Teleprompter 911: Emergency Help for STIFFS
By Christina McKenna
“He looked like he had been kidnapped by aliens and was reading their ransom demand!” Our client was apoplectic. “The entire reason we invested in the teleprompter was to help him look more natural, but instead it turned him into a robot.”
Oh no. Another victim of Sudden Teleprompter-Induced Frozen Face Syndrome, or STIFFS. It’s a disorder raging across the corporate world as leaders try to quickly improve their on-camera appearance, but without understanding how to effectively use this tricky piece of technology.
“The teleprompter is an extremely valuable tool, but if the speaker isn’t trained to look natural while using it, it can have the exact oppositive effect,” says Valerie Feder, Bluestone Executive Communications Senior Executive Coach and teleprompter training expert. “The key syllable in “teleprompter is ‘prompt,’’’ says Feder. “It can cue the speaker to the words in the script, but it can’t eliminate the need for preparation.”
Feder ought to know. She has coached scores of professionals to more effectively use the teleprompter, including dozens of major market television anchors and reporters from the newsrooms she previously ran in New York and Los Angeles.
Now a senior executive communications coach with Bluestone, Feder is part of the Bluestone team offering in-person and virtual training to help leaders (and those who support them) quickly get up to speed on best practices for utilizing the teleprompter.
While we recommend training with a professional to ensure an authentic performance, here are three great tips to get you started:
Keep the script conversational. Sentences should be written to mimic spoken, not written language, meaning they should follow a basic subject-verb-object structure, avoiding long clauses and clumsy or unnecessarily formal words.
Add special cues to the copy to help the speaker read with meaning. One hazard of the teleprompter is that it reveals just a few words at a time, providing the speaker no sense of where he or she is within the larger script. As a result, untrained speakers have a tendency to read every line with the same, robotic delivery. To counter this, use formatting, symbols, or even emojis to signal when the speaker should speed up or slow down, speak loudly or softly, or pause or smile.
Rehearse until the teleprompter feels more like a prompt than a crutch. Once you’ve edited the script and added cues, insist on rehearsing until the speaker can nail the opening, main points, transitions, applause lines and closing with confidence.
Rehearsals are tiring and time-consuming, but they also pay off. And so far they’re the best known protection against Sudden Teleprompter-Induced Frozen Face Syndrome.
Give it a try and let us know if it works for you or what else has worked better. For more rock-solid communication tips, subscribe to our blog “Let’s Be Clear” at bluestoneexec.com/blog, give us a call at 248.514.7085 or visit our website at bluestoneexec.com.