Public speaking tips

Public speaking is increasingly important, and particularly so for anyone interested in leadership, politics or sports. This guide for students is viable for others too. It does come with quite an amount of advertisements, but if you see beyond those, you should be able to pick up a tip or two.

I want to comment on one point in partiular:

"Speak with conviction as if you are really believing in what you are saying."

I must admit that I never like talking about something that I do not believe in, but I am no politician either. The best tip I ever got myself was to add something personal, like a personal story or memory. The reasoning was that "you may not know a lot about the topic, but using an experience you have, you can relate to the topic, and tell the audience what the topic means to you".

Thus, there is no need to be an expert, or even know a lot about the topic - as long as you can relate to it, you are able to share your experience, ideas and thoughts.

And as my mentor said:  "I am not particularly interested in the topic itself (I may know everything there is to it), but what I really want is to know how YOU relate to the topic. I want YOU to be part of it." 

Is he right?