How To Be A Good Public Speaker

Hi! I'm Simon Bucknall, and in 2008, I won the European Championship of public speaking. At the Art of Connection, we help ambitious professionals to connect with our audience and we do it by bringing world class communications expertise into the training room to enable our clients to persuade, influence, and inspire others. If you want to be a good public speaker, you have to speak.

Sounds obvious don't it? But it's true! These are not my words but this is Lance Miller's, who won the 2005 championship of public speaking, and the reality is that there is no substitute for practice. If you want to be a speaker you have to get out there and speak. So where can you do it? Toastmasters International comprises a network of ten thousand speaking clubs around the world.

There is probably a club near you. Alternatively you might want go and speak at organizations like Rotary or Lions, or a local community organization that perhaps has regular meetings or perhaps at your next networking meeting. There is now substitute for practice.

The second thing you need to do if you want to get good at public speaking is record yourself. Now, believe me, I understand if that sounds painful because it is. But, honestly the fastest way to improve is to record yourself and then review afterwards how you did.

This has become much easier nowadays with technology than it was in the past because even if you can't video yourself you can at least get an audio recording whether it's on the phone or on your camera. But if you want to get better, you have to record yourself so you can assess how you did and - believe me - when you look at or listen to yourself, you will spot all sorts of things that you could do differently. Believe me, even professionals find it easier to review recordings of them speaking.

The final thing has all to do with feedback; get feedback on your speaking from other people. You might leave a handout or a feedback form on the chairs of the audience members or you might ask people in advance, perhaps friends of yours or relatives to look out for specific things in your presentation that you might improve on. Maybe you want somebody to focus on your eye contact or you want advice on how clear the message was, but there is no valuable way of getting feedback than from the actual people that have listened to your presentation.

It may sound painful but it really does help. So those are the things you need to think about if you want to get good at speaking - find opportunities to speak because there is no substitute for practice, record yourself and review how you did afterwards and finally, gain feedback from your audience members.