Stage fright is real. A lot of celebrities, public speakers, and professional actors even face this stage fright, time and again. Speaking well, making speeches, communicating effectively is not everyone’s cup of tea. However, in colleges and universities, every one of us has taken a ‘communication and speech’ course but not everyone is a good speaker.
Importance Of Good Speech
Today, good speaking skills are very important in running a business and making you successful. You can get that promotion you have always been waiting for a long time, if you are effectively able to communicate and impress your bosses in meetings, conferences, networking events.
Aside from the importance of speaking in business, a powerful speech has the power of bringing changes in people’s minds. This is why if you are good at grabbing people’s attention with your talks and selling your products fast. Sales professionals are not getting paid in millions just for the sake of it, it is a true skill to sell products and bring business new clients by your speaking power and presentation skills.
A lot of people also face difficulties when listening to difficult speeches, with terms they can barely understand, for example, legal translation in Dubai of a document if conveyed in a common man’s language to your client can yield better results to that client’s mindset who can then actually end up signing that contract rather then sitting their confused thinking, “what did he just say?”
Now that you understand how important communication is today, we will list down a few tips and tricks that can help you with your speech skill and therefore benefit you in ways that will only result in success, be it impressing your friends, colleagues, bosses, or international clients.
10 Tips for Speaking Effectively
- Practice Makes a man Perfect: This phrase is not just a phrase, it is true. The key to speaking effectively and perfectly is to practice it. This could mean you speaking in front of a crowd of five people and then slowly taking your speech to a crowd of 10 and so on. People start practising in front of a mirror as well. A Lot of motivational speakers say this is how they prepare for a speech by doing it one in front of the mirror. Every speaker at one point in his life has done this.
Practice gives the confidence you need and eliminates the fear of people listening to you.
- Keep your tone friendly at all times: A speech has moments of highs and lows in it. But the key is to start with a friendly tone and end with a friendly tone. Depending on the kind of speech you are giving, the tone will have to adjust. For example, if you are a comedian your sarcastic tone might be a part of the joke but always make sure you smile at the end of your performance.
The key is targeting the mindset of your audience and if you hit that right, your speech will get a lot of thunderclaps. Do your research right for your target audience to determine the content of your speech.
- Take a few Pauses, Slow it down: When we, Amateur think about giving speeches, we are probably thinking about the time frame have and we almost tend to make our speeches quick and be done with it. But if you want people to be influenced by you, speak slow. Let your client or audience absorb what you are saying. Take Pauses after a few notes. Give the people time to react.
Yes, speech is a one-way street but one skill set these popular speakers and presenters have is that they make the audience feel like it’s a conversation. And right there, my friend is the key to a successful speech.
- Body Language plays an important role in speech: No matter, where you are giving a speech, it might be in your office conference room, your college presentation hall, or at a big stage in the ground, before you even speak people see you first. This is why body language matters in a speech. Your body language can either ooze confidence and control or, it can show nervousness and immaturity.
You must maintain straight postures, whether you are standing or you are sitting. It’s good to use to space and take a walk to a different point while take to show the audience you own the stage, you know your way, etc.
- Overcome Anxiety and Nervousness: Even the best of us can get anxiety or nervousness at any time during the speech. The best thing you can do to deal with this is, slow down your speech, accent your speech with a few emphases on words or phrases, etc.
- Maintain Eye contact: Maintaining eye contact with your audience means that you are communicating with them. It gives them acceptance, which in turn gives you acceptance as well. So maintain eye contact, not with each and everyone but make sure to make eye contact with groups across the room.
- Use Hand Gesture to show control over your Speech: Using hand gestures as a part of your speech has an impact on your audience, it shows that you know what you are saying. You might be doing legal translation in Dubai of business taxations and to emphasize the legal implication of a certain action you can point out a certain fact in a presentation to make your point backed by facts etc.
- Record your voice: When practising your speech, you can record your speech and listen to it to hear how you sound like. It will also help you take a few notes if you notice any blunders in speech delivery, pauses, highs, lows. Emphasis etc.
- Focus on Pronunciation: Make sure you are making the right pronunciation or we hate to say this but you can become the next viral meme on social media.
- Stay Up to date with all the elements of your speech, just in case there is a question from your audience.
