TJ Walker breaks down why most people sound robotic in interviews. The problem isn't rehearsal, it's rehearsing wrong: memorizing words without practicing how you move or speak. Instead, rehearse your body, your voice, and your ideas, not exact sentences.
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How do you keep a spokesperson from sounding too stiff and rehearsed during a media interview? That's a question I do get asked a lot. And it's also a question posed by my professional colleague Jared Breaux over the brocast. Here's the thing. If you're really rehearsed, part of what you're rehearsing is your body movement so that you don't look stiff. Part of what you're rehearsing is sounding conversational and having your voice go higher and lower and faster and slower and pausing. All the things that make somebody not sound like a robot. I get very nervous when people tell me they're worried about sounding over rehearsed, because typically that just means they're lazy and looking for an excuse not to rehearse. Oh, I'm better winging it. No, you're not. Think of the best Broadway show you've ever seen. Guess what? That star who brought the story to life. Rehearsed. Rehearsed hundreds of times, maybe thousands of times. It didn't bother you that they had rehearsed because they rehearsed the right way. So there's never a problem with rehearsal. If it's good rehearsal, there is a problem rehearsing the wrong way, rehearsing the wrong thing. If you are trying to memorize a script and you are under the illusion that the only thing that matters is getting each word precisely just right and you don't focus on anything else, well, you're going to be horrible. But the problem then is not rehearsal. It's that you're rehearsing the wrong way. If I go out to the golf course and I practice every single day, my golf swing, but I'm holding the wrong end of the golf club, the problem isn't that I'm practicing my golf swing. The problem is I'm holding the wrong end of the club. So, no, the problem is never that you're overly rehearsed. The problem could be that you're not moving your body, that you're sounding like a robot. The solution is rehearse so that you look good and sound good and sound believable. And there the key is, don't try to memorize word for word. Try to focus on the ideas and speaking about those ideas in a conversational way with sound bites sprinkled throughout. Do that, you'll come across well and you'll never sound overly rehearsed.
