Do I Need to Learn Tips for Public Speaking?

It seems to come as a surprise to many that giving an effective presentation or speech is one of the key ingredients for a successful career – so you may want to learn some tips for public speaking.

But for many, Public Speaking is also one of the most terrifying tasks they will have to undertake in their career.

Are you one of those people for whom public speaking is a necessary evil?

Or even someone who will make any excuse simply to get out of it?

If so, you’re not alone.

Millions of people the world over are willing to give it a go just so long as it is to team members or people they call friends. As often as not, the presentation will go well, but it doesn’t seem to get any easier. For many people, simply standing out from the crowd and speaking in public makes them uncomfortable, embarrassed or insecure.

But the good news is that this fear can be overcome. It’s not that difficult either, and becoming a competent public speaker will lead to many new opportunities, both at work and in one’s private life too.

Now, just think about that for a minute. A key skill that anyone, serious about making it big at work or in business, needs to possess is the art of being able to give a presentation.

Can that really be true?

Public Speaking skills are not a one-size-fits-all technique.

Of course, the giving of formal presentations is only part of the picture. Presentations come in many other ‘flavours’ as well.

Simply holding meetings, or pitching to customers or potential clients – even motivating a team – requires these essential skills. Many business people spend a great deal of their working day attending one meeting or another and their ability to present their ideas is a crucial element of their success – or lack of it!

Being able to present well and to hold an audience is also a crucial factor in the way other people see you as a leader. Someone who cannot engage their audiences is unlikely to inspire those who have to follow them, however good their ideas are. If you are in line for a company promotion and there is someone else trying for the same position, whom do you think the selection committee will choose?

Someone who has good ideas but finds it difficult to communicate, or someone who is comfortable inspiring others to agree with what he has to say?

So what do you want to achieve?

The starting point for any good public speaking task has to be why you are doing it in the first place. Maybe someone at work has called upon you to speak about a work-related topic: how well our department is doing on a company-wide project for instance.

Or you may be giving a sales pitch to prospective company, or giving a training presentation, or addressing a conference, or 101 other reason for getting up on your hind legs and exposing ourselves to public scrutiny as you attempt to find le bon mot and have the audience eating out of our hands.

Most presentations are designed to sell an idea. And as any marketer will tell us, the art of good selling is to tie in our product or service with the interests of our buyers.

So, the corollary of this is that the art of a good presentation is to tie in our messages with the interests of our audience.

Are they there to be informed or kept up to date on a fast moving marketplace?

Perhaps they are there to be trained?

Or to have some facet of our business explained to them?

Some presentations are about building relationships, or inspiring and motivating a workforce. Perhaps we want to challenge their assumptions, or to provoke their curiosity in a particular area? We might be trying to sell them something, or getting them to buy in to our way of thinking.

At the end of the day, the main reason to present to anyone is to change something. It might be we want to change the way they think about something; or their behaviour in regard to a specific issue.

Whatever the reason for our performance, the basic approach we need to take is pretty much the same.

The way we present ourselves, the way we control our voice, the way we structure content and the way we put our points across to the audience are the tips for public speaking that can be learned and put to good effect.