More so than any other professional skill, improving your public speaking skills will give you the most benefit in your career whether you’re employed, self-employed or unemployed. Even if you don’t regularly speak to groups, the skills that it takes to communicate effectively to groups and the confidence that you’ll gain will automatically help you in interpersonal situations. So here are the top three reasons why you should improve your speaking skills.
Reason #1: The Skills are Transferable
The skills that are necessary to be a good speaker including topic selection, determining the goals for your talk and writing your speech so that it’s a hit with your audience can help you even with one on situations. After all, a speech is simply a conversation with an audience.
So by being able to plan out what you’re going to say and effectively communicate it, you’ll be able to perform better in interpersonal situations such as job interviewing, sales and management. Learning how to answer questions during a speech make job interviewing a breeze and being able to speak to groups makes it easy to handle team interviews or pitching your product to a group.
Reason #2: It Provides New Opportunities
Being able to speak to groups effectively opens up doors in the workplace. If other people on your team are unable to speak well to groups, then you’ll get to do the presenting which automatically makes you look like an expert. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have been asked to speak. By doing presentations at work, you’ll gain positive exposure with both your peers and those above you on the org chart.
Moving up in the corporate world often means management. That means added responsibilities such as communicating policies and news to your direct reports and communicating status to those above you. In some cases, you’ll be required to speak to the board, shareholders, the media or even the general public. The latter being an incredible career booster because you’ll gain exposure outside of your employer which can help you if you ever want or need to switch jobs.
There are numerous benefits for business owners. Speaking at conferences, local business events and community events gets you exposure as an expert in your industry. You’ll reach more potential clients and be perceived as an expert in your field. Let’s say you’re one of five financial advisors that belong to a business association. If you’re the one that speaks regularly at gatherings and events, you’ll be perceived as the expert of the group. This is because you’re the one who is confident enough to speak on that topic.
If you’re passionate about a cause such as a charity or political issue, you’ll reach more people in less time by speaking at local events than you would by going door to door. So not only will you benefit by reaching out to others but so will the cause you’re trying to raise awareness for.
Reason #3: It Raises Your Confidence and Self-Esteem
This is perhaps the biggest benefit of speaking skills as there’s nothing that boosts your confidence and self-esteem more than success. A great way to improve your self-esteem is to look at your successes and your assets. Knowing that you’re excelling in an area which few people feel comfortable and even fewer are successful is like giving your confidence a shot of adrenaline.
This confidence boost is not limited to communication It can help you when you need to overcome challenges from all aspects of your life. But it does help tremendously when it comes to communication. For example, if you’re comfortable speaking to groups, you’ll come across as more confident in one on one situations such as job interviewing and dealing with difficult people.
So these are just some of the many ways that improving your speaking skills will help you. The benefits of improving certain skills aren’t always obvious so it’s up to us to find ways to move beyond the pack to become successful.
James Feudo owns the Boston Web Design Agency JVF Solutions and loves blogging about personal development and communication in his spare time.
James
A really important topic! Becoming a confident speaker is essential for any form of success in any area of life — and as you say, not just in business or career success.
You never know when you’re going to get thrown into the deep end to give a talk or take over a teaching position — this happened to me reasonably early in my professional career and I was so unprepared for public speaking! I was always quiet in tutorial groups but something deep inside me made me push beyond this fear and accept the opportunities made available to me. Needless to say, I made myself develop skills very quickly — and it has done wonders for my career!
Jeanne
Hi Jeanne,
Thanks for your comments. You make an excellent point because you’re right, you never know when a speaking opportunity might arise. It’s always better to work on your speaking skills before you have to speak – the last thing you need is to have to tweak your speaking skills while preparing a talk.
Thanks for sharing your story.
James