Four Places to Practice Your Public Speaking
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I have previously posted about the need to practice speaking. The question is, where do you find places to practice? There is the old standing-by’s, practicing in front of a mirror or a video camera. However, it’s not the same as speaking to a group. There’s nothing like speaking to a live audience for perfecting your speakings skills.
Here are four places to practice in front of an audience:
Join a Toastmasters Club. Through club activities and conferences, Toastmasters helps its members improve their communication and leadership skills while fostering self-confidence and personal growth. Attend and take part regularly. Toastmasters groups provide members an opportunity to become excellent speakers. There are leadership clubs for the advanced speaker and opportunities to present at conferences.
Speak to Service Clubs. Groups such Rotary, Kiwanis, Lions and Optimists have weekly meetings with speakers. They generally do not pay their speakers, so therefore are often easy speaking engagements obtain. These organizations are usually lower threat audiences for new speakers. They have many speakers and audiences tend not t0 expect a polished speech from everyone. They typically want to learn something they did not already know. They are there for the meeting and an interesting presentaion is a plus. Service organizations are excellent places to hone and improve your skills. Another advantages that most club audiences often include influential leaders from the community, thereby extending your exposure.
Present a workshop at association conferences or conventions. Most organizations and associations have conferences and conventions at local, regional and national levels. Most of these have calls for experts to present workshops at these events. Often, being a member of the sponsoring organization will give you an advantage in being selected. This is a great learning experience and one way to become known as a presenter.
Volunteer with a Speakers Bureau. I’m not talking about professional Speakers Bureaus that place speakers for a fee but the speakers bureaus that serve a community cause. For example: mental health, colleges and schools, religious groups, etc. It is the perfect opportunity to enhance your public speaking experience.
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Comments
Being good or at least more comfortable at public speaking can definitely be a huge plus in life. People can sense whether you are comfortable or not and the more you are, the more people will look up to you and see you as a leader (if that’s what you want). I tried toastmasters and I thought that it was ok. Maybe it was just the group I was in, but I felt I needed more interaction and more speaking time. For me I learned one of the best ways to become more comfortable speaking with people is to do it throughout your day. At the market, gas station, work. Where ever you can strike a conversation, go for it, and don’t worry about what you’re going to say. Another tip that I use when I speak in public is saying to myself, if this was my last week to live, would I care what they thought of me, and more importantly, what message would I want to get through.
What great ideas! I would have to add, though it is a little off topic, that karaoke is great for overcoming that sensitivity to adrenaline that a lot of us get.
Excellent article! Here’s another suggestion for ways to practice speaking in a “safe” environment: volunteer to lead meeting or committees at work. At those meeting and gatherings, if you’re the leader, you will have the opportunity to speak to the group. And because you already know them, that provides you with a layer of familiarity that can make you more comfortable than starting out speaking to a bunch of strangers.
Best,
David Portney