It is no secret that many of us shy away from public speaking. For you as a professional, the fear of speaking in public can limit your career opportunities. In a survey, where more than 600 employers listed oral communication as number one skill they look for as recruiters, presentation skills ranked at number four in that list, traditional skills like management skills came down at the bottom.
Quite clearly, public speaking is no longer an option for working professionals. The fact of the matter is that workplace anxiety can directly result in low work performance, hence, further limiting your opportunities. It has become an essential skill that needs to be learned if you want to emerge successful in your professional life. Not only do effective public speaking skills have the ability to catapult your career in something wonderful, it also benefits your personal and social life.
Here are the reasons why having good public speaking skills can really impact your career in a positive way:-
1) Enhancing leadership
Talking to one, ten, hundreds or thousands of people is really a big deal for most of us. Improving your public speaking skills will set you apart from your colleagues. Be it delegating tasks to your team or giving a presentation; speaking confidently and effectively is the key to present yourself as a good leader. When people start seeing you in a leadership role, they’ll automatically turn to you for direction and responsibilities, hence opening gates for new opportunities.
2) Makes you more visible and memorable
Being able to step forward and speak in front of a crowd naturally makes you more recognizable in your organization. People will remember you as a leader, a spokesperson or an authority. Your effective and impressive representation of your project or company will get you noticed by the upper management
3) Connecting to a larger community
Improving your public speaking skills will help you to connect with your audience, your colleagues, clients, and generally people around you. A good speaker learns how to gauge his/her audience’s attention and to identify the opportune time and place to initiate a bond with them. If you speak passionately and empathetically, it will promote more alliances, liking, and trust of the people that surround you.
Even though majority of our work is happening on inanimate machines called computers, career growth is still about being seen and heard. And public speaking is one of the best ways to learn how to be confident communicators and to trigger that change in your career that you have always been looking for.
