Ultraspeaking
A games-based speaking methodology co-created by Tristan de Montebello and Michael Gendler. The central premise: effective speaking is a subconscious flow-state skill, not a conscious management task. Anxiety is the bug that blocks access; the games create deliberate turbulence to surface and remove specific failure modes.
Core argument
Humans learn to speak without formal instruction and speak effortlessly with people they are comfortable with. The breakdown occurs under social pressure. Traditional speaking advice — manage filler words, use confident posture — operates at the symptom level. The root causes are discomfort with pausing, distrust of one’s own intensity, and insufficient trust that the brain will deliver without conscious direction.
Ultraspeaking addresses root causes by using games as flight simulators: not to make students better at games, but to create the conditions under which specific failure modes surface. A game that goes perfectly teaches nothing; a game that causes the speaker to leak insecurity or break direction reveals exactly what to address.
The three games
Conductor — the speaker receives a random speech title and, while speaking, sees a sequence of numbers (1–10) representing energy levels they must immediately match. Trains access to different emotional states on demand. The model: energy leads, emotion follows, words fill in.
Triple Step — the speaker receives a random title and must integrate random words mid-speech without breaking the through-line. Trains resilience and the ability to stay on a chosen direction despite interruption.
Conviction Prompts — provides sentence-opening prompts (“I genuinely believe that…”, “It astonishes me when…”) that must be completed spontaneously. Trains executive presence by forcing the speaker into states of conviction.
Three tactical principles
- Think up, not down. When gathering thoughts, look up rather than down. Looking down signals uncertainty; looking up signals thought.
- End strong. The brain disengages before the finish line. Use summary prompts (“so to wrap up…”) to prompt completion with conviction.
- Stay in character. Never leak insecurities. The audience cannot see what you feel unless you tell them; leaking forces insecurity onto the audience’s interpretation of everything preceding it.
Source
Introduced in Tristan de Montebello on Ultraspeaking, Speaking as Flow State, and the Accordion Method.