Add Power Pose to Your Speech Prep

Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman

Have you ever had to psych yourself up before you give a speech? Do you sit up with your chest open wide ready to run on stage or do you sit in your chair with your arms crossed, head slightly dipped, awaiting the Toastmaster to introduce you so you can get it over with? I used to fall into the latter category until I listened to Amy Cuddy's presentation on the Power of Posture and Non-Verbal Communication.

Amy Cuddy, Harvard Business School professor, and her colleagues conducted a study about the relationship between posture and confidence to better understand why some students participate more than others in class - participation being  a significant portion of the student's grade.

One of the findings of the study showed a direct correlation between posture and the levels of cortisol and testosterone. Cortisol is the hormone related to anxiety and testosterone is known as the dominance hormone. The test showed that participants who held a power pose - one that opens the chest and makes the person "bigger" - for just two minutes had marked increases in testosterone and therefore confidence. The reverse was also shown in participants who held a low power pose - making oneself smaller by slouching or holding arms closer to the body - by higher levels of cortisol physiologically increasing anxiety.

The helpful hint from these findings is to add holding a power position for two minutes before you deliver your next speech and you will not only FEEL, but will actually BE more confident in your delivery.

Is it possible to "over-rehearse"?

How many times have we heard it? "You don't want to over-rehearse. You won't sound natural." The more I learn about public speaking, the more I believe this is nothing more than a meme, something people say when they either don't know what to say or are looking for excuses not to rehearse. As a relatively new speaker, I've had to choose between two opinions. You'll hear these two opinions if you listen, so let's try to decide, which one should I listen to?

• Somebody who's given a handful of public speeches, maybe even gotten their CC in Toastmasters, saying "You don't want to over-rehearse."
• Actors, who rehearse the same script for months and yet sound authentic when they perform it, or musicians who spend hundreds of hours woodshedding a tune and yet sound fresh when it's performed, saying there is no such thing as over-rehearsing.

Personally, I think I side with the actors and musicians. So I was a bit surprised when I came upon this article by Nick Morgan. Nick is an expert on public speaking, specializing in how we come across to audiences in ways such as body language. (You can listen to an interview with Nick here on the excellent "What the Speak" podcast.) I was researching the question of whether you can over-rehearse and this article of Nick's came up. I saw the title and thought: how could rehearsing a presentation ever be a bad idea?

The article is interesting because he points out 3 kinds of rehearsal that are really not rehearsal at all:

• Waiting until the last minute to rehearse. What this really means is the person procrastinated until the last minute and is hoping to cram all their rehearsal into one marathon session the day of the presentation. I can tell you, that doesn't work. You need to build rehearsal into the days or weeks prior to the presentation.
• Rehearsing the wrong speech. This is pretty much the same as the first one. Michael Port, former professional actor and now speaker and speech coach, says the majority of the editing happens during the rehearsal process. I wholeheartedly agree with this. My speech at the beginning of the rehearsal process gets changed as soon as it starts coming out of my mouth. (More on this in another posting.)
• Rehearing it only in your mind. This is not rehearsal at all. In fact, it's really a euphemism for "winging it." (I'll be talking about this more in another posting as well.)

In reality, he's saying the same thing: you cannot over-rehearse. As Nick concludes, "How much should you rehearse?  A lot.  Stage actors often get up to 6 weeks, 5 or 6 days per week, 8 – 10 hours per day, to rehearse.  That’s how you end up looking natural, assured, and authoritative.  Not by winging it."

So, let's follow the actors and musicians and, until next time, rehearse well.

Gary