5 Public Speaking Skills Every Speaker Should Have

Public speaking skills are vital in both personal and professional settings. Whether you’re addressing a small group or a jam-packed auditorium, mastering the art of public speaking can significantly boost your confidence and enhance the effectiveness of your communication.

In today’s post, we’ll explore the importance of public speaking and five essential skills every speaker should possess. We’ll also share some actionable tips to improve your public speaking prowess on the podium or in front of the camera.

Why Is Public Speaking Important?

Effective public speaking goes beyond simply conveying information. It’s about captivating your audience, inspiring action, and leaving a lasting impression. Public speaking can help you in a variety of ways:

1. Influence others
2. Build credibility
3. Forge connections
4. Advance careers
5. Amplify impact

Let’s look at each of these points in more detail.

Influence Others

A skilled public speaker has the ability to influence opinions, inspire change, and motivate others to action. In other words, to make others think and act. For example, if you’re a travel enthusiast, you could influence others to pursue solo travel. If there is a cause that you deeply care about, such as providing clean water in developing countries, you could inspire others to support that cause. Do you have a product that you’d like others to invest in? You’ll need to persuade your audience with a good sales pitch!

Build Credibility

Your audience needs to trust you before you can persuade them to take action. Therefore, it is vital that you are knowledgeable and passionate about the topic that you’re speaking about. Show your audience why they should believe what you’re saying. You can demonstrate subject expertise by sharing “evidence” of your credibility and unique insights. For example, perhaps you have extensive education in the field and years of hands-on experience. Or perhaps you have conducted in-depth research and can provide sources and data to support your arguments.

Forge Connections

Engaging speeches build connections with listeners, fostering trust and rapport that can lead to valuable relationships and career opportunities. For example, if you are a YouTube travel vlogger, your public speaking skills can lead to collaboration opportunities with other travel vloggers. Additionally, popular travel brands might approach you offering to pay you to promote their product or service in your videos. Of course, you will need to have a certain number of subscribers before brands will reach out to you. In this case, we suggest concentrating on generating subscribers first. Overall, forging connections is essential, as it’s not what you know, it’s who you know! 

Advance Careers

Believe it or not, public speaking can advance your career. In professional settings, adept public speakers are often perceived as leaders and are more likely to climb the corporate ladder due to their charisma and ability to influence others. Public speaking skills can also help you in other career contexts such as job interviews and elevator pitches.

Amplify Impact

Whether advocating for a cause or sharing knowledge, effective public speaking amplifies your message. It allows you to reach a wider audience and drive meaningful change. If you build trust and establish credibility with an audience, said audience will likely share what they’ve learned from you with others. They might encourage their peers to go to one of your talks, buy your product, join your cause, follow you on social media – the list goes on. And speaking of social media, it doesn’t take long for an audience to get the good word out about you!

Essential Public Speaking Skills

You can’t speak in front of a camera or audience without developing some essential public speaking skills. You don’t have to be one of the greatest public speakers of all time, like Martin Luther King Jr. However, you need to be able to amplify your message and influence others to take action. Influential public speakers have the following skills:

1. Clear articulation
2. Confidence  
3. Engaging delivery
4. Adaptability    
5. Effective body language

Now let’s go deeper into these skills!

Clear Articulation

Good public speaking involves clear articulation. By this, we mean enunciating your words clearly and concisely to ensure that everybody in the audience understands your message. Articulation requires nailing proper pronunciation and grammar, not to mention appropriate speech volume.

Confidence

A confident speaker is also an influential one! If you appear to lack confidence, your audience simply won’t trust you. Projecting confidence starts with your voice, so make sure you speak with an authoritative tone. Next, ensure you deliver your best smile, even if you are a bit nervous speaking in front of others.

Engaging Delivery

Good public speakers employ vocal variety, storytelling techniques, and compelling visuals to captivate their audience’s attention and maintain their interest. They are skilled at catering to differentiated learning. Some people learn through simple lecturing, while others prefer having visual examples – for this reason, we suggest using a presentation as part of your speech. We know that we need to see it to believe it. Engaging delivery also helps build rapport with your audience.

Adaptability

Public speakers are prepared to adapt their delivery based on audience feedback, adjusting pace, tone, and content to suit the audience’s needs and preferences. To do this, you need optimal listening skills to gauge nonverbal cues from the audience.

Effective Body Language

You can’t simply stand behind a podium, stare straight at the auditorium doors, and yak away. You need to utilize open gestures, appropriate facial expressions, and purposeful movement to reinforce your message and connect with your audience on a deeper level. We can’t emphasize the importance of eye contact in public speaking enough. Your eyes should move around the room, looking at every person in the audience. Just make sure it looks natural, and not erratic! We suggest picking one person and maintaining eye contact with them for a few seconds, and then moving on to another member of the audience..

How to Improve Your Public Speaking Skills

If your public speaking skills aren’t up to par, don’t worry! There are a variety of ways to improve them:

1. Practice regularly
2. Seek constructive feedback
3. Study great speakers
4. Utilize technology
5. Join public speaking groups

Now let’s expand on them!

Practice Regularly

Public speaking improves with practice. You might recall your days of public speaking at school when you were encouraged to practice speaking in front of a mirror. This is a great way to gauge articulation and delivery. We suggest thinking of a topic you would like to discuss, preparing a short script, and practicing speaking in front of the mirror.

Rehearsing your speech beforehand is really important. You’ll instantly lose the audience if you’re constantly reading from your script. Reading a speech entirely from a script demonstrates a lack of preparation, as well as nervousness, all of which undermine an audience’s trust in you. That’s not to say you have to have the entire speech memorized; you can have cue cards in front of you for reference.

Seek Constructive Feedback

Ask for constructive feedback from peers, mentors, or professional coaches to identify areas for improvement and refine your speaking skills. Ask a friend or colleague if you can practice a speech in front of them. Just be sure they are willing to provide constructive feedback. We don’t suggest practicing in front of your partner – unless they are skilled orators!

Study Great Speakers

There is nothing like observing other renowned speakers in action! You could watch video clips of great speakers, such as Barack Obama or Oprah Winfrey. Pay attention to their delivery techniques, storytelling prowess, and ability to engage and persuade their audience. Alternatively, you could watch Ted Talks on a topic of interest. The main point behind observing other speakers is to learn from them and apply their techniques to your own speeches.

Utilize Technology

Leverage tools like video recording or teleprompter apps (e.g., SpeakFlow and Teleprompter Mirror) to practice and refine your delivery. You’ll find the more you practice, the more confident and fluent you become. You might want to invest in a good microphone, especially if you plan on making YouTube videos.

Join Public Speaking Groups

Engage with like-minded individuals in public speaking forums or workshops to exchange insights, receive support, and hone your skills collaboratively. For example, Toastmasters provide ample opportunities for public speaking on a variety of topics. Additionally, they provide constructive feedback. Groups like Toastmasters are especially beneficial for overcoming stage fright.

Becoming a Public Speaker

Do you dream of professionally pursuing public speaking? Our Becoming A Public Speaker course teaches a repeatable process to effectively prepare candidates for public speaking opportunities and how to engage, empower, and energize their audiences! Try it for free today.