A couple of years ago, I taught a public speaking workshop in Detroit. Three of the students in that class were job placement coaches.
I noticed a couple of interesting things as that class went on. First, the three kept mentioning how the lessons I covered in the public speaking class were similar to the lessons they were teaching one-on-one to their students.
The second thing that I noticed was that all three picked up every single skill I was teaching very quickly. Now granted… I’m a great instructor. (Sarcasm.) And our process does make learning presentation skills easier.
But these three folks seemed to catch on even more easily than most people. This does happen on occasion. But I’d never had it happen with three different people, from the same company, in the same class before. It was fascinating.
This is just a guess. But after analyzing what was different about them, I came to this conclusion. They developed these new presentation skills quickly because they already had great communication skills, one-on-one, in the workplace. The communication skills they had already developed helped them more quickly and easily learn and develop new communication skills (the presentation skills).
The opposite is true as well. If you develop your presentation skills, your communication skills in other areas of the workplace will also improve.
The ability to give a solid presentation is a trait that will help you in every aspect of the workplace, and learning to do it now will help you in ways you can not even begin to think.
Presentation Skills Won’t Just Help You in the Workplace, They’ll Get You into the Workplace.
While learning presentation skills is something you can do at any stage of your professional journey, there’s nothing better than showing up with them on your first day of work. There is a wealth of evidence supporting the fact that communication and presentation skills are two of the most in-demand skills on everybody’s resume.
- Verbal communication is a skill sought by 69.3% of employers.
- The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics ranks speaking and listening as the second most in demand job skill in the United States.
- Communication was ranked the number one in-demand job skill in 2024 by LinkedIn.
- It’s not just the US, communication is one of the three most in-demand soft skills in Europe.
- As part of the GMAC Corporate Recruiters Survey, presentation skills was found to be the most important communication ability among employers.
Having the ability to verbally communicate, both with other people and in front of other people, is something that is a benefit in every industry. It’s also one of the very few skills that is actually provable and useful in the hiring process. Being able to stand in front of an interviewer, be it online or off, and capably present yourself with confidence, structure, and engagement makes you instantly stand out among the candidates. Whenever you are able to prove one aspect of your resume, it lends a lot more credence to everything else you sold yourself on.
Five Ways That Presentation Skills Can Help You in the Workplace
Congratulations, you got the job! Now, it’s time to take those presentation skills that got you here and apply them to the rest of your position. Luckily for you, public speaking and presenting offer numerous benefits beyond just presenting well. This is absolutely not an exhaustive list, but here are just five ways that presentation skills can instantly improve other aspects of work relations.
1) People Tend to See the Person Who Has Great Presentation Skills as the Leader.
Think of any person who you consider to be a great leader. The moment that you think of this person, an image of that person will often appear in your head.
There is a really good chance that the image will be the leader speaking in front of a group. If you thought of a President like JFK or Ronald Reagan, you probably thought of a famous speech. “Ask not what your country could do for you…” Or “Tear down this wall…” might have actually entered your mind as well.
Also, when I think of General Patton, I have an image of George C. Scott standing in front of an American Flag. (He was giving a speech.)
When I played football in college, my position coach was Gary Gaines. If you have seen the movie or read the book Friday Night Lights, you may recognize the name.
Coach Gaines is a fantastic leader. He is also a fantastic communicator. Interestingly, when I think of him today, I don’t remember the coaching and reprimands. Instead, I remember the way he used to make us feel during team meetings. He inspired us. We wanted to perform for him so that we wouldn’t let him down or disappoint him.
Great speakers are synonymous with great leaders. Whenever you’re one, people immediately associate you with the other.
2) When You Speak Up and Contribute, You Become More a Part of the Team.
When I first graduated from college, I had a job working at a huge oil company. Since I was a junior employee and just starting out, I was excited the first time I was invited to the staff meeting. I was nervous too.
About twenty minutes into the meeting, my boss identified a challenge. He was looking for advice. I had encountered a similar situation just weeks before. The solution seemed obvious. I wanted to share with the group what I had done just weeks earlier to solve the problem.
However, I hesitated. I was just the new kid in the room. A few of the more senior people in the meeting spoke up. But the boss wasn’t really sold on any of the solutions.
Internally, I was thinking, “Just speak up! Your solution was much better than what had been said so far.” But, at the time, I was too scared. So, I waited.
Finally, the woman sitting to my left, Mary Beth, said the same thing that I had been thinking. The boss thought about the idea for a second and said, “That might work.” She became the hero for the moment.
I was angry at myself. “Why didn’t I say something?” I had an opportunity to help the team and help myself at the same time. The opportunity had passed, though. I missed it.
So one important aspect of presentation skills in the workplace is that we gain confidence. When we do, we are more likely to contribute to the team.
3) The Bar is Low – Learn the Basics of Presenting and You’ll Immediately Stand Out in a Positive Way.
One major importance of presentation skills in the workplace is the ability to stand out from the crowd. Let’s face it. Most people stink at giving presentations.
I sometimes jokingly say in class that you don’t have to be an excellent presenter. You just have to be a little better than the last person who spoke. In most cases, the bar is set pretty low in relation to public speaking skills in the office.
I taught a class to a department of the Federal Government a couple of years ago. As I was teaching, I felt like the energy was a little lower than usual. It was a tougher crowd, and I was feeling a little sick. I don’t like to think I was “phoning it in,” but I have to admit, it was absolutely not my best class ever.
As I was packing up my stuff, though, one of the participants came up to me. He said, “I’ve been coming to these ‘team meetings’ for almost 25 years. This one was, by far, the best that I’ve ever been to.”
My first thought was, “You poor soul. That poor performance was the best you’d seen?”
But he was comparing me to past speakers. Compared to them, it was fantastic. My presentation skills, even on a bad day, helped me stand out from the crowd in a positive way. You can too!
4) Your Presentation Skills Will Help You Build a Team Culture in Your Workplace.
Whether you are the leader of your team or a brand-new person on the team, presentation skills build teamwork. The opposite is also true, though.
When I first left the petroleum industry and got a sales job, the position I got was a starter job. My first manager, Scott Yancey, was a pretty good leader, though. (In fact, he had a TV show on cable called Flipping Vegas.) The team meetings were fun. Even though we were competitive salespeople, he made us feel like a cohesive team.
Unfortunately, a couple of months after I started, Scott moved to Las Vegas to start his own company. The manager who took over was very disorganized. The new manager droned on and on about irrelevant stuff. His meetings were an absolute chore. The team culture that we previously had was now gone. Work was no longer fun.
Within a few months, the owner had to “transition” him to a new position. That left an opening, and I got the job. After experiencing those two contrasting leadership styles, I began to try to copy what Scott had done. Luckily, I had taken a really good public speaking class just a year prior. And I used those presentation skills to create more of a dialogue in the sales meetings — versus a boring monologue.
It worked like a charm.
5) Presentation Skills Open Doors of Opportunities for Career Advancement.
We have over 1000 people attend our presentation classes each year. I’m still amazed at the number of times our participants send us emails and texts reporting life-changing results.
For instance, I got a random call out of the blue a couple of years ago from a police officer who took my class. After taking Fearless Presentations ®, he volunteered for a community outreach position. He has spent the last few years teaching college students how to improve security on their campus. He told me that he has received two promotions as well.
He told me that just changing the way that he presented, the way he communicated, led to these opportunities.
An entrepreneur from a recent class sent me an email saying that she auditioned for Shark Tank. She said that she would have never done something like that before the class.
I’ve found that the more confident you become in a new skill, the more you’ll want to practice that skill. And when you find that you are better than most people, you tend to want to practice that skill even more. So, improve your public speaking skills, and opportunities you never dreamed of will present themselves.
Presentation Skills Are Important Everywhere, But Especially in the Workplace
These are just a few of the intangible benefits of good presentation skills. In many positions, these skills are vital. For instance, if you are in sales, the better your skills, the more sales you will create. If you are a trainer, your presentation skills will allow you to teach others more easily and effectively.
If you’re a manager or a supervisor, you can lead even more productive meetings. Folks who work with customers are less likely to have miscommunication. The benefits are endless. So, if you want to get ahead in the business world, work on your presentation skills!
Just as an FYI, if you want to really improve your public speaking skills even faster, we offer two-day Fearless Presentations ® classes in cities all over the US. If you’d like information about any of them, just complete the form below.