When you turn “Speaker Coach” on, it records you as you speak. It beeps every time you say “Um” or (weirdly) “Actually.” This feature threw me off and didn’t seem to help me improve in real time.
What did help me avoid saying “Um” was just closing my mouth until I figured out what to say next.
Speaker Coach also gives you feedback after your rehearsal on the pitch and volume of your voice. Varying both of these helps keep you from sounding monotonous. This was a note that I tried to keep in mind when delivering the talk.
Here’s what I learned while preparing:
- Speaker Coach’s features were not that helpful. What actually helped was making the time to rehearse.
- I made very detailed speaker notes ahead of time. Rehearsing them more than once helped me speak without them when I gave the talk.
- I rehearsed by actually reading the speaker notes. After each run-through, I revised the slides and the notes, tightening up the presentation each time. I knew I wouldn’t be reading from the notes on the day of the talk, but this helped me become more familiar with exactly what I wanted to say.
- I kept the slides as simple as possible. Many presenters make the mistake of creating slides as bullet lists and then just reading the slides to the audience. This is a common trap, and it tempts a speaker not to rehearse because they’ll just read the bulleted list. Besides creating the “this speech could have been an email” effect, it makes the material harder to absorb.
Here’s what helped me deliver the talk well:
- When I got lost or stuck, I stopped talking and waited until I recovered my thoughts. This helped me keep from getting too nervous. And guess what? Nothing terrible happened.
- Not being tied to the speaker notes, I walked around a little bit. That is supposed to make a talk more dynamic. It also helped me get my steps in.
I almost never give public talks. Although I was extremely nervous about doing it, I got feedback that I came across as calm. PowerPoint’s AI-enabled “Speaker Coach” were underwhelming, but using it provided a structure to rehearse the presentation. And any talk can be improved by rehearsing, even if—or especially if—you’re using a slide deck. Pro Tip: If you’re giving a talk without slides, you can still use PowerPoint to help rehearse. Just create a slide deck with your notes, and then use the “Speaker Coach” feature to practice your talk.
