I have been  blogging for 14 years.  That’s extraordinary, if I do say so, not the least because no one knew when I was starting the blog how long the format itself would last.  Blogging as a thing was just getting going, and there were still a lot of blogs that looked more like online diaries than what we typically see today.  The diary format has by and large migrated to Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and other trendier social media platforms.  That leaves the blog format for more content-rich, serious blogs like mine – blogs that want to explore a topic in depth over a long period of time – in short pieces.  That emphasis on brevity was the innovation inherent in the blog format, and it has stood up well.  We have only become more information-saturated and time-challenged in the intervening years, and so we value short takes, perhaps, even more now than we did then.

One of my earliest posts was on the importance of rehearsal, and fittingly enough I was thinking about rehearsal again recently in work with clients, because human nature hasn’t changed much in 14 years.  People still try to weasel out of rehearsal.  They fret that they will become stale if they rehearse, or over-practiced and stiff.  The likelihood of that outcome is vanishingly small, by the way.  I think that over the 14 years of working with hundreds of clients I may have seen one who truly became stale from over-rehearsal.  And that was because he was a control freak who didn’t know how to change up his rehearsal modes.

One aspect of public speaking has changed in the 14 years since I started, and it makes rehearsal more important rather than less:  virtual presenting.  Here’s a tip for executives who attempt to shirk rehearsing because it’s uncomfortable on Zoom:  don’t.  You need more rehearsal, not less, if you are going to deliver a competent virtual presentation.

Why is that the case?  Presenting on video mostly means zero feedback.  You get no sense from the audience how you’re coming across, either good or bad.  If you are not used to shouting into the void, this experience may be very disconcerting for you.  Even if you haven’t thought much about how important an audience’s reactions are to you, you will miss them acutely when you first get started giving a speech on Zoom.

The sensation of putting lots of human energy out there and getting none back is worse than a bad first date – much worse, because that’s only one person.  The entire audience is there, lurking, on the video conference, yet it’s mute, and you inevitably start to imagine that it is saying nothing because it doesn’t like you or it is not interested.  Even a lot of positive self-talk doesn’t help much in this regard, unless you really, really like talking to yourself and your self-confidence is iron-clad.

So you need to rehearse a video speech for the content and to get the phrasing in your head.  And then you need to rehearse again with an eye (or ear) to bullet-proofing the delivery so that you could do it in a hailstorm standing on a tightrope over the Grand Canyon with no safety net – with vultures circling around your head waiting for you to fail.  Until you can do that without a qualm, don’t talk to me about over-rehearsal.

Happy 14 years!  I think the gift is ivory, in case you felt the need to give one.  No real ivory, please!  But you can give me some feedback:  what should the next 14 look like?