Good Preparation is Always One Step at a Time
Photo Courtesy of Dale Carnegie Institute
In his book, How to Develop Self-Confidence and Influence People by Public Speaking, Dale Carnegie wrote a section called Self-Confidence through Preparation.
In this chapter, Carnegie relates an incident of a new student in the public speaking class, who out of inexperience chose to give a verbatim rehash of an article out of a periodical. Because the speaker had little first-hand knowledge on the topic, just a lot of thoughts mulling around in his head, the speech did not connect with the audience.
In critiquing the man, Carnegie encouraged him to redo the speech the following week. This time, rather than just reporting what the magazine article said, the speaker would tell what he agreed and disagreed with in the article. This time the audience loved it.
Photo Courtesy of E How Mom
The lesson here is simple, tell what you know. This takes time. The sooner we begin preparing for a presentation or lesson, the more opportunities we have to formulate our own thoughts and opinions. Slower is actually faster. There are no short cuts.
