Reasons to Not use a Teleprompter

There is a topic I wanted to address at the very beginning of this course but I didn’t want to turn you off.

Didn’t want to scare you away.

But the topic is what is your decision process for actually deciding to use a teleprompter.

Again there are plenty of good reasons to use a teleprompter if you’re a newscaster every day.

Well you’ve got to use one.

There’s no way you can get the names and the facts straight of brand new stories of news that just happened.

Yes if you’re giving a political speech and millions and millions of people are watching you and you’ve got exactly seven minutes and twenty eight seconds for your slot on primetime that may be a good reason.

But many people use a teleprompter because they think it gives them greater control.

Not really because if you do a bad job in the teleprompter you’re not controlling the outcome.

The outcome of any speech is not what comes out of your mouth.

It’s what do people remember what do they retain so they can act upon it.

So if you’re reading a teleprompter in a wooden stiff phony way the only outcome is people have a negative impression of you and don’t remember anything you said.

So that’s an illusion to think that that’s somehow safer.

It’s not safer and it’s not saving you time.

Many people use the teleprompter because they think it will save the prep time as we talked about in the previous lecture.

It doesn’t save time for most people.

Most of the time they’re far better off using a simple page of notes to speak for most business executives.

And for that matter most politicians.

The real danger of a speech is not that they got one word wrong one comma wrong and suddenly there’s tremendous criticism that does happen for presidents of countries or heads of federal banking system.

That can happen but for most people most of the time the biggest problem in our speech is not that we got one word wrong.

There’s a lot of criticism.

The biggest danger for most of us is we’re so boring.

Nobody remembers anything we said so that’s why I would urge you focus your time on making your speeches interesting and memorable.

And I’ve got other courses to deal with that.

That’s not the point of this course.

But that should be your focus.

Having an interesting speech and delivering it in the best possible way.

Don’t use a teleprompter because everyone else is.

Don’t use a teleprompter because there is some technician who is sort of running the conference and says well everyone else is you have to it’ll be there.

The only reason use the teleprompter is you’ve decided that will help you communicate most effectively with your audience.

That’s the only reason to use a teleprompter.

So for example I’ve been speaking to you for this entire course and I’m not using a teleprompter.

There plenty of times when I do use teleprompters but I didn’t need one for this course because this is all material I’ve given hundreds of times to my clients in real life.

So I know this.

So I didn’t use a teleprompter so please give real thought to what is the best way for you to communicate with your audience.

And it may in fact be notes and not using a teleprompter but make the judgment based on what will help the audience not what might save you time.