Tristan de Montebello
Tristan de Montebello is the co-creator of Ultraspeaking, the most effective method I’ve come across for rapidly improving communication and presentation skills. In 2017, Tristan became the fastest person ever to reach the finals of the World Championship of Public Speaking, achieving this feat in just seven months with no prior experience.
Communication Skills
Looking upward while pausing to think projects confidence and thoughtfulness, whereas looking down signals uncertainty.
"When I am trying to gather my thoughts or think, people tend to look down. And if you're looking down on Zoom, it's three times as bad because it looks like you're looking at your phone or looking at..."
Speakers often lose momentum at the end of a point; finishing with high energy and clear summary prompts ensures the message lands effectively.
"Anticipate that as you get to the end of anything you're saying, you're going to naturally start regaining consciousness and you're going to start being a little bit more self-aware, and some of those..."
Audiences rarely notice internal nervousness unless the speaker 'leaks' it by breaking character or apologizing for mistakes.
"The solution is just, don't share your insecurities. Put your best foot forward and stay in it the whole time. Stay in character from beginning all the way through past the ending, because you go all..."
Preparing a talk by iteratively compressing and expanding the time limit helps internalize the core message rather than just memorizing a script.
"The Accordion Method is saying... I'm going to take everything out of my living room except the most essential pieces that make my living room... And as I look at that, I'm going to have clarity on th..."
Effective presentations are built around a single 'arrow' (the one key takeaway) supported by the 'bow' (data, stories, or anecdotes).
"The bow and arrow starts with a... mindset shift that most of us are in the weeds... we tend to focus more on what we want to say than what we want our audience to remember. The mindset shift here is..."
Executive presence is largely driven by the perceived conviction of the speaker, which can be developed through specific linguistic prompts.
"This is a game for executive presence. If you think about somebody who you feel has great gravitas or great executive presence, they usually have, there's something about them that's saying, this pers..."