Your voice says a lot

When people find out that I help with presentation skills I often get the comment "You couldn't help our diector/chairman/boss could you? He speaks in such a monotone it's boring". This is a common problem. Our voices rise and fall naturally when we speak with passion but something seems to happen when we have to make a presentation.

I don't know if it’s nerves or the formality of the occasion that causes the stilted style of a lot of speakers. Admittedly there are some people who do have a limited range to their vocal variety, even in everyday conversation, but even these people are able to enrich their vocal abilities with a bit of practice.

I think that some people believe that serious topics require a serious voice and that they will lose credibility if they put a bit of emotion into it. This is not the case - your audience wants to know you feel strongly about the topic you’re presenting. It helps them form an emotional bond with you that makes them more likely to listen to what you’re saying even if they don’t necessarily agree with it. They also want to be informed, stimulated and, yes let’s admit it, entertained!

So what can you do about your vocal style?

You obviously need to practice, but your colleagues would find it a bit strange if you suddenly started putting on silly voices or speaking like Laurence Olivier, particularly if that's the complete opposite to your normal style. I’ve found that children make a good audience to choose for practice as they expect to be entertained and they love anything that is silly and makes them laugh.

An ideal time to try out new ways of speaking is the bedtime story for your children or grandchildren. You can afford to be as wild and whacky as possible with the different voices you use for the characters. There is usually a variety of emotions involved in a story so you can also practice how these will sound. This helps you to expand your vocal comfort zone and you get instant feedback!

If you don’t have access to any children you could perhaps find a ‘speaking buddy’. This is someone who also wants to improve their vocal skills. When there are two or more of you in the same boat it is easier to be supportive and to get feedback. You need to agree to support each other in being as outrageous and silly as you can so that you can expand your comfort zone.

A good exercise when working with other adults is ‘emotional expression’. Take a couple of words such as “I’m fine” and take it in turns to say them. Before each person speaks the other one must state the emotion that the speaker is attempting to use and then feed back if they achieved the goal after the words have been spoken. The aim is to use as many different emotions as possible and to work towards fine graduations of emotion so that you can differentiate between angry and annoyed for example.

Another exercise is to stand at opposite ends of a long room and practice shouting at each other and then whispering so that you can still be heard. The trick here is to use your breath control. You actually speak on the out breath so you will need to take in a lot of air to increase volume. Remember to use your stomach to produce volume not your vocal chords.

If you can do all this in a ‘safe’ environment it will seem a lot easier to do more toned down versions when you are in a ‘scary’ environment making a speech.