How many times has it happened that you have a presentation to your team and you have had a sleepless night the previous day??
How many times has it happened that you have to address a big crowd and you have butterflies in your tummy???
These are moments when you have to do public speaking. Be it live events or group presentations or zoom meetings, public speaking plays a major role in our day to day living. Therefore, we must embrace this fact and learn the art of public speaking.
So, here are some simple tips to practice that will make you a confident and engaging public speaker. The tips can be categorized into before, during and after the speaking session.
Before
- Content is king: Irrespective of the context, the content proves to be the key. In other words, the first and the most important tip that you need to follow for effective public speaking is to get your speech well written. Be it for presentation or team review, ensure you have covered all the important points that you wish to convey to the audience. Structure the content based on the order of importance.
- Rehearse or practice: Once the content is ready, it’s time to attack your fear. Most of the times, the problem with public speaking is not lack of knowledge or content, it is because of stage fear or fear to speak to the crowd. That’s where practice comes for your aid. There are many ways to rehearse like rehearse standing in front of a mirror or have your close set of friends as your audience or record your speech or more. Rehearsing removes nervousness and builds confidence.
- Live it up: Last but definitely a key element is your look. Depending on where and why are you speaking, dress up accordingly. When you are well dressed and look presentable, it boosts your confidence.
During
- Aim to interact: When you are addressing a crowd, aim to interact. Don’t make your speech a one-way process. When you interact, you actually ease out as the audience turn acquaintances. It also increases audience engagement.
- Keep it natural: Irrespective of the purpose of the speech, remember that the event would be a success only when your information or agenda of the speech is dipped in your personality.
- Have the right body language: Despite all the preparation, there will be times when you would feel that sudden rush of nervousness. In that situation, you as a public speaker shouldn’t let that be noticed by your audience. That’s where body language comes to your rescue. Body language is a very effective to hide your nervousness and also to reflect your confidence. Therefore, knowing the right tricks of body language is a must.
- Have a great start, interesting interval and a dynamic closure. Start your speech with a great, interesting note. Have an interesting body with fun stories and personal experiences as fillers and finally give your speech a dynamic closure.
After
- Seek feedback: The success of any speech is when you know what and how the audience has received it. Therefore, post the speech, interact with your audience and seek feedback. What they liked, what is the takeaway, what is that they wish to seek if there was a second interaction and more.
- Check how much your audience understood: Once you are done with the session, ask questions to your audience. This is a nice way to create a personal rapport with your audience and also an effective way to understand how well the audience understood. Most of the public speakers who are not confident of their subject knowledge avoid this. But a good public speaker is always keen on question and answers.
- Make notes: If you wish to evolve into an effective public speaker, reviewing yourself based on the audience reaction and comparing yourself from your past presentation is a must. This helps you understand whether you are evolving, what are the persisting pain areas that need to be worked upon.
With the above-mentioned self-help pointers, you can definitely groom your public speaking skills. But, if you are a person who needs an external drive to evolve and improve then you can as well take online public speaking classes.
