Effective Presentation Skills Training #2: Rehearse, Like How World Champions Do Secretly
Welcome to this article on rehearsals for business presentations or public speech! I’m going to share with you how you can rehearse your speech much better prior to that important presentation whether it’s a business presentation or an in-class school-based presentation.
What exactly are rehearsals (I know what you might be thinking, “Thank you for the breakthrough thought Darren, like I don’t already know what rehearsals are” – there are tricks/ tips to make it highly effective) – rehearsals are activities in which you undertake to make sure that you run through the particular script and ensure that you are very familiar (food for thought: memorise or internalise?) with it.
Let’s go on to the most important concern how can I memorize my speech in a much much more effective manner?
To memorize the speech, now, if you were to memorize the speech from top to bottom it depends of course on the duration of your speech. If your speech is 5 to 7 minutes and 30 seconds it would be fairly easy to memorize that speech given sufficient time. However, if your speech is going to be 2 hours and 30 minutes like a 2 hour long seminar or worse a 9 to 5 p.m. workshop and it’s not really possible to memorize the entire script! It’s going to be very tedious in the first place to type it
out verbatim!
What I would suggest for 5 to 7 minutes and 30 seconds speech, the best way to memorize it is in fact to break down your speech into different logical portions. For example, in my speech if I have the introduction and I have point number one in my body paragraph, point number two in the body of my
speech, point number three before my conclusion.
What I can do is I will try and split them up into five different portions first and rehearse them in
separate portions and once I’m done with that I will then try and piece them together and memorize as a whole – that will be easier by breaking them up into bite-sized pieces and splitting them appropriately to the appropriate number of hours or days or weeks you can take to memorize them much more effectively.
Additionally, what you can do is you can have a drill exercise like what my mentor year 2000 world champion of public speaking Ed Tate did with me – several hours prior to my grand finals of the world championship of public speaking 2016. What we did was we split the speech that I delivered into five
different parts and the five different parts what my mentor would do would be to, say, “Darren, now go over to part one which was the introduction, then go to part three which was point number two, then go to part number five which was the conclusion. Now! Jump to part 2 again!” Part 2 is, in fact, point number one in my speech. In that way, I was able to not just memorize and more importantly
internalize my speech!
Next, what you want to do is you don’t just rehearse sitting down. You have to rehearse your speech by moving about are using your hand gestures and saying out loud as if you are the one giving a presentation, right here right now! When you rehearse, you rehearse with the vocal variety, you rehearse with the body language, and make sure you say it out and make sure it’s aloud, not just
within you! It’s very important for you to consider that because in so doing you’re getting as close as possible to the actual practical experience.
The next point about rehearsals is try and rehearse at least once or twice before bedtime
because when you rehearse once or twice before bedtime and then when you go to sleep, research studies have shown that it helps you internalize the message much better in fact it seems much deeper so much so that it’s easier for you to recollect what you’re going to say and bring it back up to the forefront of your mind!
Finally, for rehearsals, you have for many trainers they will say something like “rehearse in front of a mirror”. What I would suggest is that you only rehearse in front of a mirror if you are looking at, say, your facial expressions. However, if you’re trying to spot the body language leakages things that are not very conscious to you, body language leakages that you’re not very aware about, rehearsing your presentations in front of a mirror is not going to be effective at all.
Instead what you want to do is you rehearsed in front of a video camera and make sure you video record your performance so that you can play back and looked up for those minor body language changes. This is because if you’re looking in front of the mirror and rehearsing your speech what happens when you’re supposed to turn around and look at the different part of the audience members or maybe even have your back faced the audience members how then can you capture all these different nuances in non-verbal communication.
That’s why I would strongly advise in getting and investing in a video camera so that you can video record your performances or if not make sure you use the camera that’s in-built in your mobile phones iPhone/ Samsung a fairly good quality.
With that, I hope you have enjoyed this particular article! I’ve shared with you some approaches and techniques involved in not just memorizing but internalizing your speech. I have also shared with you that in realizing in front of a mirror is not something that many people use nowadays with the advent of technology more and more individuals actually rehearsed in front of a video camera being recorded so that they can first show it to their mentor and second, they can playback over and over again and spot the body language leakages themselves. Thank you very much for reading and I look forward to sharing with you more tips and strategies in public speaking and business presentation!
By The Way…
If you’re keen to take your public speaking skills & presentation skills (either business/corporate presentation / training for presentation to clients / kids in-class presentation) to the next level so that you may communicate and deliver speeches with greater flair and charisma, feel free to check out our public speaking course for adults and public speaking course for kids below!
For more about our Public Speaking Courses for Adults :
https://publicspeakingacademy.com.sg/courses-and-programs/group-classes-for-adults/
If you’re also looking for Public Speaking Course for Kids / Children:
https://publicspeakingacademy.com.sg/group-classes-students-age-9-18/
If you are a human resources manager/ business owner in your company…
We want to help you bring out the best in your team, organization, and company. Public speaking and communication skills for the workplace, such as persuasion, remain a priority for most corporate training out there. We believe in staying ahead of the curve in sharing the contemporary communication skills to help you and your team remain relevant, competitive and nimble. Through our customized corporate training programmes, your team will benefit from an in-depth, hands-on, and potential-maximising public speaking training programme!
Feel free to reach out to us to curate your own public speaking corporate training programme for your team, company, or organization! Let us help you develop them into highly effective public speakers at work, empowered with effective presentation skills & storytelling skills – them giving speeches with charisma, influence and impact is something you can look forward to!
For effective presentation skills & public speaking skills training for corporates/ employees: https://publicspeakingacademy.com.sg/corporate-public-speaking-training-workshop/
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