Library Revolution

I’m not the worst public speaker in the world. (But I’d like to think I’m not too terrible, either!) And since I’m often called upon to speak, I’m always glad to get little reminders about how to improve my public speaking skills.

Here’s a list I came across today (via Lifehacker) that presents a good, brief overview of the basics we all need to remember when speaking to an audience. How we present ourselves as professionals is so important, and I felt like this simple little list hit a lot of the basics that, at least to me, tend to differentiate between an OK presentation and a polished, dynamic one.

The ones I need to remember the most:

5. Talk to your audience, not at them - People hate it when they get talked at, so don’t do it. You need to interact with your audience and create a conversation. An easy way to do this is to ask them questions as well as letting them ask you questions.

9. Watch what you say - You usually don’t notice when you say “uhm”, “ah”, or any other useless word frequently, but the audience does. It gets quite irritating; so much that some members of the audience will probably count how many times you say these useless words.

These are the two I plan to work on the most this fall meeting season. I’m sure those of you who hear me speak will let me know how I’m doing!

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This entry was posted on Thursday, September 13th, 2007 at 12:33 pm and is filed under professional development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.