Do you experience sweaty palms, pounding heart pulse, dizziness, butterflies, stage fright whenever you are asked to address a room full of people? If so then you too are among people who have “Glossophobia”, or most commonly called speech anxiety-the most common fear around the globe.
If you wish to master the art of public speaking, read on.
A lot of people dislike/ or not comfortable with speaking in public, but speaking properly is the most important aspect of our life. Often, parents focus on developing child’s academics, they even spend tons of money on their academics or sports, but overlook that developing their children’s communication and honing public-speaking skills has become more important than ever before.
Nowadays, public-speaking is required in everything you do, be it a classroom presentation or addressing colleagues in the office. If you want to become a leader, good communication skills are of extreme importance as they convey you are confident and assertive, and a good listener, too. Take an example of the three most influential and powerful men of all time Hilter, Martin Luther King and Narendra Damodardas Modi, who have inspired people the most, and their success can be attributed to their good oratory skills.
Here are a few ways which can help you improve your public speaking skills and accelerate your career:
1. Know Your Audience
The first and foremost thing that you need to keep in mind before you go for any public speaking event, is to know your audience, their educational background, their language, and expectations. For example, if you are addressing youth, it is important you speak their lingoes, you should not try too hard to entertain students. If you plan on speaking about a serious topic, present it in an interesting way. All this information would help you establish a rapport with your audience.
2. Be Thorough With The Material
Next is to gather as much as information possible about the topic you are going to present. For example, if you are going for a corporate event and even though you have your speech ready, it is always helpful if you read a little extra. This will help you widen your perspective and if you face a situation where in you have to speak out of the cut you won’t be lost rather, you will be able to correlate it with your background knowledge.
3. Start Strong
You need to start strong. There are a few ways you can establish a connect with your audience quickly, such as starting off with a question, taking pauses between a few sentences, inculcating variation in voice tone matching with the emotions of your speech, maintaining eye contact, etc. This is the time when your audience will decide whether or not you are worth their time. It is pivotal that you believe in the topic you are presenting and back it up with facts, statistics, humor and your own personal experience.
4. Practice
The more you practice, the more confident you would feel presenting in front of the crowd. You can start by standing in front of the mirror or use a phone recorder and hear it after you done practicing. You can even try presenting in front of your friends and ask them for their feedback. This will help you know your flaws and correct them. People who fear audience often keep things to themselves, instead, you should participate in class room discussions, ask as many questions as you can, and this can prove to be a stepping stone and make you comfortable speaking around people.
5. Appearances Matter
Whenever you going for a public appearance make sure you dawn your best for the occasion. If you look good, you automatically feel confident. For instance, person who is dressed in a suit, properly combed hair, looks neat and tidy and speaks confidently is always taken more seriously by the audience than an unkempt person.
6. Nobody is Perfect
Lastly, it is important to note that, it is impossible to know everything, so if sometimes you are asked about something and you are unaware of the right response to it, stay calm and don’t be nervous. There are things that you know and other may not know, so you always say you will get back to them with an answer later on. Success only comes to those who accept that there is never an end to knowledge and always room for improvement.
Speaking in public can be quite helpful. For example: If you want to put forth your view to others and you put it in a way where people get persuaded, it helps you build your self-confidence. Besides this, public speaking can also help you manage your emotions as you learn what to speak when and change your nervousness into excitement. There also awaits a good career opportunity for people who are good orators such as professors, teachers, instructors, news anchors, motivational speakers, etc.
Have a public speaking story or problem of your own? Share with us in the comments!
