Which group of public speakers do you belong to?

Your ability to communicate your thoughts and feelings in a way that is interpreted as you intended is a priceless skill. I am a passionate student of life, and human interactions is one sphere I am particularly interested in. Public speaking is speaking in front of a group of two or more people. I read someone who wrote that if you are not speaking to one person in a situation where absolutely no one else can hear you, you are public speaking. When it comes to public speaking, there are three groups of people. groups-of-public-speaking

Below are the three groups and a suggestion on how to move from the bottom group to the top group:

  • The first group is the people who loves to speak in public and have become masters (or are in the process of mastering) communication in public. This is where you find professional speakers like Brian Tracy, Les Brown, and the like.
  • The second group is the people who speak because they have to, but don’t particularly enjoy the process. Here you will find a lot of people who are in leadership roles within organizations. This group of people have developed a valuable skills or have specialized knowledge or information that they share with groups of people through public speaking.
  • The third group is the people who don’t like public speaking and dread the idea. This group represents  almost 3 out of every 4 people, or about 75% of the America’s population. This is based on a publication by the National Institute of Mental Health  in November 2013. People in this group are mostly apprehensive because they have never explored the process or learned how to be a good public speaker.

Serving as a club president for Toastmasters International, I have had the privilege of watching people in the third group progressively move onto the second group. Transitioning from one group to the other takes acquiring information about how to be a good communicator and public speaker, followed by the deliberate application of that knowledge. Your knowledge is the product of information you have been exposed to, and used. In other words: Your Knowledge = Information * Your experiments.

If it is your interest to move from the third group to the first, the only thing you have to do is increase the information you are exposed to, then increase the experiments you personally conduct based on that information. This formula will work in any field or industry.

What group of public speakers are you currently in?

Day 18 of 21: 100 words per day for 21 days. 418 words.