How To Improve Your Presentation Skills The Right Way

As a speaker, it’s your responsibility to keep the audience engaged. This can be a challenge in some cases, but with these simple tips and tricks, you’ll be able to overcome all obstacles and become a better speaker.

In this guide, you’ll discover the most important things you need to know about becoming a better speaker, as well as specific techniques you can apply to improve your public speaking right now.

Step 1: Find Your Voice

There are several ways to go about finding your voice. One of the easiest ones is by borrowing someone else’s voice. This means you should listen to people who are better speakers than you and try to mimic their voice.

Remember, the key here is not to sound exactly like them, but to try and grasp their tone and adapt it for yourself. This will help you build your own unique style of speaking. Listening back to a recording of yourself is a good way to do this. It may take a few times for you to feel comfortable with that process. In addition, if you want to gain more confidence in public speaking and communication, enroll in a public speaking coaching course. You can improve your communication skills by taking customized training at Thought-Leader.

Step 2: Create a Killer Presentation

The visual element of your presentation is just as important, if not more so than the actual words you’re saying. When presenting, you should aim to show rather than tell. This means you want to create a presentation that’s so visually stimulating your audience doesn’t even need the words in order to follow along with what’s going on. An easy way to improve this element is by using presentation software from beautiful.ai or at least using a quality presentation template.

Step 3: Vary Your Voice

One of the most common mistakes for new speakers is speaking in one tone or inflection. It can make your presentation seem monotonous and boring, especially if you spend the entire time speaking in a deadpan voice. If you’re standing on stage without any visual aids, it’s even more important that you try to hold the audience’s attention.

One way you can do this is by varying your tone and inflection to create a compelling presentation. This means you want to have different levels of volume, speed, and clarity in order to keep the audience engaged for the duration of your talk. Practice doing this ahead of time so it comes naturally when you’re presenting in front of a live crowd.

Step 4: Don’t Be Afraid to Experiment

One of the problems that many novice speakers have is being too attached to what they’ve been practicing during their practice sessions. In order to become a better speaker, you should be willing to experiment and try new things, even if it means going off script at times.

Remember, if you don’t take any risks, your presentation will likely sound stale. Sometimes it’s necessary to throw caution to the wind and just see what happens when you do so. With enough practice ahead of time, you can successfully pull off different techniques without anyone realizing that you haven’t practiced them beforehand.

Step 5: Get Feedback From Friends and Family

No matter how good of a speaker you are, there’s always room for improvement. This is why it’s important to get feedback from those who have seen you speak. Ask them what they think went well and what could use some work on your part. You might even want to ask them for honest criticism about your speaking ability as a whole. This can be tough to hear, but it’s important that you take the feedback in stride and work on any areas of weakness they’ve pointed out.