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Effective Rehearsals
Dale Cyphert, Ph.D., © 2005
When an important proposal or client presentation is on the line, careful rehearsals are common. When media technology is involved, or a team must coordinate its work, multiple rehearsals are even more important to insure a polished, professional communication. When this much rehearsal time is invested, simply practicing the words of the speech is not enough.
- Rehearse means say the words out loud. Mental rehearsals don't count. Fluency and self-confidence come from moving your mouth and tongue, standing up in front of an audience (even if it's only a mirror or your dog), pushing the buttons on the remote, and hearing the sound of your own voice.
- Do a “blocking” rehearsal to determine how you will walk around the room, who will advance the slides, and how you’ll stand while interacting with the audience. This is especially important if you will be speaking as part of a team. Everyone needs to be clear about what you will be doing at all moments during the presentation.
- Have a “tech check” to make sure that all your systems are optimized, your slides project as you envisioned, and the spotlights are not shining in your eyes. Try to rehearse in the same room where you will be speaking so you can identify an issues with broken equipment, software compatibility, or audience comfort.
- Do a “dress” rehearsal—or at least compare notes on your attire—to insure that everyone’s style is coordinated. Make sure you all mean the same thing by "business casual" or "professional attire."
- Don’t forget to “proofread” any handouts, having associates look at them ahead of time to insure they are clear, complete and correct.
- Keep revising. Effective presentations integrate verbal, visual, and kinesthetic elements, but it's not until the rehearsals that a presenter will realize that a slide is needed, or a point is unclear, or some evidence could be better presented with a visual. Professionals will admit that “designing interactive presentations takes more time than designing a linear presentation” (Schatz), but with each rehearsal you'll change and improve based what is working and what isn't. Don't expect to create your PowerPoint slides in a lab and then practice the speech that "goes with the slides." It doesn't work that way (Farkas). Your reheasal will lead to improvements in the slides, which will then need to be rehearsed, which will lead to more changes, and so on until.....
- Know when to quit. Determine when your “drop dead” date is, especially for time-consuming elements like charts, handouts, or complicated demonstrations. If the content is not available to include at that time, you need to put Plan B in motion. You might, for example, decide to eliminate the point from your presentation. Instead of saying “we have sales increases of 32% in this product line,” you’ll have to say something like “we anticipate sales increases of at least 30%,” or “we will be reporting actual sales figures in our next monthly teleconference.” You might eliminate the information from your prepared media but include it in the spoken presentation as an “impromptu” addition of “late breaking news.” This can be a great way to build both rapport and credibility, and sometimes speakers purposely stage such an inclusion for its dramatic effect.
As with any other skill, your use of rehearsal time will become more effective with practice. As a beginner, you might need to go through a presentation nine or ten times before you become comfortable. Later, after you’ve given several similar reports, you’ll find that you know pretty much what to do, but even the most experienced speaker should plan to rehearse a presentation at least three times. The first rehearsal will identify content that still needs to be developed or clarified. The second is to practice the revised speech for the first time. The third rehearsal will then give you a chance to polish your delivery.
- Allow time to make adjustments between the practices. Three rehearsals one right after the other on the same day are not as productive as one rehearsal a day for three days. In your first run-through, you will probably realize that you aren’t explaining something clearly, or that a slide transition is out of order, or that you’ve left a key statistic out of your notes.
last updated 7/13/05
Schatz, Steven C. "Make Your Slideshows Interactive with Branches and Buttons." Presentations 1997: 33-35.
Farkas, David K. "Understanding and Using PowerPoint." STC Annual Conference Proceedings, 8-11 May , 2005.