Improve Your Public Speaking Skills

How to Improve Your Public Speaking Skills!

There are a lot of techniques and approaches that can be used to make you more comfortable in front of a crowd. Here are some exciting tips and ideas to help you achieve success in any situation.

Practice on your own time

You will often have more time than you think – so why not use it wisely? Even if it’s just for 15 minutes, try to focus on how many words you need to say instead of focusing too much on what your speech is about, or what makes it ‘good’ or ‘bad’. When you spend most of your time thinking about how you want to tell this story or how you think it should be received by your audience, they are likely to get frustrated with yourself or their reaction. It is better to spend your time thinking about how you would like your audience to remember your speech – and what you want them to remember – rather than trying to memorize phrases and sentences from memory.

Focus on your audience

What is important to them? Is there some aspect that your speech does not fully address? Does something happen during your speech that your audience may find confusing? These questions will help you decide how you can deliver a smoother story or better understanding of your topic. Make sure that it feels as natural as possible to talk about yourself, how you feel, and why it might be difficult in the first place. Then you are ready to face the world.

Be realistic about things

You may be surprised at how little your public speaking skills go. If you set very high expectations, then you probably won’t reach any of those goals. On the other hand, when you are not ready to speak to the whole room, then you are still a good speaker. Set some achievable but realistic expectations and be sure to hit that. This way you will start to learn how to talk in front of people who aren’t experts yet, but who are willing to listen. When you know more about your audience, do try to understand how much energy you have to give, and then adjust accordingly.

How long should your speech be?

Asking this question will reveal where your level is, how much work you can give up, and what kind of impact and impact your message will have. If it is over 60 seconds (which may be enough for a typical presentation), then it will be easy in both directions. Don’t forget that people generally only really focus on the beginning at first and end at the end when the clock strikes zero. So let’s not waste time trying to make sure we write 10,000 words worth of talk at the start. That doesn’t mean we are great writers. Our knowledge is limited, the pace needs to be adjusted. In the end, your audience will expect a certain amount of time for everything.

Have a plan

Being organized is helpful for different situations. For example, if one is presenting a short speech, outline the entire speech and the steps you need to take to give your speech. At the same time, don’t forget that your listeners will want to see how you plan out everything and all the steps you can take to make your speech successful. Also, remember that you are also using a lot of energy in making this speech (see tip #2). Once you get prepared, consider each part of the speech and its requirements. Be careful about not repeating the same line more than once or not repeating your main thesis every few sentences. This will prevent fatigue and exhaustion, especially if your content consists of technical information such as statistics or data analysis.

Stay positive even after an unpleasant event

A negative outcome means a tough conversation. But, you don’t have to stay negative forever. Use lots of positive emotions and keep your thoughts positive even when others are disappointing you. This is especially effective if the moment is related to politics and/or social issues. Remember this during the last week’s election, when we saw President Trump speaking before our eyes. He was positive in his first couple of lines, but as he kept going downhill, it became increasingly clear that he wasn’t able to hold his own. His language and tone were extremely offensive and unacceptable regardless of whether he was talking about his opponent who had been accused of a criminal offense, his rival who had faced an embarrassing setback, or about our elected officials. After a while, he turned into an angry child because the rest of us didn’t understand what we were seeing. The last thing he said was that he wanted me to be punished. My heart sank. I could feel myself losing control – maybe my nerves got the best of me. However, all negative feelings and bad feelings disappeared and we all found ourselves calm and happy again. And you can, too, feel how people react on such occasions – even politicians. We have become less aggressive or confrontational because some of us simply lack confidence in what they say. And that can help you improve your public speaking skills and become the most confident person in the room.

Practice self-awareness

A very useful tool for improving your speaking abilities is self-knowledge. When the first two days of being a presenter are getting underwhelming, just sit down, put on your nice dress, or get your hair done and look at yourself. Do you like what you see? Did you miss anything? Were you angry or upset about anything? Are you happy about the process and your progress? All these questions will help you get a better picture of your present ability and how you are feeling about it. Practice answering all of them so that you don’t always hear yourself saying the exact opposite of what you like to hear. You can’t change how you are. That is part of growing and becoming better every day. It’s better to have your priorities straight at the beginning than to have them slightly unsteady throughout the meeting. Of course, practice makes perfect, but it will help strengthen your overall skills and feel even better later during actual presentations.