Rehearse!
You have an important presentation, and you’re prepared.
You’ve got your talking points, developed great strategic stories, written an outline, and built a PowerPoint to reinforce your key messages. Heck, you’ve even added a few speaker notes to your slides.
But, you’re not finished.
You need to rehearse.
And not just rehearse in your head as you drive to work, or by scrolling through the slide deck in the hotel lobby, or by thinking through your content in a morning meditation session. You need to rehearse out-loud and in full.
Excuses may already be percolating in your brain. Excuses like, “I don’t have time,” “I’m better off the cuff,” “I know this material like the back of my hand,” or “I present all the time; it will be fine.” Don’t be duped.
There are critical benefits to conducting a complete rehearsal. Here are just a few:
1. Builds Confidence:
Nerves are a common issue for many presenters, and while they first describe a general anxiety, the source is often a fear of forgetting: forgetting what to say, forgetting details, or forgetting what comes next. Rehearsing, however, puts all these fears to rest. Rehearsal is a no-stakes environment where you can comfortably work out the kinks and find your “flow.”
2. Makes the Brain:Mouth Connection:
When we think through our content, we ignore performance. We don’t consider our pace, our enunciation, or our tone. We don’t consider how we will gesture or if we will move about the room. And we don’t consider how we will breathe during our delivery. Even if we do think about those things, thinking and executing are entirely different. An out-loud rehearsal, on the other hand, ensures that your brain and body all work together to deliver an engaging and effective presentation.
3. Amplifies Your Credibility:
You advertise your expertise through your command of information, your ability to clearly and convincingly convey your points, and your comfort in the spotlight. Rehearsals help you master smooth transitions, use your cadence and intonation to emphasize key information, and eliminate reliance on notes or, worse, reading from the slide deck. All of this falls into place when you rehearse.
So now that you’ve beaten back the excuses and bought into the power of rehearsal, here are the ingredients of a great rehearsal.
1. Out Loud:
Practicing out loud helps you hear phrasing that needs to be adjusted and places to insert effective pauses. Rehearsing out loud helps you “feel” when you’re going too fast or too slow. And rehearsing out loud helps you notice if you swallow words or if you race through names, labels, or abbreviations that are strongly familiar to you but novel to your audience. All of these things, and more, become apparent when you rehearse OUT LOUD.
2. Make it as Real as You Can:
The best rehearsals replicate the real thing. Are you going to be on a stage? Is there a podium? Will you be standing or seated? Will you have a clicker in your hand? Are you free to move or does a fixed camera require you to stay in a small space? Taking steps to ensure your rehearsal replicates the real thing, to the extent possible, is valuable. Of course you may not have access to a 10,000 sq foot convention hall for your dry run, but you can find an empty room that has sufficient floor space to replicate the stage. The closer you can get to the real thing, the better.
3. Practice with Your Slides:
The best slide decks work in concert with the presenter, and timing is everything. Display content too soon and you can distract your audience from what you’re saying. Advance too slowly and you lose the “punch” the visual provides. Of course, forgetting what slide comes next and having to make an “about-face” in your presentation is a dead giveaway that you’re not optimally prepared. To avoid these issues, get a clicker (you can get a perfectly operable clicker for $15 on Amazon), set up your laptop in front of you, put your PPT in presentation mode, and rehearse with your slide deck.
4. Don’t Always Start at the Beginning:
Inevitably when we rehearse presentations, we get interrupted, we decide to edit a line, adjust the timing of a slide, or we get a text message. Whatever it is, we stop and when we return we frequently go back to the beginning. Repeat this process and it turns out you will rehearse the opening 100x, the middle 10x, and the end 2x (if you’re lucky). To ensure every part of your presentation is equally rehearsed, don’t always start at the beginning. Start in the middle or in the last third and rehearse those sections individually. Picking up at random places also helps prepare you for the possibility that you’re interrupted or temporarily ‘draw a blank’ during the real thing–you’ll be experienced getting back on track.
5. Get Feedback – From Yourself and Others:
With today’s technology, you can easily set up your phone or computer to record your rehearsals so you can review them. You can see what works and what doesn’t, evaluate your rate of speech and if you’re pausing at transitions, and assess your gestures and body language. It’s hard to watch ourselves on camera, but this tool helps you fine tune your performance. Getting the perspective of a third party is also valuable because an independent person is in a better position to evaluate if your explanations make sense or if you're stuck in jargon.
If you want to ensure that your presentations are successful and that you're at your best, you need to rehearse. Don’t be convinced that having the organization, stories, and slides is all you need for a great presentation. Schedule time to rehearse–out loud and for real.