Speak Before You Think: Tristan de Montebello's Games and Methods for Becoming a Better Speaker

Asked about the biggest misconception, de Montebello says people badly underestimate how transformative speaking can be, because it is a meta skill rather than a specialized one. He compares it to fitness, where the benefits spill beyond muscles into energy, mood and confidence. When he started having breakthroughs in speaking, he found that work, friendships, groups of strangers and even family relationships all felt different.

He uses a hardware and software metaphor. Humans evolved to speak, and a baby learns without formal education, so the hardware is extraordinary. Over the years, though, small bad experiences create bugs, we start avoiding speaking, and we stop upgrading the software. All that is needed is some debugging and upgrading, and he wants listeners to know they "already have what it takes".

Rachitsky highlights one of the course's core tenets, that if you don't enjoy speaking you are doing it wrong. De Montebello agrees and treats enjoyment as a barometer. With family or close friends we feel fully ourselves and communication is rewarding, but under business pressure people try to control each word before it leaves their mouths. That is the opposite of a natural, subconscious skill, and the practice itself must also be enjoyable or it will not last.

De Montebello says his approach changed when he understood that speaking is a subconscious, flow-oriented process. When he speaks best, he is not thinking about speaking at all, and is fully attuned to what he wants to convey. Adding tactics and frameworks adds more things to think about, so the aim is to get into a flow state and stay there to the finish line.

That shift moved his practice from symptoms to causes. Instead of counting filler words, he asks what produces them, and finds that filler words and racing usually come from not feeling comfortable slowing down or pausing under pressure. Solve that, he says, and both problems take care of themselves while you gain mental space.

The same logic applies to monotone delivery, which he reads as a lack of trust that you can show intensity or take time to think without everything unraveling. Unless you have proven otherwise to yourself, you play it safe. The work is therefore layering: removing old habits and building new ones so flow is not interrupted.

De Montebello offers three tweaks, starting with one that makes you look better. Many people look down when they gather their thoughts, which on Zoom looks like checking a phone or notes and signals uncertainty. If you look up while thinking, you appear thoughtful by default, which reads as confident and makes you less likely to be interrupted. He suggests a Post-it reading "think up" on your computer until it becomes habit.

The second tweak, "end strong", is about sounding better. He cites freestyle rappers scanned in an fMRI, who enter deep flow but start being pulled out of it just before they finish, like runners slowing a few yards from the line. In speaking, people taper off or voice doubts such as "I don't really know if that makes sense". Because audiences remember endings, a bumpy landing ruins an otherwise smooth flight.

His fix is to expect self-awareness to creep back near the end and make the ending sound like an ending. He also recommends summary prompts, such as "So to wrap up" or "What I want you to remember", which start a sentence and let the brain fill in the rest. The key is not to let go of the gas pedal at the last moment.

The third tweak is staying in character, which de Montebello says makes you feel more confident. While speaking, our senses are heightened and we notice every odd word or ramble, but audiences cannot see what we feel. Many speakers "leak", saying "I'm not making sense" or laughing nervously, which forces a filter onto an audience that had noticed nothing.

He uses an airline analogy: a pilot announcing that a red light is blinking, but not to worry, makes every creak feel ominous. Likewise, a leader who shares their insecurities makes people second-guess everything. His advice is to put your best foot forward, stay in it past the ending, and let it be. His own cue for hard moments is simply "stay in it".

De Montebello says that when people stay in character they get the reaction a confident speaker would get, which reinforces the habit. He suggests looking around and recognizing that most people speaking up in meetings are nervous, yet you cannot tell. Rachitsky admits he leaks a lot and compares it to a stand-up comedian saying a joke bombed, which only draws attention to it.

De Montebello adds the peak-end rule and a train image. Speakers are the driver, and if there is a crash by the roadside, you can keep going and people will look at the next landscape, or you can stop the train and point at it. When he asks audiences after someone apologizes, they are never surprised by what the speaker thought went wrong.

De Montebello says you cannot get better at speaking without speaking, just as you cannot become a great cook by reading a hundred cookbooks. People tend to read or watch videos instead because practice is scary and few venues exist. His message is that you have to do it, but that only the outside is scary: once you start you are rewarded, and enjoyment grows with skill.

The games grew out of early coaching sessions in his backyard with his co-founder Michael Gendler. They gave people a speech title like the most incredible invention in the world and watched them freeze up, and the longer people thought, the worse their answers got. So they kept compressing the exercise until it became word association, then built a game for each root cause they saw, and later realized they had a board game and put it online during Covid.

What every game shares is short deliberate reps followed by feedback, then another rep, with the learning happening in your internal feeling. Rachitsky says he played the games with his family after taking the mini course, and they spent about an hour on it. His mom asked how she could do it on her own, and his sister wanted to try open mic nights.

The first live game is Conductor. A random speech title appears along with changing numbers from one to ten, where five is natural speaking and the other numbers set the energy level, plus an occasional "breathe" slide that means silence. De Montebello goes first on "When I grow up", rising to six and seven, dropping to three, two and one, pausing, and returning to five, speaking about wanting to work through the emotional blockers he still carries at 40.

Rachitsky then tries "The Greatest Puzzle" and changes direction mid-answer. De Montebello's feedback is that he did not let himself play and was too focused on avoiding looking foolish. After a second round on "Integrating new cultures" about raising his son between two family cultures, Rachitsky notices himself hedging about how it could have been better, and de Montebello points out that he is leaking.

De Montebello explains the point is to create turbulence, like a flight simulator, which you cannot prepare for. He quotes Kevin Kelly, "Pros are just amateurs who've learned to recover gracefully from their mistakes." Rachitsky says he took away that each energy level opens a different folder of thoughts and memories, and that doing hard things at low stakes builds confidence.

De Montebello sums up the principle as "energy leads, emotions follow, and words fill in the gap". If you tap into conviction or frustration, the content naturally fits it. The game is also diagnostic: some people find the highs easy and the lows hard, and he sees the lows as testing your willingness to take up space. You can play it free on Ultraspeaking, or with a friend calling random numbers.

Triple Step is for people who lose their thread when someone yawns or a pen drops. The player gets a random title and speaks for a minute, while random words pop up that must be woven in as though they were always part of the speech. De Montebello's title is "How Would Your Friends Describe You?", and he describes himself as an easily excited Labrador, working in french fries, a massage, daydreaming, cartwheels, a microwave and the internet.

His advice is to be like a tree in a storm, firm enough not to snap but not so flexible that you swing with every gust. Choose a clear direction first and then make the words work for you. He says the game builds resilience and also works as a warm-up before a podcast, interview or meeting, because it pulls on many parts of the brain used for communication.

Rachitsky's first attempt is on "The best thing about pain" and he uses each word to start a new thought. De Montebello suggests holding a single direction instead, such as approaching your fears head-on. On a second try with four words on social distancing, Rachitsky ties in the stock market, a newspaper, a marathon and the toilet, and de Montebello calls it really good.

De Montebello says a perfect rep teaches you nothing, since only those where you feel an edge are worth much. Some people find Triple Step hard and Conductor easy, or the reverse, and each is a mirror. What holds you back in one game likely holds you back elsewhere in life, so unlocking it works like a set of gears. He adds that the nagging inner voice never fully disappears but fades with each reinforcing experience, like a quiet listener in the background.

The last game uses conviction prompts, sentence starters such as "I genuinely believe that" or "It astonishes me when" that push you into a more convinced state. De Montebello calls it a game for executive presence and says that most people do not fully stand behind their words, so confident speakers get their ideas through more often. He notes that perhaps 10% of people need the opposite and should question themselves more.

On the title "Saying No", de Montebello speaks about how saying no to exciting projects, not just meetings, lets him get more done with fewer things. Rachitsky draws "Space Exploration" and argues passionately for it, even bringing in the pale blue dot. He says the prompts made him feel what he was going to believe, and that being forced to talk helps new insights emerge.

De Montebello observes that people slip into a "public speaking voice" when a timer starts, though they were chatting normally a moment before. His cue is to "think out loud", and he says most people have a skill set up here and a mindset down here. He recalls a Naval Ravikant idea that one should discover the words at the same moment as the audience does.

Rachitsky asks whether this just trains people to make things up. De Montebello says many people fear becoming a bullshitter, and that fear creates an immune response against speaking freely. But if the worry is loud, you probably have a sharp radar for it. The aim is to match their delivery while having the ideas to back it up, and the inner listener you build becomes a compass.

De Montebello says the Accordion Method may be what he is most proud of. He estimates about 80% of speaking cannot be prepared, but when you do have a deadline, the old way is broken: dump ideas on paper, shuffle them into 10 or 15 pages, edit a script and then memorize it. Memorization is a fragile chain, like reciting a poem as a child and losing your place after missing one verse.

The Accordion Method prepares by speaking instead. He compares it to redecorating a living room by removing everything except the essentials, such as one couch, a pillow and a lamp, and then deliberately bringing items back. Practically, you speak for three minutes with a timer under two rules, stay in character and end strong, then redo it in two minutes, one minute and 30 seconds, then repeat at 30 seconds and expand back up to one, two and three minutes.

By the time you reach 30 seconds you have only the essential pieces, and when you expand back up, he says one client felt he had a football field in his mind. The talk is then internalized rather than memorized, so you can deliver it in one, two, three or five minutes, and a slip does not matter. Rachitsky says it matched his experience: the best nuggets remain and you cut the long introduction.

On timing, de Montebello suggests a rough pass about a week ahead if you know the material well, with one or two reps the day before or morning of. He writes no script, just four cues: the one thing and three bookmarks. He uses it for every client, from five-minute talks to 20-minute keynotes, and also on single sections, and a full pass takes about 15 minutes.

De Montebello says most people prepare around what they want to say instead of what they want the audience to remember. He bets that of the last all-hands or talk you saw, you remember only one thing. In the Bow and Arrow technique, that one thing is the arrow, a single sentence you would be happy for people to take away, and it acts like a compass in your pocket.

You cannot just throw an arrow at someone, so you need a bow that gives it weight, in the form of an anecdote, data point or story. The process is a back and forth, usually done alongside the accordion, drafting a tentative one thing, refining it, and testing which support fits. By the end you should have a clear arrow and bookmarks that act as the bow.

Rachitsky says he is preparing a talk for a summit and will use both exercises. De Montebello notes the approach works at the micro level too: each slide should have a one thing, or else it should not exist or should be split. A slide with too many things means you do not know which data point matters, and Rachitsky suggests making the slide title exactly that takeaway.

Asked for a story from his path to the 2017 World Championship of Public Speaking, de Montebello says the journey lasted almost seven months and he had no speaking experience when he began. He gave more than a hundred speeches and filmed each one. Six days before the semifinals he finally had a speech he thought was worthy, one that had moved him to tears when writing it, and he tested it on a group of 50 people.

On watching the recording, he saw people checking the agenda, their phones and their purses at the most emotional moment, and the 50 pieces of feedback were only polite good-luck notes. He threw the speech away. In five days he rebuilt a new one from the best material of three months of experimenting, the strongest jokes, and carefully worked transitions, like a stand-up comic building a special.

Before the semifinals he rehearsed it in a Vancouver plaza and performed it for one person, a Toastmasters district director, even though it was meant for 500 to a thousand. In the middle of it he saw a tear roll down her cheek, and she hugged him and said he had it. He won the semifinals, and says that by walking into the finals he felt he had already won.

In closing, he encourages listeners to take the first step, saying the more constrained you feel in your speaking, the more transformational it will be, and that it is far more enjoyable than expected. His request is that people apply the ideas, introduce the games to someone else and try the accordion with a friend. Rachitsky points to ultraspeaking.com/Lenny for a free email course, and de Montebello notes some games are free on the main site.