If you liked reading this, please click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack. Thanks!
If you play a sport, you’re familiar with practice. Spending countless hours honing the skills you will need in a game, is a critical way to develop and be ready. You practice your strategy, your tactics and all the fundamentals you need to put together to win.
Performing arts are the same way! Singers, dancers and actors rehearse constantly to not only memorize their lines or songs, but to perfect their timing and coordination. Taylor Swift had a famously intense preparation for her Eras Tour where she would sing the entire 40 song setlist while running on a treadmill.
“I wanted to get it in my bones. I wanted to be so over-rehearsed that I could be silly with the fans, and not lose my train of thought.” - Taylor Swift
In business you have meetings that are at least as important as any game or performance. Important investor presentations, big customer pitches or even key customer status meetings. To your business these meetings are critical to your future!
So why does your team never practice for them?
It’s always amazed me how people in business think they do their best work without any rehearsal at all. Many senior folks who don’t even practice their talks before giving them! They think they can just show up, stand in front of the room and be their best on the spot.
And then they go into an important meeting and blow it just because they were unprepared. In assuming they were prepared and never rehearsing the meeting, they never realized the big gaps in their preparation.
I don’t mean rehearsing just your talk, or going over your slides. I mean rehearsing the entire meeting. In the real meeting they won’t just sit and listen! They will ask questions, interrupt you and potentially even be confrontational.
How do you practice for a meeting?
You have some of your team pretend to be the other party! Their job is to act just like them, including the hard questions, the unexpected surprises and the critical feedback. Run through the meeting a few times, with different scenarios, each time your stand-ins will act differently. Their job is to make sure you are ready.
Many leaders get defensive when I talk about rehearsing for meetings. “I have years of experience…”, “It would take too much time…” and other such excuses. I have no doubt you have a lot of experience, and plenty of things to do, but so do all those athletes and performers! No one, no matter how great, is at their best without practicing.
Mostly, people find the idea of practicing for meetings silly. But you can tell when people practice, because they are extremely prepared. Why let your pride get in the way of your best?
So, make time to practice. Lead by example by hosting important meeting rehearsals and let your team see you preparing. Schedule simulations of key meetings for your team and get them in the habit of scheduling them.
Not only do you get to practice and prepare, your stand-ins get to practice being in the seat of your customers or investors and seeing the world from their position. That practice is valuable as well!
There are so many things working against you in business, you need to bring your best. Especially when it comes to these critical meetings, don’t leave it to change. Practice.
For more on Communicating with Customers and Investors, see: