Soness Stevens: Speaking, Listening, Love & TED

Soness Stevens asks “Why does the world need to hear your message?” A TED speaker and TEDx Head Speaker Coach, Soness unlocks what it means to connect with an audience. She offers valuable tools and speaking tips as well as personal stories and together we dive into “speaking is healing.”

Simon Sinek is famous for asking “What’s your ‘why’?” Soness helps us see that you have to go beyond that in order to create and deliver a successful TED talk. You need to drill down to the universal truth. Soness shares how the “Wisdom of the Five Whys” is a great place to start.

“Speaking is healing because you’re listening,” says Soness. We explore reciprocity and the powerful interplay between speaker and audience. A presentation is about being present in that moment. The best TED speakers have rehearsed over 200 times so they can be truly present and truly connect in a mindful, compassionate way that becomes an example of love in action.

Successful communication and meaningful connection rely on understanding that people will listen once they feel they have been heard. We also explore how communication begins within and how it’s the internalized voices of our caregivers that influence that inner monologue.

Soness shares how growing up with a mother who suffered from mental illness crafted who she was as a speaker and as a listener. And we go deeper… Soness helps us understand how presenting her own TED talk created a beautiful opening with her own mom and how it created ripples of communication and connection well after she left the stage.

“Speaking is healing” helps open up this conversation for everyone - even those who are not focused on applying to TEDx right now.

Learn more about Soness’s Step on the Red Dot program at http://www.yourspeakingjourney.com/. She invites you to email her about your interest in this intensive speaker’s training program: soness@yourspeakingjourney.com

Have you ever felt heard? https://youtu.be/m_JbDMrP4UY and that talk about the rice cooker: https://youtu.be/xkEIeCKh3X8