This is an analysis of Jill Bolte Taylor’s extraordinary presentation on her experience of having a stroke.
Presentation on TED.com:
http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/229
This presentation is possibly my favourite presentation of all time.
Jill is a neuroanatomist who experienced a stroke in her left hemisphere, and was able to map what was happening to her from the inside.
Things to note about Jill Bolte Taylor’s presentation on a technical level include:
- Establishing credibility
- Creating curiosity
- Storytelling
- Systematically using the space, her physicality and the voice
- Visual aids
This is how she does it.
(I use the Cobalt communication planning questions to reverse-engineer the kind of planning a speaker did to put together their presentation. If you want to know more about these questions, go to http://www.cobaltcommunication.com, enter your email address at the top, and you’ll get free access to a 30-page e-book called ‘Rapid Presentation Planning’ which gives detailed information about how to use these questions for yourself.)
Before reading this watching guide, I’d recommend you watch Jill Bolte Taylor’s presentation once through just to enjoy the ride. Then come back for more analysis.
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Question One – What do I know about the people I’m talking to?
Apart from what we know about human beings in general (see ‘Rapid Presentation Planning’), these are people who are attending the TED conference. TED is a conference for the thought-leaders in Technology Entertainment and Design. Clever people. Jill’s presentation is in the science section of the programme, so probably to an audience of people who are involved in science.
Question Two – What response do I want from these people?
As you go towards the end of the presentation, Jill speaks about wanting more people to be able to move to the right of their left brain and experience the expansive connected space that she describes. Presumably, she wants people to have a flavour of what that type of consciousness is like, and perhaps learn how to move towards it. If I were her, I would want to give a memorable enough presentation that people go away and talk about it.
Question Three – What are people coming in with?
Well, with such a non-mainstream topic for a scientist, people will need to know that she is not some woo-woo New Ager, but someone who has credibility in her field. They may have no idea what happens in a stroke, or very stereotyped ideas about what it’s like. If they know that it is a neuroanatomist describing her stroke from the inside, they may be expecting a very dry presentation of scientific data.
In general, many non-scientists expect scientists to be somewhat detail-oriented and lacking in passion.
Maybe people are concerned about not understanding the jargon of a scientist talking about their field of study.
Question Four – What is important to these people?
Apart from what is important to all people (recognition, autonomy, time, meaning in their life…), these particular people want their time at TED well spent, and presumably want to learn something, especially about how the mind works, which is the topic for this section of talks.
Question Five – How might this affect how I communicate?
This is where we reverse-engineer the decisions that Jill Bolte Taylor took in her presentation, as well as the things she does well naturally.
00.00 Jill starts by telling us about her brother as the reason for her entering this field [credibility - as a person and as a scientist | use of gesture - dreams vs reality - anchors the concepts beautifully in space]
00.55 She details the job she had at the time of the stroke and what they were studying [credibility - as a scientist, but subtly done in a by-the-way kind of way]
01.43 Mentions her volunteering [credibility as a person and as a scientist]
01.50 ‘On the morning of December 10, 1996… brain disorder of my own’ [curiosity]
02.08 ‘Watched my brain… could not walk, talk…’ [credibility - she speaks factually about the event, speaks at a level of detail that non-scientists will understand | curiosity - we're waiting to hear how those four hours affected her...]
02.15 ‘If you’ve ever seen a human brain…’ – great break into background detail – you’ll see this a lot with successful presentations – credibility set-up, curiosity set-up, then background info.
02.32 THE BRAIN! I LOVE IT! Surely the best use of a visual aid this century… [visual aid/curiosity]
02.54 ‘This is how it would be positioned inside of my head…’ Perfect use of a visual aid – creates vivid, relevant pictures in people’s minds. [visual aid]
03.06 ‘For those of you who understand computers… Parallel… Serial…’ Beautiful use of metaphor – finding what may be unfamiliar and making that information accessible by drawing parallels with what’s familiar – in this instance, without patronising anyone. This is also completely necessary information for what she is about to explain.
[I'm not going to label all the rest of the points - they're pretty much all about storytelling, gesture, tone, curiosity, credibility... Labelling them all would get a bit repetitive!]
03.57 As Jill begins to explain the different hemispheres, from this point onwards notice her use of space and gesture. The space begins to be separated into two different portions – the left (from her point of view) being the left-brain space, the right (her p fo v) being the right-brain. She even uses her voice to differentiate these two spaces. She has a left-brain voice, and a right-brain voice.
04.18 ‘… Collage…’ This is setting up the context for her right-brain experience. Without this, we might just dismiss her stroke experience as some kind of hallucination. Remember: set up the context you want your data to be viewed in before you give the data.
04.49 ‘… right here, right now…’ She steps forward and stands still, representing the current moment with her body.
05.10 Notice her placement of ‘methodically’, and the past and the future. (Note to people who’ve been through the Cobalt masterclass: See, I wasn’t making up that stuff about timelines and spatial anchoring…)
05.21 ‘Enormous collage… picking out details…’ Collage (the right-brain experience) is anchored on the right, and the left brain is approaching it from the left to pick the details. You might think I’m crazy for being this obsessive, but this kind of consistency is one of those things that no one (apart from fellow presentation analysers – we’re pretty few and far between) will consciously notice, but will make your train of thought easy to follow.
05.51 ‘that little voice… bananas… laundry’ By using such mundane examples, we can identify that voice inside of us… or rather our internal voice can identify itself!
06.27 ‘This is the part of my brain that I lost…’ Bang! Back into the story… and curiosity…
06.40 ‘… caustic pain… icecream…’ She puts her experience, that most of us haven’t had, into a context we can easily understand.
06.45 ‘… gripped me… released me…’ Jill is the queen of gesture. Notice how we not know the rhythm and pace of the pain, so we are beginning to be able to place ourselves in Jill’s position.
07.02 Can you picture the cardioglider? A big secret to storytelling is the listeners being able to put themselves into the story…
07.08 ‘…primitive claws…’ I love how Jill takes us from the known (what we have all experienced) into the unknown – being outside of the body looking in. An experience you may have had at moments, but it’s almost as it she induces the experience in us as we listen.
07.30 What side is that ‘esoteric space’? Consistent, huh?
07.48 ‘… every step is very deliberate…’ You aim to only move with purpose. This movement only adds to our identification with Jill’s story.
08.03 ‘… ok, you muscles…’ She takes us another step into the altered state.
08.15 ‘… and I look down at my arm…’ Another step. Notice also how, because of her set-up, we go ‘Oh, that sounds like the right brain looking at the world..’ Experts where we weren’t before. Always better for people to make their own realisations before you state them overtly.
08.44 ‘…total silence… mute button…’ Another mundane example for a very uncommon experience.
09.10 ‘… enormous and expansive…’ Demonstrated by her gestures, the slowing of her pace and the softening of her voice.
09.20 ‘… we gotta problem, we gotta problem…’ Left brain voice and use of the ‘methodical’ gesture – much sharper and more direct.
10.10 ‘… 37 years of emotional baggage…’ Suddenly, we understand her joy…!
10.40 ‘… my right arm…’ Another step in the process. Beautiful storytelling. We all know what that means – she’s having a stroke. Then, in the talk, she has the same realisation that we’ve just had (as it were).
10.40 ‘…This is so cool!…’ The shared part of an experience brings us along, the unexpected wakes us up. This is pretty unexpected, right? If I didn’t like this woman up until now, I really began to from this point.
11.05 ‘… but I’m a very busy woman…’ We identify with the crazy thought as perhaps something we might have…
11.18 – the phone call. Notice the level of detail in her telling of this part of the story, her consistency in the use of space and voice tone, and just how each part builds the tension just like in a thriller. ‘How is she going to get out of THIS..?’
13.42 ‘… just like a balloon… my spirit surrendered…’ Notice how, because we have come so far in our journey with Jill, that we are now willing to go with her into possibly her last moment on earth. If she had started with such high emotion, it would have been easy to dismiss her. Now, we are willing to go where she leads because we like her.
14.38 ‘… pure pain…’ Even this rawness makes us go quiet, rather than dismissive.
15.18 ‘Nirvana’. Amazing to have followed a brain scientist from brain chemicals to Nirvana. She just did it by establishing her credibility, setting the context, then taking us step by tiny step.
16.16 Shifting from the message, to the epilogue, as it were, by the change in voice, pace and gesture.
16.45 ‘… eight years to completely recover…’ These words and the photo bring us back to ‘reality’ – that this really happened to this woman in front of us.
16.49 ‘We are the life force power of the universe with manual dexterity and two cognitive minds and we have the power to choose moment by moment how and who we are in the world.’ It’s worth knowing your message so that it rolls off the tongue. Beautifully put.
17.15 Notice how effective the use of the right-brain/left-brain space is in separating these two experiences we’ve had during Jill’s presentation.
18.18 ‘… and I thought THAT was an idea worth spreading…’ I love watching her standing her ground, and accepting her standing ovation.
Whether you agree with her standpoint, you gotta agree, Jill Bolte Taylor truly takes us on a ride!
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excellent!!!!
Hello Andrew,
I really like this talk. She really knows how to communicate with the
public, even if at tiny times her tone of voice felt a little off to me
(although I find it gives her extra credibility as a scientist).
Her presentation is great. Showing that real brain was such a good idea.
Now, on a different topic, if we could get her to meditate, I wonder if
she’d discover a depth to her words… I get the sense she is missing a big chunk of the story!
…Btw, it is so useful to read your ‘reverse-engineer’ analysis of these talks!
Adriana
Jill has acheived the absolute state of meditaton and can return to it at will, she has balance of left and right brain hemispheres, which is why people pratice meditation and for most of us it will take 5 or 6 hours a day for approximately 15 or more years.
Jill took the opportunity to totally recreate her entire personality and dump all the garbage that never served her first time round, she is missing nothing.
I thought Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor’s idea worth spreading was that we could choose to be connected with all of humanity and project peace to one another, instead of choosing to be individuals — I, me, myself — and not being concerned with those around us. That was what almost brought Dr. Taylor to tears at the end, wasn’t it?