What Qualities Are Required For A Good Public Speaker?

For many people public speaking is something that is a challenge, and something people are not comfortable doing. There are many different situations and jobs which require public speaking as a role. These include lectures, high school teachers, lawyers and announcers. 

This article will outline the qualities in which you should be good at if you are hoping to pursue a career in any one of these roles, or any other job which may require good public speaking skills. As well as the ways in which you can improve these qualities.

Have Confidence:

One of the most important qualities of a broadcaster and public speakers is good confidence. If you are not confident, it will be obvious to the people you are speaking to. 

A lack of confidence can affect the way you speak in numerous ways. The first is the fact that it might cause you to stutter and struggle to get across what it is that you are trying to say. People who are nervous often also speed up what they are saying so that it is over quicker. A steady pace is key when speaking confidently. 

As well as this, when people are nervous they tend to fiddle, this might be with their fingers, or in some cases any rings or jewellery they are wearing. Not only does this show your audience that you have a lack of confidence, it can also distract them from what you are saying as they will be focusing on what you are doing with your hands. There are many different gestures you can make while speaking to show both confidence and passion for what you are talking about.

The best way to overcome a confidence issue is to rehearse over and over again so that you know exactly what you are saying and how you are saying it. This is due to the fact you will become comfortable with what you are saying.

You can show confidence through your body language by having a strong posture and appropriate body language as opposed to being hunched over.

Know Your Audience:

Knowing your audience is very important, because your speech is for them, not for you.

Different audiences will require a different type of public speaking. For example, if you are speaking to teenagers in a secondary school assembly you might loosen up your approach so that the students do not lose interest, you might also consider getting them involved to keep their focus throughout the speech.

However, older more mature audiences will be able to keep their focus on a topic for longer without getting restless and losing concentration.

Depending on the audience will also depend on the type of information you add into the speech itself, and the type of language you use. For example, audiences with more intelligence will be able to understand different words than an audience with lower intelligence levels.

Structure Your Speech Well:

The key to a captivating speech is a good structure. If you lose the interest of your audience due to a poor opening, it can be really hard to bring their attention back to what you are saying. This means you need to capture their attention at the start, and maintain it till the end.

A good structure will also allow for the speech to be delivered more smoothly. It will allow you to stick to the main topic, and not talk about irrelevant information that does not offer any purpose to your speech.

The end of the speech should always sum up the topic and assure that the audience is not left with any questions, or gaps in knowledge. You should also always end any speech asking if anyone has any questions if it is necessary. Not only does this assure the audience has everything they need from your speech, it also gets them involved and allows them to get any information they might have missed.

Get Feedback Where Possible:

Getting feedback can improve your public speaking skills in a number of ways. Good feedback can boost your confidence as well as outline any improvements you can make. 

It is good to see if you can get feedback before you do the speech for the intended audience due to the fact you can take the feedback on board for the actual speech. Good feedback can also boost your confidence.

You can do this either by rehearsing in front of someone, or simply recording yourself. 

Record Yourself:

Recording yourself speaking is a very useful thing to do for numerous reasons. The first is the option to have the audio transcribed into text. This is useful if you are giving a speech for educational purposes as you can hand out text documents for people to make notes on and refer back to at a later date if they need to. 

As previously mentioned you can easily distribute audio or video files of yourself speaking to gather feedback and improvements to become a better public speaker. 

As well as this it is also useful to listen back to yourself rehearsing as you can pick up on improvements you need to make yourself. For example if you feel as if you are speaking too fast when listening back you can make a conscious effort to slow down when talking so you can be understood better and appear more confident to your audience. 

To Conclude:

To conclude there are many skills required to be a good public speaker, but these are skills that can be rehearsed and improved with practice and feedback from others.

The main things to consider when conducting a public speech is to assure that you appear confident so that the audience trusts what you are saying, as well as making sure that the content of your speech is relevant to the audience you are planning to deliver it to. This will assure that the audience listens to what you have to say instead of zoning out.