A short, first-person talk by Nataliey Bitature on the value of public speaking. The speaker recounts a high-pressure six-minute speech to ~1,000 people (including notable attendees) and emphasizes two main lessons: prepare your content carefully and rehearse extensively so delivery (body language, tone, pacing) becomes confident and natural.
Public speaking is a really useful skill to have. It's something that my dad always encouraged me to do. No matter how shy you are as a person, naturally, he said, it's important to be able to communicate effectively. And I always used to roll my eyes and be like, it's because he's so good at it that he thinks everyone else can do it. But over the course of my high school and university experience, I realized the true value of public speaking and how important it is to not be afraid to speak up and to let your thoughts out and to be able to do that in a clear, no matter how big the audience or how intimidating. So when I was at my Masters, I had to participate in the student competition and eventually we got to the final and I had to make a speech for six minutes in front of a room of 1,000 people, including President Clinton and Professor Mohammed Yunus and Dr. Adesina and all these people that I was so impressed by and so nervous to speak in front of. So I practiced for months before we had to do it. And I got a really good coach who helped me to understand where I'm at as a speaker right now and where I need to be and what are the different things I could improve on. So with effective communication, the content is really important, and that's something that's technical and that you have to work on and prepare in advance. And then about the actual delivery, it's important to do it many, many times. Practice is the most helpful thing that you can do. Practicing by yourself, practicing in front of a mirror, practicing in front of test audiences so you see how you react and how you communicate. You need to be able to do it. Happy birthday. Good. They told me, you know, if you sing the. So happy birthday to you, you can sing it even while you're doing something else because you know it so well. That's how well you should know a presentation you're about to make. That's important. You should have practiced it so much that you can do other things while you say it, because then you can focus on how you deliver it. Your body language, your tone of voice, the pace that you're taking, how, where you emphasize the different parts that are important. It's really a useful skill to have, especially if you're someone who has to give presentations, often for work or in your career or in different pitch for your business, to make sure that people understand effectively what you're talking about and believe in you and listen to you and trust what you're saying is true. It's something that practice really helps with, and it's something I would encourage everybody to get used to doing more and more often, because you never know when you're going to have to speak up, especially to a larger audience than you're normally used to. And sometimes people get very nervous, especially if they're not practiced or prepared. And that can really affect the message of what you're trying to sell or trying to communicate. So it's important that you can do it confidently and calmly, just in case you ever have to do it. And if it's something you do regularly, you should practice regularly. No matter how good you are, naturally practice makes a difference. It adds a polish to what you're doing, and it makes you more effective in everything that you're communicating.
