The Essential Public Speaking Tips For Managers

Part of the main task of a manager is to pass information to his/her staff, employers, business partners, shareholders or the public. Information is power and for an organization it makes the difference between failure and success. One cannot succeed as a manager if he/she cannot effectively and convincingly speak to individuals or a group people. It is therefore important to know few essential public speaking tips for managers.
Sometimes, managers may find themselves forced to make impromptu speeches with no or little time to prepare adequately while in most cases, they have time to prepare before facing an audience. Below are some of the public speaking tips for managers that will make them well equipped when speaking to a small group of staff members or when addressing the industry bigwigs in a major conference.
The first public speaking tips for managers, before they open their mouth is to make sure they know the topic they want to speak on well. If you don't know about a topic, do a thorough research about it and commit to memory all the basic facts about the topic.
Sometimes even if you know the topic, don't just be too sure; freshen up your memory because a few things may have changed. For instance if you are talking to your sales team about a product you want them to market out there, learn everything about the product from raw materials to packaging because this is the kind of information you need to pass out to the team so that they can also eloquently market the product.
After getting satisfied with the grasp of the topic, the next public speaking tips for managers is to research about the audience if the speech will not be delivered to an in house staff. This is important because a manager needs to capture the attention of his/her listeners. A manager should find out the interests of the target audience, their problems and challenges, the questions they may want to be answered, how technical the questions are and many other valuable questions and then tailor the speech on this issues.
Sometimes the manager can write down the speech or list the points that can guide him/her when delivering the speech. Reread the speech or the notes and make sure the written speech is simple and coherent enough for your audience. To get a better grasp and confidence before facing the audience, rehearse the speech by delivering it out to yourself or a few confidantes. Rehearse as many times as possible until you are confident. Practice your beginning and the end of your speech because these are the most stressful parts of the speech. A poor start will dent the delivery of the whole speech while a bad ending may spoil the otherwise good delivery.
While making speeches, another public speaking tips for managers, is to spice the speech with humor and gestures but make sure the humor is related to the topic as much as possible and is the right one for the occasion. Furthermore ensure the wise cracks do not offend anybody in your audience. But before you apply humor, consider your strengths first - whether you have made people laugh in the past or whether you are good at explaining things.
The last public speaking tips for managers is to have an outline of the speech ready. Sometimes a manager can draw a blank even after making proper preparation. The thought of drawing a blank in front of a crowd is pretty chilling. The best thing is to have an outline of the speech which you can bail you once your mind lets you down.