Your performance: rehearsing

Perhaps the most neglected key to success in speechmaking is practice. After you --or you and your speechwriter-- have completed research, writing, revising and polishing, you want to benefit fully from all that work. The final, essential step: rehearse.

1. Why? You can eliminate excessive nervousness (normal nervous energy actually stimulates a better performance); discover weaknesses and errors to correct; make yourself familiar with your talk and therefore be more relaxed. Rehearsing builds confidence and can help to ensure you enjoy a successful performance.

2. What will it be? Memorize? Most people don't have the time. Use notes? You risk not using exact words or correct terms, or forgetting effective phrases you have carefully crafted. Read? As we all have learned to our despair, in the hands of many people, reading a text is deadly. But for you, using a complete text can be the most practical and effective --when you perform the speech, as outlined in Your choice: a written text?

3. The whole thing. Rehearsing is effective if you invest the time needed to practice everything. Prepare a marked rehearsal copy of the script as suggested. Rehearse the whole speech --don't drop the last third. Take advantage of all the suggestions-- as if it was the real thing. Ideally, rehearse with family, friends or colleagues. Use a lectern --or a reasonable facsimile: it is key to performing well using a written text.

4. Your voice.Your greatest tool. Rehearsing gives you a chance to add dimension, strength, vitality to your voice, your principal means of communication. Ask your rehearsal audience to report if they can hear you loud and clear. When they say you are too loud, that will be just about right for your real, larger audience. Most people need to speak more slowly and more loudly, and to e-nun-ci-ate more distinctly than they usually do.

5. Your body. It speaks volumes. Your posture, gestures, movement, facial expressions, eyes -- all tell people a lot about you and your message. According to conventional wisdom, more than half of all human communication is nonverbal. Take full advantage of your own personal instrument to communicate authority, conviction, integrity.

6. Your appearance. Well prepared and well groomed, you naturally adopt the posture and bearing of a person who is poised, confident, authoritative. Looking good, you feel good. Thinking "I am relaxed" can help you to relax. Stride to the podium purposefully. Stand erect, head up (How often do we see people slouching?).

7. Your hands. Natural, spontaneous, meaningful gestures can be persuasive tools in delivering key parts of your message. What do you do spontaneously in conversation? You reach out, you reach up, you show how large or small is an object, an issue, a concept.

8. Your face. This is where people look to see whether you are friendly, lively, genuine: convincing. To believe you, they don't want to see deadpan, pretense, hostility (preoccupied with their effort to do everything right, speakers can actually appear hostile). Smile occasionally, naturally.

9. Your eyes. Contact! One of the most common criticisms: "He didn't look at me. Why?" From the start, regularly look, in turn, at a person on the left; later, in the middle; later, on the right. Looking up and offering a genuine smile can build a bond, a rapport with your whole audience. Again, this is conversational. It is critically important when you use a script.

10. Practice perfects. A modest amount of time and effort for rehearsing will not interfere with other demands we face. For an important occasion, it is a final investment in your performance, to ensure you get maximum return from your earlier investment in developing your ideas. On to success.