If you want to build your business, raise your profile in your industry and achieve the ambitious goals you’ve set for yourself, there’s one unexpected strategy you can use to dial up your success. That strategy?
Mastering the art of PUBLIC SPEAKING.
In this episode of Power Play, I discuss two powerful strategies that will help you command more attention around the boardroom table, network with ease and land speaking gigs that will elevate you to a position of leadership in your field.
How has mastering the art of public speaking helped YOU grow your business?
Episode Transcript:
If you know you want to be a more powerful, persuasive, high impact speaker here are two tips that you will not necessarily learn in most public speaking programs.
When I think about speaking, there are two unique skills that I’m always looking to practice. One is actually the physical act of speaking and paying attention to my voice, and the second is mastery over my material.
So, in many public speaking programs and certainly if you work with a voice coach, you are going to get different types of tools and tricks to practice speaking. Practice projecting your voice, practice varying your cadence, your tone.
A great exercise that you can use to do this is actually what I learned when I was in journalism school training, which was — we would take an object. It could be this bracelet, this ring and speak about it, straight, for 60 seconds, taking time to think about interesting things to say about this bracelet. How it was given to me by my friend Jennifer. And how it is white with a brown clasp. And as I’m speaking about the bracelet, what I’m truly practicing is my ability to speak on topic without saying ‘um’ or ‘ah’. Got it?
So you can choose whatever topic it is that you want to speak about it consistently for 60 seconds. Every time you want to say ‘um’ or ‘ah’, discipline yourself to simply pause instead.
So that’s the first part. Now what that allows you to have have much more fluidity and command over your voice as you’re speaking, so it’s really excellent practice. But that alone, without really great content, means you’re a great sounding vacuous speaker.
So let’s deal with the vacuous side next.
One of the things that I find many public speaking programs really overlook, is mastery over content. So one of the best ways to become a stronger speaker and presenter is to have mastery over the content about which you are speaking.
Now, you don’t get in mastery over content by reading and researching. That helps you to stay informed, to stay up to date. What allows you to truly have mastery over your content, and the kind of content that’s going to make you a great speaker and presenter and truly articulate in the moment – whether you are preparing or you’re doing it on the fly, is to publish. Got it? Is to create output.
One of the most important things that I do and that I coach my clients to do in order to be better speakers and presenters is to publish. Write articles on LinkedIn. Write weekly emails to your community. Write articles and submit them to medium.com or to popular blogs. Write research papers, white papers, letters, emails, publish reports, create training webinars. The more content you create in your area of expertise, that’s how you truly master a topic. Not by reading, by communicating and publishing.
And so that’s where I find so many programs miss the mark, because it’s all about that projection of the material rather than mastery over the material itself. So there you go. Two tips to help you be a more persuasive, powerful speaker and presenter. Good luck.