Should I rehearse my presentation and for how long?
The following comes from TJ Walker’s upcoming book “The Wisdom of Your Audience”. Consistently, the worst advice speakers and presenters get, comes from everyone who is NOT your audience. The following gives examples of some of the WORST advice people are often given. It is followed by the advice of your audience. Listen to them. They are your true judge and jury.
Should I rehearse my presentation and for how long?
Your PowerPoint Presentation Creation Specialist: “Rehearsal sounds like a nice idea, in concept, but we still have to re-design the last ten slides.”
Your Corporate Communications Director: “Sure, let’s rehearse if there is time. But we are still waiting for approval on the slides from corporate HQ and I don’t expect those until the morning of the presentation.”
You: “I absolutely have every intention of rehearsing. But shoot, it’s midnight and we are still changing the font size for the bullet points on the presentation and the speech is tomorrow morning at 8:00 AM and I haven’t slept in 2 days. Looks like there is no time for rehearsal. Besides, I want to seem ‘fresh.’ I might seem stale or canned if I rehearse.”
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Your Audience: “We don’t care if you rehearse or not, just don’t rehearse on us. If you don’t know what slide goes where, or how your transitions work, or how your clicker operates, guess what you are telling us? You are telling us that you and your one hour of time are a hell of a lot more important than the collective hundred hours of our time as audience members. You are telling us to drop dead. OK, we will; right in front of you. You now get to speak to a dead audience. Are you happy now? You had better be great when you present to us if you want us to remember you and to love you. In theory it’s possible you could be great without rehearsing, and maybe Tiger Woods could have become a great golfer without ever practicing. Yeah, right!”