The Seven Strategies of Master Presenters - Lifecycle Performance ...

208 / THE SEVEN STRATEGIES OF MASTER PRESENTERS
means practicing early and often. However, the hardest practice session
for many of us to get around to doing is the first practice session,
and this is an all-too-common mistake. One of the best ways to get
around this is to do “the zero practice session.”
We developed the idea of “the zero practice session” from Joan
Bolker’s recommendation to take the anxiety out of writing the first
draft of a written document. Joan calls this “the zero draft.” The
purpose of the zero draft is to get words on paper or a layout of your
presentation. The intended audience for the zero draft is you. So get
something—anything—down on paper. Give yourself something to
edit. You are purposely working out and clarifying your own thinking
about a particular topic. Once you have a better idea of what you
want to say, you can then decide if the material suits your intended
audience. In other words, you have to figure out the answers to your
own questions first. Then, and only then, do you work at figuring out
the answers to questions your audience will likely have. Many times
your questions and the audience’s questions will be the same. Sometimes
not. However, we often can’t answer an audience’s questions
until we answer our own questions first.
We have found that the concept of the zero practice session has
taken a lot of the anxiety out of the preparation process. It has also
helped us by giving permission to write and develop presentations in a
manner that is more in tune with how presentations are naturally developed,
and we have confidence it will do the same for you.
Another way to ensure that you practice early and benefit from
early feedback is to enlist selected friends and colleagues to listen to
and give you feedback on your zero practice session. In this case, you
should tell your audience that this is as much of a brainstorming session
as it is a feedback session. You need to tell your audience that
you want their ideas as to what should and what should not be included
in the presentation as well as any other ideas they have, regarding
both content and delivery. For example, the participants in
our Seven Strategies of Master Presenters courses are amazed at how
much more quickly they improve and how much better a job they can
do when they develop and practice their presentations in small groups.
Why is this true? They can test early and they can test often. This
immediate feedback gives the presenter an idea much earlier as to
whether an idea will work or not. When we ask our participants to