Top 5 Public Speaking Skills Every Leader Must Master

Since the Ancient Greeks, oratory and debate have shown the power of the spoken word to influence and make an impact.

Not everyone wants to be a professional speaker, but everyone can become more professional when speaking to an audience.

Public Speaking and Leadership

Effective communication is a vital skill every successful leader must possess. Leaders inspire, influence, and direct their teams to achieve organizational goals through communication.

Whether it's the company kickoff, a team meeting, or presenting to the board, leadership requires confident and effective public speaking.

Leadership requires courage, and regardless of your comfort level with public speaking, this is a skill you'll have to develop if you want to be successful. Having been a professional speaker for nearly 25 years, and having coached hundreds of people to speak with confidence and gravitas, this article is designed to make that development easier.

1. Listening

Every great speech starts with listening to the audience. What are their challenges? What are their needs, wants, and beliefs?

By listening, the leader can empathize with where the audience is, physically and emotionally, and then transport them with their message to a future state.

"People don't care how much you know, until they know how much you care."

This quote, attributed to President Theodore Roosevelt, sums up the importance of listening before you ever open your mouth. When people feel listened to, they're far more likely to trust you.

2. Preparation and Practice

Prior planning prevents poor performance. Nobody should speak "off the cuff" unless they have a deep understanding of the topic and their audience, and even then, preparation is essential. After reflecting on and researching what you want to say, structure your speech into a beginning, middle, and end.

• The beginning establishes that the speaker understands the challenges and opportunities the audience is facing, often through a personal story or a surprising fact.
• The middle explores how the audience might think, feel, or act differently. You might do this with a diagram, a model, or by sharing a new perspective.
• The end is a call to action. With new facts, perspectives, and insights, what does the leader want the audience to take away and execute? If the speaker doesn't tell them, nothing will change.

Preparation is what lets a leader articulate ideas clearly, concisely, and effectively, which matters enormously when presenting strategy, goals, or expectations.

Preparation alone isn't enough. I remember giving my first TEDx talk in 2016. At that point I'd been a global professional speaker for 17 years, but with the 18-minute format, I rehearsed over and over until I was completely comfortable with the message, the pauses, and my gestures.

Most leaders are time-poor, and I know many who have someone else prepare their slide deck, but practicing the delivery is still essential:

• Practice identifying the one key message for each slide, not five.
• Practice finding a story or analogy that illustrates your point, rather than reading off the slide.
• Practice visualizing the audience and connecting with them directly.

3. Passion

We've all sat through a mind-numbing presentation and thought, "that was an hour of my life I'm never getting back." In contrast, when a speaker is genuinely passionate about their message, we get carried along and time passes in a flash.

Leaders, regardless of specialty, need to get in touch with their passion for the topic they're speaking about. Passion can also come from frustration and a strong desire for change. Uber wasn't created by two people who were passionate about transportation. It was created when the founders were frustrated they couldn't get a taxi and thought, "there has to be a better way."

When I'm coaching leaders on public speaking, I often ask: what happens if you don't give this speech? Or worse, what happens if you give it and nobody understands why it matters? How does that make you feel? Good. Now inject that feeling into what you're talking about.

4. Confidence

A weak message delivered with confidence is more persuasive than a good message delivered timidly. Listening, preparation, practice, and passion should build the confidence a leader needs to stand on stage with executive presence and deliver.

If confidence is still lacking, some coaching on executive presence is worth pursuing, since a credibility gap on stage is hard to recover from mid-speech.

5. Conversation

Leaders tend to get good at broadcasting, and the first four skills here will sharpen that. But what turns a good speech into a great one is when it becomes a conversation with the audience rather than a monologue at them.

Asking real or rhetorical questions engages the audience and creates genuine buy-in for the message, in a way that pure broadcasting never does.

Once you know the end goal is mastering conversation rather than mastering speaking, listening, preparation, practice, passion, and confidence all take on a different purpose.

Conclusion

Not every leader needs to be a Steve Jobs at a product launch, but there's a lesson in his preparation and passion for the product. With the right intention and practice, leaders can master public speaking and become more confident, competent communicators. With the right combination of knowledge, preparation, and passion, a leader becomes an inspiring and motivating speaker who's remembered for years.

I've been engaged by companies including Microsoft, Red Hat, and BASF to develop their leaders' ability to speak with impact. Contact me if this is something you need help with.