What Are the Life-Changing Benefits of Public Speaking?

You may wonder why you should bother with public speaking. If you're like most people, you probably don't like public speaking. You may even be afraid of public speaking. But the are some very real advantages of public speaking that can help you in both your professional and personal life.

There are actually more benefits of public speaking than you might think. The advantages of public speaking range from increased confidence to meeting others to becoming more marketable. All of these benefits can make a real and positive difference in your life. How's that for public speaking motivation?

In this article, you'll learn about the advantages of public speaking in more depth. We'll discuss each benefit of public speaking and provide you with helpful tips.  You'll also learn why to take public speaking class if you can and how to find a class near you. Finally, we'll provide you with additional public speaking help in the form of links to additional tutorials and other resources.

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Now let's learn more about the advantages of public speaking, and dive into some great resources and helpful tips:

What Are the Benefits of Public Speaking? 

Most people don't think much about the benefits of public speaking. But there are actually quite a few advantages of public speaking. Here are 12 advantages that show that public speaking can make a real difference in your life.

So, if you're looking for some public speaking motivation, take a look at this list of ways the public speaking can help you:

1. Builds Your Confidence

Although you may be nervous before giving your first speech, you'll feel a sense of accomplishment (along with a sense of relief) when it is done. If the speech went well, you may even receive positive feedback from your peers and your audience--further bolstering your confidence.

If you practice your public speaking skills and continue to give speeches, your oral communication skills will improve. As your skills improve, you'll begin to feel more comfortable (and confident) in your ability to speak well.

2. Improves Your Research Skills

To make a successful public presentation, you need to research your topic thoroughly. You'll learn where to find the information you need for each presentation and how to tell whether the information is credible and relevant.

Good research skills will serve you well in a number of professional and personal tasks, including:

• Business report writing
• Academic studies
• Job hunting
• Marketing
• And more

In addition, having more and better information can help you make better decisions.

3. Strengthens Your Deductive Skills

Public speaking requires you to work from a premise and draw a conclusion based on the information you've researched. This is called deductive reasoning.

Deductive reasoning is another important skill that's improved by the speech writing process. Like many of the other skills strengthened by studying public speaking, deductive reasoning is useful in everyday life.

Here's a hypothetical deductive reasoning example for a small business:

To meet our business expenses, we must earn $4000 USD a month.Last month we earned $4500 USD.Therefore, last month we met our business expenses.

As you can see, good deductive reasoning skills can be important if you're running a business. That example was over-simplified for the purpose of illustration, but you can probably think of more specific areas where deductive reasoning will help in your business or life.

4. Markets Your Business

If you own a business, you can use public speaking to market your business. Even if you don't own a business, public speaking can make you more marketable as a business professional. Here's how to do it:

1. Focus your speech topics around subjects that are of interest to your potential customers or industry.
2. Research your speeches carefully, to make sure that everything is correct.
3. When writing your speech, pay special attention to information that may interest potential customers or employers.
4. Practice your speaking skills so that your delivery is smooth.
5. Make sure that the audience who hears your speech includes at least some possible clients or employers.
6. If possible, share your speech through social media.

Over time, as you continue to give speeches on a particular subject, you'll start to become recognized as an expert on that topic--which increases your marketability. Even a single well-done speech on a site like TED Talks, YouTube, or SlideShare can grow your professional reputation.

5. Strengthens Your Oral Communication Skills

Oral communication is the ability to communicate verbally. Public speaking is a form of oral communication.

The more that you practice giving speeches, the better you'll become at communicating orally. Those improved oral communication skills not only apply to any future speeches you may give, they can also carry over into everyday conversation.

6. Improves Your Chances of Getting Hired

Another benefit of public speaking is that it can increase your chance of getting hired. Communication skills are in demand by employers. Communication skills include both written communication skills and oral communication skills.

A 2017 study from talent acquisition software provider, iCIMS, found that over a third of all employers list oral communication as one of the skills they value most in a job candidate.

What better way to improve your communication skills than by writing and giving speeches?

7. Gives You a Chance to Meet Others With Similar Interests

Another of the advantages of public speaking is that you'll get to meet other people. Public speaking can be a great way to network and meet others in your industry or who have similar interests.

Plus, if you're the one who's giving the speech, event participants will be more likely to interact with you than if you're just attending. And when the event is over, they'll also be more likely to remember you as one of the speakers.

8. Helps You Overcome Your Fear of Public Speaking

As I mentioned earlier, fear of public speaking is very common. In Great Britain, for example, a YouGov study found that fear of public speaking ranked third on a list of common fears--right after heights and snakes!

If you rarely give a speech or presentation, you're more likely to be afraid of public speaking. However, as you learn more about public speaking and practice your speaking skills, your fear is likely to decrease. You'll be more comfortable giving speeches. And your audience will sense that you're more comfortable and perceive your speech more favorably--likely giving you positive feedback, which will further reduce your fear of public speaking.

9. Makes You More Aware of How Others Perceive You

One of the benefits of public speaking is that you'll become more aware of how others perceive you. If you know how others perceive you, you can work to improve that perception.

Public speaking requires you to pay more attention to your physical presence. Here are just some of the factors you'll learn to control as you improve your oral communication skills:

• Posture
• Tone of voice
• Hand gestures
• Pacing and other nervous gestures
• Interjections like "uh" and "um"
• Clothing choices

As you improve your control over these factors--not just while you're speaking, but even in everyday conversation--you'll notice that others view you in a more positive light.

10. Develop Better Writing Skills

Did you know that public speaking can also help you to improve your writing skills? The writing techniques that you use to write a good speech can also be used to write other things such as:

• Reports
• Articles
• Letters and memos
• Research papers

Having good writing skills can lead to better assignments at work and better grades at school.

11. Learn to Be Calm in Stressful Situations

Perhaps the public speaking benefit that most transfers to everyday situations is learning to be calm in a stressful situation. For most of us, public speaking is stressful. As you learn more about public speaking, you'll also learn how to calm yourself so that you can successfully make your presentation.

Some of the calming techniques that can help you to get through a public speech are the very same calming techniques you can use to get through many other stressful life situations.

12. Be an Advocate for Causes You Care About

Another one of the great advantages of public speaking is that it gives you a way to better support causes you care about. With your improved public speaking skills, you can create and give a winning presentation that'll make others aware of your cause. You may even be able to use your speaking skills to motivate others to take action.

Why Take a Public Speaking Class?

We've just answered the question: what are the benefits of public speaking? Now that you know the advantages of the public speaking you may be interested in learning how to improve your public speaking skills. One of the best ways to do that is by taking a public speaking course.

You may wonder--why take a public speaking class when I could improve my speaking skills by practicing. The answer is simple. A public speaking class can help you grow your skills more quickly. Plus, you'll get valuable feedback from the teacher and from other class members. Other speaking courses will help you learn by observing great speakers.

But where can you find a good public speaking class? There are actually a lot of public speaking classes available if you know where to look. Here are six places to start:

1. Local community college. If you're near a community college, that can be a good place to sign up for a public speaking course.
2. Toastmasters International. This is an organization dedicated to improving people's communication and leadership skills.
3. Public speaking meetups. Meetup helps people connect with others who have similar interests. There are public speaking meetups.
4. The Public Speaking Project. This site offers a variety of free and low-cost public speaking instructional materials.
5. Coursera and edX. Coursera and edX partner with top universities to offer low-cost or free college courses.   
6. Other online resources. There are other online resources to help you improve your speaking skills including YouTube videos, blogs, and more.

Additional Public Speaking Help

Envato Tuts+ Business also offers additional public speaking help. Here are some tutorials you may want to study to learn more about public speaking:

• 
  Presentations
  How to Write a Great Motivational Business Speech
  Laura Spencer
• 
  Presentations
  How to Give a Good Presentation—Without Anxiety or Being Nervous
  Julia Melymbrose
• 
  Communication
  How to Overcome Your Fear of Public Speaking
  David Masters
• 
  Communication
  Writing Speeches That Grab Your Audience From the Opening Sentence
  David Masters

In addition, the articles below can help you find the right template so that your presentation materials look professional and attract the audience's attention:

• 
  Presentations
  35 Best Keynote Presentation Templates (Designs For Mac Users 2021)
  Sean Hodge
• 
  Presentations
  The Best New Presentation Templates for 2021 (Top PowerPoint PPTs & More)
  Sean Hodge
• 
  Microsoft PowerPoint
  34 Best PowerPoint PPT Template Designs (For 2021 Presentations)
  Sean Hodge

You can also find more information about creating an effective presentation in our eBook on making great presentations. Grab this PDF Download now for FREE with your subscription to the Tuts+ Business Newsletter:

Conclusion

If you think about, I'm sure that you'll agree with me that the benefits of public speaking outweigh any hesitation about public speaking you might have. While a public speaking class is a great way to improve your skills, there are other ways to get public speaking help (such as through resources listed in this post). So, why not give public speaking a try? 

Editorial Note: This content was originally published in 2018. We're sharing it again because our editors have determined that this information is still accurate and relevant.