AnnouncementHow TED Masterclass is helping businesses communicate

A change is taking place...

More and more companies are seeking to improve the communication skills of their employees - not just in the sales, communications, and marketing departments - but in other departments like technology, operations, and administration. The ability to effectively communicate, while once considered a “soft skill,” is now recognized as an essential skill needed to succeed in any field.

This is where TED Masterclass for Business comes in. Three years ago, we noticed learning and development teams at all types of organizations looking to TED for help. We’re frequently asked, “how does TED prepare its speakers to deliver their talks with passion and impact?”. It made us think, could we create a program to help organizations better employee communication skills?

We listened...

This prompted the idea of TED Masterclass for Business - TED’s approach to idea development and impactful communication that is specifically designed for businesses.

Using Chris Anderson’s best-selling book, “TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking” as the course’s foundation, we added curated TED Talk content to serve as concept examples, had our speaker coaches and curators weave in their experienced insights, built in activities to help learners construct their talks, and developed resources to help organizations run programs internally. We then invited L&D professionals from over 100 organizations of all shapes and sizes to test the course for a year.

We learned...

The results were awesome. In addition to their invaluable feedback, we were excited to learn about all of the different ways organizations were using the course. Some of the ways included:

• An engaging tool to improve communication skills throughout the organization
• A toolkit to help prepare speakers or leaders for public speaking opportunities
• An extension to sales training
• A tool to increase employee engagement and celebrate ideas
• A capstone exercise within a presentation literacy or communication skills training
• A way to facilitate blended learning by pairing virtual learning with an in-person showcase of ideas

And many more!

In addition, we learned that TED Masterclass works very well, not just individually, but in pairs and small-groups. The process of building out an idea in a coherent and authentic way, and then delivering it so that it resonates with an audience, lends itself very well to collaboration.

We launched…

Finally, taking the advice of our L&D partners we launched TED Masterclass for Business available in two formats:

• SCORM-compliant for organizations that want to distribute the course using their LMS or LXP
• As a mobile app that can be managed centrally by an administrator with an easy-to-use, web-based interface

As a result, there are now thousands of enterprise learners around the world who are using TED Masterclass for Business to identify, develop, and share their best ideas.

With TED Masterclass for Business, your organization can begin sparking and celebrating the best ideas of your workforce.