Critical Thinking

The first benefit of public speaking is critical thinking. Designing a talk to be delivered in front of an audience requires a lot of research and planning. In the early stages, you will need to do a great deal of critical thinking on many levels to design the talk. For example, if this is a software development talk, you need to think about the parts of the programming system you want to discuss. How much of that system are you going to cover? If you have 60 minutes to talk, realistically, you want to talk for 50 minutes to allow time for questions at the end; therefore, you can’t cover everything.

If you are explaining a topic that can be a little dry and potentially boring, consider weaving an interesting scenario or story into the talk to make it more interesting. How you pitch this scenario and the complexity of the features you discuss is also determined by the skill level of the audience. Is this a talk to beginners, who will have little to no knowledge of the subject, or are you speaking to people with some skills who want to learn more? On the topic of skill levels, consider how you will reshape the presentation if this is an advanced talk for professionals who are experts in the field. All these factors need to be considered carefully, and this level of critical thinking and weaving complexity, story, narration, and subject matter requires a great deal of thought and effort up front in the talk construction process.

Your brain is a muscle, and the level of critical thought required to design an engaging talk is a skill. After designing a compelling talk for the first time, you will have developed new skills simply by going through the thought and design process for the talk.

I personally find the design and research stage of a talk to be one of my favorite parts of the process. I really enjoy the level of thought that goes into the talk construction process. As I have progressed through my public-speaking career, I have also become better at weaving stories into my talks. Some earlier talks, which were software development talks, were purely technical, without much story. While I am proud of those talks, they were quite difficult for audience members to follow if someone’s concentration lapsed at any point. As I became better at designing talks, I started weaving scenarios into them. Sometimes, these would be made up of stories, and at other times, they would be based on personal experience.

As a species, we are hardwired to enjoy stories, so if you can take a challenging subject and weave in a narrative, you can help your audience engage with the topic—and get them to hang on your every word. The key to reaching that stage is the level of critical thinking you put in at the beginning of the process, and this is a skill you can develop over time, which not only benefits your talk but can also benefit all aspects of your life and career.

Personal Satisfaction

Some people get their adrenaline rushes by climbing mountains; other people get them from running marathons. Public speakers get their adrenaline kicks by putting themselves in the vulnerable position of standing on a stage in front of a lot of people and confidently talking about a subject—and hoping they don’t get booed off the stage. However, in all my years of public speaking, I have never seen a speaker booed off a stage, so don’t fret over that one.

No matter how nervous you are before you start speaking, you will experience a massive adrenaline rush once you get started that will carry you through the talk. By the time you get to the end and the audience starts clapping, you’ll feel amazing and have a great sense of personal satisfaction. If this was your first talk, you’ll feel like you’ve climbed that mountain. The audience loved the talk and applauded you, and for that moment in time, you conquered the room.

Every time I speak at a conference or meetup group, no matter the size of the audience, I always feel amazing afterward. It’s as if I’m walking on clouds. That feeling of satisfaction is addictive, and I absolutely love it. You won’t see me bungee jumping off a bridge for kicks, but I will gladly stand in front of 1,000 people and talk to them.

Increased Self-Confidence

It takes a lot of confidence to stand on a stage—the same level of confidence it takes to play music on stage or act in a play. If you lack confidence, then learning to speak in public can really help you on a personal level. The first few times you speak to an audience, you will be terrified—everyone is. But the more you do it, the more confident you will become. You will still be nervous before each talk. I certainly am, but that’s a good thing. If you are a little nervous, then it means you care about the quality of the speech you are about to give.

In my younger years, I lacked self-confidence. I am a classic introvert who likes spending time by myself, but I was also quite shy in my earlier career. I hated speaking to other people on an individual basis, let alone on stage. As I progressed through the ranks in my career, I had to give presentations—it came with the territory. These presentations occurred in the organizations where I worked, either to my peers or in the boardroom to higher-level executives. At the time, I absolutely hated doing these presentations. They made me feel physically sick, but I had to do them, as it was part of the job. Over time though, I started getting used to doing them; although I was never comfortable doing them, I got used to them.

Later in my career, I started making online training courses for Pluralsight, a company in the United States. When it came to promoting these courses, it was recommended that I consider the public-speaking circuit. I was a little apprehensive at the time, but I designed my first talk and was invited by a local software development meetup group to speak. I figured presenting the talk to a small group would be a good idea. I expected around 10 to 15 people to attend, but about 60 people turned up. To say I was terrified was an understatement. Thankfully, the talk went well, and the audience was incredibly supportive, even when I made a mistake halfway through the talk. I felt amazing when I finished the talk, and I sought out my second speaking gig. Fast forward many years, and I have now spoken all over the world at conferences. I no longer fear speaking—sure, I still get nervous before a talk, but I can control my fears, and I feel that my levels of self-confidence have increased significantly. It has been a fun ride with some amazing experiences, for which I am very grateful.

Improving Communication Skills

Public speaking is all about effective communication. You are standing on stage and communicating an idea to people in the audience who have come to learn from you. Communicating so that people will listen and understand you is a critical skill to develop in a career, and public speaking is a fantastic way to practice this skill. Core personal skills like this are also very desirable to employers, as they want effective communicators on their staff.

If you ever get the opportunity to speak at international events, you will also master speaking to audiences whose first language isn’t English. I was a little apprehensive when I first did this because I was worried that people would struggle with my British accent, but I needn’t have worried. Provided you talk at a slower pace—not so slow that you sound strange but slower and clearer than a conversation with a friend—you will have no issues.

As a British person, I am always in awe of people from other countries who can speak in their native language and are fluent in English. I can’t speak another language except some very bad French, so I always appreciate the efforts of other people from different countries.

Effective communication is a crucial skill for life and business, so becoming an experienced public speaker will pay you back repeatedly in your career and can even help give you a competitive advantage over other applicants for positions if you can demonstrate excellent communication skills.

Networking and New Connections

One of the biggest benefits of public speaking is networking and the people you meet along the way. The reason you get up on stage to speak is to pass on knowledge and ideas to others; therefore, public speaking is all about people. When you have delivered your talk and are at the venue, your audience will want to talk to you and hang out. This is all part of the public speaking package—meeting people.

Meeting people in these avenues has many benefits. First, as social creatures, it’s nice to meet people with similar interests with whom you can have discussions. I have spoken to many conference attendees who have become good friends. Sometimes, after delivering a talk, someone will share an alternative view that differs from your presentation. This is a good thing, as it expands your horizons as a speaker to hear alternative viewpoints, which could make it into future versions of your talk if they are just as valid as the views you initially expressed.

Another potential benefit of networking at an event after delivering a successful talk is being offered work engagements. I have had this happen several times after I have spoken at a conference, hung out with the attendees, and, in some cases, swapped contact details. Then, a few weeks or months after the event, I have been contacted about training or consulting opportunities. This doesn’t happen all the time, but it can be a great extra source of income when it does, especially if you work for yourself.

I urge you to always mix with attendees; don’t simply do the talk and then run off to your hotel room and hide. People have taken the time out of their day and busy conference schedule to listen to your presentation specifically, so always try to talk with people and answer questions after the talk. People may not approach you straight away, but if you attend a social event hosted by the conference or event, people may chat with you over a drink. If you can, always be available for them.

Travel

Another benefit of public speaking is that you might get to travel around your country or even the world to deliver presentations, which is fantastic if you like to visit new places. When I started speaking, I delivered my first few talks to local meetup groups in the cities nearest me—in my case, Derby and Nottingham in the UK. I gradually started to expand from near my home to places like Hereford, Leeds, and London. I really enjoyed travelling around the country to give these talks, as it allowed for a day or two to travel to other cities, stay over in a hotel, and explore a little before getting the train back home.

Over time, I earned invitations to larger conferences that allowed me to travel around the world to places such as Norway, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Germany, Holland, America, and Australia. I had never visited any of these countries before, so being accepted into these conferences broadened my travel horizons.

Another great benefit of speaking on the conference circuit is that larger conferences tend to cover your airfare and a few nights in a hotel. I normally extended my trip by a few days—at my own expense—to do a little sightseeing.

Persuasion Skills and Driving Change

When you break down your process for conveying information to a group of people, what exactly are you doing? Teaching, most certainly. Entertaining, possibly. But you are also persuading people to agree with a point you are making, or at least trying to inform them of another viewpoint.

Persuading people requires you to speak with confidence, have well-researched information and viewpoints, and come across as an authority. These are all skills that you can develop as a public speaker, and they will also benefit your career. Effective communication and persuasion will take you far in a career, and if you can do it onstage with several hundred people in front of you, you can do it in the office.

Performance Skills

When you are in front of an audience relaying information, you want them to be entertained, engaged—and most importantly—awake. To achieve this, you need to put on a good performance. Public speaking is as much about performance as it is about passing on information. I have attended many talks in my career. Some had fascinating subjects but were delivered in a dry and boring way, which made them extremely hard for me to watch and maintain my interest. I have also seen other talks on subjects that I don’t really have any interest in, which have been excellent: well, delivered, engaging, and captivating.

The more talks you complete and the more you focus on delivery, the better you will become at performing. I’m not talking about doing a dance or bursting into song, I’m talking about getting people to listen to what you have to say, which is just as important as holding a tune for a singer.

The audience doesn’t want to see you hugging the lectern and trying to hide behind your laptop. I suggest using a slide clicker so you can get away from the computer keyboard and walk around the stage a little. Make sure to emphasize what you’re saying with hand and arm gestures and focus on making your voice sound animated and excited. You don’t have to go over the top, but by focusing on these details in your delivery, you will drastically improve your performance skills.

Being Respected As an Authority in Your Field

The final benefit, and one of the most important, is that you will start to be regarded as an authority in your field as you present to more audiences at large conferences. Being an authority doesn’t necessarily mean you are a top expert on the subject. An expert can demonstrate ideas with a lot of stories and personal examples from their work, but an authority will use a lot of emotions and metaphors to get their point across and draw people in. Of course, you can be an authority and an expert.

Being a public speaker gives you many potential advantages over applicants for jobs. Public speaking is seen as a skill that has value, not only in your chosen subject area, but also as someone who is able to write and deliver a talk, which means you can finish what you started. You will also be seen as someone with great confidence, which carries a lot of weight in the job market.

After you have written your talk, you will want to get on stage, or in a boardroom, to deliver it to an audience. If you are presenting at a private company event for work, this could happen quickly. If you are planning to present at a local meetup group or at a conference, there may be a big delay in writing and performing a talk if you do not plan.

Smaller meetup groups tend to book their speakers months in advance, so at the time you are planning the content of your talk, try connecting with local groups to talk with them about dates. If they have an open date two or three months in the future, it is worth getting booked and advertising the talk. This gives you plenty of time to write and rehearse the talk. Having a date already booked in the diary will be a great motivator to get the talk written in plenty of time.

If you have already written the talk and are practicing, but the earliest slot is still a few months away, let the groups know that you can be contacted if there are last-minute cancellations—provided you are comfortable with this—and they can put you on their reserve list. Some people may need to pull out at the last minute for any number of genuine reasons, so being flexible here helps.

Many meetups have their own websites through which they manage their bookings, so a Google/Bing search (or other search engine) will uncover them for you. Another popular platform for booking and arranging meetups is http://meetup.com. The Meetup website lets groups promote their events and allows attendees to book spaces and speakers to contact the organizers. One useful Meetup feature allows you to do geographic searches for meetup groups on specific subjects, which makes it easy to seek out speaking opportunities near you.

If you want to speak at a larger event, such as a conference, then you need to go through a process called a Call for Papers (CFP) or Request for Papers (RFP) . When a conference is in its planning stages, it will launch its CFP process, and potential speakers can submit talks for consideration. This process can start anywhere from two to six months ahead of the event date. Once the CFP process ends and speakers have submitted their talks, a conference selection panel reviews all submitted talks and works to put together a potential agenda by selecting talks they believe conference attendees will enjoy.

If you have speaking at conferences in mind, then you will need to find out when conferences are scheduled during the year and when they open their CFP for submissions, which means you’ll need to plan ahead. Speaking at conferences takes a lot of planning, and it is worth starting that process early, even before you have designed your slides.

When I come up with an idea for a new talk, I do a lot of planning and create a series of mind maps that document what will be in the talk. We will look at mind maps in the next chapter. I then write the talk synopsis that I will submit to the conference. At that point, I apply to several conferences with the synopsis for that talk. I don’t design the slides until the talk is accepted at a conference. With that acceptance in place and a date in the diary, I plan when I will build the slides and start rehearsing.

If you are a new speaker, then you might not want to leave writing the talk until it has been accepted at an event, and that is fine, but I sometimes do the planning for two or three new talks at once and then build them when they get accepted. Sometimes my new talk idea isn’t accepted at all; that can happen, so I never spend time building a complex slide deck until I must.