The Brunner Method for Practicing
Are you giving yourself the best chance at success? Whether it’s making a pitch, a presentation, or a speech, unless you are practicing, chances are the answer is no. I hear the reasons all the time as to why someone may not practice; time constraints, discomfort of speaking in public and even the idea of practicing can induce anxiety. You might even think you know the material well enough or have sufficient speaking skills to succeed without rehearsal. Woody Allen once said, “80% of your success comes from just showing up.” I believe 80% of your success comes from preparation. And preparation includes practicing.
I’ve developed The Brunner Method for Practicing that incorporates my other concept, Liz’s 4 C’s, that will give you more confidence, help you to know your content well, have more clarity of your content, and help you deliver any message in a conversational way. By following these steps, you can unleash your potential in a way that’s based in both habit-forming best practice and human behavior:
First, schedule time to create your content.
Once you’ve designated that time and written your content, divide your completed message into three, four or five sections, depending on length and what makes sense from a content perspective.
Create a practice schedule based on how much time you have until you need to deliver your content.
Practice the last section out loud, first, by itself, and record yourself. (I’ll use four sections for this explanation.) Listen back to your recording for vocal variety, pacing, and volume. If you stumble over a word or phrase more than once, change it and eliminate the worry of stumbling over it when you are performing the speech live. Also, as you listen back to the recording, ask yourself if your content has forward motion, structure and flow.
The next day (or afternoon), practice section three by itself, record and listen to determine if it all sounds “good.” Once it feels comfortable, do sections three and four together, in chronological order. Then go on to section two, follow this same structure, and finally section one.
Depending on the length of each section, you may only need to spend 20-30-minutes doing each section, or less. You may also choose to simply work on one section and only one section for a couple of days if it is challenging. Your practice schedule may also be determined by how much time you have until the actual delivery of your speech. The point is: Do not go “top to bottom,” beginning to the end. (More on the reasoning and benefits of this below.)
Time yourself for each section, and eventually the entire speech, so you know how long your remarks are. Ensure that you're not rushing through important points or dragging on too long in order to keep your audience engaged.
The benefits of this methodology are:
There is a muscle memory that happens between your brain and your mouth when you practice out loud.
When you are finally delivering your message, from the beginning to the end, your energy stays high throughout your remarks because as you get to each next section, you’ve tricked your brain into thinking it’s a new speech because you practiced that section as its own entity. What often happens—if people practice out loud at all—is they usually go from the beginning to the end, but somewhere in the middle it begins to lose momentum. By practicing backwards you do not lose forward momentum.
If a particular section is not working, this is an opportunity to improve your storytelling, to possibly choose more effective words, eliminate any unnecessary information or jargon.
When you know your content, have clarity of your content, you will have more confidence and can deliver your remarks in a conversational way.
This is not about memorizing your remarks. As a professional keynote speaker, I’m not a big believer in memorization because if you forget something you thought you memorized, that can throw you off your game (see also: confidence). With the Brunner Method for Practicing, you are not learning your content by rote. And remember: the audience has NO idea what you were planning on saying, so to them, it’s always fresh.To learn this methodology with support, inquire here about 1:1 coaching experiences, tailor-made to fit your goals.
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