As We Speak

by Peter Meyers

  Some people say that they’re afraid rehearsing their presentation will make it sound stale; they claim they’re better when they don’t rehearse. This is ridiculous—a bit like saying that Roger Federer plays better tennis when he hasn’t practiced. Rehearsal is not about preplanning every gesture and movement. It’s about practicing. When a soccer player goes out to prepare, he doesn’t say, “Thirteen minutes into the game, I will kick the ball at a 67-degree angle, when I am exactly halfway down the field.” Instead, he hones his skills—the kicking, the passing, the dribbling. That way, by game day he has the techniques at his command, ready to adapt to the requirements of the moment.

  In the professional theater, rehearsal generally has three distinct phases: (1) Actors read the script out loud, often sitting down around a table. This is called, logically enough, “table work”; (2) They get up onstage and add movement, with the script still in hand; and (3) They rehearse “off book,” meaning that they know their lines. No professional actor would ever be seen holding a script a week before opening night. By that point, everyone is “off book.”

  There’s a good neurological reason for this: your long-term memory is much more powerful than your short-term memory. If you are storing your script in your short-term memory, most of your mental RAM will be used with the retrieval process, leaving very little bandwidth for you to dedicate to meaningful expression. Received wisdom in the theater states that if you can get your lines memorized a week before performance, you have time to move from focusing on the content to focusing on the delivery. You have to assimilate the content in a way that you can start to move, think, and speak while saying it—and connect with the audience at the same time.

  As we mentioned earlier, we don’t recommend that you actually memorize every word of your content. But you do need to be familiar enough with what you plan to say that you can then turn your full attention to delivery. And this process should happen ideally at least a week before your presentation, so that the content has time to sink into your long-term memory.

  This may feel challenging, because the number of nips, tucks, and edits that can be done on your script is endless. You could go on fixing and changing forever. But there comes a time—and it happens a week or so before your presentation—when you must call it finished. Leave the content alone from this point on, and move to working on your delivery.

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  MASTER TIP: Rehearsal time is for practicing your delivery—not for endlessly tweaking your content.

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  So here’s a rehearsal process for you, based on the one used by professionals in the theater:

  1. First, practice just the words, concentrating on sense and meaning. You can do this sitting down, or if you’re more comfortable moving around, you can get up on your feet. But the emphasis is working with the language, and exploring the narrative. Get your mouth used to the ideas. You can bump through the text, stop and go, think about where you want to land your points, what the operative words are. Practice your transitions. Familiarize yourself with the ideas. Think of it like learning a song.

  2. Now you bring in the movement. What are you going to do with your body? How will you handle the slides? It’s generally not a good idea to plan every gesture and every single move. You want to be yourself, spontaneous and appropriate in each moment. Don’t be overly analytical, or try to choreograph each angle of your arm. What you want to do is block specific sections. Blocking is theater terminology for the process of planning where, when, and how actors will move around the stage during a performance. You’re going to design blocks of movement—a large-scale plan of action. For example, do you want to be sitting or standing for the first section? Will you begin at the podium, or downstage? Which direction do you want to move for certain key sections after that? Do you want to land this point on the right side of the auditorium, or to the left? Plan ahead of time when you will draw the audience’s attention to a slide, or when you want to come downstage and connect with them again. When do you want them looking at the slide, and when do you want them looking at you? Creating a large-scale action plan like this ensures that you will hit all the key moments in a smooth manner—but leaves the details to be improvised and fresh.

  When you have finished making these decisions, you can hold a tech rehearsal. Whether you’re in a theater or a conference room, a tech rehearsal is the time for you to practice all the technical aspects of your performance: plan your entrance, run through the lighting cues, check the slide-change cues, and rehearse any handoffs or transitions that are going to occur. Who’s going to introduce you? Will you shake hands? Where do they go after the introduction is over—do they cross upstage or downstage from you? Practicing these things ahead of time allays anxiety and avoids the awkward do-si-dos that can occur onstage if you haven’t polished the details in advance.

  A tech rehearsal is performed “cue to cue,” meaning that you don’t have to go through every single word of the presentation. You’re just practicing the important cues and transitions—anything involving light, sound, video, or another person entering, exiting, or handing you something. There are a million things that can go wrong with the technical aspects of your presentation—simple bloopers that can easily be avoided by holding a tech rehearsal. Leaving these things to chance is almost always a mistake.

  3 Now you’re ready to bring the meaning and the movement together for a dress rehearsal. No actor would ever step onstage for opening night without having first done a dress rehearsal, and neither should you. A dress rehearsal is intended to be as much like the real thing as possible. The key to a dress rehearsal is that if something goes wrong, you do not stop. The show must go on. You do the entire presentation from beginning to end without pausing, dealing with bumps in the road as you will on the big night itself. This way you’re actually practicing what to do if something goes wrong: what will you do if you stumble, for example, or forget your words, or the laptop doesn’t work? And make no mistake, it’s not a question of if something will go wrong; it’s a question of when. So, during your dress rehearsal, as long as there’s not an earthquake or a fire in the theater, you persevere. There’s a good reason for this: by creating the experience of going through the whole thing without stopping, you’re literally forging a neural pathway in your brain that gives you confidence. When you get up onstage, you’ll have the feeling, “I can do this.” How do you know? Because you’ve done it before.

  A note about dress rehearsals: tradition in the theater says that a poor dress rehearsal will always result in a great performance on opening night—and vice versa. Why that is, no one can explain, but it’s marvelously consistent. Maybe it’s because a good dress rehearsal makes performers overconfident, while a disastrous one makes them work harder. In any case, don’t get discouraged if you have a lousy dress rehearsal—it’s actually a good sign!

  It’s ideal, obviously, to hold these rehearsals in the actual location where you’ll be presenting. Sometimes it’s possible, sometimes not. But even if you can’t hold a full rehearsal in the space, do your very best to visit the room where you’re going to be speaking in advance—preferably at the same time of day that your presentation is scheduled. If you’re in a conference room with windows, check the direction of the sun. Make sure that you’re standing so that the light is shining on you, and not in the audience’s eyes. Use your voice in the room. If you’re using a microphone, practice with it. If not, practice filling the room with your voice. Ask a colleague to stand in the back, and tell you if you can be heard. If there’s a view out the window, decide whether it would make a nice background, or if it will be distracting for the audience. Are there boats that will come by behind you, or bicyclists? (You won’t be able to compete with that—every single eye in the audience will be drawn to the bicycle!) Are there curtains that can be opened or closed? Can this be done ahead of time? Ensure that you’re not standing in silhouette against the window. How’s the general level of lighting in the room? Too dark, too
light, just right? Are there controls on the wall that you can access? Often there will be dimmer switches or even an extra bank of lights available, if you check. What is the temperature like? You don’t want your audience to freeze, but an overly warm room will send people to sleep. Is there a screen or a table near where you’re going to stand? Do you like it there, or would you prefer that it’s removed? Is there a garbage pail standing right next to the place where you’ll be presenting? (You’d be amazed how often there is!) Move it! Garbage is not a positive association. Make friends with the person who has the power to change these things—often a technician or hotel employee, depending on where you’re presenting—and ask for what you want in terms of temperature, light, furniture, and media to be preset. They are generally happy to help.

  If you’re presenting in an auditorium and there’s a stage, walk onto it. Stand where you’re going to stand. Imagine the audience in front of you. Note the distance across which you’re going to need to project your energy, eyes, and voice. Grid the space—this is where you mark the coordinates of the edges in your mind, all the way to the four corners of the audience, so that you have a mental map and feel for the area you’ll have to cover. Where is the screen going to be? Where are you going to stand? Remember, using the podium is only one option. And if you do start there, you don’t have to stay there. You’re not locked into it. Move around on the stage, and find the place where you feel the most comfortable. Practice your entrance. Can you get onto the stage easily? Go up and down the steps. Are they carpeted or slippery? Is there a loose corner where you’re likely to trip? Ask colleagues to sit in different places in the auditorium—some in the back, some along the sides. Have them raise their hands when they feel that you’re not reaching them with your voice.

  Check your lighting. Remember the last line from Sunset Boulevard, when Norma Desmond says: “All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.” Are you ready for yours? We cringe to think of how many times we’ve watched a great speech ruined by the fact that the speaker was standing with the light falling oddly across her face, and didn’t realize it. Don’t get caught looking like the Phantom of the Opera, with half your face in shadow. To avoid this effect, use this old photographer’s trick: while standing onstage, turn your back to the audience and hold your hand up in front of your face, at roughly eye level. Move around the stage, watching the way the light hits your hand. This approximates the way the audience will see your face in the light. There will usually be a dead spot on the stage, where the lighting is shadowy. Mark it and remember it—and stay out of it! There may also be a hot spot on the stage, where the light has a concentrated glare. Avoid this one, as well.

  If you have any control over the lighting, or a chance to talk to the lighting technician before the event, ask for amber gels; these are filters that can be put over the lights. They warm the light in a flattering way, without making the stage look like a disco. And even if the technician won’t put them on for you, he’ll be impressed that you knew enough to ask!

  Now think about your ending. Plan how you will get your laptop off the stage. Practice your exit. You wouldn’t go on vacation without knowing how you were going to get home . don’t go onstage without knowing how you’re going to get off again. How will you finish your presentation? It’s nearly always appropriate to make a little bow with your head, acknowledging the (wildly enthusiastic!) applause.

  We’re often asked if it’s a good idea to rehearse in front of a mirror. We advise against it. The best performances are the ones where you’ve transformed your self-consciousness into connection with the listener. Watching yourself in a mirror forms a habit of watching yourself as you speak, and can add to self-consciousness. Ideally your focus is on the audience, not on how you look.

  Try to rehearse in front of a small group of trusted people who can give you feedback on what you’re doing well, along with a few recommendations of what you could do to take your performance to the next level. Or practice in front of your kids. Kids are very direct—and if you can hold their attention, you can hold anyone’s attention.

  Get feedback from a qualified coach, from someone who is encouraging and nurturing, or from someone you trust. But a word of caution—be very specific about the kind of feedback that you ask for from your rehearsal audience. If you’re less than twenty-four hours away from the performance, anything that causes you to radically rethink your presentation can be fatal, even if it’s a great idea. A theater director never gives an actor a note to change something one day before the opening night. The doubt and uncertainty that it produces can sabotage your entire performance. Two to three days before the performance is not the time to start working on fundamental issues of personal style. If you say, “Umm,” a lot, and you’ve been doing it for thirty years, you’re not going to fix it in the two days before the performance—and focusing on it will only frighten you and put you off your stride. Major changes should be worked on with a coach in a studio setting, long before you enter a high-stakes situation. The choreographer doesn’t alter the choreography right before the prima ballerina goes onstage. If you have fundamental alterations to make, make them ahead of time or leave them alone.

  Twenty-four hours before you go onstage, you need supportive feedback only. What are you doing that is working well? Be specific when you ask—otherwise, people are all too happy to give you a long laundry list of what is wrong with you, and it’s too late to fix it anyway. If you’re sharing your content with someone (long before the rehearsal process begins!) you might ask, “Is it clear?” “Does it seem relevant?” “Is it the right length?” During delivery rehearsal, you can ask them, “Is it dynamic enough?” “Am I bringing enough juice to the presentation?” “Am I in the right state?”

  The only exception to this is if someone points out to you at the last minute that there is a gross inaccuracy in your data, or a potential legal problem with what you’re saying, or if your opening will be horribly insulting to the chairman of the board. In that case, make the last-minute changes with gratitude!

  The key to doing a good rehearsal is to practice getting yourself into the right state. If you need the final performance to be confident and steely, or warm and supportive, don’t practice your talk when you’re dull, bored, and tired. You’ll just be reinforcing a negative state. Which leads us, inevitably, to the section on .

  Part Three

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  STATE

  STATE

  YOUR STATE SPEAKS louder than your words.

  Your state is the way you feel. It is the condition you are in—psychologically, physically, and emotionally—at the moment you step into the spotlight or open the conference room door. State is the most important part of communication—and yet it is almost universally overlooked. Your state determines not only your ability to communicate, but also your ability to lead, bond, and respond to what is happening around you.

  In Parts I and II, we gave you tactical methods designed to instantly transform your ability to communicate. Part Three is about making a deeper investment. This is the ongoing practice of developing your inner game. These techniques create long-term shifts that will allow you to build your own personal brand in a sustainable way. When it’s show time, and you’re under stress, tired, or angry, you must be able to readjust your state. Mastering your state builds character. It puts you in the driver’s seat so that you’re having your emotions, instead of your emotions having you.

  Actors, tightrope walkers, football players, martial artists, and prima ballerinas all know how to bring themselves to a state of readiness that promotes peak performance. And they do it six days a week. (Everyone gets a day off!)

  If you’re a tightrope walker, you can’t afford to have a bad day. The ballerina who has to spin around three times, leap through the air, and land in her partner’s arms can’t decide on her seventy-eighth performance of Swan Lake that she “just doesn’t feel like it.” She’ll break an ankle. And yet, these human beings have the s
ame genetic makeup that you do. On any given Tuesday, they are affected by the same things that affect you: Weather. Traffic. Money. Family. Health. News. Taxes. How you slept the night before. The trouble is that all of these things, although they powerfully influence your state, are outside of your circle of control. If you have to wait to perform until all of these aspects line up perfectly, you’ll never achieve anything.

  We all know people who have everything in the world going for them, yet are absolutely miserable. We also know people who have very little, who may be barely able to survive, but who are radiantly happy. What is their secret?

  There are three core things that consistently affect your state and that you can control on a consistent basis. 1 They are your body, your mind’s eye, and your beliefs.

  In the next few chapters, we’ll walk you through the ways that you can shift your body, mind’s eye, and beliefs in ways that pull you forward, instead of holding you back. On the audio download, we’ll take you through a preparation method for putting yourself into a peak performance state.

  7

  BODY

  THE FASTEST WAY to build the emotion of confidence is to change what you’re doing with your body. By body, we mean specifically the way you: (1) move; (2) stand; (3) breathe; (4) use your facial muscles; and (5) gesture with your hands.

  There are physical patterns that produce different emotions in your body. If you want to influence the way you feel, you need to understand these patterns. These are like levers that give you access to certain emotions. You can shift your state by using different combinations of these levers.