Staying Brave During Public Speaking

Your palms sweat and stomach turns at the thought of speaking in public to a large group – sound familiar? You’re not alone and it is a task that most of us will need to perform at some point in our life, whether it is to colleagues or friends and family. Luckily help is here in the form of a helpfully complied list of tips to successfully guide you through preparing and undertaking a public speech.

1, Prepare.
Make sure that you know your topic, understand the aims and objectives of the speech and be clear of the message that you want to deliver from the start. Be precise with the content of your speech and your message will be clear and a reasonable length, keeping your audience engaged. if you are bored of your speech the likelihood is that your audience will also be bored.

2. Practice makes perfect
Make sure that you run through your speech with a group of friends before the real thing as this will make you more familiar with the layout and improve your self confidence and flow of speech. Time yourself, do you need to add or extract parts of the speech to ensure that you keep to your time allocation.

3. The main attraction
Confidence in your self is key to great public speaking, remember that people are interested in what you have to say, they have chosen to sit and listen to you, they have faith in you, so be interesting, whitty, informative and stimulating, remember when you smile and the world smiles back.

4. Meet and Greet
Arrive early to familiarise yourself with your audience, Get to know a few people and the audience will seem less daunting when you are up on the stage. During your speech create eye contact with members of the audience, focus, and interact with your audience.

5. The Speech
The time has come for the main event! Take deep breathes, keep calm and relax! Enjoy yourself and don’t speak to fast! Start by entertaining the audience with your introduction, a funny story about the weather perhaps, something that your audience can relate to, then collect your thoughts and begin.

Hopefully these tips will have you feeling more prepared and optimistic towards your speech, remember to become part of the room, not a lonely speaker, enjoy yourself, inform your audience and enjoy the applause when you come to the end of your very successful speech.

Mere Golf & Country Club is the perfect Cheshire conference venue, with a selection of conference and meeting rooms, Manchester airport nearby and other facilities for your needs.