Public speaking opportunities give you as the speaker enhanced status, a platform for your passion and career or business advancement. Take each presentation opportunity seriously and practice and rehearse as if everything depended on it. It just might be a turning point for you.
Recording your practices with audio and/or video devices offers you a chance to really polish your performance. Here are 3 tips for using these practice tools.
1) Use your time wisely: Don't watch or listen to the whole speech. Instead, recall the specific moments during your practice when you felt or recognized trouble and fast forward to those spots. Identify the specific issue (was it lack of knowledge, not remembering your outline, being uncomfortable with the content, being distracted by something or someone?) and then stand up and repeat that section a few times. Start one or two sentences before the trouble spot and continue a few sentences afterward. This will integrate the newly practiced piece into the rest of the presentation.
2) Evaluate yourself cautiously only about things you can fix: You can easily improve your clothes, your hair style or color and your delivery style. Focus on these rather than giving yourself a failing mark for qualities that can't be changed such as age (young or old) or weight (maybe in a few months, but not today). When you recognize that your clothes look ill-fitting or your hair is always in your face, you have a specific, narrowly focused task you can address. Fixing one or two specific, manageable things will work wonders for your self-esteem.
3) Use successive recordings to boost your confidence: Record a practice, quickly look or listen to it, identify two or three opportunities that are within your power to address today, then record your next practice. Focus on hearing or seeing the changes you've made, rather than finding new areas that bother you. Two or three iterations will fix most things and you'll gain confidence that you can deliver the whole presentation at the same, improved level.
What tips do you have for making the most of your practice recordings? Post them for us all through our comment link below.
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