Last October I received a call from a business leader who is recognized as a pioneer in her industry. She had been invited to give a TED talk this month and asked if I could give her some tips. “Well you have plenty of time to practice,” I said after giving her some suggestions on how to craft a compelling story. “Spend the next two months working on the story and the slide design and then three months rehearsing.”
“Three months?” she asked after a long pause.
“Yes. Three months. You’ll be giving the presentation every day. Ninety times sounds about right,” I said. “It’s a short presentation. Just get up about 15 minutes earlier and practice.”
“Ninety? Isn’t that a lot?”
“Well, Dr. Jill Bolte-Taylor rehearsed her TED talk 200 times. It’s been viewed 15 million times and Oprah invited her to be a guest on her show. Dr. Jill’s TED talk transformed her career.
“I’ll get started right away!” she said.
This week TED celebrates its 30th anniversary of spreading ideas. Although I’m not affiliated with the conference itself, I’ve spent much of my career as a journalist and communication expert and have analyzed the greatest TED talks and what makes them go viral. I’ve also had the opportunity to personally interview many of TED’s most successful speakers and coach hundreds of leaders from globally recognized brands to give what I call “TED-style” presentations.
Practice is the one habit that transforms a merely good presentation into a TED-worthy performance. And not just a little practice, but many, many hours of it. Rehearsing your presentation begins well before the PowerPoint slides have been built. To “practice,” means internalizing the content so well that your delivery sounds less like a formal speech and more like a conversation over dinner.
Musician Amanda Palmer delivered the most-talked-about presentation at TED 2013,The Art of Asking. Given her experience performing on a stage one would think Palmer would be comfortable giving a short presentation. But playing music is different than delivering a slideshow and the fact that Palmer is a performer explains why she spent countless hours over four months to get it just right. “I slaved over the talk, writing and writing and re-writing and timing and re-timing and tweaking and trying to fit the perfect sets of information into 12 short minutes,” Palmer explained on her blog.
Palmer delivered the presentation constantly—in hotel rooms, to friends, in classrooms, on the plane to the conference. Palmer even approached someone sitting alone at a bar and asked, “Can I tell you a story?” No, it wasn’t a pickup line. Palmer really did want to practice her TED talk!
An effortless presentation takes hours of work. You must dig deeper into your soul than you ever have, choosing the right words that best represent the way you feel about your topic, delivering those words for maximum impact, and making sure that your nonverbal communication—your gestures, facial expressions, and body language—are consistent with your message.
If you fail to rehearse the presentation and to internalize the content, you will be thinking about a million other things instead of being focused on your story and making an emotional connection with your listener. The conversation in your head might sound like this: “Did I build an animation on this slide? What slide comes next? Why isn’t the clicker working? What story did I plan to tell now?” Your expressions and body language will reflect your uncertainty.
Have you ever studied dancing? A person is taught to count steps at first. They even talk to themselves. Only after hours and hours of practice do they look effortless. The same rule applies to a pitch or a presentation. It took Palmer, Dr. Jill, and the person who contacted me months of hard work to make it look easy.
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard, “Carmine, public speaking doesn’t come naturally to me like it does to other people.” I’ve got news for you—it doesn’t come naturally to those people, either. Most speakers fail to appreciate the role that practice plays in delivering a high-stakes presentation, whether it’s a TED talk, a job interview, or the one opportunity to pitch a new client. In my opinion, practice is the one thing that will transform your presentation from good to great. Put in the time. Your ideas are worth the effort.
(Carmine Gallo is an independent, objective communication expert not affiliated with TED Conferences, LLC)