Message, Speech, and Influence

0:09 i'd like you to watch the first two 0:10 minutes 0:12 of the ted talk by hans rossling who is 0:14 a professional of international health 0:16 at karlinsky institute just the first 0:18 two minutes 0:19 and as you've watched that video think 0:22 whether you find hans rossling's message 0:25 influential 0:26 why why not take a look 0:33 do you find his message influential i 0:35 personally do 0:36 and i'm guessing that the majority of 10 0:38 million viewers who watch his ted talk 0:40 online would probably agree with me 0:43 but let me articulate the basis for my 0:44 argument 0:46 heath brothers whose scholars at 0:48 stanford and duke 0:49 identified the characteristics of sticky 0:51 messages 0:53 those messages that are particularly 0:54 influential 0:56 and i believe that hans rossling hits it 0:58 out of the ballpark on 0:59 every single dimension of sticky 1:01 messages 1:03 his message is simple which helps us 1:06 remember 1:07 he describes developing world in terms 1:10 of 1:10 large families and short life 1:12 expectancies 1:13 and he describes developed countries in 1:15 terms of small families 1:16 and long life expectancies and he shows 1:19 us how the two converged 1:22 his message is unexpected at times which 1:25 helps him capture our attention 1:27 he compares students and professors of 1:29 an elite karlinski 1:30 institute to monkeys his message is very 1:34 concrete 1:35 through survey data he shows up exactly 1:39 that some of our preconceived notions 1:40 about the world can be erroneous 1:44 hans roslin comes across as very 1:45 credible in just a few short seconds 1:48 in the introduction he tells you that 1:50 he'd been teaching 1:51 global development for nearly 10 years 1:54 that he has about 20 years of experience 1:56 working with african institutions 1:58 on the problem of hunger he also tells 2:01 you about the credibility of the data 2:02 he has very reliable data on fertility 2:05 rates 2:06 and life expectancies worldwide since 2:07 about 1962. 2:10 his message is very emotional he makes 2:12 you think about such things as 2:14 child mortality he's very enthusiastic 2:16 very passionate about the subject 2:18 which is contagious and finally he tells 2:21 you stories 2:22 he shares with you that he was 2:24 personally very anxious and insecure 2:26 about teaching this course to swedish 2:28 undergraduates for the first time 2:30 those personal stories make the argument 2:33 more memorable 2:35 it turns out that the pace of your 2:38 speech how fast you talk 2:41 can make you more or less influential so 2:44 on this slide i have a graph where 2:45 on the x-axis we have your pace of 2:48 speech 2:48 in terms of words per minute and on the 2:51 y-axis 2:52 we have your ability to persuade others 2:55 what do you think is the association 2:57 draw your prediction how fast do you 2:59 need to talk 3:00 to be most influential 3:06 the relationship is actually curvilinear 3:09 nature 3:10 you're most effective when you speak at 3:12 about 190 to 195 words per minute 3:16 you're perceived as more knowledgeable 3:17 more intelligent and more objective than 3:19 someone who speaks more slowly 3:21 now the moment you hit and exceed about 3:23 220 words per minute 3:25 your audience begins to struggle with 3:27 comprehension 3:28 people also have a hard time 3:30 differentiating between weak and strong 3:32 arguments you might wonder where hans 3:35 rossling is on this graph 3:36 you can see that he hits the effective 3:38 range pretty well he averages between 3:40 156 3:41 and 218 words per minute