A lot of people who are quite dynamic speaking across a desk find their persuasive abilities are not nearly as powerful when they’re presenting from a stage.
It’s to do with audience distance.
You see, in normal face-to-face conversation, the words we use only carry around seven percent of the total meaning of what we’re saying.
An extraordinary 93 percent is conveyed by non-verbal information.
Our words are coloured and nuanced by things like minor shifts in facial expression, subtle variations in voice tonality, slight movements in posture, the depth of our breathing, and so on.
But when we’re presenting from a stage, most of the important non-verbal signals are lost on the audience.
So a little bit of exaggeration is the name of the game.
Good speakers will overstate their non-verbal messages to compensate for the distance.
They’ll increase the variety of their voice tone and tempo, use generous gestures, and accentuate their postural shifts.
In this way, they make up for the small subtleties.
Doing this may seem a little unnatural at first. But a bit of practice and a touch of boldness will add immensely to the effectiveness of your presentation.
Try it out in front of the bathroom mirror. Accentuate things a little more at first, and then allow yourself to gradually become more and more dramatic.
Here’s a simple rule of thumb. When you think you’re going over the top, you’re probably just about right.
In fact, that’s about the level where you’ll be coming across to the audience as a lively and enthusiastic speaker.
GETTING YOUR VOICE WORKING FOR YOU
Probably the best way to add extra punch is by increasing the variation in your voice tonality and pacing.
Good speakers will raise and lower their pitch and change pace and emphasis from word to word, drawing certain words out, and enticing listeners in with pauses.
These are the characteristics that grab people’s curiosity and interest, and compel them listen to what you have to say.
But too many speakers tend to sound the way a closely-typed memo looks. Everything is the same pace, the same volume, the same dull drone. There’s nothing to attract a listener.
So here are two tips to make your voice more interesting
1. Get emphasis by changing pitch, not volume
Don’t try to get emphasis through loud and soft. People just don’t hear it. Try up and down instead.
Take a word like ‘important’. Instead of pushing out the ‘port’, try starting off low with the ‘im’, then let your voice quickly sweep up on the ‘port’, and then down again for the ‘ant’.
2. Get variety by changing pace
Pull out the key words and phrases and s–l–o-w t–h–e–m d–o–w–n. You’ll be amazed at how slow you can actually go – and how much more interesting you sound. And for added effect, introduce pauses just before key words. This will draw people’s attention to the words.
Voice tonality is so important that we spend a lot of time on it in our training programmes – with plenty of games and exercises to encourage people to experiment and increase their range.
And most people are surprised at how quickly and how easily they improve.
John Cliff – www.johncliff.com
