Rehearse, Rehearse, Rehearse…
As for many things in life, preparation is key. Public speaking is no exception. Throughout this blog post, I will be referring to Chris Anderson’s book called Ted Talks. Chris Anderson is the owner of TED and his goal for writing this book is to showcase how to become a powerful public speaker and to help the reader give the presentation their best shot. In his book Ted Talks, he provides more than enough information to help his readers give phenomenal presentations.
I mentioned earlier in the blog post that preparation for presentations is extremely important and Anderson gives plenty of tips on how you should prepare for a presentation.
Slides. They seem like the greatest gift on Earth. I mean, they provide visuals for the audience and help you keep on track with your presentation. However, in Anderson’s book, he states that “a least a third of TED’s most viewed talks make no use of slides whatsoever,” (2016). This is because many of the speakers at TED do not want to lose the attention of their audience as a result of slides. From my personal experience, I have seen MANY slides that have flashy transitions and animations. These are extremely distracting and should be avoided! So, my recommendation is to be conservative with your slides if you plan to use them!
Scripts. Scripts can be extremely helpful for one speaker and a nightmare for another speaker. In my personal experiences, when I scripted a presentation, I performed better in that presentation. However, in Anderson’s book, he tells a story of a college professor’s (who is anonymous) experience at a TED talk. The professor was well known for his fantastic and interesting presentations. However, at the TED talk, he performed horribly. Anderson mentions that the professor’s poor performance was his fault because Anderson asked the professor to script his presentation (Anderson, 2016). The college professor’s experience is just one of the many examples of people who dislike scripting for their presentations. All in all, I advise you to script if YOU want to.
Last but not least, rehearsing. Yes, you need to rehearse! As I mentioned in my previous blog post about the PricewaterhouseCoopers Case Competition, my team and I rehearsed like madmen, but we were able to put on a great presentation. Anderson uses examples in his text to showcase some methods of rehearsing. For example, Susan Solomon states that you should be able to recite the presentation in your sleep, Rachel Botsman says you should rehearse in front of someone who knows little about the subject you are presenting about, and Susan Cain says you should rehearse the presentation on a stage in front of a few audience members (Anderson, 2016). These are just a few of the many methods you could use to rehearse your presentation. Remember, rehearsing can lead to a successful presentation!
To add to the idea of rehearsing, a classmate of mine at the University at Buffalo touches on the importance of rehearsing in one of his blog posts. Scott Covino is writing his blog posts on improving public speaking skills as well and for this particular blog post, he is reflecting on the book “Essentials of Public Speaking” by Warren Dubois. In Scott’s blog post, he states, in his own words, that “… as with any other activity we may be originally nervous about, with continual practice we can conquer that fear and become successful at it,” (Covino, 2018). In other words, with continuous practice and/or rehearsal, you will become more comfortable with presenting in front of others. Scott’s quote truly resonates with this blog post and my overall opinion on rehearsing for presentations.
Overall, I enjoyed reading parts of Chris Anderson’s book: TED Talks. For the sake of my MGG 303 course, I did not have enough time to read the whole book. However, if you are looking to improve your public speaking skills, this book is a must read!
I hope this blog post aids you in your presentation preparation skills!
References:
Anderson, C. (2016). Ted talks. New York, New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
Covino, S. (2016, March 1). Reflection on the book, essentials of public speaking, by Warren DuBois [Blog Post]. Retrieved from https://medium.com/importance-of-public-speaking/reflection-on-the-book-essentials-of-public-speaking-by-warren-dubois-c65db4cd0e22
