There is no replacement for preparation. The time and effort will pay off as good preparation for anything does.

My husband, Che, who is a great speaker and funny too, goes to great lengths to prepare for a speech. He has quite a process:

1. First off he makes sure that he knows the subject very well.
2. He writes out the whole speech – the first draft.
3. He dry-runs it several times, out loud, when he is on his own. This helps him refine the speech in terms of the right kind of words, how they sound out loud, and how he feels speaking them out loud.
4. When his talk is refined, he starts practicing the actual delivery – with a video camera.
5. He replays the video to see where he can improve. Now, often he does this on his own, but this step is something that could be done with your mentor.

I use a similar approach minus the video camera.

What approach have you used to prepare for a talk?

Shew! We are going on to week 3 of the A to Z Challenge. The last three days have been hectic and I was not as regular posting as I would have liked. It is all part of the learning.

This post is part of the Blogging from A to Z Challenge. Twitter hashtag is #AtoZChallenge and Twitter id is @AprilA2Z