The most important first step to improving as a speaker is to first understand what you’re working with. Your unique relationship with and approach to public speaking will define your journey to growing as a speaker. Here are the four general types of speakers, so that you can recognize, for yourself, what kind of speaker you are.
The first is the kind who might prefer chewing on broken glass to speaking in front of an audience. They’ll maintain a strategic distance from public speaking and would really rather be in a coffin than giving a eulogy.
The second kind of speaker doesn’t dread public speaking quite as much as they dread death, but it’s a close second. They’ll try to avoid speaking until they need to. They may have had two or three lines in a school play during high school, a long time ago. This kind of speaker tries, they truly do. While they awkwardly stammer and falter, or make awful jokes to coat their anxiety, somehow, they figure out how to take care of business. They usually get people’s sympathy votes.
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The third kind of speaker believes they know exactly the reason why they are speaking. Time and luck have provided them chances to speak openly in front of the crowds, and over time they’ve trusted themselves to have a knack for it. Some of these speakers are keen to make slide presentations before they start composing their speech. These speakers like to utilize their slides and pre-written scripts to keep them afloat, and they think that it’s least demanding to just translate their speaking from a projector screen or their pre-written script.
These speakers are a difficult case, because they work hard to pick the correct words and expressions to utilize, and on paper it can be a decent speech. Sadly, public speaking has less to do with having a pre-written script than it has to do with relating and connecting with the crowd. These speakers tend to overload the message in their speech, which usually bores their listeners. To them, it’s a formality to let people know of the information. Examples of these speakers include school principals and boring lecturers.
The last kind of speaker is the professional speaker. They know if the audience needs less or more information. They customize their speeches flawlessly, depending upon their audience along with the subject matter. They know how to empathize with the crowd and engage the audience so they effectively get their points across. These speakers truly influence the lives of their listeners and generally, people flock towards them. These speakers are often successful comedians and TED talk speakers.
Of these four general kinds of speakers, there is definitely one archetype that you can likely identify with. This isn’t to pass judgement on anyone’s speaking ability — it just means that we all have different baselines and different aspects to work on. Ultimately, identifying what kind of speaker you are will help you jumpstart your journey to becoming a better public speaker and accomplishing your goals.
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Olga V. Mack is a blockchain strategist, public speaker, and adjunct professor at Berkeley Law. She is Vice President of Strategy at Quantstamp, the first decentralized security auditing blockchain platform. Most recently, she served as General Counsel at ClearSlide and she has held legal and operational roles at Visa, Zoosk, Pacific Art League, Wilson Sonsini, and Yahoo. Olga founded the Women Serve on Boards movement that advocates for women to serve on the corporate boards of Fortune 500 companies. You can email Olga at olga@olgamack.com or follow her on Twitter @olgavmack.