How to Improve Your Public Speaking

Raise your hand if you remember taking a public speaking class in college? ??‍♀️ I personally remember that I was equally excited and scared for this class as a first year college student but, at the same time, it felt comforting knowing that everyone around me was going through the same thing. 

As time has progressed and I have grown in my career I can confidently say that public speaking has never NOT been part of my job. From my days in radio to my current job, public speaking has always been something I’ve had to do in both big and small settings. 

As I’ve discovered things I like and do not like doing career wise, I realized that I actually really do like public speaking. I also realized that it is an essential skill to have and to be able to do properly. 

It is truly a topic that I am passionate about, so as I’ve improved throughout the years (and am still and forever working on this) I wanted to share a few tips that will help you improve your public speaking skills. 

Practice, practice, practice 

Now, I know this first tip sounds like common sense, and it is, but you’d be surprised at how many people feel that they don’t need to practice. If you have a presentation coming up, I feel that practicing is essential. Just running through it two or three times makes such a difference and really helps your confidence level improve.

Record Yourself 

Stemming from the first point, something that has really helped me is to record myself when practicing my presentations. These days, technology has played a big role when it comes to communication in general and we all have access to tools that can help us improve our public speaking (hello zoom). If you are still at a point where you are embarrassed to practice in front of friends or family, recording yourself and watching it back is a great way to see what you are doing. You may speak too fast, or too slow, or maybe use a lot of buffer words like “um” “so” and others and you might not even know you’re doing it, so recording yourself is a great way to catch those mistakes and try to improve them. I like setting up a zoom meeting and recording it then watching it back to see where I can improve. This has really helped me out.

Analyze and identify areas where you can improve 

Once you have identified the places where you can improve it’s time to work on improving them. What I would do is record myself practicing and then once I feel that I have “fixed” the mistakes,
I would record myself again and see if I’ve improved. You know the saying that goes “practice makes perfect” well, I don’t know if practice makes perfect but, it certainly does make better. 

Always take advantage of opportunities where you can speak (at work or school)

Like I mentioned earlier, public speaking seems to be part of every job so, if you have opportunities to speak in front of a crowd (doesn’t matter if it’s big or small) always try and take advantage of it. I feel that growing up, it was common to run the other way when opportunities to speak came up, but as you progress through your career taking advantage of such opportunities can only be to your benefit and if you consider to have a fear of public speaking, then the more you do it the more you work towards conquering that fear or at least minimizing it. 

Always prepare and be knowledgeable about what you are talking about 

One of the ways that you can improve your public speaking is by being prepared (not only by practicing) but, also by being confident in what you are going to say. In my opinion, being prepared makes such a difference when it comes to speaking in public. I get so much more nervous when I really am not sure what I’m talking about than when I know the information I will be presenting. So, if you’ve got down the information you will be presenting on, then you will be ahead of the game and can focus on how to transmit that information effectively. 

Finally, I wanted to share some other tips that have helped me in the past when it comes to actually speaking in public: 

• Breathe- seriously, again this sounds so simple but wow it makes such a difference. Right before you begin your presentation, if possible take a deep breath, inhale and take a deep exhale and image all the nerves leaving your body as you exhale. 
• Mentally prepare yourself- If you know you will be speaking, giving yourself a pep talk is always a good idea. I usually like doing this in the car and just talking to myself and telling myself everything will be ok makes such a difference. 
• Asking yourself “what’s the worst that can happen”- asking myself this question always makes the situation much less scary because there really isn’t a terrible thing that can happen when you speak. I mean, can you mess up? Yeah, but we all make mistakes and mess up and the world moves on. I guess what I’m trying to say here is that it is not a big deal if you mess up. Instead, look at it this way. If you mess up, then you look at it as an opportunity to improve the next time you speak, and I guarantee that if you keep trying you will improve. 

Well, that is it for today’s blog post. I hope it made you think of ways you can improve your public speaking skills. 

Public speaking is truly a skill that is so important for any job and in my opinion, good public speakers tend to be more successful in their careers because they know how to communicate effectively. Let me know if you have any tips you’d like to add in the comments below and let’s get out there and communicate!