Talking and gesturing are a salaryman’s secret weapon.

I say with reasonable confidence that most people do not like giving presentations. They take a long time to assemble and proofread, they require you to put yourself in front of a big crowd of coworkers and supervisors to be judged, and if you blow it, you look like a shmuck.

However, it’s that precise lack of appeal that makes being able to give a real home run of a presentation such a valuable workplace skill. Think about it; nobody wants to give presentations, so if you can become the one person in the office who can knock them out of the park, you’ve basically got yourself a monopoly on brownie points.

If you can prove yourself as “the presentation guy” (or lady), you’ll become a go-to candidate whenever your boss needs to assemble a lot of info and make it easily digestible for the whole company. That makes you an iron-clad asset to the company, and that value doubles if you’re asked to put together a presentation for a different company. If you can nail a presentation for, say, a potential partnership with a different company or some manner of licensing deal, you not only establish yourself as a go-to company relations expert, you’ll also start building an inter-company network. Everyone, both in your workplace and beyond it, remembers a 10 out of 10 presentation, and if you ever need to make contact with someone above you, they’ll remember you as the person who pulled it off.

Of course, before all that can happen, you have to actually get good at assembling and giving presentations. It’s not gonna be easy, especially if you have any hang-ups about public speaking, but if you can overcome those concerns, you’ll cement your position for a very long time.