Hello Diana,
I am an accidental speaker. I started my community JSLovers (meetup.com/jslovers) 5 years back to share my learnings with the developers. For 1 year we were not able to find any speaker. Only my co-founder used to give sessions and I used to manage rest. Then 1 day, he was not able to give a session and I have to give the session. TBH, my 1st session was worst and I was not able to give session I think for the next 3-6 months but then after that, I was back and still doing the speaking.
How did it help in my career?
- It gave me a lot of confidence to present in meetings, internal sessions, etc.
- Public speaking helped to handle the questions and the crowd. This again helped me in my career when I am in a meeting or interview I am always confident.
- Recently I got my yearly performance review and my manager mentioned this - "I can stand you in front of a room full of 100 folks to present and you won't be afraid or nervous and this all because of your experience in public speaking".
- Public speaking helped me casting my network in the tech world and it helped me to reach the people easily for any tech help or job.