3 Characteristics of Excellent Public Speakers
Public speaking can be terrifying for any introvert, but when you want to get your career off the ground, you may sometimes need to speak in front of an audience. Public speaking is how we memorably share ideas with large groups of people, stand out in the corporate world and get improved visibility in our fields of work. The unfortunate truth is that if your public speaking skills are lacking, then you will likely find yourself in hot water, as people won’t be focused on your presentation and won’t pay attention. To succeed, you will need the following characteristics drilled into you:
Confidence
Highly confident speakers are viewed as more accurate, competent, intelligent, credible, likeable, knowledgeable and believable than those who are a mess during their presentations. There are two main ways you can approach this and improve your speaking skills:
- Excitement
If you are genuinely excited about the subject you’re speaking about, then this feeling will show through your sense of nervousness about your presentation. Studies have shown that people who accept their anxiety as excitement find it easier to speak in public when it comes.
- Authenticity
If you want to excel at public speaking, you should do more than simply beat the jitters; you need confidence in your chosen subject. You should be yourself, as cliche as it sounds. If you have to deviate from your carefully written presentation, do so and don’t let that hinder your efforts. Though you should still practise your speech often before you go out there on the podium, you don’t have to memorise it by heart. Memorising a speech may cause you to fumble when you can remember a section just right.
Passion
If you want to communicate with people via speech,l you need to be passionate about your subject matter. Speech is meaningless without passion; the last thing you want is your audience dozing off because you’re also bored with the subject or spilling monotone statistics in a flat tone of voice. You will need to exude a certain level of sincerity in your emotions when communicating with people and your audience. You need them to feel impressed by the way you speak. There is no need to attempt to practise your sincerity; you need to focus on how you feel and the people of your audience. It may be hard to feel passionate about some topics when you present a work that is interesting to some but not entirely engaging for you. Sometimes to show passion about a topic you’re not precisely passionate about requires you to dig much deeper into it and find things you can find exciting.
Being Yourself
Sometimes, no matter how much you believe in the topic you’re trying to present, you will likely appear insincere or too calculated if you don’t act like yourself. This may distract your audience, as they can easily spot that you’re playing a role. You don’t necessarily have to change and become someone else on stage; all you have to do is have faith in your positive qualities.
Examples of that can be seen with political candidates who appear inauthentic; they are far less likely to win the respect of the voter base so that they won’t win an election. If a company’s social marketing strategy comes across as equally fake, its sales will take a hit. If you create a page on a dating website but write in a way that comes across as forced and equally unauthentic, then people are more likely to avoid your profile. Public speaking is the same way; you must focus on your best qualities.
