Strategies to Succeed in Public Speaking

Excellence and the Public Speaker

by Lanie Smith

In your role as a public speaker, it is important that do your best and deliver excellent speeches. Your audience will appreciate the effort to provide quality, and doing so will increase your confidence and esteem. Excellence requires not only providing what is promised to the audience, but going beyond what is expected.

Questions you may have include:

What determines excellence?
What are the benefits to a speaker?
How can a public speaker achieve excellence?

This lesson will try to answer those questions. There is a mini-quiz at the end of the lesson.

What is excellence?

Excellence in public speaking concerns how well you give your speech and how good the speech itself is. Evaluation is both personal and by the audience.

Your evaluation

The first part of excellence relates to doing something to the best of your ability. If you set a goal of delivering an excellent speech, thoroughly prepare, then give your best performance, you have achieved that goal and done an excellent job at presenting the speech.

The second part of excellence for the public speaker is an evaluation of the speech itself. You can evaluate your speech by considering your abilities and your criteria of success. But the audience also evaluates the speech, according to their own expectations.

Audience viewpoint

A good speech is one that fulfills the stated requirements and is delivered without mistakes or hesitations. An excellent speech goes beyond what is required and exceeds the audience's expectations. It is synonymous with quality.

Excellence is in the eye of the beholder. If you have done your best, you may feel your speech is excellent. But some people in the audience may have different expectations and a different evaluation of whether or not the speech was excellent. That is why it is important to have an idea of expectations before proceeding on delivering your talk or presentation.

Benefits of an excellent speech

Benefits of giving an excellent speech can be an increase in your own confidence and esteem, as well as recognition and praise from the audience.

But it is also possible that you will receive criticism from those who did not think you were excellent.

Confidence and esteem

If you set a goal of giving a speech to the best of your ability and you succeed in that, you get the sense of achievement and confidence. It is a good feeling when you complete a difficult speech. It can increase your confidence in being able to even more challenging tasks.

Your evaluation of the speech to a large extent determines your self-esteem. If you have done your best, gone the extra mile and delivered what you feel is an excellent speech, you can feel proud of yourself and your abilities. It is especially gratifying if you can listen to a tape of your speech at a later time.

Praise

If your audience also feels your have done excellent work, you will receive applause and other forms of praise. You might even receive special compensation for your speech. Your audience will recognize you as an excellent speaker.

If you are speaking or making work-related presentations, your supervisor, the customer and your peers will recognize you as a person who does his or her best to produce a quality product. A speaker with a reputation for doing excellent work will certainly advance in his or her career.

Criticism

It is also possible that your audience had other expectations or that you did your best, but the requirements were beyond your skill-level. It is also possible that some people in the audience are the type who do not acknowledge excellent work. In such a situation, you may receive no praise or acknowledgment. In fact, you may even be criticized for the "poor job" you did.

Be proud

If you feel you gave an excellent speech, you can still be proud of your work. But you must also evaluate whether you misinterpreted the requirements and expectations, there were unrealistic demands, or some personality issues. But still, be proud of your excellence.

Become excellent

The first thing in ensuring that you do excellent public speaking is to know the requirements for the speech you are to deliver. You must then work hard to develop the speech and practice your delivery per the requirements. You need to be well-prepared, with no uncertainty in what you will be saying.

The attitude of being excellent goes beyond simply satisfying audience requirements. It is delivering a speech that is beyond expectations. You should put in the extra touch of quality. For example, you could find out about individuals in your audience ahead of time and personalize your speech to meet their specific needs. Relating to the audience adds a touch of quality to a speech.

Giving an excellent speech is a natural progression from being healthy and skilled in speaking. It leads to being valuable to the audience and requires character to complete your assignment.

In conclusion

Giving an excellent speech will increase your confidence and esteem. You may also get praise for your speeches and advance in your career. Excellence requires satisfying the requirements and going beyond what is expected.

Speak with excellence and be proud of your work

Mini-quiz to check your understanding

1. What is the difference between a good speech and excellent speech?

2. What if one person criticizes your speech?

3. How can you improve your speeches?

If you got all three correct, you are on your way to becoming a champion in public speaking. If you had problems, you had better look over the material again.