To All Communi-Creators:
I've said it before and I'll say it again . . . rehearse, rehearse, rehearse.
There is a veritable cornucopia of fine reasons why you should rehearse your performance, but today I focus on just one.
Rehearse - so you can be comfortable with your content and not be dependent on notes. There are few things more painful then sitting through a presentation where the presenter is:
A) Reading their slides with their back to the audience;
B) Reading from the handout they already gave me, which I could have read myself;
C) Reading from cue cards or other notes so they never make eye contact with the crowd.
Besides resulting in a boring presentation where no connection whatsoever is made with the audience - A,B and C all have one other thing in common - they are credibility killers. If you don't know your material well enough to be conversant on the topic for the next 30 minutes or so - I have to wonder why I'm listening to you at all.
Contemporary audiences lend more credence to speakers who can deliver a performance from memory. You need look no farther than the flack President Obama caught some time ago when it was revealed that he almost always uses the teleprompter - more often in fact then any other modern U.S. President. Long speech, short speech - doesn't matter, the teleprompter is always there. His dependence on it is so extreme that when it fails, so does he.
This reliance on a crutch hurts Obama in two ways. First, fair or not, it weakens his credibility and the confidence his audience has in his authenticity. And second, using notes puts distance between him and his audience. It mitigates the connection he wants to achieve.
One television crewman who also covered Clinton and Bush stated, regarding Obama’s use of the teleprompter, “He uses them to death. The problem is, he never looks at you. He’s looking left, right, left, right — not at the camera. It’s almost like he’s not making eye contact with the American people.”
THE POINT: Take time to know your material - not only will you perform better, but your audience will have greater faith in the validity of what you say if you look like you know what you're talking about.
