Speech and voice skills are obviously going to be very important to your overall impact when addressing a group of people. One of the secrets to becoming a good public speaker quickly is to have some speech and voice training so that your nerves don't show through in your voice - that way you will sound more confident to your audience and so they will be much more likely to take what you say seriously. You will also sound more confident to yourself - this will help you relax so you can concentrate on your speech.

One easy way to get over the fear that you feel is to realise that in one sense you are not really talking to a group of people, because from each listener's point of view, it is just one-to-one communication. So if you don't have trouble talking to one other person then you will be able to learn how to talk to a group - because they are a group of individuals. If you find it difficult to think this way, practice looking at just one person at a time while you are giving your speech. If you find that difficult, try looking at a picture on the wall while you are talking, and pretend that is the person you are talking to.

To be good at speaking in public it is also necessary to learn how to communicate your ideas clearly and concisely. This requires organisation of your ideas, and planning to determine the order you are going to present them in. Make sure that you have at least a beginning, a middle, and an end to your speech, because that is how people expect to be told things. Breaking from that format will generally confuse them and so make it harder to get your ideas across.

There are a lot of skills to learn to become good at public speaking.

High Performance Learning provides expert training in a wide range of Public Speaking and Voice Skills.