What if you are asked to step onto the podium in front of a mass audience and speak to them into a mic?
Most of you will feel butterflies in the stomach, fast heart pounding, blood running cold, and sweaty palms. Glossophobia, or fear of public speaking, is quite common even for experienced business professionals. If you fail to overcome your fear and keep evading public speaking, you might miss out on several golden opportunities to take your business or profession to the next level. Contrary to this, if you successfully win over your public speaking angst, you unlock a plethora of new avenues.
A common misconception about public speaking is that only political leaders, motivational speakers, and senior or managerial-level professionals engaged in delivering frequent speeches must master this skill. However, this is an absolutely wrong notion! Public speaking is important for people from all spheres of life, be it a teacher, a homemaker, a student, a junior executive, etc., to become a more well-rounded individual.
In this blog post, we have listed a few benefits of public speaking. Hope it will give you a little push and encourage you to learn this skill wholeheartedly, without any fear. Read on!
Professional Benefits
1. Career Advancement
Public speaking is not an optional skill to learn; instead, it is a mandatory in-demand job skill for career progression. Be it a group discussion, answering the interviewer’s questions, putting forward your ideas and suggestions in the office meetings, or interacting with a colleague or an outside client – you need to speak up confidently. In a nutshell, you can excel in the competitive job market, grab promotional opportunities, and get an edge over others by your effective speaking abilities.
2. Forges New Professional & Social Connections
Public speaking engagements, such as seminars, workshops, events, etc., provide a great networking platform to forge connections with like-minded people and grow your professional circle. A good example is the TEDx Talk. You can learn how to become a TEDx speaker and spread your message while also making connections. The audience members might approach you to have a conversation or ask questions after your session is over. You can also provide your contact details and business details to them and invite them to have an extensive discussion/talk about a particular topic or your offerings at a later date.
3. Builds Thought Leadership
Public speaking gigs give you a stage to tap into your knowledge, passion, and expertise to answer the biggest questions hovering on the minds of your target audience. Moreover, you can engage with them in a meaningful manner, nurture relationships, and gain credibility and trust in a non-sales, neutral setting, which drives valuable opportunities for your business. You also gain wide-reaching exposure and greater authority by speaking in public, which are building blocks for establishing yourself as a thought leader.
From the confidence and poise of a compelling presentation to the respect earned for succinctly communicating your message, public speaking has tangible benefits that allow one to be viewed as a leader in their field. One effective way to improve speaking skills is to practice out loud with scripts or engage in conversations with others. Additionally, recording yourself speaking will help you become aware of any issues like mumbling or stammering that you can work on and correct over time. You can work with a professional public speaking coach to practice various speaking techniques, overcome fears, increase vocabulary and learn effective presentation strategies – all essential tools to perfect your public speaking abilities.
Personal Benefits
1. Makes You More Empathetic and Observant
Public speaking makes you more observant of the audience’s needs and wants, how they perceive you, how they take your message and respond to your gestures and call-to-actions. You make all efforts to empathize with the audience to connect with them at a deeper level. You learn to make your talk more personalized, relatable, and conversational to turn the listeners into active participants. All these skills help you at some point in your personal life.
2. Makes You a Better Listener
We all know something, but not everything. We all learn from each other, and public speaking is no exception. Even the most efficient and experienced speakers constantly polish their speaking skills by keeping their ears open to the stuff uttered by people around them. They also listen to other influential speakers, focusing on what they say, why, and how they say it. To sum up, the better your listening skills, the better will be your speech.
3. Teaches You to Stay Calm During Stress
For most people, speaking in public is a stressful affair. However, with continuous practice, you learn to calm your nerves and transform nervousness into enthusiasm. You learn several tactics (such as meditation, breathing exercises, etc.) to relax your mind and get rid of your jitters. All these learnings certainly translate into other aspects of your life and help you overcome other nerve-racking events with ease.
The Bottom Line
Public speaking offers you not just one or two benefits but the myriad of benefits packed into a single package. In addition to providing personal and professional benefits, public speaking helps you hone many other critical life skills, such as critical thinking, reasoning, persuasive ability, communication skills, etc. So, if you want to make your presence felt to others and don’t end up as a mere spectator in the office meetings and events, speak up!
Interesting Related Article: “Using public speaking to build your self-confidence“