Concept
Rehearsal out loud
Rehearsal out loud is saying the whole thing, start to finish, to a colleague, a partner or a wall, before it counts. In Talk Like TED, Carmine Gallo reports that the most natural-seeming speakers had often rehearsed the most. At work almost nobody rehearses, which is the opportunity.
Rehearsing in the head does not count, because the head skips the sentence that does not work and supplies the word you will not find in the room. Out loud, you hear the opener that is really a warm-up, the third point that is really two, and the ask you forgot to make. One pass is enough for a meeting; a presentation that matters deserves three. The habit extends beyond talks: a hard conversation rehearsed once out loud arrives with the facts in order and the sentence that says what you do not mean ready, which makes it easier to stay curious when the other person reacts. Gallo's best-known example, the neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor, says she practised her talk about two hundred times so that it would sound like a conversation.
A real-life example
A hospital pharmacist has five minutes at a board meeting to ask for a second dispensing robot. Saying it aloud to a colleague the night before, she hears that her first minute is history nobody needs and that she never names the cost. She cuts the history and opens with the cost and the waiting times. The board asks two questions and approves a trial.
How to use it
- 1Say it out loud, start to finish, once before anything that counts.
- 2Listen for the sentence that does not work, the point that is really two, and the missing ask.
- 3For a presentation that matters, three passes; for a hard conversation, one.