Do You Have Trouble Describing What It Is You Do? TED Speaker Titles Offer Some Helpful Clues.
For many of the most interesting people I know, the most daunting question is a simple one: ‘What do you do?’.
Especially for people who are finding new ways to create change, there isn’t one title that accurately captures our work.
A selection of TED 2022 speakers and their titles
I host brand thinking programs for changemakers, so we run into this problem all the time. I’ve often wished there was a Job Title Designer I could bring along with me.
The words to describe what we do either don’t exist yet, or they don’t cover the richness of our work, they convey the wrong connotations, or they are so new, that no one knows what they mean (yet).
Why are titles so important?
‘Start with WHY’ may be all the rage, but other people still need to understand your WHAT in order to hire you, fund you, support you, or buy from you.
Without a clear answer to ‘what do you do?’, you waste a lot of time explaining yourself. People misinterpret and misrepresent your work. You lose opportunities.
It’s more than a communication problem: having a clear label for what we do is existential to our sense of worth and wellbeing.
During one memorable training session a few years ago, a young woman took the full eight minutes of her personal brand pitch to try and describe what she does. Her insecurity and frustration were evident. She never even got to her ask. She was clearly crushed when the buzzer cut her short.
“So you’re a community curator”, I summarised for her. She looked stunned and almost burst into tears. The good kind, I was later assured when we spoke one-on-one. Finding a better way to describe her work was fundamental to how she saw herself, and the value of her work.
Looking for a formula to crafting better titles
Though I was nudged by trainees to come up with a clever formula for the perfect title, I never did find it.
This weekend I was figuring out which talks I wanted to hear at TED 2022, happening right now in Vancouver. I scanned the speakers' list. I was immediately struck by the speakers’ crisp and clear 2 to 3-word titles.
Poverty fighter.
Philanthropy disruptor.
Urban revitalizer.
Meditation advocate.
Clearly, TED put time and effort into this.
TED knows like no other what it takes to spread ideas. If they invest the time to create strong, simple titles with their speakers, we should take note.
I intuitively started taking screenshots of all the examples that I thought would be useful for my trainees.
Once I put them all next to each other, a formula seemed to emerge.
All the titles that caught my eye consisted of two parts:
a role (designer, disruptor, advocate, enthusiast, leader, investigator, bug scientist)
a topic (space, meditation, sexual wellness, climate, poverty)
Nuclear Energy Influencer.
Space Architect.
Biomaterials investigator.
Resilience designer.
A clever, contrasting adjective to a conventional title creates a new spin, hinting at the way these people are changing their industries. Digital Public Servant. Artistic entomologist.
Not all of the 2022 speakers’ titles enlighten me entirely. Nor do they all work for the everyman. And yet.
Here were the clues I had been looking for.
By combining concepts we know with concepts we might not yet know, these titles send rich clues. It conjures up an image of the speaker’s field of expertise and their mission for change. They generate curiosity.
My watch list started to get really long.
This week will be the first time that I will hear the story of an Urban Revitalizer or Nuclear Energy Influencer.
Let’s see if it works for you as well as it does for TED.
Next time I run a training session, I will prototype a new exercise: create your max 3-word TED speaker title.
Step 1. Team up with a peer to write each other’s TED speaker titles.
Step 2. Open brainstorm on words that describe roles — aim for at least twenty, and write them each on one sticky.
Step 3. Same for topics (thought this list might be shorter).
Step 4. Mix and Match. Capture your favorite combos.
Step 5. Present to the group and ask everyone to say what they think the job title entails.
Step 6. Check if the associations are on point, tune, and test again.
Let’s see if we can create some magic with this formula. I will report back.
I wish you the job title you deserve!