The ability to speak effectively depends on some trades and qualities. It is also dependent upon the communication situation.
The following is a checklist of features that are often associated with effective public speaking skills.
- Self-confidence
- Knowledge of the topic
- Understanding of the audience
- Proper articulation
- Pleasing voice quality
- Sincerity
- Emotional control
- Fluency
- Friendliness
- Reasoning
- Sympathy
- Open-mindedness
- Humility
- Responsiveness
- Awareness
- Humour
- Forcefulness
- Spontaneity
- Tactfulness
- Intelligence
Need for Public Speaking
The best presenters and speakers speak in a usual way that invites you to make some modifications in your life, no matter how small.
Thus, there are three vital purposes of public speaking which are explained below:
Informative Speaking
Informative speaking is regarded as one of the most common types of public speaking. The main purpose of informative presentations is to share one’s knowledge of a subject with an audience. Reasons for making an informative speech differ broadly.
Example: Let’s say, you might be asked to teach a group of co-workers how to use new computer software or to report to a group of managers how your latest project is coming along. It is incorporated into various different works.
Therefore, learning how to speak efficiently has become an important skill in today’s scenario.
Persuasive Speaking
Another reason for speaking to an audience is to persuade others. In our everyday lives, we are often called on to motivate, convince, or otherwise persuade others to take an action, change their beliefs, or reconsider a decision.
Persuading customers to purchase your firm’s products, advocating for music education in your local school district, or inspiring high school students to attend college all involve affecting other people through public speaking.
Whether public speaking is something you do every day or just a few times a year, convincing others is a challenging job. If you develop the skill to convince successfully, it can be professional as well as personally rewarding.
Modes of Delivery in Public Speaking
There are four main modes of delivery used in public speaking:
Impromptu
The impromptu speech is delivered with little opportunity to prepare. Its main virtue is that it is spontaneous; its main shortcoming is that it is usually not well-planned. When you are urged “say a few words” without any advance warning, what leads is an impromptu speech.
Extemporaneous
Extemporaneous speaking is somewhat more formal than impromptu speaking. You have an opportunity to plan, and the resulting speech is better organized than an impromptu speech. You will normally rely somewhat on notes, but you will not read to the listeners. Most public speeches are delivered extemporaneously.
Memorized
A memorized speech allows for a well-planned expression of ideas. When presenting a speech from memory, how, speakers have the tendency to lose a certain amount of naturalness and sometimes sound and look quite wooden. The possibility of forgetting the speech is another negative aspect of memorized speech.
Manuscript
Manuscript speaking is relied on for more formal occasions. Speaking from a manuscript, you are able to be very precise, and you can carefully control the exact message the listeners receive. Naturally, it, in general, takes longer to develop a manuscript speech, and often the manuscript becomes a barrier between you and the listeners
Entertaining Speaking
Entertaining speaking includes an array of speaking occasions ranging from introductions to presenting and accepting awards, and wedding toasts, to delivering eulogies at funerals and memorial services in addition to motivational speeches and after-dinner speeches.
As with informative and persuasive speaking, there are professionals, from religious leaders to comedians, who make a living simply by delivering entertaining speeches.
Importance of Public Speaking
Individual
When you apply for a job, the employer evaluates you on the basis of certain characteristics. Your capability to communicate is one such characteristic, and it comes across clearly in an interview. Your ability to communicate not only influences whether you are employed but it determines your progress in the job.
Employers realize that it is the ability to communicate that often separates exceptional employees from ordinary ones. Being able to organize your thoughts and give a public speech is another substantial determinant of your personal and professional success.
Being able to give an efficacious public speech enhances your self-esteem; you feel good about yourself.
Organization
It has been said that an organization is only as good as the individuals who constitute make it. It could also be said that an organization communicates only as effectively as its individual members.
There is a need in business for people who can effectively present the organizational viewpoint to the public. The average business organization does a poor job of acquainting the public with its contributions to society.
From a communication viewpoint, it does not matter how clean the motives of the organization are. What matters are, what the public knows about such things and how the public responds to this knowledge of a company’s activities.
Unless the public is made aware of what the business is doing and why the purposes on the part of the business will be of no use. Only through effective external communications can businesses present the information that is most likely to result in a desirable image. One of the most crucial and effective formats in which to present that information is public speech.
Society
We live in a society in which the free expression of ideas is not merely tolerated, but encouraged. Issues are analysed and viewpoints are presented in many different formats. Newspaper editorials, town hall meetings, and discussions (or arguments) are a few settings in which opinions are aired on those subjects about which the participants feel strongly.
It is often through public speaking that ideas are presented for public evaluation. This was as true in the prelude to the Declaration of Independence as it is today in election campaigns at all levels. It is as evident at an annual meeting of stockholders’ as at a monthly union local meeting.
For lack of an effective speaker, a good idea may fail to get consideration. A lack of articulate opponents may allow the passage of legislation of little merit. A free society requires willing and articulate people of different viewpoints.