8 Ways To Make A Speech Effective

By Author: Allen Jackson
Total Articles: 20

Fear of public speaking also called glossophobia, is a fear greater than death. It could hurt your professional and personal life. It is a position all of us have been before, be it delivering the news headlines in school or a presentation in office. But you can overcome this anxiety by taking up short-term courses on speech training.

These courses also open avenues for strategic communication consultant to help out businesses. These consultants can help the organizations chalk out plans and strategies to pitch new ideas to the potential clients or offer a presentation in internal meetings. However, special speech coaching imparts techniques to overcome these fears.

Some of the ways to make your speech effective are:

1) Stand up, move around: You will feel energized if you stand up and walk around. Be it a panel discussion or a conference call or a media interview, helps you provide a smooth presentation. The moment you sit, your energy drains out, makes your voice less lively, and crowds the diaphragm.

2) Speak loudly: The only way to find out if you fumble or cannot pronounce something is by practicing time and again. In case you do face any of the mentioned issues, you can always rewrite the phrases or workaround. Practice will also give you a sense of how speaking makes you feel.

3) Practice in the actual setting: Once you make the changes to your phrases and the tonality, try speaking in the real environment like a conference room, auditorium if you are a student, or in front of your group who are taking the speech training course along.

4) Work with a coach: Generally, speech training has trained coaches alongside who record and offer feedback wherever you lack. They help you out with the expressions and other delivery issues. If you have taken a distant course, the trainers provide feedback via Skype sessions, phone, or e-mails.

5) Pick a subject as per convenience: How to pick a topic that you care about?

• It should have an impact on you
• Others should also resonate with it
• The audience should benefit from your knowledge
• Speak about from your heart

6) Avoid overreacting to the audience: Audience reactions are dependent on neck-up and neck-down. Neck-up is when the audience has to make an effort to pay attention to your topic, while neck-down indicates the listener is intrigued by your subject. You might come across listeners who yawn or get busy with their phones. Make the atmosphere interesting with some anecdotes.

7) Do not talk fast: Talking fast can interfere with breathing patterns. Talk fast, breathe less. That can lead to panicky feelings, thereby to fear. Slow down. Be calm and relaxed.

8) Develop a plan to improve the next speech: You learn from your mistakes. See how you can improvise next time by noticing the following cues:

• Areas of improvement
• Facial expressions
• Usage of PowerPoint presentation
• Your rhythm

Has speech training helped you overcome the fear of public speaking yet?