How to practice your speech even when you have no time.

If you work in a business and are in a leadership position of any kind, you are going to have to give a talk to your team(or colleagues) to either:

1. Inform them all of the latest updates of information in your organisation that they need to know or put into action.
2. Motivate staff to pull them in the direction they need to go to succeed for your organisation.

However, because you are a busy person, you have no time to do that 'perfect' presentation you planned in your mind. So what we all do is put it off until the day we can get everything right. However life doesn't usually work that way, wouldn't you agree? Would you prefer to have a perfect presentation one day or the best you can do today?

'Don't put off until tomorrow what you can do today.' -Benjamin Franklin

I believe most of us would opt for the second option. So, here's my four step plan to get you to do more effective presentations that would influence your team more effectively.

1. Have a really good knowledge of the subject you want to talk to your group about.
2. Get it written down in a format or style of the presentation you are making.
3. Practice by going over the presentation. Either by reading it line by line or memorising the 'roadmap' which is the key elements/words of the talk.
4. Record your presentation to hear your voice and adjust accordingly. Yes, when you first start recording yourself you may find that you don't like the sound of your voice. This is just because you are not used to hearing yourself. It's normal. You are not Simon Sinek.or Mel Robins. or Obama. You are YOU.

And finally the 'hidden' last step. It's optional. Play the recording to someone you trust to get a critical feedback that you can make adjustments to. Then go back and repeat steps 2 to 4.

Oh and by the way you don't need to spend a long time planning this. The most amount of time spent would be gathering the knowledge beforehand.(Step 1).

If you are confident that you understand the subject well enough then you can move on quickly to step 2. Use modern technology to put all your ideas into a notepad on your smartphone. Afterwards expand your ideas and write down the speech. Some people don't like to write down their whole speech word for word.(To leave space for improvisation). I think this is equally as effective depending on your style. Then hit 'record' on your phone and go over it without overthinking what you are doing.

Don't procrastinate but put this to work and start seeing the results quickly.