It’s September. It’s time to get that new lunchbox and think about what your new teacher will be like. It’s time to knuckle down and get ready to work on new skills. Just in time for conference season!
There are so many tech industry conferences between September – February. You may be speaking at one of them. Fantastic! You are going to do great. Why? Because so many people underestimate how much preparation a great talk takes. But not you. You invest seriously in preparation to reap real rewards.
Yes, practicing can feel artificial and awkward. Especially practicing in front of other people. But practice does two vital things – it helps your body get familiar with presenting and it helps your brain absorb your message. When you know your message really well, you can focus on helping your audience absorb it.
Practice builds comfort. Comfort builds confidence. When you feel confident as a communicator, you become natural and articulate. That’s when the magic happens.
Practice in the shower. Practice on your commute – record yourself on your phone and listen while you’re trapped on the freeway. Present to your dog. He will be fascinated and attentive.
The other aspect of preparation is about the environment. You know that if you aren’t prepared when you go out on stage you can appear preoccupied and awkward. You know that if you put on the headset microphone for the first time thirty seconds before you go on stage, your brain will be focusing on what that microphone feels like in your ear and how you sound through it.
Insist on getting time on the keynote stage with the lights on and the microphones at the right levels before you do any speech. Check your microphone or earbuds. Make sure you can see the teleprompter and slide display. Try the stage lights to see if they’re going to be in your eyes.
Get paranoid and plan for things to go wrong. Haven’t you ever seen a projector fail? Or a remote not work? Or a demo crash? We all have. Expect it and have a plan B.
An unprepared communicator who wings it may stick the landing one in a hundred times. If you’re comfortable with those odds, good for you. But a prepared communicator delivers consistently, and gets consistently better at delivery every time she speaks.
Your business must scale, and you must scale with it. Great communicators create the change they want to see in the world. poseycorp helps innovators build powerful messages and the skill to deliver them so they can break through the noise and be heard! Click here to receive pragmatic communications advice in your inbox every month.
poseycorp’s next Ask Me Anything About Communications is Friday, September 7th at 9 am PDT. This month, we’re talking with Jay Golden about Thought Leadership and Storytelling. Click here to register!
