Credibility
How do you maintain your credibility throughout the whole presentation? How do you sound credible? What makes a credible speaker? Let us take some very helpful tips from http://istudy.psu.edu/FirstYearModules/OralReports/ReportInfo.html.
It indeed takes a lot of effort (and guts, too!) to have that credibility. According to the aforementioned website, it is important to ‘know your material.’ By doing this, you will earn the attention of your audience. It will make the audience more convinced of what you are speaking. Knowing the material comprehensively will mean that you can also speak straight and fluently. You will sound credible if you have no quivers or vibrations in your voice. You must not sound tense or nervous. You must always sound confident. And if you know your material very well, then your confidence will just follow.
The same website also recognizes the importance of having a strong and established support for your ideas. With this, you can be able to defend and create a strong foundation for the ideas you are presenting. It will also make your ideas more convincing to your audience. You may present facts, statistics, studies, theories from well-known psychologists, and words of training experts you know to have a well-built framework of your speech.
In a website that talks about speaker credibility, it says that a credible speaker should always be ‘objective.’ In this way, the people will believe what the speaker is talking about. It details further that there are three basic qualities of credibility:
(1) competence;
(2) character; and
(3) charisma.
You can read more about this at http://webhome.idirect.com/~kehamilt/spkcred.html.
In another website, http://www.uwlax.edu/urc/JUR-online/PDF/2003/corrie.pdf, it states, ‘high credibility speaker group participants would recall more information than would those in the low credibility speaker group.’
At the end of it all, you will realize that credibility really takes a lot. It is because credibility is also one big thing that makes a major difference in your presentation. You just have to have that patience and determination to master how it is to be a credible speaker and you will be saved.