The importance of Public Speaking – 10 Ways in which it furthers Your Career and Business Growth
Before specifically addressing the importance of public speaking, or even how public speaking can improve your career, or business, let me ask you this: Did it ever stop to think that nowadays there are people who make a fortune solely by mastering the art of public speaking and harnessing its many benefits to their career and business growth?
There was a time when oratory skills were exclusive only to political pundits and social critics, but as of modern times, this skill will is critical in helping professionals, entrepreneurs, and businesses stand out and thrive.
Despite the first statement above, a considerable amount of people still avoid as much as they can to stand in front of others and share knowledge and valuable ideas depriving the world of their much-needed contributions, and limiting themselves and their businesses from growing further.
The truth of the matter is that many of such people will eventually have to learn the art, as they will be engaged to speak publicly at one point or the other throughout their lives. Public speaking has always been an insightful medium through which entrepreneurs and business leaders alike make their mark in the economic and business space.
Instead of being shying away from the art, there are a couple of benefits one can harness from public speaking. Some of the benefits derived will be instrumental to your overall success in the work and business space. Contained below are ten reasons why public speaking helps your business and career.
Importance of Public Speaking – 10 Ways in which it can Help Your Career & Business
1. Showcases Knowledge
One thing public speaking does to you is that advertises your strong knowledge base as you are afforded the platform to clearly and carefully articulate your thoughts to a vast audience, who can then share from the wealth of knowledge.
It is often said that knowledge that is not put to good practice is of limited to almost no use. As such, if the rightly placed people whom you work or do business with don’t know you possess this kind of power, you are good as redundant.
By developing excellent public speaking skills, you have the opportunity to showcase your knowledge on the job or business.
2. Breeds And Develops Healthy Confidence
When you have successfully learned how to engage a large audience of people over time, you will notice that it builds and develops a healthy dose of confidence. This will undoubtedly help your business or career in the workplace.
It is more commonplace in corporate environments that employees are required to make presentations almost every now and then. In such environments, an excellent presentation made with remarkable confidence not only stands you from your peers but can speed up your career rise within your organization.
3. Broadens Your Knowledge Base
This part might come off a tad counter-intuitive, but by getting prepared to make a presentation, you learn better as you have a greater opportunity to be more grounded in the topic or subject at hand.
One great piece of advice you can really take from this to help your career is to “know your onion.” Very straight to point, right? However, the truth is, it’s need not overstated. Having a sound understanding on the subjects that comprise your work, not only helps you score an award-deserving presentation, it equally improves you as a person and increases your work rate, which in turn is instrumental to bolstering your entire career life.
4. A Great Speech Inspires Your Employees
One way to run a very successful business is to always motivate your employees. One way to do this is by being creative. Creative in the sense that you must learn how to tell great stories, either from your personal experience or could be one about influential people.
Once you can connect with your employees over a great story, they will most likely be inspired, and that same energy who be reflected in their work ethic. The more you learn to communicate the vision of your company to your employee through a pumped-up speech, the more they will be inspired to working for you. There is always a great feeling when everyone believes they are working for a higher purpose.
Before you make your speech, always practice well, because the quality of delivery is critical.
5. Helps you think and make negotiations better
Being proficient in public speaking improves your critical-analytic skills. Most prolific public speakers understand that the way and manner they prepare their speech is instrumental in how to communicate them.
An integral part of training to speak in public speaking is learning how to research, think critically, and learn how to organize information from your standpoint and that of your audience.
The training will equip you with skills on how to analyze different scenarios thoroughly while opening up more avenues to properly engage with your audience. These skills would be reflected in the results of your sales and marketing campaigns and also overcome unforeseen challenges.
6. Increase your leadership skills
Public speaking improves your leadership skills. It does so by developing your listening abilities, which is crucial, but not a frequently taught subject in the area of effective communication.
Being able to actively listen will help you to focus better when having a conversation while learning to be open to the opinions of others. By doing this, you learn to understand people’s perspectives more appropriately, which helps you assemble and cultivate more dedicated and passionate teams as the great insights developed will be inspiring in ways that help serve your customers through better products and service.
7. Handle PR like an expert
Public speaking after a while strengthens your confidence as you share ideas and experiences while promoting your business.
You will most definitely handle interactions in every engagement from meet-ups to PR campaigns without ever obsessing over the risk of coming to a hitch or failing.
With time, you will see yourself speaking comfortably before a crowd in a way that positively reflects you and conveys your company’s message, even when answering unexpected questions that can crop up at any moment.
8. Connecting Directly With Industry Decision Makers And Network
When you learn to speak in public, you connect directly to a network of professionals in a powerfully concise way.
Speaking at a conference or professional workshop, or roadshow, you are afforded plenty of opportunities to network and connect with a captivating audience. A way to do this is to initiate a reach out approach to participants before, during, and after to harness deeper connections with others.
Your presentation, when crafted well, will start up a conversation and provide a solution to a problem. This can even convince or nudge the industry’s big wigs to connect with and share in your vision.
9. Soft Sell Yourself
Public speaking is another excellent way to soft-sell your idea. Soft selling is not the direct binge marketing campaign by corny salesmen that we all have become used to in our everyday lives.
Most of the time, it would not require you to pitch anything, but to convey, instead, the knowledge of your experience and expertise service for solving real business problems.
You rarely ever sell anything using soft-selling concepts but rather show that we possess specific skills and service to tackle a real-world problem. More like a service pitch but never selling anything directly.
10. Promoting Growth Opportunities
As you learn to practice public speaking, you will naturally see yourself speaking with conviction.
The key to giving a resounding speech is to first believe in what you are speaking about. An audience can immediately read a poorly conceived idea, and when this happens, the credibility of your presentation will automatically be in question.
People only rally behind people who exude confidence and a dose of excitement. When you speak with a high level of conviction, it will motivate employees and customers alike.
The same conviction will incentivize people to either commit to or partner with you as they are immediately drawn to you and your vision.
CONCLUSION
One major importance of public speaking is the fact that the improvement of these skills culminates with an improved level of communication skills, and that can add value to all aspects of your life, both personal and professional.
It is almost impossible to grow into leadership positions in the corporate world without polishing your public speaking skills. You will be responsible for negotiation with partners, suppliers, customers, team members, and so on, how will you do that if you are clumsy when speaking in front of others?
With this article I am hoping to inspire you to realize the importance of public speaking, and start now looking for public speaking resources such as this blog, books, youtube videos or anything else you can find to absorb as much as you can of public speaking techniques and skills that will turn you into an inspiring leader, a terrific negotiator, and a much better person to talk/listen to.
REFERENCES & FURTHER READING
Don Barnard. What are the Benefits of Public Speaking? https://virtualspeech.com/blog/what-are-the-benefits-of-public-speaking . Accessed on 07/21/2019.
Institute Of Public Speaking. 5 Ways Public Speaking helps Grow your Business & Career Part I . https://www.instituteofpublicspeaking.com/public-speaking/5-ways-public-speaking-helps-grow-business-career-part/ . Accessed on 07/21/2019.
Management Study Guide. Role of Effective Public Speaking in Career Growth. https://www.managementstudyguide.com/role-of-effective-public-speaking-in-career-growth.htm . Accessed on 07/21/2019.
Special Databases. The Role of Public Speaking in the Business World. http://www.specialdatabases.com/role-of-public-speaking.html . Accessed on 07/21/2019.
