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Once you get over the shakes and nerves that go along with standing in front of a group of people and delivering a speech, your next big challenge is going to be finding ways to get better in order to maximize importance of public speaking. Deep down inside, what each one of us would like is if we could find ways to make the effort that we put into each speech make us just a little bit better. It turns out that there are three things that we can be doing that will make this happen.
You Are Going To Need A Mentor
If you are going to have any hope of becoming better, then you are going to need some help to get there. What this comes down to is simple – you are going to need to find yourself a mentor. If we were back in school, an mentor would be assigned to you. Sorry – that doesn’t happen anymore. Now you are going to have to get up and go out and find yourself a mentor.
Finding someone who is willing to be your mentor is a big deal. However, you need to keep in mind that they won’t be your mentor forever. Mentors will change over your lifetime as both your and their needs continue to change. Remember that it is your responsibly to make it easy for your mentor to work with you. Additionally, since they are willing to work with you, you need to always be looking for ways to make them more successful also.
It’s All About Your Reputation
If you want to get better at this speaking thing, then you are going to have to deliver some speeches. This means that people are going to have to be able to locate you and then decide that they want you to come and talk to their audience. What’s going to make this easier to accomplish is if you have a good reputation.
In the world of speaking your reputation is going to be built on many different things. There will be simple things such as showing up on time, only using the time that you’ve been allocated, etc. However, there will be more subtle things also such as your ability to connect with your audience. We need to keep in mind that if we don’t have a positive reputation, then it’s going to be very hard to get speaking opportunities. One wrong move and you can end up trashing your speaking reputation.
Do You Have Goals?
If you are going to want to become better then you need to take the time to sit down and create some goals. For you see, if you don’t have a clear vision of where you want to get to, then you’re never going to be able to get there. The reason that we create goals is so that when we are in the middle of something and we’re wondering why we’re making the effort to do a task, we can remember what our goal is and it will give us the strength to carry on.
All too often I run into speakers who tell me that they do have goals. However, when I ask them what their goals are, they start to stammer and look up into the sky as they try to remember just exactly what their goals are. Look, if you are going to create speaking goals for yourself, do it the right way. You’ve heard it before but it never hurts to hear it again: a goal must be measurable, identifiable, attainable, specific, and, here’s the most important part, in writing. If this is what your goals look like, then you should be all set to achieve them.
What All Of This Means For You
Becoming better at what we do is something that all of us want. When it comes to delivering speeches, things are no different. We’d all like to become better public speakers so that we can share the benefits of public speaking, the challenge that we all face is that it’s not always clear what areas of our speaking we need to be working on.
In order to improve the quality of the speeches that we give, we need to first go out and find a mentor. This will be a person who can give us advice on how the speeches that we are giving are going over. We need to keep in mind that time changes everything and so we may need to change mentors over time. Next we need to realize that it’s going to be our reputation as a public speaker that is going to get us our next speaking gig. Finally, in order to become a better speaker we need to have real goals that we can work towards achieving.
We all want to become the best public speaker that we can be. What we need to realize is that it’s a journey from where we are to where we want to be. This is a journey that we won’t be able to make by ourselves, we’re going to need mentors. However, if we follow these suggestions then eventually we’re going to discover that we have become the speaker that we knew that we could be.
– Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills™
Question For You: What do you think is the best way to approach someone that you want to ask to be your public speaking mentor?
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Note: What we talked about are advanced speaking skills. If you are just starting out I highly recommend joining Toastmasters in order to get the benefits of public speaking. Look for a Toastmasters club to join in your home town by visiting the web site www.Toastmasters.org. Toastmasters is dedicated to helping their members to understand the importance of public speaking by developing listening skills and getting presentation tips. Toastmasters is how I got started speaking and it can help you also!
What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time
I don’t mind telling you that I’d like to become a better speaker. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that because of the importance of public speaking you pretty much feel the same way. However, we always face the big challenge – what do we need to do in order to become better? Should we run away for a week in the woods with a speaking guru? Perhaps, but it turns out that there are a number of small things that we can do that will have a big impact on how good of a speaker we become.