For vast majority of the population it’s one of the hardest and most stressful things that they could ever imagine. Yet, everything is to be trained - below you will find useful tips and tricks that are going to improve your public speaking skills.
Keep your nerves down
It’s perfectly normal to be stressed before big speech at the conference. Lot of people are feeling some physiological reactions like trembling hands or stomach ache before before acting public. It is really important not to associate said symptoms with acting poorly during lecturing,
The best way to overcome that kind of anxiety is to be maximally prepared for your speech. Write down everything that you want to say, ask someone close to be with you and listen to whole of it and after you end ask for the notes. Knowing the fields that could be improved is really important. It gives you certainty, that you are prepared for everything.
Speak to the audience
Everybody got that one really boring lecture during studies. Professor seems to be talking to himself and whole of the audience is really trying not to fall asleep. Well, when preparing your public speech your main goal is not to be like your professor.
First of all you have to know your audience. You have to know what language there are speaking, what they are finding funny and what they are interested in. For example if you are a lawyer and trying to perform before audience full of programmers, cut down the legal talk to the minimum. The audience will have problems with understanding your message and in the end you will become like your professor - boring.
Be yourself
I know, that this is one hell of a cliche, but please bear with me. You are who you are and you can’t change that. If you are not the most open and easy-going person in the world it wont change over night, because of one public speech. But you can show the audience who you are and that will positively influence your reception by them - big time!
You are shy person? Don’t expect from yourself to act like a showman during your lecture. First of all you will be even more stressed and second - people know when you are fake. Audience can feel that you are not acting like yourself and will be judging whole performance based on that. So it’s better for everybody to act natural :).
React and adapt
I know, that my first tip was to be really prepared in the way, that nothing is going to surprise you, but it’s just not possible. That’s a charm of live events - everything could happend and everything will happend. You will be getting questions from the audience, people mighr be laughing when thy are not supposed to and be silent when you are telling your joke. There’s nothing you can do.
Well, nothing except being elastic and adaptive in your approach to the speech. If you are prepared well enough and know all of the presentation by your heart you can skip parts that your audience is finding boring.
Notes are just that - notes
Don’t read during your public appearance. That’s the worst you can do. It’s like telling your audience - “Thanks for being here, but I didn’t had a time to prepare myself so I’m going to read this for you”. That’s just not how you are supposed to perform. Yeah, sometimes it’s hard to remember numbers or some quotation. It’s best to have it written down on presentation slide.
