Practicing Public Speaking: Rehearsing Speeches

00:00 Should you rehearse your speech or presentation? And if so, for how long? The answers are, of course, yes, and as long as it takes for you to be great.

00:12 There's this old tale out there that says, Oh, far better to just be spontaneous.

00:17 You'll be fresh, complete, utter nonsense.

00:20 That's an excuse from people who are lazy or are nervous, and they want to avoid and procrastinate.

00:27 Yes, you need to rehearse every speech, every presentation you give, but you need to rehearse in a particular way.

00:34 You need to rehearse on video.

00:36 And that can be as simple as talking to your own cell phone and recording it.

00:40 I do not.

00:41 And let me repeat, I do not recommend that you rehearse by talking to the mirror, because if you're talking to a mirror, you're going to be thinking, Hmm, is my nose somehow gotten a little crooked? Am I losing even more hair? What's with these jowls? You can't be in the moment presenting if you're looking at your face, because everyone, I mean, everyone has something they don't like about their face.

01:09 So I would not recommend that if you want to rehearse in front of your dog, I don't have a problem with that.

01:14 But make sure there is a video recorder present and recording you, so you can watch it.

01:22 Here's the real key to rehearsal.

01:24 It doesn't do any good to rehearse it once.

01:27 Well, it doesn't. Tiny, little bit of good.

01:30 But the real key to rehearsal is to keep doing it until you like the results.

01:37 Maybe you can do that in one take.

01:40 Maybe it takes ten takes.

01:42 Maybe it takes two days.

01:43 Guess what? Your audience doesn't care.

01:46 They simply want your best.

01:48 So it's your job to rehearse yourself to get you to the point where you're at your very best.