You're looking to take your career to the next level. How can public speaking help you get there?

If you can speak confidently to a group of people, you can have your thoughts influence decision making and your perspectives shape the world around you. While your voice is only as strong as your ability to act on it, you can use public speaking to multiply your efforts by as many people who will listen to you. Get good at speaking in public, asking questions of others, and answering difficult questions. This is a skill that transcends countless disciplines and industries.

A true story. I was struggling to get a speaker for an event we were running in London and contacted a customer to see if they would present a case study. They were uncertain but I said we would help them craft their message so that they would stand out in front of an audience of potential future employers. They agreed to present and 6 months later started a job in New York for a company that had a director in the audience.

It can so many networking opportunities as you are booking yourself with countless organizations. That much has potential of getting into your next job overtime. During that presentation, higher ups will see your character during it.

People buy people, not skills. I have seen countless people come to me after being passed over for a promotion. Why? They could not speak well. They were and still are amazing at their work: in a technical sense. But for people to see your beautiful talent, you need to communicate. In this new era, the soft skills are the hard skills.

I always remember a quote from Tina Turner about performing in public. Tina said that what most people think of as nerves she thought of as a surge of electricity that energised her performance. This is how I think about nerves and public speaking.

Get on stage. Get a microphone and scream into the void. Stand up open mics are a great way to exercise the muscle and learn how to get an audience to listen to you. You can study, you can practice in front of a mirror, you can rehearse your lines until you can recite them backwards, but none of it will matter if you still choke when the time comes. Go to the smallest open mic you can find, and come up with a few funny quips. (do that in the reverse order please!) Stand up is like being forged in a crucible. It will be difficult, but if you can have a successful, or even a really unsuccessful show, you will see that public speaking can't kill you, then you can really have fun on stage.

I always use a simple 3 part story structure, beginning, middle and end. However, for the narrative, I use a simplified "Heros Journey." Beginning (Current situation and opportunity for change) Middle (Commitment to action and overcoming challenges) End (Achieving success and sustaining momentum)

Remember that it's a performance so use neurolinguistic programming (NLP) techniques to reinforce your message. No one would stage a play without rehearsing so you must rehearse! I never used prompt cards preferring to remember my lines but would practice, practice, practice. I would also video my practice so that I could see how authentic my performance looks.

I recommend attending live plays twice once to enjoy the performance and the second to analyse how the actors performed. Try and tease out techniques that you can borrow and use when you are speaking in public. What is it they do to appear authentic even though they are repeating the same lines daily?