Table of Contents

1. The Meaning
2. The Importance
3. The Benefits
4. Basic Tips
5. Roles that Require Public Speaking

Are you looking forward to growth in your hospitality career? Public speaking is one of the important skills you need to have in your arsenal. Communication is woven together in the fabric of our society, and most especially in the hospitality industry; hence it is essential that you groom the skill.

Interestingly, you can incorporate your public speaking skills into your roles at work. It sets your foot on the right path to success. In this blog post, we will show you how you can use your public speaking skills to climb up the ladder to success in your hospitality career.

The Meaning

Public speaking can simply be defined as successful communication in front of a number of people. It is used to communicate a message(s), make an argument, and share information with your audience.

Public speaking is one of the many skills that people need to be successful in life. Public Speaking Skills include communicating, expressing, and persuading an audience or group on a topic. It can also help you become more confident as well as persuasive. The goal of speaking publicly is always to make your audience more informed and persuade them to your side.

The Importance

Speaking in front of the public is important because it is one of the skills we need to succeed in life. Public speaking can give you more confidence and become persuasive, which will help with your hospitality career.

When we are constantly inundated with messages, communicating in a way that is accessible to our audience becomes even more critical. In an age where information can be found easily online without extensive speaking skills, it is more important than ever before to have excellent public speaking skills.

The Benefits

Public speaking can be a great way of improving your personal development on many levels since it improves your communication skills in almost every area. Here are some of the benefits:

• Increase Your Confidence: Sometimes public speaking can be nerve-racking, but it feels great when you’re finished. If the speech goes well, your colleagues and audience may give you positive feedback, which will make you feel confident.
• Boost Your Hospitality Career: Public speaking can help you stand out in several facets of work, including meetings and interviews. In addition, you will have the skills to promote your ideas, and social skills, or even get your point across at a board meeting.
• Improve communication skills: When you are writing a speech, considering your framework and persuasive strategy early can help you improve communication in other areas of your life. Personal relationships, social interactions, and work situations all require communicating ideas to other people. Public speaking focuses on the act of sharing ideas. You can learn to share when taking up an opposing view or standing behind your audience.
• Improve social connections: Public presentation engagements can be a great way to meet and make social connections with people who share your interests. Try mingling with the crowd after your speech, answering questions, and seeking fresh perspectives on what you’ve learned.

Basic Tips

• Prepare Ahead

You know those people who present so effortlessly on TED talks? There’s a reason why they are fluent, articulate, and concise, and it’s not because they are natural-born public speakers. They practice. For hours and hours.

Whether you are sitting in a meeting with a group and simply have to give an update, or if you are on stage in front of the whole company at a Town Hall style meeting, planning and practicing will give you confidence and help you get your message across.

The key thing to prepare when planning your presentation is to know your subject matter. If you are presenting a status update, have confidence in the numbers you are sharing. Be able to answer questions on the data. Know where it comes from and how it was created. If you know you know what you are talking about, the people in the room can’t ask you anything you’ll find difficult, and that’s a huge confidence boost.

• Be open to different learning styles

When you present to a group, expect there will be a range of different learning styles in the room. Some people take in information that they hear, others prefer to read it, and others need to take notes or see a worked example or prototype for their own ‘light-bulb’ moment.

Stories make your information easier to understand and easier to connect back to the company goals, so if you can, include customer testimonials, quotes, or case studies that show what you are trying to achieve and why it’s a good idea.

It’s hard to hit every learning style when presenting to a group, but let’s say you are going into a board meeting to discuss a new project prioritization approach. You could:

• Create slides with key data points on, presented as graphs or graphics
• Talk through the slides (without reading them), adding in more detailed information
• Share a quote from someone who has used it, saying how helpful it is
• Provide a link to the model for them to try it out themselves.

Aim to incorporate a range of different content styles to help your message be understood effectively. Make sure you’ve got electronic copies available to distribute, and if you are meeting in person, it’s always helpful to have one or two copies printed out for people who want to take them away.

• Listen to feedback

…but don’t take it personally.

Naturally, that feedback helps to motivate you and learn more about the areas you need to improve on. Listen to feedback and work on the necessary areas.

Hospitality Roles That Require Public Speaking

Some of the hospitality roles that require public speaking are:

• CEO
• Event manager
• Travel manager
• Sommelier
• Restaurant manager
• Hotel general manager
• Executive chef
• Casino director
• HR Manager

Public speaking doesn’t come naturally to many of us, but being able to find your voice, even when the conversations are difficult, will set you apart as a trusted and valued colleague.