Great motivational speakers seem like they were born with gravitas. They move on stage so eloquently, their body languages relax, and they speak with such conviction that you are immediately interested in listening and automatically believe in what they have to say.
Although it surely takes years of practice for good motivational speakers to become as successful as who you see on stage, they have some natural qualities that help them tell inspiring stories that motivate listeners to improve their lives and tackle their challenges.
So if you have ever wondered “What qualities should a motivational speaker have?”, below are the five qualities that great motivational speakers possess.
1. Introspection
Do you know why motivational speakers often seem so inspiring? Most motivational speakers are just regular people, like us. Many of them have years of experience in business, counseling, or research.
Many others suffered tremendous trauma and loss. These are just common human experience that affects the way we view the world and how we interact with people around us.
Great motivational speakers have one thing in common: a great story where they are the successful protagonist, where they overcame a great challenge and learned a few things that they could now share with us. They inspire us to reflect on our own lives and problems and encourage us to tackle our challenges.
To do this, motivational speakers need to spend a lot of time in introspection. They need to look back on their past experiences and teachings.
They need to be self-aware enough to understand their strengths and weaknesses, investigate the roots of their pain and problems in order to draw lessons and conclude why they succeeded. From there, they can craft a message that can inspire and motivate their listeners.
2. Empathy
The ultimate goal for motivational speakers is to inspire listeners and motivate them to change. Some motivational speakers even craft a specific path for their listeners, with instructions to make small changes every day to tackle their problems and improve their lives.
To help their audience, motivational speakers need to have empathy for their pain, understand their audience’s problems, and tailor the message and actionable recommendations towards the audience’s needs and wants.
All of us share some of the same life challenges: love, loss, trauma, and triumphs. Without the ability to empathize, motivational speakers cannot relate their personal experiences to their audience’s, and thus their message and ideas may not resonate with the audience and fail to move them towards action.
3. Sincerity
Listeners can spot fakers from a mile away. Motivational speakers need to have a sincere and unwavering belief in their own stories and ideas to convey those ideas effectively and convince others to believe in them as well.
A speaker’s sincere investment in his or her own message clearly shows on stage. They speak with passion and conviction. Their emotions and intonations flow naturally, and you want to believe in everything they say.
This sincerity is a great force than can excite the audience, draw them in and drive them to action. If a speaker doesn’t sincerely believe in what he or she is saying, why would the audience?
4. Confidence
Great motivational speakers often exude a supernatural level of confidence. After all, their job involves a great deal of public speaking, and they tell stories to inspire people and move them towards change.
If they don’t have conviction and confidence in what they’re saying, the listeners will have a hard time believing in them as well.
Fortunately, confidence can be built with consistent practice. What looks like seamless confidence is a combination of good storytelling, a rehearsed flow, and natural body language and pauses that takes months, maybe years, of practice.
That’s why motivational speakers often start their careers by practicing with a speech coach, friends or family and build up their skills in front of small crowds. It may take years of practice for them to deliver an eloquent and confident speech, but the perfected delivery technique helps the message resonate better with their audience.
A speaker’s confidence can also gain the audience’s attention and engagement. If the energy in the room is exciting and engaging, it will encourage the audience to participate in the discussion and help them remember the message better.
5. Dedication
Everyone knows that Rome wasn’t built in one day, but being a motivational speaker requires a great level of dedication. When they first start a motivational speaking career, they need to invest quite some time and money into crafting their message and ideas, perfecting their delivery techniques, and marketing themselves before they can actually start earning money from this job.
Motivational speakers often work for themselves, make their own travel arrangements, and personally find clients and speaking gigs. This can often seem discouraging at first, and without dedication to the profession, most motivational speakers cannot succeed in this career.