5 Tips to Master the Art of Public Speaking At Work

Public speaking is not only beneficial for personal development but it also helps you improve at many levels in various areas of life. The art of public speaking takes you forward in life; you can make a career out of it, get engaged in public debates, and excel in your organization by speaking confidently in front of your audience. It is the most essential skill that can help you achieve your goal in life.

Public speaking has many other benefits that we will discuss in this article and later we will discuss the ways to improve the skills of public speaking.

Advancement in career

Public speaking is an art that can help you take a step further in your career. It enhances the skills of creativity, critical thinking, and ability to lead, and improves the ability of decision making. All these skills acquire a high place in the job market and they increase the value of a person. People with all these skills are preferred and appreciated by every organization.

When you speak confidently at a professional event, it increases your credibility. And you can also add all these skills to your resume to make it attractive. Not only this, you get the confidence to stand out at work and present your work more confidently in business meetings. You can also land the desired job with all these skills.

Boost confidence

Public speaking helps boost the confidence of the people. There is always a fear related to public speaking and when one overcomes it, there is no limit to their confidence. And the way you connect with your audience, people can have an idea of the knowledge you acquire and the way you want to share it with others.

You can start with the smaller groups and gradually you will notice a huge difference in your confidence level as you move to the larger groups of people. It is not only beneficial professional and improves your communication in your personal life as well.

You just need to understand that the nervousness would never fully fade away but you learn the tactics to handle it surely.

Critical thinking

You can develop great critical thinking skills with the help of public speaking. Public speaking requires you to first write what you need to speak in front of your audience and writing is not an easy process. You need to analyze the structure of the sentences and also think about the type of audience and use the language accordingly.

And the process does not end with writing, the editing and tailoring the speech to fit the message you want to convey is also equally important. Therefore, it helps develop your critical thinking skills as you need to throw light on various aspects, for instance:

• Make relevant points as per your audience.
• Make listeners understand what you want to say.
• Speaking in an appropriate tone of voice.

Personal development

Personal development depends a lot on communication skills and people who get better at public speaking enjoy the maximum personal development in all the aspects of life. Whenever you have to speak publically, you will think of the better ways to communicate your views to the audience and every step further would help you develop personally.

Expansion of professional network

The added benefit of public speaking is that you get recognized among people and everyone wants to talk to you when you speak well publically. It gives you opportunities in abundance, your circle gets better and you get the chance to make better contacts and generate huge business.

Leadership skills

Publically speaking what you feel would develop leadership skills in you. People who are good at work but cannot express what they want to say, would not be a leader. For being a good leader, you need to speak your heart out in front of the right audience.

When you stand up in front of a group of people and are able to convince them with your words, you get the best leadership skills. Leadership requires a great speaking quality.

Tips to improve your public speaking skills

Public speaking is a very useful skill, no matter what the occasion or gathering is, people will prefer you if you are a good speaker. Especially at work, you will always be the highlight of the meetings if you have the quality of impressing your boss with your speaking skills. Here are some tips that will help you learn public speaking at work.

Know your audience

Before you start your speech, make a quick research on the people you are going to talk to. You need to judge them a little bit for how they look and the way you can maintain their interest. You need to remember that people get easily bored of listening, so you need to maintain their interest.

The best way to connect with your audience is by getting on their level and talking about the things that are common with your topic and their expertise. If you feel that the topic is new for them, you can give them a basic intro so that they don’t feel out of place.

You also need to think critically about their purpose of being present there in front of you. And then look upon the ways you can make them get the best benefit out of your speech.

Understand the matter

Knowing the material you have to speak about should be your priority. Your knowledge about the subject would put life into your speech. Remember that audience is quite intelligent, they know when you are faking your speech and when you actually know something about it. You would only be appreciated it if you are able to deliver some factual information to the people.

The more you will know about the topic, the less would be your dependency on the flashcards or the notes. When you keep on looking at the cards, people will lose interest in your speech and your speech would also look robotic.

Maintain the attention of the public

This might be a task but you need to excel in it. Grab the attention of the audience from the very beginning, you can do it in various ways. For instance, you can tell them a captivating story, ask them a thought-provoking question, or share some astonishing statistical fact. It would instantly grab their attention. But it does not end here, you need to keep maintaining their attention throughout your speech.

You can use appropriate humor so that audience does not get bored or keep acknowledging them from time to time. You can also involve them by talking to a couple of people directly. The other way is to use props, it works maximum time if you do not overuse them and make sure that props are age-appropriate.

Effective body language

You will speak less with words but your body language will speak more. Body language involves your facial expressions, body movements, and gestures. All these things are better at conveying your message than your words. When someone is listening to you, they will notice everything in your body language not only your words.

So, you need to work on the following things:

The way you stand

Stand up straight, not stiff but straight. Release the stress from the shoulders so that your body does not reflect a slight bend at the back.

Facial expressions

Notice what you are saying and make the appropriate facial expressions. For instance, you can smile in between the speech if it seems appropriate, or wear a joyful expression while talking about something exciting. You need not look robotic. Be natural and work on your facial expressions as much as you can.

Use the stage

Use the stage well. You can take a light walk in between the talk without losing the interaction with the public.

Eye contact

Connecting with the audience would be easier if you make eye contact with them. Do not make others uncomfortable with your eye contact. Make it short but long enough to grab their attention.

• Speak slowly

The way you speak should be understandable. If you are speaking too fast, people would not be able to understand what you are saying. If you speak too slowly, they will lose interest. Therefore, you need to maintain an appropriate speed that people would be able to understand and maintain their interest.

Let the pauses be there

When you make a point that is credible, give a pause for two or three seconds. It gives the audience the time to digest what you have just said. It also proves that you are confident and in control. So, do not try to fill those gaps with extra words like, “like” or “you know”. These words would reflect that you are not confident enough and also distract the public.

Get training from professional

You can also get proper training from the NLP professional to brush up your speaking skills. They can train you in the best way and you can have the benefit of enhancing your skills to speak in front of a crowd whether it is personal or professional.

Ask for feedback

You can always ask for feedback from the audience. It will help you improve and get better the next time. You can hand them over a short survey or questionnaire to give ratings to your speech. There is always room for improvement and make sure you improve in the right direction.