5 Ways to Improve Your Public Speaking Skills

For many professions and even hobbies, public speaking skills are essential to achieve success. Just like any other skill, public speaking can be practiced and perfected. To improve your public speaking skills, follow the following tips.

Think about it...

1. Understand Your Audience

Well If you skip this step, it won't matter how well that you think you did. If you don't understand your audience well, you won't effectively communicate your ideas. What is worse, you could be wasting your time and talking to the utterly wrong audience.

2. Record Yourself on Video

This is a great way to practice free of expectation. This way, you can ensure you are using the right words and body language and pinpoint any improvement areas. Watching yourself on video can be difficult, but it will help you improve.

3. Act Like You Are Talking to Your Friends

Of course, be sure to maintain your professionalism. Your friends are not only familiar to you, but they are more likely to welcome and forgive you for mistakes. Often, the error will barely be noticeable to them.

For this reason, it is easier for you to talk to these people than strangers. Imagine you are talking to a big group of your friends that won't judge you even if you make a brief mistake. You'll improve your comfort level, and the practice will help you control your emotions and get back on track if a mistake were to happen.

4. Try Open Mic Nights and Karaoke

Get yourself in front of people more often and especially if it is outside of your comfort zone. Believe it or not, the more opportunities you get to potentially fail, the better you will become. That is because making mistakes highlights the areas you can practice on and where you can do better the next time. Poor public speaking skills or fear of it is simply due to lack of experience.

5. Expect and Welcome Failure

You won't be perfect the whole time. You may fumble on a few words, say "um" by mistake, or worse, but that doesn't mean you can't get yourself back on track. Most people won't even notice these things unless you respond to them negatively.

Instead of expecting perfection, welcome the idea that you will probably fail at some point along the way, and that is okay. It is what makes you human and relatable. The ability to move past these little mistakes and expect failure gives you the confidence you need to be successful.

FROM THE PROFESSIONALS:

"If you can speak, you can influence. If you can influence, you can change lives."- Rob Brown 

"They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel." - Carl Frederick Buechner 

I'll see you in class

- Dante