Time after time, speech or presentation after speech and presentation, one theme always seems to come up again and again – preparation. I am able to work to get the content, I can eventually find a coherent organization for it, and I can fit words to get my point across. But all too often, it just seems to end there. Which is quite obviously an issue. Sometimes I'll only get around to putting the final content together the night before a presentation, which leaves little room for preparation. This chronic lack of time to prepare for the delivery shows itself in many ways through my speeches.
For one, it makes me so much more nervous when I actually get up there to do presentations. Will it be long enough? Will I rush? Will I even manage to get sentences out that make sense? Thankfully I had prepared for the recent civic artifact speech more than I usually do, which reduced the nerves that I was feeling a significant amount. Unfortunately I feel that I was still in the 'valley of awkwardness' when I gave my speech, which caused my pace to rush as I was just trying to get through it without making any mistakes. It also showed itself through my hand gestures. When I was practicing, I found that it was calming to use repetitive hand gestures to keep my body under control and to keep a somewhat decent pace. Unfortunately I was not able to rid myself of this habit when I actually went to deliver my speech.
In order to improve this, I think it is essential for me to spread the practice time on presentation and speeches over a much longer period of time. Even if I dedicate the same amount of time overall to practice, I think spreading it out over a longer period of time will let it sink in and let myself become more comfortable with the material that I am presenting. I think this will allow me to focus more on reducing repetitive gestures that distract the audience and pacing myself better to actually let the audience hear what I have to say.
I feel that improvements in preparation will trickle down into other aspects of my presentation, leading to an overall improvement in the entire package. So it's kind of like trickle down economics, only it actually works!
I definitely understand your problem, and hopefully preparing better will help us both. Beyond spreading your preparation time over a longer time, could you also change how you are preparing for at least part of the time? You don't say, but I assume that if you are preparing stuff only the night before, it involves mostly looking over you note-cards and practicing silently to yourself. If so, you could preparative more out-loud in front of other people.
ReplyDeleteYou nailed it; preparation really is the key. The "valley of awkwardness" is definitely an uncomfortable place to be, but the best part is that we can get through it simply through preparation. With repetition and practice, it's only a matter of time until your mastery of the speech develops, and so minor problems such as hand gestures may soon evaporate.
ReplyDelete"Like trickle down economics, except that it actually works." HA!
ReplyDeleteIt's such an unglamorous tip, but it's remarkably true: the more quality time you invest in practice, the better the outcome. Best wishes as you present!