the audience understand his speech more smoothly and interestingly, which enable them to get straight to the points with fewer obstacles.

The other important technique that Pink uses in his speech is phrasing. For example, he repeats important concepts many times ("candle problem" for six times) and repeats important points twice in succession ("three and a half minutes longer"). Repeating emphasized points make the audience feel that the repeated phrases are important and are forced to pay more attentions to them. To impress important points more to the audience, he also repeats same phrase patterns for more than three times such as "we can" and "maybe." They all work very well to leave strong impression to the audience. Another technique is rephrasing. He describes concepts in different ways such as "carrots and sticks" = "reward-and-punishment approach" = "If-then rewards." Similarly, he tries to rephrase abstract concepts with difficult nouns into more concrete and understandable examples such as "These contingent motivator" = "if you do this, then you get that." They help the audience to understand the concepts much easier. All these rephrasing techniques are employed in order to make the content easier for the audience to understand. Since the topic is abstract, rephrasing is done quite often in his speech.

The last important aspect of Pink's speech is to interact with the audience. He often asks them using the confirming words like "Right?" for five times and "Okay?" for six times. They are said at the following points:

1. Before unfolding the logic to confirm the premise of his story.
2. After unfolding the logic to confirm the consequence of his story.
3. Right after complicated explanation as reading quotes is done.
4. Simply used as a tag question.

By inserting these confirmations at each point, he tries to make sure that the audience catches up with him. They are stimulated to listen to him more carefully each time he confirms with them. He also asks the audience to think ("Think about …") and has an imaginary discussion with them ("Now some of you might look at this and say …"). He even regards the audience as groups of examinees in the experiment he is talking about and makes orders calling them "You." He uses these different methods to make a strong connection with the audience as much as possible. It is a good strategy to keep their attentions the whole time while making a speech.

Because Dan Pink himself was an excellent speech writer, he uses many kinds of speech techniques so efficiently including imaginary setting, jokes, repeating, short sentences, rephrasing, and interact with the audience. There are tons of touching speeches on the TED's website, but I think Pink's is one of the most effective and successful speeches of all.