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5 Essential Speaking Skills

In the public speaking training article, we'll cover some of the basic speaking skills you simply must at least be aware of, if not have mastered.

Even seasoned professional speakers are not above reviewing the basics and making improvements; as my Karate Sensei used to tell me - "just because you're a black belt doesn't mean you don't go back and perfect and polish your basics".

Some of the speaking skills here are not skills per se, but mistakes that brand you as a rookie and destroy your credibility with your audience.

In a sense "what not to do" is also a skill because it does take conscious effort to weed these bad habits out of your behavior when you're up in front of people speaking.

1. Stop Pacing:

Read my articles on "Stage Anchoring" - the stage or front of the room is not some place for you pace around nervously.

Unless you're a comedian or a preacher, stop the random prowling around the stage. It makes you look unprofessional.

Map out 2 to 4 locations on the stage and use stage anchoring to delineate specific states of mind to attach to those places.

2. Stop Nonessential Chatter:

I've seen many, many polished professional highly experienced speakers lose rapport and credibility they've built up by not keeping quiet when they should.

I'm specifically referring to saying out loud what's in your mind that's not part of your speech or presentation.

This usually has to do with something going wrong with technology, or some other unexpected event on stage, and the speaker starts muttering "this wasn't supposed to happen" or other nonessential chatter.

3. Use Nonverbal Communication:

Most speakers focus on the content of their presentation, the words they'll say.

But study after study shows that when people communicate it's our voice tone, body posture, facial expressions and gestures that make the biggest impact - even more than the words you say.

4. Junk Speech Patterns:

Junk speech patterns include "you know?", "okay?" and "um" or "uh".

A little is okay, but repeated junk speech is distracting and brands you as a novice speaker.

Record yourself speaking and listen back - you may be surprised by junk speech patters you find yourself saying over and over.

5. Message Clarity:

Many speakers have a passion to share their message, their story, or better yet to promote themselves and their business, but are just plain guilty of not telling the audience exactly what they should do.

At the end of your talk, your audience should be given clear instructions on what is going to happen next or what they should do now.

Summary:

While these 5 speaking skills don't comprise every possible skill that you should possess, review them carefully and make sure you are working to master each and every one of them.

It's easy to say "I know all that" but the question is, are you doing it! Knowledge is not power, action is!