

The secrets of Malcolm Gladwell - wvl
http://blogs.ft.com/rachmanblog/2010/02/the-secrets-of-malcolm-gladwell/

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saturdayplace
Should be titled: Malcom Gladwell's public speaking secret. And the answer is
plain as day,and rather boring. Said Gladwell, "I know it may not look like
this. But it’s all scripted. I write down every word and then I learn it off
by heart. I do that with all my talks and I’ve got lots of them"

That's like asking someone who looks physically fit what their secret is, and
they tell you, "Diet and exercise."

Everyone knows this, but no one wants to put in the work.

~~~
ibsulon
No, not everyone knows this. In fact, nearly every public speaker is initially
taught _not_ to do this. (I was in Forensics in high school, and recently
joined Toastmasters.) For most people, if you try and memorize a speech, it
will _look_ like you've memorized a speech, because you will be fumbling for
where you are next.

If you are a professional speaker on a tour, someone with a lot of drama
experience, or a salesperson with the same pitch every time, then it might
make sense to do Gladwell's approach. For the rest of us, practice extensively
but don't memorize start-to-finish.

~~~
tpyo
I just make mine up on the spot. Does no one else do this?

~~~
frossie
_I just make mine up on the spot. Does no one else do this?_

It depends. There are some advantages to winging it: true spontaneity, an
ability to have a more interactive presentation that is tuned to the rhythm
and responses to the audience.

The oft-materialised risk is that it turns into a rambling incoherent mess.

In front of an unknown audience, the risk is too large, because if they don't
feed you the right response, you are dead in the water. At least with a
prepared talk you have something to fall back to.

If you know your audience, or if you are determined to engage it whatever it
takes (school talks come into this category), a certain amount of off-the-
cuffness works well, provided you are confident you know what you are talking
about.

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hernan7
That would be, sprezzatura (to make the hard look easy).

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprezzatura>

~~~
nandemo
Er, no, admitting that you put a lot of effort into a speech is exactly what
sprezzatura is not.

Sprezzatura would be more like "oh, was the speech that good? I hadn't noticed
myself. Well, now that you mention it, I guess it just comes naturally to
me...".

------
fleaflicker
I went to see him speak at a sportswriter's event in Brooklyn last week (he
writes a lot about sports).

He was unbelievable. I could listen to him for hours. He's as engaging in
person as he is on paper--clear, not overly verbose, and unfailingly
entertaining.

------
yurisagalov
I've done presentations and speeches as short as 30 seconds, and as long as 75
minutes, and in both cases, I _always_ memorize and rehearse the talk, but I
never memorize a script. This is generally a simple concept, and I think a lot
of public speakers (who are far better than I am) do this as well. The idea is
that you should know what you are talking about, but it should always be
fresh, new, and interesting.

When I do power point presentations, this is easy to accomplish - the points
(1 to 2 at most, usually) are on the slide, and I simply expand on them in my
talk. I may rehearse the slide/talk 10 times, and each time it will come out
slightly different, and that is generally good. I want to make sure that I
know what I am going to talk about, but I _trust_ myself to be able to discuss
the topic with some insight on the spot.

Granted, this only works for topics you are familiar with, but no amount of
prep in the world will make you comfortable leading a 75 minute discussion on
a topic that is not close to your heart and mind.

------
metra
Surprised none of the editors caught this spelling mistake: perverserance. For
a second I thought maybe that's the British way of spelling it but, no, it
seems like it's just a spelling mistake.

~~~
angelbob
"Perverseverance." That makes an excellent portmanteau of "perverse" and
"perseverance." I may have to start using that, though not especially for
Malcolm Gladwell.

------
wakeupthedawn
Gladwell is successful because he tells so many people what they want to hear:
your lack of talent doesn't matter.

I always lol when I hear the Bill Gates example. The guy is a freaking genius.
He had to go through Math 50 at Harvard to figure out there were people
smarter than he was. Somebody else sneaking into the computer lab to learn
programming (I'm sure there were many) wouldn't have been as good.

~~~
tptacek
This has nothing to do with the article. Whatever you think of his books,
Gladwell is demonstrably a talented public speaker, and this article explains
his basic method.

~~~
mnemonicsloth
No, Gladwell is a demonstrably _successful_ public speaker.

Gladwell's point -- and the OP author's -- is that you should taboo the word
"talent." Talent is the idea you wind up with when you commit the Fundamental
Attribution Error while observing success or skill:

 _In social psychology, the fundamental attribution error ... describes the
tendency to over-value dispositional or personality-based explanations ["he is
very talented at X"] for the observed behaviors [extreme skill at X] of others
while under-valuing situational explanations for those behaviors. ["he spent
his entire childhood practicing X"]_

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error>

~~~
tptacek
Have you ever watched him give a talk? Have you, yourself, ever given a talk
to a large audience? I have, and it's a bitch. He's a demonstrably _talented_
public speaker. It is extremely interesting to me, and, I assume, to most
people who do public speaking, that Gladwell is actually writing out the
entire content of his speeches.

The rest of your comment, whatever. I don't care about his books. Neither does
the author of this article, if you care to read it.

~~~
mnemonicsloth
Yes, and yes. Good for you, and I agree.

The fact remains, Gladwell's most recent book, _Outliers_ , argues that _there
is no such thing as talent_.

If you call someone talented, you're implicitly conceding they were somehow
predisposed to have the skill they've got. Gladwell says there are no such
predispositions, only histories, habits, and hard work.

UPDATE: the definition of TALENT I'm using is here:
<http://www.thefreedictionary.com/talent>

tal·ent (tlnt) n. 1\. A marked _innate_ ability, as for artistic
accomplishment. See Synonyms at ability.

~~~
mbrubeck
_"Gladwell's most recent book, Outliers, argues that there is no such thing as
talent."_

Did you read _Outliers_? Because it doesn't actually say that. Let's see what
it really says:

"Yes, the hockey players who make it to the professional level are _more
talented_ than you or me. _But_ they also got a big head start..." (p 30)

"Joy and Gates and the Beatles are all _undeniably talented._ Lennon and
McCartney had a musical gift of the sort that comes along once in a
generation, and Bill Joy, let us not forget, had a mind so quick that he was
able to make up a complicated algorithm on the fly that left his professors in
awe. That much is obvious. _But_ what truly distinguishes their histories is
not their extraordinary talent but their extraordinary opportunities..." (p
55)

Gladwell argues against what his book calls "the primacy of talent." He says
talent is one ingredient in success - even a necessary one - but not the most
distinguishing one. He describes all the successful people he profiles as
_very_ talented, but adds that many equally talented people are unsuccessful
because of different historical, cultural, and personal backgrounds.

~~~
jseliger
This conversation is doubly funny because it reminds of something this guy
Paul Graham once wrote in an essay: <http://paulgraham.com/hs.html> :

* Don't think that you can't do what other people can. And I agree you shouldn't underestimate your potential. People who've done great things tend to seem as if they were a race apart. And most biographies only exaggerate this illusion, partly due to the worshipful attitude biographers inevitably sink into, and partly because, knowing how the story ends, they can't help streamlining the plot till it seems like the subject's life was a matter of destiny, the mere unfolding of some innate genius. In fact I suspect if you had the sixteen year old Shakespeare or Einstein in school with you, they'd seem impressive, but not totally unlike your other friends.

Which is an uncomfortable thought. If they were just like us, then they had to
work very hard to do what they did. And that's one reason we like to believe
in genius. It gives us an excuse for being lazy. If these guys were able to do
what they did only because of some magic Shakespeareness or Einsteinness, then
it's not our fault if we can't do something as good. _

