- So you've spent all of this time
preparing your talk,
you've put together your slides,
the next thing is to practice.
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- Do you think that when Beyoncé gives a big performance,
she hasn't practiced it?
Absolutely not.
Any professional speaker, entertainer, musician,
what we see as an audience,
is a product that has been refined.
You have to do it over, and over, and over again.
- Yes, most of the work you're gonna do
in terms of preparing a talk,
is about building those slides,
figuring out that story, doing all that work.
So maybe that's like 75% of the work,
but then, like a quarter of my time
needs to be spent practicing.
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Practicing you talk accomplishes, actually many things.
Fundamentally, it allows you to really think about
how you're saying things.
Are you being clear?
Are you comfortable with what you're saying?
Are you able to be conversational?
- One advice that I was given was to speak less
but speak more effectively.
The way I was told I could achieve that was by practicing.
- It lessens the nerves,
so the more that you're comfortable with the talk,
the more that you're gonna be comfortable with the talk
when you're on the stage.
It's also about remembering your talk.
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Practicing it really ingrains it into your brain
and you then have a chance to sort of be like,
"Okay, well I know where this talk is going next,
I know what next slide is happening."
It allows you to feel more comfortable,
act more comfortable,
when you're up in front of an audience.
- If you're an athlete and you're like,
practice throwing a ball
over and over again, and you wanna have that throw
in your kind of muscle memory, and similarly,
the more times you run through your talk,
the more it's gonna kind of roll off the tongue.
- Practicing I wold say,
is the number one way to remember your talk,
but practicing can look different for different people.
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- Spending time at first, writing scripts,
rehearsing them, until they became part of my voice.
- Putting the script to the side
and then going over the presentation.
- I have not found that scripting works too well for me.
There's something about the action of saying the talk
that I need to do that the physical action of writing,
doesn't seem to capture.
- Talking myself through it, saying it out loud.
I'll practice in front of my cat,
I'll practice in front of my husband, my colleagues at work.
- You can do things like, video yourself,
or do an audio recording of yourself.
- Filming myself and watching it back
was extremely difficult.
But it was the way I really saw
where my hand movements were very silly
and where I wasn't pausing or slowing down.
- I do a lot of practicing
maybe in front of a mirror at first,
and I try and do that actually
without any of the visual cues.
I wanna make sure that I'm comfortable talking through it
regardless of whether there are slides there.
- Practice everything.
Practice what you're going to say, practice pauses,
practice hand gestures, the order of your slides,
how you're gonna deliver things,
but you also need to get feedback.
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- All of these ideas have just been living in your head,
but it's not entirely clear
until someone else has seen what you're saying
and gives you some feedback,
whether or not you're actually getting that out across
through your talk.
So am I making sense?
Did you follow me through the talk?
Is my language clear?
Am I using too much jargon?
Am I not making sense?
Are my slides clear?
Are they too confusing?
Or too complicated?
Is there anything about my design
that maybe isn't accessible?
Am I using red and green?
Which would be a problem
for people who are red-green color blind.
- Is there a place where you need to give
more background information
because something is not clear later on in the talk?
- And then there's little simple things,
like, are there typos?
Did I remember citations?
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- In order to present yourself in a really clear way,
it's important to try out how you're describing things
in front of a lot of different people.
- Trying to find people
who are you are friends and colleagues
who kind of mimic the audience
that you're gonna be in front of.
- It is important to have the perspective of someone else,
someone who's not from your field,
someone who's not a scientist,
because these people usually have the best feedback
on how understandable your presentation is.
- By asking other people,
letting them be critical of your work,
you can really make it better.
- It's not just about knowing what you need to change,
you also get to hear about what your strengths are
and what you've done well.
It's just really about making your communication better.
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- An effective talk is made in the preparation.
- As you do more and more of them,
the process becomes a lot quicker
and you know what to do.
- You get to know yourself better, and what works for you.
- Practice makes better.
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