Practice Makes Perfect–Or Thereabouts!

I love sports. One of my favorite sports to play is tennis. I love it so much that when I developed tennis elbow I played left-handed! (I had just purchased a new racket, and I couldn’t let the thing go to waste!) Despite my love for playing the sport, I’m not really good at it–but I’m much better than I used to be. You know why: Practice. Natural ability or not, to get really good at a sport requires practice. Legendary Czech tennis great Ivan Lendl has been quoted as saying:

If I don’t practice the way I should, then I won’t play the way that I know I can.

Practice, then, is the key to getting better at something–really anything. Even more so, it is the only way to achieve your best performance! Even greats like Ivan Lendl didn’t win every game or even every match. Practice made him better. It helped him to achieve great things. It didn’t make him perfect. Perfection is not our goal. Competence is.

The same rule applies to the way we perform during impromptu speaking opportunities. The more we practice, the better we become. Like Lendl, we will never achieve the kind of performance we want, the kind of performance we’d like to achieve, without practice.

I have found that there are two ways to effectively practice for impromptu speaking:

• Do it more often
• Memorize and follow a pattern

The more you do something, the better you will be at that something. Just look at how badly the younger crowd beats us at video games! If you have a job or position that gives you opportunities to practice frequently, you will naturally get better. If not, I recommend membership in a local Toastmasters club. At each regular club meeting you will be given the chance to practice your impromptu speaking.

As for the patterns, we’ve discussed 3 of them in previous posts to this blog:

• Tell a Story
• Position-Action-Benefit
• Past-Present-Future

Having the pattern of choice memorized allows you to focus on delivering the content without being distracted by how to organize what you’re saying. By keeping these patterns in mind you can be practiced and ready when your next impromptu speaking opportunity comes along. You’ll be prepared to perform the way you know you can!

For more information about Toastmasters and help finding a local club in your area, check out this link:

Toastmasters International

Now get out there and Speak Up!

Position, Action, Benefit

If you’ve ever purchased a house or lot, you know that there’s a really important part of the process: Surveying the land. When I bought my house, a small team of surveyors came out and put stakes in the ground to define the borders of my lot. These stakes clearly defined the position of my land relative to the other lots in the neighborhood. It’s important to know exactly where we stand in relationship with our neighbors.

Likewise, when we communicate with others using impromptu speaking techniques it is frequently important to make sure that our position, our stake in the ground is clear. We don’t want our presentation to sound as if we have no clear point, as if we’re floundering searching for the words to express just what we want to say. And we won’t have a crew of surveyors nearby to help, either. It’s up to us!

Today we’ll discuss the second technique or pattern in our conversation about creating our own impromptu-speaking masterpieces. The first was discussed in a previous post:

• Tell a story

The first pattern is a simple and easy-to-recall recipe for success. I highly recommend you memorize and apply one or more of these patterns we’re discussing as you build your own skill in this area. It’s being able to communicate those valuable ideas you have that makes you most effective. It’s in our best interest that we be able to effectively get those ideas out in a form where they can be understood and discussed.

Today we’ll tackle a slightly more advanced pattern. I first learned this pattern in a “Presenting for Impact” class at my employer. (It’s a wonderful class, by the way. I strongly recommend that you take it when offered in a classroom near you!) The pattern is: Position, Action, Benefit (PAB).

Position is your stake in the ground, it’s where you stand on the issue, what you believe.

Action is the step or steps you want the audience, team, group, person to take.

Benefit is what’s in it for them. How will they benefit from following the action you recommend?

Let’s apply this to a real-world situation we’ve seen discussed right here before. Imagine we’re asked, on the spot with no warning, how our department can reduce costs. Our answer might come out something like this:

(Position) I believe that our team can cut costs be reducing the amount of waste paper we generate. (Action) I’d like us to consider eliminating header sheets, turning double-sided printing on by default, encourage each other to do multi-up printing–or not print at all–and to start making better use of the recycling containers that are available. (Benefit) The benefit to our group will be measured in the cost of using fewer sheets of paper overall. It will also be measured in green benefits as we reduce the amount of paper we send to the local landfill.

I think we’ve all followed a pattern like this one before, perhaps without even realizing it. With practice, the patterns we’ve learned so far–Tell a Story and Position/Action/Benefit–will prepare you for the unexpected and inevitable impromptu Speak Up opportunities.

Color Outside the Lines

It’s popular to speak boldly about “coloring outside the lines.” I think of it as a more hip version of the threadbare “think outside the box.”

The truth is, though, that when we first clutched those fat Crayons in our pudgy little hands the lines on the page provided guidance as we struggled for mastery.

I can remember being really tiny and looking with admiration at the coloring books of the older kids. Not so much as a smudge outside of the lines! Wow! They were, to me, masterpieces. I struggled mightily to build my skill to emulate their success. The lines on the pages of my coloring books gave me guidelines or patterns to follow. It was these patterns that eventually helped me to succeed.

When I watch the likes of EMC CEO Joe Tucci or President Barak Obama take questions from an audience, I feel like that little kid again. I watch as they produce a coloring book’s worth of impromptu speaking masterpieces that I wish to emulate. How do we build our skill to achieve a similar level of comfort and articulation? I believe that the answer, like when we first learned to color inside the lines, is to follow a pattern. Following a pattern will give us the guidelines we need to build expertise and eventually succeed.

Knowing and practicing a pattern to follow will also prepare us for the surprises that impromptu speaking opportunities bring. Consider the brilliant work of US Airways Captain Sullenberger in the recent crash landing in New York’s Hudson River. All passengers and crew aboard flight 1549 survived because in the 5 minutes between take off and splash down Sullenberger followed practiced guidelines and patterns. He had never lost two engines on takeoff before, but years of training and preparation equipped him with patterns he could follow automatically.

Knowing the patterns allowed him to focus on delivery–successfully delivering the passengers and crew alive!

Similarly, but with much less danger, our impromptu speaking opportunities present us with situations we’ve never been in before.

Like Captain Sullenberger we can handle these unexpected situations by automatically following patterns we’ve memorized and practiced. These patterns help us remain in control and focused even in the most challenging situations–successfully delivering the information our audience demands.

In a short series of upcoming posts to this blog we will discuss three patterns that we can follow to develop our impromptu speaking skills.

The patterns are:

*     Tell a story

*     Position, action, benefit (PAB)

*     Past, present, future

Stay tuned…