Great Speakers aren’t born, they’re trained

“Great Speakers aren’t born, they’re trained: Public Speaking is a Skill developed through experience & learning!!”

I remember when I was in class X, I was selected to speak in the morning assembly of my school on the topic “Stop chasing happiness and it will follow you!!” I was extremely excited but equally full of anxiety as I had never been on the stage before that. However, I prepared well and reached the school stage on the D-day.

While on the stage, I confidently wished “Good Morning” to all and begun with my speech but it seemed as if I was tongue tied, I could not utter a single word. I don’t know what happened, my vision became blurred and I started trembling in my boots. My teachers prompted me to see the paper, I had in my hand but I could not understand anything. At last I had to say “Sorry” and I climbed down the stage, embarrassed. I can never forget that day!!

And today, if you ask me to speak in front of Lacs of people, I’m ready, anytime! This transformation did not come in a day but it was very smooth & easy when I realized, “Great Speakers aren’t born, they’re trained as Public Speaking is a Skill developed through experience & learning!!”

What is Public?

The term ‘Public’ does not comprise of just masses, in fact it includes one or two persons, a group, crowd and even opponent and speaking in public may be speaking in a formal as well as informal environment.

What is Speaking?

‘Speaking’ evolved with the passage of time. When the creation woke up from the slumber and the cave man steeped out, the multitude of experiences made him cry & crone, sing & dance, save & be brave, prepare & warn, love & hate, smile & weep and thus emerged the desire to communicate the feelings among humans. Thereby the man started using lips to utter sounds and moved to carvings to drums and then to alphabets, thus a language was born and speaking came into existence.

What is Public Speaking?

Speaking in public is nevertheless different from speaking in routine. Public Speaking or speaking on stage means one has to recollect one’s ideas, thoughts and feelings and deliver them in an organized form to the targeted audience in a given fixed time.

Effective public speaking enables the speaker to prepare & present one’s ideas and thoughts in clear, correct, concise and audience centric manner, which has grammatical correction & a graceful, uncluttered style & most important it transmits the message to its audience as desired.

The Objective of Public Speaking

The Objective of Public Speaking is to grab the attention of your audience and let them listen & understand your viewpoint as 90% of people in the audience is there to listen but doesn’t want to listen. To make them listen to you requires a great effort.

Let’s know that “It’s a blessing to be a captivating Speaker!!”

A Skill to be learnt like other skills

As it is a skill, it’s true that no amount of reading and learning techniques from a book or watching a video or webinar will turn you into a competent, confident speaker. A skill can only be learnt through hard work and practice. It is similar to learning swimming or driving.Sachin Tendulkar then and Sachin now is a living example of what hard work and practice can do. And yes, this hard work if done with smart combination of proper guidancein the right direction and sincere perseverancemay fetch results at a faster pace.

Many people who never knew how to speak became great, enticing, captivating & hypnotizing speakers by using the mantra of adopting the right mind set and practicing strategically. The three elements that determine the effectiveness of a speech are: Content, Body Language and vocal variety that can becertainly learnt if one is passionate about becoming a good speaker.

If you too dream to become such a speaker one day, I would suggest: Believe in yourself and keep following my blogs & YouTube Channel “Fab YOU lous”to learn all about Public Speaking and Communication Skills and again mark my words, only reading and listening would not help you, you have to practice a lot to hone this skill as you are aware “Practice makes a Man and a Woman PERFECT!!!”

Dr Preeti Chitkara

Manager-Institutional Affairs

KIET Group of Institutions

Ghaziabad