While most people consider speaking in public worse than a death sentence, it does not have to be so. In fact, public speaking can be a fun and fruitful endeavor in the hands of a speaker with the right mindset.
And the first agenda when it comes to public speaking is to approach it in terms of having fun.
How can you ever have fun speaking to a large audience hanging on to your every word and gesture, you say? The answers are simple.
Here are a few tips to get you started.
1. Choose a subject near and dear to your heart. There is no better supplier of knowledge than experience. Your audience knows when you just read off a book and when you’re speaking from having been there yourself.
Frankly speaking, unless you speak with emotional involvement with the subject, you cannot endear yourself to your audience. The audience looks for it, wants to know that whatever they are learning from you is worth their time and effort to listen to.
You want to be earnest, enthusiastic, excited, and persuasive. No other technique does this faster than being personally involved.
2. Capture the feelings you had about the topic. Again, your feelings are the key to a convincing speech and is the ability to project the feelings you had of the subject across the whole audience. Some may not agree with you and some may have felt you could have said it another way. But, none of them will forget you.
Speaking to the public monotonously and indifferently creates a sense of objectivity not appreciated by the audience. The stage is not the time to become dispassionate. Imagine the reason why we patronize movies and theater so much. It is partly because we want to see depth of emotion expressed fully.
As human beings, we need to see humanity in others.
3. Speak and act sincerely. You must approach the speech like a man going to have a good time, not like a man heading for a hanging. No matter what happens, you must have the will to survive with a sense of humor. In this tip, one must find a way to appreciate the situation he is in, and then find a way to turn the tables to his advantage.
The ability to float right-side up when you are down is a great test of personal character more than anything. To act with sincerity in all that you do will permeate his being and will become most noticeable with the audience.