Be interesting to keep your audience engaged.
As the leader of a workshop, it is more important than ever to have powerful public speaking skills to promote teamwork and act as a role model to other group members. Effective public speaking skills include engaging your audience with powerful facts, adding humor and personality to your speech and being prepared to answer questions.
Focus
Choose a message or topic to focus on during your workshop, and stick to it. When speaking in front of an audience of any size, drifting from topic to topic can cause the audience to become confused and not pay attention to what you are saying. For example, if the purpose of your speaking engagement is to explain the new rules of the employee handbook, discussing last year's financial performance may be irrelevant and unnecessary to discuss.
Have a Strong Beginning and End
Grab your workshop audience's attention from the very beginning by starting with humor, stating a strong and meaningful quote or giving a powerful statistic -- you should end the same way. In most cases, the first and last thing that is said can be one of the few things the audience remembers from the presentation. The body of the speech should contain quality content as well, but the beginning and end should be the strongest.
Get Feedback
The best way to enhance and improve any future speeches is to seek feedback from your audience. Ask for feedback on the topic you discussed and your speaking techniques as well as if your message was effective. Good questions to ask are, "Did you gain a better understanding of the topic at hand by the end of the speech?" or "Would you attend another speech of mine? If not, why?"
Quick Thinking
Do thorough research on you workshop topic so you are prepared if you are asked questions. Thorough preparation includes more than just memorizing your speech; it involves being able to quickly respond to feedback and questions you may be asked. A good way to prepare yourself is to develop a list of likely FAQs (Facts Answers Questions) that may be asked.
