Nick Chacos

The foundation of your effectiveness as a leader is your relationships with your team. Building trust & connectivity with your people helps you learn how to inspire, motivate, and provide feedback. You don't have to have all the answers... but you can still be a mentor, a good listener, a good coach, and set an example for high character. When your team believes in you and shows up for you, other teams - and other leaders - will take notice.

Engaging your people to get feedback, ideas, and solutions is so helpful here. Usually people shy away from change or taking risks because they are afraid to speak up, don't think their opinions matter, or think failing will result in harmful consequences. By getting new ideas, listening, and helping facilitate implementation - people start to feel empowered to speak up and take more risks. This creates a culture of innovation, psychological safety, trust & continuous improvement. The "Kaizen" philosophy is worth researching for anyone struggling here.

Capture Attention Immediately! If you start off with the same warm "good afternoon everyone, thanks for being here, my name is ...", you will lose a lot of your audience right away. They may even have the best intent to listen to you, but their subconscious will begin to tune you out. This is something called the Habituation Filter. When the brain believes it is getting a message it's heard before or is used to, it will tune it out. Think about when you look at something; if you look long enough at it, your vision will change, because your brain is starting to ignore the messages that are staying constant & searching for something new. Cut through those filters with a striking story that you jump immediately into!

Connecting with the audience is the biggest key. Whatever you are saying, it has to pass the "why do I care?" test. Research has shown that people are more open to new ideas or changing their beliefs if presented with a positive possible outcome for themselves... so you need to connect your content with a positive outcome for your audience. It's also important to connect on an emotional level. The best speakers I've ever seen have all weaved in some way to bring up a personal story, talk about their families, their childhoods, or something that helps me feel closer to them. When your audience knows you & feels connected to you personally, they are going to be more open & receptive to whatever you have to say

The biggest key here isn't memorization, but it's having a true understanding of your content. You need to be able to talk about the subject as if you are engaged in a deep discussion. This will allow you to speak to your audience without sounding rehearsed or fear of "losing your place". It also allows you to adlib a bit if needed, or respond to questions on the fly while you present. Don't memorize; Understand!

A learning component would provide the most significant impact in becoming a great public speaker. Learning tips & tricks on how to engage an audience and deliver your content with confidence would be hugely valuable & allow you the opportunity for continuous growth. Additionally, further education around your presentation topic will allow you to sound less rehearsed; familiarity with a topic relaxes you & allows you to flow through your content more naturally - which allows your audience to view you as more authentic & trustworthy