6-9-10 Shoulda Told Me #11

Practice makes perfect. Hmmm, I guess maybe that someone DID tell me. I can distinctly remember my mom telling me (relative to music) that practice makes perfect.

Unfortunately, just because Mom said so, didn’t necessarily mean that I easily translated that to my professional life. Duh.

In the past, I’ve talked about the communication skills that I defined in my model for executive skills and traits (1-4-10 Let’s Talk). And I’ve also talked about preparation, knowing/reading your audience, and how to seal the deal (3-12-10 Yea, There’s a Presentation for That). But today, I’m even more focused.

I still remember giving my very first presentation. No, I don’t remember the topic, but I do remember my physical reaction to the actual “giving of the presentation”. Frankly, it was horrible. Before I started and during the entire pitch, I had an awful case of the butterflies. I’m pretty sure that when I got up in the front of the room and looked out at the audience, all they saw was a terrified young woman with a bona fide deer-in-the-headlights look going on. My mouth was so dry you could’ve spun cotton in there. And my hands shook as I put up the first view foil. (For those of you under 40, we didn’t have Powerpoint back then. We had someone type up our presentation and then copy it to transparencies which were then shown on the screen. Heck, I’m guessing they don’t even make the transparencies or the display machines anymore!). And answering questions was excruciating as my brain seemed to have taken a vacation to less stressful climes.

That had to be the longest half hour of my life. But somehow I muddled through.
And I swore that it would never happen again.

So I did my research. I identified a couple of people that I thought were very good at giving presentations. And then I took the time to meet with them and ask a lot of questions.

The very best advice I got? Practice. If you want something bad enough, its worth some practice. And I decided that I wanted to be GOOD at giving presentations or talking in front of groups of people.

I finally realized that it really wasn’t so dumb to stand in front of the mirror and give my presentation to myself. Or it wasn’t so dumb to give the presentation in my car on the way to work. Or it wasn’t so dumb to ask a trusted colleague to listen to a dry run. All of these….. Over and over.

Did it help? Well, yes. I like to think that I ended up being pretty good at delivering pitches. At least others told me so. I will tell you that I never eliminated the butterflies (and that’s okay, because I felt that kept me on my toes). But I was able to minimize the nervous reactions during the pitch and I was able to rein my brain in so that it stayed in place during those q & a sessions.

So, I sure wish someone had told me sooner that practice makes perfect at work too!

Cheers!