Sunday 30 September 2012

Public Speaking - How to Prepare Properly

One of the secrets to being a competent public speaker is proper preparation. Like most things in life, if you do all the groudwork and put the time and effort in you'll be rewarded. But so many people who step up to the front of the room die on their feet because they didn't do the proper preparation.

Talk to Yourself!
I do a lot of driving and I love it. I use it for my thinking time. I'm alone in my car with no interruptions - I can choose to answer my mobile phone or not - and it's the time when I do most of my quality thinking and come up with some of best ideas.

So one of the things I started doing when I was thinking about an up coming presentation I had to do, was speaking it out loud whilst I was driving. I'm sure I got loads of strange looks from other drivers! It was great to just blurt it out and I did so imagining that I was actually stood in front of the audience at the event. But I quickly realised that I couldn't remember the content by the time I got back to my office!

Record Yourself
So I thought I could record my random talks in the car and discovered a brilliant app which comes on the iPhone - Voice Recorder.

I switch the Record feature on and I just begin talking as if I'm stood in front of the live audience. As long as I know my subject matter, I can waffle on for about ten to fifteen minutes. This gives me a great base for my talk.

Transcript
I then transcript the audio into a Word document next time I'm in my office. I do this myself but there are people you can find via the Internet who will do this for you and for a very reasonable fee.

Once I've got it in a document I can then tweak the text and add bits until I'm happy.

Final Recording
I then narrate the whole talk back onto the Voice Recorder app on my iPhone.

I then have my talk in audio format and I can play it in my car.

Keep Listening
I then play it whilst I'm driving and I listen to it over and over again until it finally goes in.

Final Rehearsal
I then do one final practice with the printed text in case I need to refer to it. I stand in my office and do my talk always as if I was there on the day in front of the live audience.

On the day
I always like to talk to people before the talk to get to know them and I like referring to some of them during my talk if I can. I like to try make my talk relevant to the company I'm presenting for and the people in the audience. So I like to find out as much about the location, company and the people as I can in advance.

I find this method really works. I never like having notes to read from and I never take them with me on the day. I think learning my talk this way gives me enough freedom and flexibility to add bits on the day as I see fit.

What methods do you use? Please let me know if you try my method and please let me know how you get on.