Wondering whether “Public Speaking” is an ‘Art’ or ‘Science’? “The Art of Public Speaking’ written by famous writer ‘Dale Carnegie’ is one of the finest good reads on Public Speaking learning. It’s a skill, no doubt. Some come up with such competencies by birth, while some develop it over the years by training or learning. Immaterial to what you excel in, you need to practice a lot for this talent to add to your character. Personally, I grew up seeing my father speaking to the audience boldly. In due course of time, my family members have also become used to speaking with diverse audiences in their professional careers. Though I am not the finest public speaker, at least I can speak. I still make mistakes, but I try to overcome them in a short time; sometimes, people ask me how to develop this skill. Here I jot down some tricks I follow for a public speaking session. I believe these will be helpful for beginners to practice and excel at public speaking.
Suppress ‘FEAR’:
Overcoming fear is possibly the most critical part of conquering the public speaking X factor. In most cases, people get a fear of talking in public. It mostly comes from a lack of confidence, lack of success stories, lack of information, lack of practice, etc. Once you win over this trick, speaking to the public will be as easy as water. Overcoming fear, I mostly follow one line in my mind: “Audience are here to listen from me, and they believe I have capacity to deliver.”
Analyze ‘AUDIENCE’:
In most cases, we don’t usually analyse our audiences before going into speaking publicly. Hence, we make silly mistakes or start with irrelevant issues, derailing the audience from the speech. Once the audience loses their patience in listening to the speaker, it’s a dead end for that session. Keeping the audience interested in the full speech is only possible when you know your audience mostly. This will come over once you analyse your audience’s character as much as possible. A very minute review of that analysis will give you scope to find the interest of the audience to keep them alive in the session.
Keep ‘2C’:
During a speech, we usually forget why the speakers and the audience are here. Hence, we start discussing topics that can’t connect the audience with the speaker. ‘2C’ is a concept that helps us in delivering a ‘Concrete’ & ‘Compact’ speech. This structure of speaking keeps our speeches very concrete on the motto of the speech and also makes the narrative well-informed and well-versed. For reference, we can highlight some out-of-the-box topics while having a connection to the main topics of the discussion. In any case, the audience should not feel that the speaker lacks knowledge about the topics and just wasting their time.
Continue ‘INTERACT’:
It’s advisable that at any point in the speech, the audience must not feel that they are stranded in the discussion; even the pitching of the delivery may vary with the tone of the audience’s pulse. Sometimes speaker’s full plan of speech delivery must change, or the speaker should shift the momentum of delivery according to the audience’s reaction. Understating audience reaction is key to this success. Hence scanning the audience’s eye or their movement is important. The speaker should try to engage the last person in the audience row to the extreme corner of the audience so that they feel like it’s an engaging event. Interaction with the audience makes the speech more eventful, creative, and interesting to the audience. One of the beauties of interaction is to pass the time of the speech more fruitfully.
Bring ‘DRAMA’:
The audience here is not to listen to your speech only but to see how you engage, interact and treat them in the speech. It’s great to take the full audience in one journey line so that they don’t feel they are listening to you. Rather, they are listening to their stories. Therefore, bringing some drama in terms of physical movement, eying differently, and moving hands and fingers with the correct approach can lead a speech delivery more attractive to the audience. Please make sure you know the correct sign or movement of a finger according to your culture, or it may be jeopardised.
These above five steps are not strict rules and regulations to go for public speaking, but these are tools that can help you make your speech more audible and more friendly to the audience. In the end, a well public speech can lead to a good engagement session. No matter what, having vast knowledge of the topic is the key to the successful delivery of the session. Whether public speaking is an art or science may be a debatable topic but having good feedback from the audience after an excellent delivery is a surreal and magical feeling for the speaker. It gives him an immense amount of confidence for the next session, and each session forward, in the long run, piling up momentum for the better next session. Happy Public Speaking!
Engr. Md. Jakaria Jalal
Head of Public Relation, Sector A
Bashundhara Group
Email: [email protected]
