Rehearsing Presentations: Is there a better way to practice?

Creating 10,000 presentations in the course of your career and rehearsing them all with great care will not necessarily guarantee you presentation mastery.

Neuroscience, and common sense, show that factors other than blind repetition must prevail. For example, if your golf swing isn’t any good, and you hit the driving range everyday of the summer, chances are that your swing won’t be any better on Labor Day.

Why? Because you’re practicing the same thing over and over–and it’s a thing that doesn’t work.

To put practice to work for you, neuroscientists have discovered that, first, you need to have:

1. A motivation to improve
2. Knowledge about how to improve
3. An understanding of how to apply the knowledge
4. And the ability to evaluate the outcome–what knowledge was applied to the situation and what knowledge was not applied?

That’s where perfect practice comes in. To improve you must have a clear idea of:

1. What, specifically, to do
2. How to apply the techniques to get the results…

3. …and how well you actually make the necessary changes.

And the more you repeat the process, the better you will get.

Here is the equation for building skill:  Motivation + Knowledge + Practice + Assessment = Skill.

That’s why people who use a personal trainer can get fit faster. Why big teams pay for great coaches. Why therapists can transform a person’s perspective.

So, if you’re reading this, you must have a motive to improve your speaking.  But do you know what to do?   Most people are unfamiliar with the basic tenets, the art and science of public speaking and presenting.

I assume you know how to practice your talks: you should rehearse under performance-like pressure.  It’s the only way to strengthen your speaking muscles.

But are you able to grasp what knowledge you’ve applied and which you haven’t?  Probably not, which is why an executive speech coachcan make a big difference for you and/or your team.