The sneaky weakness that attacks when you're most exposed

Eliminate this weakness through practice

“An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching.”

— Mahatma Ghandi

I could feel the heat of the crowd as they looked at me expectantly. I could feel my heart beating fast. I can sense dread as my fear that I am boring the crowd got worse and worse. What’s that? Oh no, I can feel the sweat building on my body and showing up through my shirt. This presentation is turning out to be a disaster. This isn’t supposed to happen. I’ve given tons of presentations recently at all levels and they’ve all received great feedback. What the heck is happening here?

Was this a massively important presentation to secure funding from the Board or CEO? No it wasn’t. It was important but an informal presentation where I shared the stage with some of peers as part of a Careers Conference so that other employees can get a sense of the opportunities available. We had a 30 minute slot shared between myself and one other General Manager. Our subject was to talk about networking and share some tips. Compared to previous presentations I’ve given, this should’ve been a breeze. No slides, no hard questions about model assumptions or returns on investment. No discussions around risks or regulatory compliance. This was simply a chance for me to share my experiences. What the hell happened? Why did I start to stumble the moment I opened my mouth? Why did my heart rate jump up dramatically? Why am I sweating profusely when the air con was on full blast? What was going on? In the stark contrast of reflection, I realised what it was that was missing:

Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice

The trap I fell into was that this presentation in comparison to all the other presentations I’ve had to give seemed so informal. Don’t get me wrong, the topic was important as it was sharing knowledge that could be valuable to many younger employees. But the amount of technical information and data I had to be across was limited. It was just me sharing my experience right.

For this reason, I didn’t practice. I spent probably two hours across two weeks to get ready for this presentation. I worked with my peer to determine what we were going to say so that we didn’t contradict each other, but we didn’t rehearse or anything. Actually, more accurately, I didn’t rehearse. I didn’t do many of the things that I’d normally do for a presentation like:

• Blocking out time ahead of the presentation to mentally get ready. I had simply stepped from one meeting straight into the presentation.

• Rehearse in my head how I was going to put my points forward. In all other presentations, I would rehearse in my head or out loud for hours to get ready.

• Recite my self confidence inciting phrase before the presentation. It sounds silly but it works for me.

Because I didn’t do any of the above, when the spotlight was on me and I had to put my points forward, my brain realised that I hadn’t practised and didn’t know how best to put the points forward. As introverts, we can’t talk on the fly like extroverts. We need to practice in our heads first. By not blocking out time beforehand, my brain didn’t even have the chance to realise that it hadn’t practised and wasn’t ready. The first time it realised this was when we I was standing on stage in front of the crowd. By then, it was too late!

The sense of dread was only made worse when my co-presenter had very obviously practised and being more of an extrovert, essentially shot out of the gate. The contrast made my brain realise just how poorly prepared I was. Now to be fair, it wasn’t as bad as it seemed. Due to the lack of practice, in my head it felt ten times worse than what other people saw. In fact, I did have a few people come to me and say my message was very helpful. But it was far below the standard I had expected for myself. For this reason, I not only felt unprepared but I also let myself down. Perhaps that is what I regret feeling the most.

So the realisation I had this week centres around a famous phrase many successful peoples have used:

“How you do anything, is how you do everything.”

So the action for this week is this: regardless of how trivial something might seem or how informal or simple the action is. Always practice. You might not need to practice as much as if you were presenting to the Board. But definitely practice in your head at least once so that when that spotlight hits you, you brain knows how to get started and the momentum that creates will help to overcome your nerves.