I was a good student. I did my homework on time, studied zealously for tests, and read every assigned page. Math was hard for me, so I took a summer class to try to coax my brain into grasping all those black and white formulas. I was always relieved when math tests required us to show our work in the margins, because that way, even if I ended up with the wrong answer, I could get partial credit for understanding most of the process of how to get there.
When I became an actor I applied similar study habits to the work of preparing a role. I researched the time period and setting of the play and read other plays by the same author. I spent lots of time figuring out a history for my character that would inform why she behaved as she did in each scene. This was the work I was encouraged to do by teachers and that I understood every great actor did. There was study and discipline involved in bringing a role to life.
My first year in graduate school, during a scene I was doing, a teacher said to me, “Stop showing me your homework.”
I looked at her blankly. She continued, “I know that you know every single thing going on in every dynamic happening in this play, but I don’t want to see that. I just want to see you responding to what’s happening right now.”
The diligent student in me couldn’t help responding, “But what’s the point of all the work I’ve done if you’re not supposed to see any of it?”
She replied patiently, to a class riveted by this question, “You do have to do the work. You have to know the details surrounding the world of the play so that you can fully inhabit it. You have to understand the inner life of your character and the past that has carried her here. You have to spend hours in rehearsal figuring out where on the stage you will be and what will happen between you and every other character to make the story best come to life. But the reason you do so much homework is so that when you walk on stage you can throw it all away. You need to trust that work is there for you so that you can simply be present to what’s happening in each moment.”
I could write pages on how and why this is so very true for an actor but that’s not the point of this piece. The point is that as an executive coach and facilitator, I have found myself repeating the phrase “Do your homework and throw it away” hundreds of times.
I often work with people preparing for interviews, panels, meetings, and presentations. They too are good students who do all their homework. They know the topic thoroughly, make extensive notes, prepare thoughtful slides, and anticipate the kinds of questions that will be asked. As they begin to rehearse they almost always say something like, “I’m not sure exactly how to prepare because I want to be really confident about what I’m going to say but also come across as easy and natural, not overly rehearsed.” To which I reply, “That’s right, you want to do your homework and then be able to throw it away!”
Coming across as easy and natural is the part that requires “throwing it away.” If we are too focused on remembering what we prepared or showing how smart we are, then people feel our effort rather than our ease. Ideally, we learn to internalize, to trust that our preparation and homework is there for us in a way that frees us to be responsive and to read the room. The ability to read a room is a key component of executive presence. People shine when they are in sync with their audience, whether that audience is a few people or a full auditorium. The less we are worried or thinking about how and what we are going to say, the more present and available we can be to what our audience needs from us. I often encounter a belief that people who have this facility with speaking and flexing to an audience’s needs don’t have to work as hard, they just have some magic blend of confidence and skill. They have “that thing.” This is sometimes true. But more often than not, they are people who are really good at doing the work without showing the work, so that it looks like all they had to do was show up. The truth is, you have to do a lot of homework to be able to just show up.
When preparing for interviews (whether you are the interviewer or the interviewee) or for meetings, you should most definitely show up with a clear agenda and specific questions and answers prepared that you’d like to get to. You should also be prepared to throw them all away. If a productive line of questioning is going another way, you want to be able to go with it. If someone offers information or an idea that is gold, you need to be able to keep digging there even if your agenda has you going in another direction. Trusting yourself to deviate from the plan is easier if you’ve done thorough homework. You know your objectives and your material well enough that it doesn’t matter how you get there.
We have all seen examples of people who seem stiff or robotic with answers and explanations in meetings or when giving talks. We’ve seen people nervous about what they assert in front of a boss or client, or who are unable to participate if a discussion digresses from the intended topic. There can be multiple reasons for this, but one of them has to do with people’s relationship to their homework, hanging on so tightly to what they’ve prepared that they can’t think beyond that.
One way to avoid getting too attached to homework or preparation is to do it in such a way that you don’t get overly tied to any one version of what you are going to say. Know what you want to talk about and the details you want to hit on, but practice saying it in multiple ways. Get the language and concepts in your mouth, but don’t prescribe for yourself something so specific that it will throw you if you don’t say it exactly as planned. When I’m preparing for an interview or to speak in front of a room, I like to say various versions of what I’m going to talk about out loud in the car, in the shower, while doing my hair. I get familiar with the sound of my voice speaking about things without getting overly attached to any particular version. I practice in casual environments that help me feel loose and at ease with it. I also anticipate where there might be pushback or questions and speak through various ways of addressing those. Sometimes this part of the preparation gets used, often it doesn’t. It doesn’t matter, I’ve done the work and I show up more open and sure of myself for having done it.
So, do your homework and then throw it away. Prepare, rehearse, know your stuff and then simply and fully, show up. As I learned all those years ago in grad school, life isn’t math class. People don’t want to see your work in the margins, they don’t want to see your preparation. They want to experience it in the work, in your presence. Your homework will show up in your ability and freedom to be fully responsive to whatever the moment demands of you.