Welcome Professionals…

…Winston Churchill did it, professional musicians and actors do it, TED talkers do it – so why don’t we do it? In TNF #104 we discussed the power of rehearsal. A good rehearsal – when done professionally – will boost the effectiveness of your presentation by magnitudes!

So what is key for a professional rehearsal? Here is a checklist:

• Plan a decent amount of time for a rehearsal. You may need some extra time for modifications to your presentation after the first dry-run and then do it again!

• Get the team together when more than one presenter is running the show. Band members may practice their part alone, but every band has to practice together before entering the stage!

• Rehearse with a proper audience. Get some critical minds who will give you constructive feedback. Don’t just do it in front of the mirror, this is not the same!

• Remember your words. You must always know the first and last sentence of your presentation by heart! The intro and outro have be fluent and to the point. You can improvise with words inbetween, but never allow yourself a weak start or ending.

• Keep your technological support idot-proof. At least plan a backup procedure in case something goes wrong.

• Practice eye-contact on your most important lines, also practice accentuation!

• Practice how to work the room. When moving during the presentation, set your steps deliberately. Who will you turn to, who will you engage with?

• Don’t be too hard to yourself. Every dry-run will feel a bit awkward and never close to perfect. You will rock the show when lights go on and adrenalin kicks in!

Taking the rehearsal seriously will get you to a completely different level.

Knock on wood!

Malte

Thursday Night Flight is brought to you by Malte Müller Professionals. Sharing best practices for top management consultants on topics like communication, client handling, problem solving, appearance, and fitness. Check out www.mm-professionals.com for more material and free resources!

Welcome Professionals…

…As top management consultants, we deliver most of our work in presentations. From the proposal pitch throughout sharing first hypotheses and intermediate results, convincing stakeholders up to giving a presentation on final conclusions and recommendations to a steering committee. All of these are presentations whether we use a formal slide presentation or free speech, whether we talk to a group or one-on-one.

A good preparation of these presentations is key and everybody knows that. Yet, I see a lot of effort put into the content while the power of a rehearsal is untapped. Only few teams and individuals acutally take the time for a proper rehearsal.

Of course, good content is the foundation of every presentation. Deep analytics, rigorous problem solving, creative thinking, and logical conclusions are crucial to every presentation. This work has to be done professionally without any doubt.

Once the content is clear, I see presenters spending a lot of time and effort in structuring the presentation, choosing the right words and graphs, adding pictures, polishing colors and so on. This is also quite important. While the polishing often goes on to the last minute before the presentation, a proper rehearsal is skipped in most cases.

This is a great mistake. While content, structure, and appearance are certainly tablestakes to every presentation, there are some additional elements of equal importance. These include

• good connection between presenter and audience
• projection of self-confidency
• fluency and flawless execution (esp. when more than one presenter is involved
• projection of a positive attitude

The above are most important elements for building a trustful atmosphere to move and convince the audience. This is why we do a presentation in the first place, otherwise we could just pass on a written document. Achieving these features takes a lot of general training and experience. It does also require specific training for the individual presentation. This is done by a proper rehearsal.

I will cover the key features of an effective rehearsal in next week’s TNF.

Stay tuned,

Malte

Thursday Night Flight is brought to you by Malte Müller Professionals. Sharing best practices for top management consultants on topics like communication, client handling, problem solving, appearance, and fitness. Check out www.mm-professionals.com for more material and free resources!