Success comes down to effective presentations. Internally, meeting managers make them to sell the value of meetings and later deliver their results. Externally, suppliers need to capture more business with fewer sales presentation opportunities.
You know this, too, and spend more time than ever meeting about presentations—then fastidiously researching and designing the slideshow. While all these busy-work steps are important to the final presentation, do they really get you ready for the big moment?
Nothing prepares you for the real thing like a good rehearsal (or two). I’m not talking about a run through, where you click through your slides, moving your lips as you read bullet points. A rehearsal is a practice session in anticipation of a public performance. It’s doing the thing in the “as-if” mode.
To have a great rehearsal requires two things from you: full commitment and a vivid imagination. While this sounds hard for you now, it likely came easy to you as a kid. Children are naturally committed to their games, recitals and make-believe moments. They see themselves in high definition.
My uncle Jim, for example, left me a stack of records in the late 1960s when he shipped out to Vietnam. Meet The Beatles was my favorite, and I rehearsed to it often. I’d put the album on in the living room and sing along at the top of my lungs, using our Hoover vacuum cleaner handle as a microphone. I could see myself on stage, playing with the band at Dodger Stadium. I could hear the crowd’s roar after each track. I bowed.
My grandmother hid around the corner, watching me act a fool and smiling to herself. She credits those make believe concerts to my lack of fear when it came to performing for crowds, such as the hundred or so kids at my summer camp in 1972.
As children, we have no problem playing make-believe, but as adults, we pull back and limit our rehearsals to quick mental run throughs without any imagery or drama. It’s a shame, too, because these full-contact exercises can boost our confidence and sense of preparation more than anything else—especially when we have trepidations about the situation.
You can have a mental rehearsal no matter where you are. In this case, you must conjure up the images of the situation where you’ll perform—the place, audience, ambience, your appearance, everything. The more vividly you see the images in your mind, the more familiar they will be later. In the world of sports, visualizations are a critical part of preparation as coaches and trainers realize the confidence-building power of imagery.
Make sure you include hurdles in your rehearsal. This is where it gets “grown up.” As kids, when we play make believe, it always turns out great. When I gave my pretend rock concerts, I had the crowd at “hello.” This won’t prepare you for the real world of objections, distractions and constraints.
A study released in the Journal of Sports Sciences made a breakthrough discovery: Teens that mentally rehearsed overcoming adverse competitive situations were the most confident and prepared during games. This technique is called Motivation Specific Mastery (MS-Mastery). In this case, you visualize yourself mastering a challenging situation, not just running through it with a good outcome. Stretch your imagination to identify things that could go wrong and objections that will be launched your way. Imagine how you’ll overcome them calmly, then move on to your big finish.
While mental rehearsals have merit, nothing beats a full contact dress rehearsal. If your upcoming performance is a conversation or a presentation, you need to give it out loud—from the beginning to the end! I always get up early the day of my convention speeches to give my talk into a mirror, making eye contact with myself. I’ve learned that if I can face myself and like my own words, then my audience will, too.
The closer you can come to a simulation of the exact physical experience the better. If you are going to rehearse a work presentation, rehearse in the actual room you’ll later use. Setup your visual aids and use them, just as you will live. Recruit a few volunteers to be your audience. Bring a clock, so you can also rehearse your timing. You’ll get great practice at dealing with distracted people, ringing cell phones, ticking clocks and gadgets that don’t work on command. In some cases, you’ll realize that you need to make some technical or content adjustments, which is yet another benefit from real rehearsals.
By including challenges during your rehearsal, they won’t fluster you when they happen during the actual presentation. As they pop up, you’ll be in a familiar place where you’ll internally smile and think, “I knew you were coming!” Mike Tyson, the world-champion boxer, once said, “You get knocked out by the element of surprise, that’s what drops you to the canvas. If you see the punch coming, you can survive it.”
After a good rehearsal, celebrate with child-like enthusiasm. Clap for yourself, do the victory dance and store this feeling in your subconscious. In the book, Psycho-Cybernetics, author Maxwell Maltz argues that our subconscious mind is easily tricked by our imagination. It doesn’t know the difference between a rehearsal and a real performance. It just knows you’ve done this before and done it very well.
During your all-important presentation, you’ll be able to draw upon this success experience to overcome any fears or anxieties. You’ll look forward to your performance instead of dreading it. Your well-rehearsed level of preparation will eliminate the fear of the unknown, replacing it with a been-there-rocked-that attitude. One+
TIM SANDERS, a top-rated speaker on the lecture circuit, is the author of Saving the World at Work: What Companies and Individuals Can Do to Go Beyond Making a Profit to Making a Difference (Doubleday, September 2008). Check out is Web site at www.timsanders.com.
This article is an excerpt from Tim Sanders’ upcoming book, Today We Are Rich: Principles for Confident Living (Tyndale House, March 2011).
