Growing your career entails being able to share your ideas, convince people, and make an impact on your environment. To do this, you must have good communication skills, especially speaking compellingly and eloquently before an audience- simply, public speaking.

If you feel deficient in this area, don’t fret because there are ways to develop this skill, even if you’re not a natural-born public speaker. Even the best orators had to start somewhere. Many of the savvy and charismatic public speakers and politicians in history even had to overcome stuttering, like Demosthenes, Winston Churchill, and Joe Biden, to name a few.

But like any other skill, practice makes perfect. The key to becoming a skilled public speaker is not to shy away from the opportunity to speak because of fear but to take small steps until you begin to feel your confidence improving. From there, the exercise becomes less daunting and intimidating, and you may even start to enjoy the experience as you go along.

Brilliant Ideas Should Be Heard

No matter how brilliant, what you know won’t make a difference if it’s left unsaid or not adequately communicated. Whether you’re proposing a new reporting system to your bosses or training your staff to elevate customer service, having the right words, backed by the right action, is the key to getting things done the way you want.

When it comes to career advancement, it is not necessarily the best brains that get noticed and promoted. It is usually those who can present their ideas in a way that powerfully connects with and persuades their listeners by providing sound arguments and a moving conviction. And then support their words with actions.

Having this skill in the workplace is vital to be more competitive and stand out and give your ideas a chance to be heard, appreciated, and adopted. Keeping your clever views to yourself will not benefit your organization and make an impact on those around you and will do little to boost your career prospects.

Speaking From Your Mind and Heart

What you say is as important as how you say it. You can make a simple idea sound ingenious if you know how to express it well. I’m not talking about padding the facts or manipulating your audience, but being authentic, trustworthy, and impressive.

It doesn’t mean having to sound too fiery, animated, or hard sell. A cool, calm, and relaxed manner also has its place in public speaking - think Steve Jobs or Mahatma Gandhi. The key is that your message should come from a place of passion and belief in what you are trying to convey, whether selling a new idea, defending your viewpoint, challenging the status quo, educating, or inspiring a movement.

You cannot convince people to believe and embrace something you are not entirely sold to.

Professional Benefits of Good Public Speaking

Your work life, whether in the corporate or business world, usually requires you to speak before an audience during meetings or brainstorming sessions.

It is a necessary skill for going up the corporate ladder or becoming a business leader - motivating people and communicating your business to your internal and external audience. Harnessing a good public speaking skill is a career strategy that empowers individuals to have a voice, literally, and a platform to promote their professional vision and goals.

Making a Good Impression

Following how you look and move, the way you speak immediately comes next when making a good impression. No impeccable dressing or enthusiasm could make up for a failure to connect and engage your audience when making a speech or a lecture on stage. You might initially get their attention by looking great, but the way to sustain their interest is to inspire, empower, and provoke them to think and act as you guide them through your message.

Boosting Sales

Public speaking is crucial in a sales career. When you need to make a sales presentation, your speaking skill is the vehicle to get your message across. Your slides and demeanor are helpful for visual impact, but your words and manner of highlighting your product’s advantage will mainly sway your audience to buy what you are selling. Public speaking is the primary tool for salespeople to close a sale and meet a quota. Without it, it would be difficult to sell even the best product or idea in the market.

Rallying Your Team

If you’re in charge of leading a team in your company, you need to be a leader they listen to for motivation and guidance. Having a diverse staff of various personalities, backgrounds, and goals, you need to be the unifying force that will steer them in the right course. The impact of those pep talks, in-person meetings, and training sessions for team engagement hinges on your deep connection with them and influencing them to follow your lead. With effective communication, you can rally them behind a common goal and work towards accomplishing them.

Enhancing Your Personal Brand

Good public speaking skills help you build and enhance public perception of you as a capable and credible professional in your industry. Experts usually get invited to give lectures and formal talks, and this is where a knack for powerful speaking is crucial. It can make or break your personal brand because who you are in your social media profiles, emails, and resume should be backed by what they see and hear when they see you in person delivering a speech.

Asserting Your Worth 

Whether you’re negotiating your benefits and salary, requesting to be reassigned to another location, or asking for a promotion, you need to justify that you are worthy of what you are asking for. You do this by speaking to your boss effectively about your career highlights, qualifications, and goals. The confidence you get from having public speaking skills can translate to prevailing upon your boss’ reservations and letting your competencies shine through.

Expanding Your Network

Giving lectures and talks is an opportunity to engage your audience, meet new people, and expand your sphere of influence. When aspiring for career advancement, networking with the right people you can exchange ideas with and learn from can help enhance your reputation, strengthen your clout, and accelerate your development both professionally and personally. A wide network also helps you access job or business opportunities, enhance your professional profile, and build long-term associations and relationships.

Speak and Shine

Here are some tips to help you improve the public speaking skills that can equip you for future roles you aspire for in your career.

Know Your Audience. You can only make a deep connection and good rapport with your audience if you know how to relate to them and vice versa because you know their profile, purpose, and needs.

Prepare Your Material. Knowing your material from front to back can help you have more confidence in facing your audience, answering their random questions, and sharing the details of what you know.

Create an Outline. Having a guide will help keep you on topic and not miss important points in your talk.

Practice. Practice before a mirror or record yourself speaking to see where you need to improve. As you practice, ask for feedback from your friends and colleagues so you can make adjustments where necessary.

Learn from Other Renowned Speakers. It helps to learn how other successful public speakers engaged their audience and used techniques like repeating the central theme throughout, strategic modulation and pauses, body language, etc., to send their message across powerfully.

Be Yourself. People will listen to you because they think you have something unique and value-adding to impart to them based on your credentials and character. Learn the best practices from experts but always speak from your authentic person.

Remember these tips to help overcome your nervousness and master public speaking. This valuable skill is a work in progress, and you continuously become good at it if you are willing to practice, improve, learn, and repeat. Your career and future, in general, will greatly benefit if you pursue it with a sense of purpose and direction.