What You Need to Become a Great Public Speaker
By Royane Real
Author of How You Can Be Smarter - Use Your Brain to Learn Faster, Remember Better and Be More Creative
I used to work in a museum, spending nearly twenty years teaching many hundreds of people to give presentations about a variety of science topics. I helped these people improve their public speaking and presentation skills.
Many of the people I trained in public speaking had never spoken in public before. When they first started speaking and making public presentations, many of them were quite anxious. That`s not really a surprise because a fear of public speaking ranks number one as many people`s greatest terror.
How did these people do after a few months of learning to give presentations in public?
I can truly say that every single person who made a sincere effort to improve their public speaking skills eventually became much better at speaking in public than they had been when they started. Even those people who had been very nervous and awkward when they first started giving presentations public usually became relaxed and effective after some practice and some coaching.
Because I coached so many public speakers, I wanted to discover which factors helped people improve their public speaking skills.
One big factor that made a lot of difference in improving people`s public speaking ability was the number of speeches and presentations that they made. Those people who were willing to practice a lot and give many speeches usually had a much faster rate of progress.
Still, it turned out that the amount of practice was not the most important factor in whether people improved their speech making skills or not. Some of the people who showed no improvement in their public speaking skills actually made speeches quite often.
So, what is the most important factor that determines whether or not you can become a really good speaker?
Here is what I discovered. The single most important factor in whether or not you can become a good public speaker is whether you have the desire to do so. If you have the desire and make a commitment to be a really good public speaker, you will be, although it will take some time and some practice. If you don`t have the desire and commitment to be a good public speaker, you won`t be.
You have to want to be good. You have to want to improve every time you step out in front of a group of people. Without the desire to be a good speaker, you won`t make the effort required to keep improving. You won`t have the courage to listen to your public speaking coaches. You won`t be interested in getting the feedback from your audience and acting on it.
It`s really very simple. Those people who sincerely want to improve their speaking abilities are the ones who can improve.
If you don`t have a strong desire to improve your public speaking, it won`t really matter how much you practice. It won`t matter how much coaching you get.
But if you do have the sincere desire to be a really good public speaker, you already have the most important quality. If you have a sincere desire to improve your presentation skills, there’s no limit to how far you can go.
This article was written by Royane Real, author of How You Can Be Smarter - Use Your Brain to Learn Faster, Remember Better and Be More Creative
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