From the vault: 7 secret advantages of the speaker who practices

(Editor's note: Published last year, this post is one of the most-read-ever on the blog--and it's one I share with my trainees again and again, in the hopes they'll discover these bonuses for themselves.)

As a speaker coach and trainer, I can tell you that the one thing I always recommend is the same thing my trainees rarely do: Practice, and lots of it.

I don't just recommend practice for your speech or presentation because it sounds good. I know there are seven secret advantages--some of the best advantages in public speaking--reserved for speakers who practice. And by practice, I don't mean flipping through your slides an hour before the presentation. I mean run-throughs, full of stops and starts, until you're able to deliver that talk as you envision it. Helpful observer friends and cameras optional, although they both can help the practice process. Whether you do it solo or with a team, practice will help you:

1. Look like you didn't need practice: Call it the Great Irony of Public Speaking: The speaker who practices winds up looking relaxed, unruffled, at ease and extemporaneous. The speaker who gets up to speak without preparation looks like, well, she isn't prepared. The unprepared speaker is more likely to run overtime, stumble, forget and otherwise look forced. You can only get that extemporaneous, casual look through practice--and it's the biggest practice advantage.
2. Remember more of what you wanted to say: No question about it, repetition through practice means your brain will retain more of what you wanted to say. Every speaker has those moments when her mind goes blank. Practice means that the words have a better chance of coming out of your mouth, anyway. 
3. Roll with the punches: If your slides don't work, you can still speak. If the room changes, the mic doesn't work, or you wind up with lots of other last-minute public speaking snafus, you can still speak. Knowing you have practiced your speech--including what might go wrong--keeps you cool under difficult and changing circumstances.
4. Work out your stumbles ahead of time: Keep tripping over that troublesome word or phrase? Hesitating to say that strong, pointed statement? You'll get better at it with practice. And who doesn't prefer to make the mistakes in private, rather than into a microphone? If you're working with a speechwriter, let her sit in on your practice so lines can be rewritten on the spot to make them easier to say.
5. Try a new speaking skill with lower risk: If you're trying something new to you, from storytelling to speaking simply about technical topics, practice makes that first foray less risky...because it won't actually be your first foray after you've practiced many times. 
6. Build a stronger structure for your speech or presentation: Want a strong, fast start to grab and hold your audience's attention? A big ending? A section of your keynote that gets the audience engaged and active? Practice can make sure you have the time to plan, try out and perfect those key sections of the presentation.
7. Hit those grace notes: Whether you want to polish the delivery of that special quote to use your vocalizing well, maneuver the stage smoothly, or get creative with your special thanks and acknowledgements, grace notes are practice-worthy. The things that can take your speech from good to great are best nurtured with time to practice.

Don't think you have time to practice? Check out my 5 stealth ways to find the time for public-speaking practice. You can do this.

I'm delighted that Andrew Dlugan's great Six Minutes blog chose this article for his weekly roundup of the best blog posts on public speaking for the week ending July 14, 2012. Thanks, Andrew!

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The Eloquent Woman's weekly speaker toolkit

Readers who follow The Eloquent Woman on Facebook are already used to seeing links to good reads, resources and ideas from other sources there, in addition to posts from the blog. On Mondays, I summarize that extra content and put it here on the blog, so all readers can benefit. Every weekly speaker toolkit has a mix of the practical and the inspirational for speakers, especially women speakers. Here's a look at the week just past:

• Recollecting where we've been: We have always fought: Challenging the women, cattle and slaves narrative pokes at our assumptions about what women have done and can do.
• Yes, really: If you get the public speaking jitters, here's a chance to reflect on why a little bit of stress is actually good for you.
• What the audience sees: I'm a big fan of using what I call the "invisible visual," a word picture that your audience can see in the mind's eye. Imagine a flying pig: How words take shape in the brain clues you in on what's happening to them when you do that.
• Come to Brussels in September: I'm chairing the autumn conference of the European Speechwriter Network in Brussels in September and hope you can join us for this focused two-day event. It starts with a full-day workshop on the nuts and bolts of speechwriting, followed by a day of top speakers on leadership communication. If you want to improve your ability to write and deliver speeches or improve your company's ability to communicate ideas and engage staff in developing new behaviors, this is the meeting for you. Please do join us and share the conference information with your colleagues. 
• Are you sure your story should be told? Snoopy has the last word in a cautionary tale for speakers.

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More ways to use The Eloquent Woman Index of Famous Women's Speeches

With more than 100 speeches and counting, The Eloquent Woman Index of Famous Women's Speeches is a powerhouse resource if you're looking for quotes, speech examples or inspiration and training help from women speakers. This year, we're slicing the Index to make it more useful. Check out these posts that share famous speeches by type of speaker, speaking style and topic:

• Reach: Find inspiration and aspiration in these 8 famous commencement speeches by women
• Stretch: They make off-the-cuff look good in these 6 famous extemporaneous speeches by women
• Represent: They lived up to "lift every voice and sing" in these 14 famous speeches by African-American women speakers
• Seek: Smart, passionate searchers can be found in these 6 famous speeches by women scientists
• Overcome: Jitters stopped them at first, but you'll find how to overcome your own fears in these 5 famous speeches by women who feared public speaking
• Express: Speaking on the most personal of topics, these 7 famous speeches by women about health will open your eyes and your heart.
• Stand and deliver: The inability to speak in public spurred the earliest of these 6 famous speeches about voting by women speakers
• Go global: More than a third of the Index includes non-U.S. speeches. Here are 13 famous UK and European speeches by women
• Say it plain: Hillary Clinton said it best: "Women's rights are human rights," and she's among these 13 famous human rights speeches by women

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TEDMED editor Lisa Shufro on fear and the first-time speaker

Lisa Shufro on the TEDMED stage

In a Huffington Post essay, TEDMED managing editor Lisa Shufro shares an insight into fear and the first-time speaker -- and while it may seem to be a story about magician David Blaine and how he prepared for a TEDMED talk, it's about Shufro, too. That's because she and Blaine belong to a small but amazing club: They both gave their first-ever public talks from the stage of TEDMED.

Full disclosure: Shufro is a longtime reader of The Eloquent Woman and my client, since I coach TEDMED speakers, thanks to her. She leads the editorial team that finds, selects and preps TEDMED speakers, who range from celebrities to unknowns, patients as well as physicians, scientists and policymakers. But to my mind, her biggest accomplishment was her first speaking gig on a stage where the stakes were high:

Two years later I gave my first talk in public from the stage of the Kennedy Center Opera House. In front of two hundred thousand people. Many of them were accomplished doctors and scientists. I was now the Managing Editor of TEDMED -- without a formal degree in science or medicine. As a musician, I'd been on stage thousands of times. But never without a violin between the audience and me. Right before going on stage, my words drained from my mind. I started holding my breath.

If you're a first-time or would-be speaker--or just remember the first speech you ever gave--you'll love this essay. Shufro writes it in the manner of a good TED talk: It's personal, and follows a path from one first-time speaker to another. She uses a visual you can picture in your mind's eye, a playing card on which Blaine had written a note for his talk, which he gave her once his talk was done;  later, she took that card onstage when her turn came to speak. Lovely symmetry there. This is a story full of small, intimate moments, juxtaposed against the looming, large stage they shared. And for speakers, it's a good discussion of risk and fear and how they come into play during preparation and that moment when you step on the stage. I'm so delighted Shufro has shared this story with us.

(TEDMED photo)

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The Eloquent Woman's weekly speaker toolkit

Readers who follow The Eloquent Woman on Facebook are already used to seeing the "extras" I share there: links to good reads, resources and ideas from other sources, in addition to posts from the blog. I'm summarizing that extra content and putting it here on the blog, so all readers can benefit. Here's a look at the week just past:

• Suss them out: Not sure who you're up against in a negotiation? You can plant a "trust land mine" to get your bargainer to reveal more.
• Speechless: Thanks to some notes he made, we get a glimpse of a speech President Eisenhower never gave.
• Will you ever be taken seriously? If you're always the youngest person in the meeting room, that's a fair question. Some great tactics here for anyone to use in speaking to the powerful.
• Heckle this: Michelle Obama confronted a heckler--and won the exchange. Here's my take on five things you can learn about handling hecklers when you speak.
• Don't just Google it: Google employees teach one another professional skills. Here are tips on how to present the next great idea from inside the place that has plenty of them.
• September in Brussels: After the great experience I had keynoting the International Speechwriting Conference in London last month, I'm especially pleased to say I'll be chairing the autumn meeting of the same group in September in Brussels.
• About the quote: Inspiration for you to remember before your next speech, from our Pinterest board of quotes for public speakers.

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Famous Speech Friday: Robert Kennedy on the death of Martin Luther King, Jr.

If I'm going to blow up the rules for Famous Speech Friday, it will be for this speech. I saw it broadcast live 45 years ago, and it stands among the best impromptu speeches I know. Normally, this series brings you famous speeches by women, but I find myself unable to let this one pass unnoted this week: Yesterday was the 45th anniversary of the speaker's own assassination, an indelible memory for me.

In 1968, Robert F. Kennedy was running for the presidency of the United States, and on the campaign trail.  His brother, President John F. Kennedy, had been assassinated just five years before. He arrived in Indianapolis to learn that civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. had been assassinated. He was to speak in the heart of the city's black neighborhoods, and it was feared that citizens would riot. Kennedy threw away his stump speech and spoke to the moment in brief, extemporaneous and simple, yet elegant, language--words designed to unite the crowd at a divisive moment:

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black. 

So I ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King -- yeah, it's true -- but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love -- a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke.

If there's a speech that exemplifies the great insight I heard from speaker coach Peter Botting at the International Speechwriting Conference in London--the idea that "big ideas don't need big words"--it's this one. Anyone might follow this speech, which deals with the minutiae of the moment and hints at a larger vision of what this means for America. It quotes Aeschylus but stays close to the emotions of the crowd. It's a quiet speech, not at all anxious, but appropriate in its sadness, regret and respect for the events of the day.

What can you learn from this famous speech?

• Speak from your heart, not from your notes when the moment is tense and emotional. You can see Kennedy fidgeting with what must have been notes--he had a plane ride's worth of time to craft notes in between learning that King was shot and learning that he'd died--but this speech didn't rely on them. 
• Heal with the song of poetry: Kennedy calls this his favorite poem, and the Greek poet he quotes blessedly translates into the simplest words: Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget/falls drop by drop upon the heart,/until, in our own despair,/against our will,/comes wisdom/through the awful grace of God. In effect, he's letting the audience offload its emotion into the poet's words and subtly reminding them that these powerful feelings are ancient as well as current. And--so like the ancient Greek poets-- the poem is bracing and forthright, not maudlin and weepy. It fits the moment. This also works because Kennedy stays true to himself by sharing his favorite poem, a well-worn, well-known-to-him stanza, one he's unlikely to forget in the moment.
• Be willing to face the music: A dogged campaigner, Kennedy could have gone ahead with his prepared stump speech, but he even tells the fans "Could you lower those signs, please?" in the first phrases of his remarks. This speech speaks forthrightly about the tragedy, and aims to help the listeners make sense of it in real terms. "In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it's perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black -- considering the evidence evidently is that there were white people who were responsible -- you can be filled with bitterness, and with hatred, and a desire for revenge," said Kennedy, laying out the realities. "We can move in that direction as a country, in greater polarization -- black people amongst blacks, and white amongst whites, filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand, and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion, and love."

Would that we all could pull ourselves together as speakers in such a moment as this, and so effectively. His words carry all the more power for us today because, two months after this event, Kennedy himself was assassinated.

You can read the text of this famous speech and hear the audio here, and the video is below. What do you think of this famous speech?

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