Tips for becoming a better public speaker: practice

Let’s spend a few posts talking specifically about how you can tune up your public-speaking performances.

You won’t get better if you don’t practice

As you’ve probably gathered by now, I believe that the biggest single key to success in just about everything is practice. And practice. And did I mention that you should practice?

Getting practice time

There are lots of opportunities to get practice speaking publicly, if you hustle a little: volunteer for tours, volunteer to mentor a group of students during the summer and spend at least some of your time “lecturing” to them with slides and presentations, volunteer to give the project updates in your bosses staff meetings, volunteer for proposal and presentation teams, work with local schools and charities, and so on.

The practice opportunity that has had the biggest payoff for me is giving tours. This is pretty easy to arrange if you are still in school. But even after school you can get quite a few opportunities to give tours if you know where to look.

Finding tours after graduation

If you work in a research facility or a federal laboratory, you’re still in luck, because these places have almost as many tours as universities.

If not, there are opportunities yet to be had, but you may have to look a little harder. Remember, you are looking for ways to practice your public speaking skills, so it doesn’t really matter if your company doesn’t often have visitors or give tours, as long as you can find some group in your community that does. It’s the practice that matters, not the venue.

Rotary and Lion’s clubs, your church or synagogue, local schools and colleges, and the Chamber of Commerce are all possible places in which you can become involved and practice your craft. Volunteering in a community organization can provide a lot of practice giving tours and speaking to large groups—these organizations depend upon individual donations, and many of the donors want to see where their money is going.

Toastmasters

Another great option is to become a part of your local Toastmasters International club (http://www.toastmasters.org). Local chapters of this organization meet regularly for the sole purpose of improving their members’ public-speaking skills. Meetings include prepared and extemporaneous speaking opportunities, along with structured feedback from the rest of the club to the speaker.

Roll your own

If none of these options works for you, look for “Brown Bag Lunch Talks” in your club, company, or organization. In many organizations, especially technical ones, groups of staff get together regularly (perhaps once a month) to listen to a relatively informal talk by someone in the group or by an invited outside speaker.

If you can’t find a gathering like this where you are, create one. Come up with an interesting topic for the first meeting, post flyers or recruit friends, and get a speaker or volunteer yourself. Creating a gathering like this will benefit those who attend and those who speak—a win-win proposition!