1. Developing your voice, posture and confidence
Improving the quality of your voice and the way you carry yourself while you speak will directly influence how confident you seem and how persuasive you can be! Your voice, posture and overall body language are your greatest tools as an orator. You can stabilize your voice and find the right volume to speak at by doing breathing exercises and vocal warm ups. Some things you can work on are: the volume of your voice, the tone of your voice, and the speed at which you speak. Your posture and body language can be just as important as your voice and the content of your speech. Moving around too much or standing too still can come off as nervousness, but using gestures and pacing in a purposeful way can make you more persuasive and add to your confidence as you speak!
2. Be aware of your audience
Being aware of your audience helps you add context to your speech and target your audience better. This will also help you engage with them on a higher level. Being mindful of your audience, is something you should be doing even before you face them! Keeping your audience in mind as you develop your ideas and craft your speech will help you choose the right words to use and appropriate story-telling techniques like humour and relatable anecdotes. Here are some questions you can ask yourself as you consider your audience: Do they all belong to a certain age group? Do they have a similar problems or goals? Do they all belong to the same industry? Answers to questions like these will help you tailor your speech to suit your audience better and engage with them more effectively.
3. Know your material
Being knowledgable and updated on your subject matter is the mark of an effective orator. Luckily this aspect of speaking can be developed quite easily! Staying in touch with the latest news, trending topics and latest research in your field is just the first step. Reading opinion pieces and listening to talks by others in the same field can help you form your own insightful, nuanced opinions and develop ideas worth sharing. Knowing your material also means organizing your ideas well. While stream of consciousness can make for interesting delivery, speeches that are well structured with a captivating hook and a cogent, powerful ending are the most persuasive.
4. Study great speakers
Watch other public speakers and identify those who inspire you. An obvious place to start would be to watch those who discuss topics you are interested in speaking about. Another way to identify speakers you can emulate is to pinpoint the purpose of your speech. Is your speech meant to be motivational or informative? Is your aim to glavanize your audience into taking action or to provoke contemplation? Look for people who achieve these aims with their speeches. Study their voices, body language and other details of their delivery and observe what makes them great.
5. Practice makes perfect
Like any other skill, oratory skills require lots of practice. Practicing your delivery, rehearsing your material, and visualizing yourself delivering a compelling speech can also help to build your confidence! Even if you aren’t practicing for a specific occasion, take any opportunity you get to speak publicly and get used to the feeling of speaking in front of others. Speaking in front of an audience as often as you can will help you dispel any fears or anxieties you have around public speaking. You can also record yourself speaking to get a better sense of how you really sound and get feedback from others while practicing!