Learning The Skills Of A Public Speaker
You're reading Learning The Skills Of A Public Speaker, posted on Thursday, September 11th, 2008 at 9:35 am in Career Tips, on BrainBloggers at the Career Advice blog. More after the jump.
In order to succeed in any line of work you must have determination, great work ethic, and you must be bold. If you have problems speaking to a group in public then you most likely have problems speaking to your boss or other businessmen - which leaves you helpless and keeps you from being promoted. You need to overcome your fear of public speaking and learn to embrace life with no fear.
The first thing you are going to want to do when learning public speaking is to pick a topic that you are passionate about. Make sure that you know everything on this topic and that you truly love it. If not then you will be confused easily. But if you love it your enthusiasm will show and make others just as enthusiastic to hear about it.
Practice in front of friends. Practice in front of the mirror. Practice in front of a camera. You can do any or all of these or find another way that appeals to you—as long as you practice. No one will care if you have notes or the whole written speech with you. Your audience won’t care if you refer to your material occasionally, but you’ll lose their attention if all you do is read to them. Be completely familiar with your speech so you can easily “talk to” your audience.
Think of the service you’re offering. Instead of dwelling on the lavish praise you’d like to receive after your perfect speech, focus on the information you’re sharing. It might enlighten or inspire or inform or, depending on your topic, save a life.
Believe in yourself. You can certainly be inspired by and get ideas from the presentations of others. But never imitate them; never compare yourself to them. You are unique. Appreciate your own special way of approaching a topic and presenting it. Be yourself. Believe in yourself.
Don’t take yourself too seriously. Everyone makes mistakes—yes, even in public speaking. Either let it go and proceed as if nothing happened or just admit your mistake, smile and correct it. If you do this graciously, you’ll win the hearts of your audience.
[...] You want them to know right away that you have what it takes. During certain jobs you will find Public Speaking very useful if you have to make a presentation to a large group of people. Again you want to be [...]