Being a good speaker is essential nowadays. You can inspire the audience to take action, you can persuade the audience to buy into your products and services, and you can impact lives with your stories.
Being a confident speaker is a skill one must learn, and can learn. But how to be a confident speaker ?
Here are some tips :
1) Focus on your audience
Speakers tend to focus on themselves a lot. While this is important, it must not be a priority. Yes, we need to dress well, be on time, have great powerpoint ( if you use one ) slides and many other elements.
Remember, our focus is primarily on the audience. They took time off to come over to the conference to learn something. Thus, the message and the takeaway for the audience should be the ultimate goal. Once your goal is to focus on the audience, you will go all out and can be a confident speaker.
2) Practice
Practice is a must. You could have done the presentation 100 times before, but always respect the crowd. Rehearsing and practicing prior to the event, run through the slides and level up your game for the audience is necessary so that you yourself is familiarize with what is your message.
I do rehearse at the venue myself if the event organizer allows. This is for me to be comfortable with the venue.
Below is a picture of my practice before an event.
3) Get feedback
Get Feedback from people. What did you do well ? What could you improve on ? To be a confident speaker, you have to be open enough to receive feedback and learn. A tiny improvement each time will help you grow further.
Who to get feedback from ? It could be the :
- the event organizer
- your mentor who can watch the playback of a video of you speaking
- friends and colleagues
- the audience ( you could give a feedback form after your speech or presentation )
Thank you so much. Hope these 3 tips above will help you to be a confident speaker.
To know more about us, kindly visit :
Email : KidsPublicSpeaking@gmail.com
About :
Johan Speaking Academy has trained more than 1000 kids to speak on stage since 2014. The founder Johan is the 2015 Peninsular Malaysia Public Speaking Champion. In year 2015 itself, he represented Malaysia to the World Championship of Public Speaking held at Las Vegas. He finished as the Semi-Finalist.
Founder Johan Ooi & Cherry Ho
