By nature of the subject, public speaking is a career that many people struggle to excel in.
You are speaking in front of an audience of people – all who have differing opinions and different backgrounds that made up those opinions. Purely by nature, there will be no two people in the crowd with completely identical outlooks on life – meaning there will be nobody who has the exact same outlook on life as you, either.
It is these differences that bring up the one essential step in attaining public speaking success: “The speaker must remain humble.” In his book Successful Persuasion Through Public Speaking, Zig Ziglar discusses humility in terms of public speaking success when he says it is vital to remember “we are servants to those who invite us to speak to them.” He is right.
When people are invited to speak in front of a crowd, they are invited to share their opinions and share their stories and share their ideas with perfect strangers. These strangers are all different individuals with varying ideas, and to assume that the speaker knows what is best for every single individual in the crowd is to shoot themselves in the foot. For public speaking success, the speaker must always remember that these people are listening out of choice and that assuming the speaker holds any sort of power over his audience might be a kiss of death.
Ziglar reminds his readers they “can never forget the great responsibility that comes with every invitation.” Speaking to an audience is helping an audience. You are essentially helping to direct them down a certain path, from award show presenters telling the audience who to cheer for to salespeople telling an audience what product would best enhance their life, a public speaker is directing the audience somewhere.
In order to see public speaking success, the speaker must always remember to remain humble and remember their responsibility to lead the audience – not dictate the audience. When remembering to remain humble, the latter comes naturally. A humble public speaker is more likely to be a public speaking success because their audience, with all of their opinions and ideas, will be more likely to listen to someone who respects them as individuals rather than someone who is telling them the frame of mind they need to be in.
Remember… honey is sweeter than vinegar, and that concept applies even when talking to people from a stage where they cannot directly respond. Kindness and humility will go a lot further than pretention ever could.
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