7 Public Speaking Tips To Overcome Performance Anxiety

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Public speaking has been an intricacy to many individuals. From people who have senior executive positions at well-known corporations responsible for succession management to young adults in secondary school, many have listed their number one fear as public speaking. However, being an effective public speaker can be easily acquired from practice and maintaining the right mind set. Most importantly, it can have a dramatic impact on your business management effectiveness.

Change Your Focus

Change your focus. Public speaking is not about you, it is about your audience. Keep this in mind when preparing for a public speaking engagement. Your focus should be on the audience, not yourself or your performance. This will help to control public speaking anxiety. Not only will it help quell public speaking nerves, it will also help your speech too. Your speech will be much more engaging and enjoyable when you focus on the audience, not yourself.

Preparation Is Key

Preparation is the key to a successful speech. Knowing how to differentiate between memorizing content and concepts will decide how a public speaking event results. If at any moment, a business leader forgets content and is not aware of the speech’s meaning, they are surely to do poorly. On the other hand, if an executive forget parts of the speech but has the knowledge and hints of the content’s baseline, they can easily dodge public humiliation. If the business professional is truly well informed of the content, the audience might not even recognize that the speaker forgot a portion of the speech.

Know The Crowd

Knowing the crowd also provides for an engaging public speaking event from the best keynote speakers. If a professional knows they are talking to individuals who may not be specialized in a topic, he or she can easily modify their language and appear more aware than they really are. If the audience is made out of experts, the orator will need to prepare even more. Being able to answer every question that might be relevant to the speech will either make or break a leader’s image. Knowing the information well, however, will make the event significantly more comfortable regardless of a novice or sharp audience.

Mode Of Delivery

Apart from being informed, the mode of delivering a speech can also alter the effectiveness of it. Speaking at a loud volume and clearly will please the audience more so than if a person mumbles. This is true even if you are talking about an exciting topic like the fraud triangle. Being aware of the speed of words alters the effectiveness, too. Speaking too slowly might bore the audience. Speaking too fast might confuse them. Getting the speed right will directly affect their perceptions, and the presentation’s points will then get easily through.

Keep Eye Contact

Keeping eye contact is a gain not only to the audience but for any business executive, too. By looking at people and studying their facial expressions, a person is able to depict whether the audience is understanding the words, references, and language structure used. If they appear to be rather confused, altering the volume or speed may improve the session. Besides, direct contact while talking intensifies a speech, because there is a direct connection with the crowd.

Give Homework

If there is one public speaking lesson to be learning from all of those phenomenal TED talks you have seen, or those female president speeches you wish you were hearing. It is to always leave your audience something to take with them after they leave your presentation. You want your audience to remember your speech after you leave the room. Giving them some bit of wisdom or a bit of homework to apply whatever lesson it is you imparted on them will help them to remember your speech and actually get something out of it. This is the true mark of someone that learned how to master the art of public speaking.

Practice Makes Perfect

Lastly, practicing a speech in front of friends and family will help the public speaking event succeed, just as it helps when you are asking for a promotion. Acquaintances may offer the speaker criticism that may not be provided by those whom the speaker does not trust. Criticism can be a friend in this situation, because it helps improve skill set and the overall presentation.

Becoming an effective public speaker is a skill that can be obtained by any business professional who wishes to possess it, whether they work in a medical office or a Fortune 500 company. Not having the skill mastered does not mean you are not able to do so. With these tips, practicing and exercising charisma, any business executive is able to thrive at public speaking.

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