Feb 5, 2020 in Public Speaking

Are the best speakers in the world are the ones who are born with the quality of public speaking?

Public speaking? Is it a quality people are born with? Can it be learnt and honed? What are the key components of it?

The art of public speaking

Are the best speakers in the world are the ones who are born with the quality of public speaking?

The answer to this question is a big “NO”.

People get scared with the rostrum as if they are confronting their death. Public speaking is an art people aren’t born with, it needs to be learnt and practiced. One can really be good at his public speaking with the passing time.

It’s just a kind of sport or a performance.

Preparation is the key to an effective public speaking session. Preparation helps to gain self confidence beforehand delivering a speech. It also helps to manage stress, nerves or butterfly in the stomach feeling.

Oh! Butterfly in the stomach?

Nerves are inevitable; you can’t avoid getting nervous in a situation when you’re all alone in front of many people. That’s a natural human tendency or you can say that it’s an in built feature of human mind; you can’t block or disable that feature.

The beauty of nerves is that they indicate you that you have something important to say in front of many people. They indicate that you have an urge to make people informed and understand a specific situation or condition which your senses have gathered through your eyes and ears.

The main trick is to channelize these nerves in such a manner that your audience can listen, understand and can take any informed decision or action. Now why it needs to be channelized? It’s so because your nerves are a form of huge energy which have been stored within you and according to the Laws of Nature, “Energy can’t be created nor be destroyed; only its form can be changed.”

Now you have learnt the significance of preparation so  let’s have a set of questions which you need to ask yourself before preparation:

1. Who? Who your audiences are? Are they students, managers, service providers, planners, homemakers or specialist of a particular field? Are they in numbers of 20, 50, 500 or more?

You need to adjust your vocabulary according to the demographics, adjust your sense of humor according to the age level of your audience and adjust your actions, your body language and gestures according the size of audience.

1. How? How you have been told to give your speech? Is it face to face, online, live or prerecorded? Do you need a presentation slide or flipchart?  

Consider the equipments like having a microphone or handheld microphone, having a pointer for slides etc. Depending on the answers, your hand gestures will differ. If you are delivering your speech in front of a camera then you need to consider whether it is live or prerecorded? If it’s live then you can’t edit your speech and it takes lesser time but if it’s prerecorded then you can edit your speech but it takes more time.

1. When? More importantly how long?

By defining the date and length, you’ll be having a clear understanding about how much time you’re having for preparation and also you will have a clear idea that how much content you need for your speech. Your content must be greater than the delivery time i.e. if you are being told to deliver a five minute speech then you must prepare for a ten minutes speech so that you can conclude your speech in reality within the stipulated time.

1. What? What key points you need to be included in your speech or presentation?

You need to draw the attention of your audience to a specific topic for which you have been told to deliver a speech. Consider including the key points which are coherent to your main topic. You can take notes of the key points on a paper if you are not having a presentation slide or flipchart.

1. Why? Why you have been asked to give a presentation? Are you an expert of that specific topic or do audience like your sense of humor or do you have any experience in that field?

Consider your strengths for the speech like if you have any previous experience about the situation for which you have been asked to give the presentation or speech or you are having any expertise in that topic or any of your quality which fascinate people around you like your sense of humor or good singing. It will help you to reflect your content in way that touches your audience’s heart and can leave a last longing effect.

Hocus Pocus Locus recipe!

After getting clear answers for the above set of questions it’s time now to create a plan for your speech. Make a table of three columns which is shown below:

The above table will give you a clear picture of your audience for before, in between and after your speech. This table will help you to mesmerize your audience as this table will be your hocus pocus locus recipe!

Now to articulate your content there are some more components:

1. Managing stress.
2. Elocution and managing verbal tics.
3. Organizing the space.
4. Preparing your presentation.
5. Preparing your image.
6. Introducing yourself.
7. Art of storytelling.
8. Body language mastery.

Learning and practising these skills will naturally evolve a better speaker within you day by day, effortlessly! 

Wishing you all the best!

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