Episode #74: Do You Have A Great Voice As A Speaker?

Probably only a microscopic number of speakers have had any voice training. The vast majority of us are in business and get called on to speak. As we rise through the ranks we need to deliver reports internally, to speak to our project teams, to address the sales rally. We also get dragged outside the organisation to give speeches to industry groups or chambers of commerce etc. When we get up and speak we are just using an extension of our daily conversational speaking voice. This is where we get into trouble.

Speaking to a group can be done in a conversational way, but the voice needs to change. It needs a number if things to be happening at the same time. It needs to be a bit louder than normal, even when you are using a microphone. This relates to the power levels we need to be projecting to the audience and the way to regulate that is through the volume we apply.

We need to be using well placed pauses. Often we are nervous when we are to get up in front of others, so unknowingly we start to speed up and start running the sentences together. I was coaching an Indian businessmen once and he gave a two minute talk which was one single sentence without a pause anywhere. I was amazed. When we do this we are killing the message because the audience cannot easily follow what we are saying and also because our ideas crash over the top of each other like winter storm surf. We need the pauses so the ideas can be heard and can sink in and be processed by the audience.

Mumbling the words makes it hard to follow. Mumbling is usually a factor when we are speaking too quickly and not using enough pauses. Slow down for better effect. Now I am a fast speaker so slowing down just kills me and kills my flow. I have to do it though if I want to be heard. It becomes a particular problem when I speak in Japanese. Having an accent when I speak and doing it at speed makes it hard for the audience to follow. I need to slow down!

When you are a fast speaker you worry that the audience will think there is something unnatural with the way you are speaking, as if you are being disrespectful to them. I was using a teleprompter and the speed setting was rather slower than what I would normally use. I thought this is going to sound condescending to the audience. However, when I heard the speech later, it didn’t sound like I was speaking down to my audience at all. In fact, it sounded clear and measured.

We need to start with a good strong voice and make sure we don’t allow the ends of our sentences to trail off and just end in a whimper. We need to finish each sentence with some strength. We don’t want the intonation rising at the end either because that implies lack of conviction about what we are saying. In the middle part we want voice modulation. That comes in three varieties: tonal range, that is to say the up and down of speech tone; the degree of strength we are using – soft and strong; and the speed – sometimes we slow it right down and other times we speed it up again.

Filler words like Um and Ah have to be reduced or preferably removed altogether. They are a distraction when they have high frequency. It annoys the listener and competes for the attention of our message. The audience starts concentrating on the speech hesitations rather than the key points we are trying to convey. I was at a speech recently and the frequency of “ums” was every sentence. There weren’t even any “ahs” to break up the monotony! It was a negative for the speaker and it diminished an impressive resume.

We don’t need to have a deep DJ voice but if you have one, great for you. For the rest of us, we can only go with what we have and we can use our voice range to go a bit deeper on certain key words we want to emphasise. The words in a sentence are not all equal. This is not a lexicon democracy. It is a dictatorship of the important and we should be stressing the words which are key to the message. Don’t hit too many words in the one sentence, because we detract from the impact of our careful selection. Going soft on words works just as well as going hard by the way. A conspirator flavor is introduced when we do that. It is as if we are inviting the audience into our closed circle and we are sharing a secret with them and them alone.

When we hear our own voice played back it sounds strange because it is not how we hear it inside our own head. I remember that John Lennon was very self conscious about how his voice sounded on his records. Despite that he managed to sell millions of records anyway. This difference of how we sound is a physical thing to do with the bones in the ear, making sure we hear it one way and our audience is hearing it another.

Forget about the way you sound. Speak with control, with clarity, with pauses, with key word emphasis, with tonal variety. When we do that, the audience will be attracted to our message and that is all that we need. Think about all of the actors you see in movies and on television – they don’t all have just one voice style. They are successful because they are great communicators with the voice they have. We need to be the same.