Mastering Public Speaking: Why Improvising is the Result of Preparation

“I don’t need to rehearse, I’ll improvise”.
No, dear CEO. You will try to “wing it”.
Improvising gets you applause. Winging it gets you nowhere. Here’s why:

I’ve trained as an improv artist for years.
Read that again.
I’ve put in hundreds of hours of time and effort to prepare for going on stage and performing without a script.

This is why improvising when you do a presentation is the OPPOSITE of “winging it”.

Winging it means:
😐 You spend days perfecting your powerpoint slides.
😐 You glance once or twice at them before you need to present.
😐 You read your slides during the presentation.
😐 You become a message delivery person instead of a memorable speaker.

Improvising means:
🙂 You spend days, weeks and months working on your speaking skills.
🙂 You improve your on-stage presence, your body language and gestures, your voice modulation.
🙂 You work on your confidence and making eye contact with the audience.
🙂 You develop a strong skill set that you can take with you into ANY presentation.
🙂 Then you walk into that presentation and improvise.

Think beyond the next presentation.
Once you develop strong presentation and speaking skills, you can switch jobs, departments, industries.
And always be able to improvise.