Secret of great speakers

Let’s get one thing straight right now, it is easy to do a simple presentation if you speak English. However, let’s say you work in a kitchen.

Are your morning briefings enthusiastic and exciting?

There is a bit of misunderstanding surrounding the phrase “public speaking”. People have the misconception that becoming good at public speaking is all about how they speak. Giving a presentation to a group of people requires more than just your voice.

If you want to be an effective public speaker, use every resource at your disposal, such as your body language, your arms, and your legs, to draw the crowd’s attention and hold it.

A speaker who stands in one place and never moves his arms while speaking softly just relays information about the talk is boring. Therefore, if you want to avoid this curse, you should learn to communicate with your whole being when you are in front of an audience.

Use facial expressions, gestures of the arms, and movement to express yourself. It is the extra effort that can make a good presentation great or a fair presentation good.

A good public presentation can be compared to eating a meal in a restaurant. In fine dining, an excellent chef knows there is more to it than just food because excellent service and ambiance make a meal enjoyable to consume as well as the presentation of the food.

Public speaking is no different. Just get up and say what you have to say. In order to be successful, you must communicate, not just speak. If you want to communicate, your audience must understand what you are saying and be prepared to put it into practice.

Public speaking is one of the most under-used methods, but it is also one of the most effective. Simply put, don’t just stand there when you address a group of people. Get out of the podium and move around a bit. Walk from one side of your speaking area to the other. Use your hands to help you describe an illustration or to gesture with emphasis toward the crowd when your text fits that kind of expression.

This movement is good for you because it’s a way of walking off your nervousness. It’s good for the audience because it keeps them interested. And it’s very good for your presentation because it is a powerful way to get your point across and to assure you are being understood.

Public speaking and public performance go hand in hand. When you watch a speaker, the key words are “watch” and “experiences”. The more your audience actually experiences you rather than just hears what you say, the better they will like your presentation and the more likely they will be to agree with what you have to say or take action in the direction you wanted them to.

Of course, it can be a nervous moment the first time you decide to step away from the podium and use your body as part of your presentation. If you walk and move in front of people, there is always a risk an accident can happen. You could swing your arms in emphasis and knock something over. You could trip over a microphone cord and be in danger of falling down.

Or your wardrobe could malfunction because of the increased stress and that would be a horrible thing to deal with when everyone is looking at you. But with some extra measures, such as checking to make sure your wardrobe is secure beforehand and evaluating the speaking setting so you are aware of potential causes of accidents, you can take some risks so the results will be so much greater than what you are passing up when you stay behind the podium.

One of the risks of stepping away from the podium is that you might lose your outline. To enable yourself to wean away from needing that outline all the time, choose one or two sections where you’ll share a personal story. Then your movement will be confident and effective. And when you can combine confident movement with good speaking skills, your public speaking will go from good to great in an instant.

They say that practice makes perfect. While we can agree that practice certainly helps, you can also achieve greater fluency by changing your perspective and seeing public speaking as a skill to master, rather than a terrifying ordeal. By putting forth the effort, you can overcome your fears and start speaking publicly with confidence.

Related: 9 books to improve public speaking