Should Business People Rehearse Their Lines? And How!

About a year ago, I was one of two sources for an article about entrepreneurs’ 30 second networking introductions. The journalist said that the other expert and I both recommended that you shouldn’t over rehearse, that your bit will lose it’s spark if memorized. Boy did she get that wrong. In fact, I preach entirely the opposite. Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. In the car. In the shower. Rehearse.

I’ve often told clients that if I wake them up at 3 am they should be able finish the line I feed them. It’s only when you know something inside out that you can let go and do it naturally. No one would ever tell a ballerina not to “over rehearse”. Once she knows what to do with her feet, she can let go and really dance.

The question is not should you rehearse, (yeah, you should…) but how. It’s not enough to rehearse. You gotta add movement, emotion, bring it to life. Clients sometimes groan when I clap the rhythm of their lines for them or choreograph their speeches or tell them not just to rehearse the lines, but really full out do it.

I love it when stuff I make up actually turns out to be true.

Dennis Broe-Ward, a business strategist out of the UK, insisted I check out a recent Sunday Times article. Thanks Dennis! It’s all about two brainiacs
(the artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company and a professor of neurology and psychiatry) who got together at Columbia University to discuss how memory works. Cool story. One of the guys (Let’s call him Brainiac 1)worked with actors on a cycle of history plays. Each actor had a role in at least 7 of the plays, tons of roles (both principal and understudies), thousands of lines. Four of the plays happened to get dropped and picked up again a year later. When the actors reviewed the lines, they remembered bupkis. Nada. Zilch. When they did a group line run, not much better. But when they threw the actors on stage, all of a sudden it came back to them. “Nearly word-perfect straightaway“. Add an audience, even better.

Clients tell me, “Tsufit, it’ll be fine on the day!” Oh really? If Jerry Seinfeld rehearses every movement (see his documentary Comedian) so can we. Check out the article if you want the whole science behind this, it’s fascinating, but here’s the bottom line. The body remembers what the brain forgets. The better rehearsed you are (including the movement and emotion), the more spontaneous you’ll be able to be. And now I’ve got the brainiacs onside to prove it.

How do you guys memorize stuff?