Public speaking is one of the skills which is required to develop an effective personality. During education time or as a professional one needs to have this skill at some other point in time. Often people face the fear of public speaking. What makes a person a good public speaker or presenter?
A pair: Confidence and Competency.
Leading and pacing between these two levels up the person to become a better speaker. Confidence without competency or competency without confidence leaves a person in an emotionally unstable state. A beautiful and respectful juggling between duos brings out a speaker to perform well.
Imagine a situation when a person is full of confidence and gets on the stage without practicing, Person may be speaking but it may not be that impactful. On contrary, if a person has a lot of practice and somewhere confidence is missing then the person may not be able to perform as per the practice level.
Once a boy asked his sports teacher ‘I want to become a badminton player. His teacher said “That’s nice, you can keep on practicing and level up your confidence and competency. First play wherever you get a chance in your school, street, or nearby vicinity. Practice at that level and keep learning skills to refine yourself. Once you find yourself competent at a certain level then level up yourself, try to play at the next level.” That boy followed his teacher’s advice and patiently kept on practicing, learning, improvising, and finally, he participated in a school tournament and got selected for a district-level tournament. A few days before the tournament he fell down on school grounds and had a minor injury, his school principal saw that and helped him to get home and gave his best wishes. He thanked his kind-hearted principal. His parents and teachers supported him. He took the proper treatment. With patience, he waited for the doctor’s report to get the green signal to go ahead and was able to participate in the tournament and play well.
This is how this boy’s story speaks about gradual improvement and resilience. A public speaker needs to improvise himself/herself by asking for feedback and putting those feedback into consideration to bring it into practice with patience. Many times it happens everything is perfect but at the last moment there may be some technical glitches or anything unpredictable then resilience power brings back a person to get the strength to show up.
A few points to focus on to become a good public speaker.
- Confidence – Recall a situation where you find yourself doing something with full of confidence, be in that moment and live it fully now, bring your awareness about sensory inputs and enthrall energy within the whole body. Anchor that powerful state of mind using any hand gesture. Use this gesture whenever you need to be in that confident state.
- Competency – Practice and Rehearsal. Write a well-crafted speech, practice it, and rehearse it as many times as you can. Keep reminding of this saying – Practice makes a man perfect.
- Improvise – Ask for feedback from different people and experts. Take it a positive note and find ways to improve in that area.
- Resilience – Not to be obsessed with a goal. Just focus on putting efforts in the right direction. Increase acceptance and patience level to embrace unpredictability. Anchor on breath and hold a calm state of mind in every situation.
Above are the points one can consider to pave a path to becoming a better public speaker. Apart from that, there are successful strategies that can be installed. One can develop healthy and powerful beliefs. Effective coaching can work as a catalyst and can help a person to grow and shape up as an impressive speaker.
