10 tips for improving your public speaking habilities

Public speaking techniques

Public speaking is inherently one of the most important abilities that one can have as a business leader and member of the community as a whole. It allows for people to trust you and for confidence in your product or service to ride as well. However, it may not be the biggest talent for some people. This list should provide sufficient tips in order to improve public speaking abilities.

• Eye contact
• Humor
• Passion
• Breathe
• Support
• Hand gestures
• Visual aids
• Minimalism
• Be nervous
• Preparation

Eye contact

Engaging with your audience is imperative, so remaining able to look them in the eye allows for more immersion in what you are discussing as well as gives you the opportunity to feel more like you’re talking to just one person, as opposed to a whole room of them.

Humor

Maintaining a level of humor within a presentation always helps with easing the tension within a room or presentation. It also allows for more audience participation and ensures your words are being heard. Audiences cannot stand being bored, and most of these types of public speaking engagements can prove to be slow moving, so adding some spice can keep morale up within the meeting room or hall.

Passion

While many public speaking opportunities are aimed at informing others, it feels more palpable if one is passionate about what they are speaking about. This makes the presentation of ideas easier for both the audience as well as the speaker. Similar to the tip about humor, audience members value someone who genuinely cares about what they are speaking about, and who can clearly present their thoughts about a particular topic with ease.

Breathe

Talking in front of a group of people can be nerve wracking and not for everyone in particular. Breathing helps center oneself and calms all those nerves down a little bit. Just assure yourself that while you’re breathing, you know what you are talking about and these people need to hear what you have to say.

Support

Friends and family can play a crucial role in helping out with public speaking. Asking for help with practicing in front of somebody you are comfortable with could be very useful. Not only this but a friend can sit at the front of you when you’re giving your presentation in order to ease your nerves further.

Hand gestures

Accentuating words and important phrases is super important when public speaking, and one way to do that is simply with your hands. Hand gestures and movements emphasize things in a way similar to italicizing or bolding words on a paper would do. They add a level of immersion and give the audience something to look at as well. If you don’t normally talk with your hands, I’d recommend trying to incorporate those movements into your speaking.

Visual aids

PowerPoints and whiteboards are super helpful when public speaking and could help you if you’re the type to forget memorized things easily. This doesn’t only include text, however, as using things like videos and pictures can also aid in being able to properly evoke a visual that maybe simply speaking about may not be enough. Visual aid helps with more than just not forgetting. 

Minimalism

In a similar vein to visual aids, minimalism goes hand in hand with that tip. As aforementioned, people tend to get bored very easily, and big words and long text boxes tend to do that to them. If using PowerPoint or any other sort of visual idea planner, one must ensure that the words used are the least possible as well as the speaking about certain topics to be short and simple. Less is more in this case.

Be nervous

Nervousness is nothing new in this space, and many would argue that it is actually quite important. Nervousness means that what you have to say must be important and you are afraid that your message won’t properly get across. It’s simply a matter of harnessing that nervousness and transferring it into actual speaking. You would be surprised how much easier the speaking gets the further into the actual speaking part that you are. Just take breaths and focus.

Preparation

Probably the most important of any of these tips: practice, practice, practice! Be it by yourself or with a close friend, practice is the only way to go through the entire speech or presentation and to get a good idea of things like pacing and timing. While there is no substitute for the real thing, practice can ensure that the real thing will go much smoother.

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