Vocal Wobbles: How to Ease your Shaky Voice during Speeches

Do you ever find that your voice wavers when you’re delivering a speech or during professional presentations?  Have you noticed that this problem is particularly troublesome at the beginning of your public speaking presentation?  Just like with any physical exercise, you need to make sure that you’ve properly warmed up your voice before your public or professional speaking event. 

In an ideal situation, you will be able to spend a few minutes immediately before your presentation engaged in some vocal warm ups.  Depending on your venue, you should take time right before you take the floor to sing as loudly as possible or recite poetry.  If Lord Byron and Wordsworth escape your mind at that moment, recite nursery rhymes.  If you know that you will be unable to have a few minutes to warm up immediately prior to your presentation, do so as close to your time as possible.  This may mean that in the hotel room in the morning, or during a break in the proceedings, or in your care on the way to the venue you’re belting out the tunes or reciting the words of your favourite poet.  Either way, make sure that you’ve warmed up those vocal chords.  Just as an athlete must warm up before the big game or race, you as a speaker must warm up before your event.

Unfortunately, often you will not be able to erupt in song during a board meeting or conference so that your voice is ready to go for your presentation.  In those cases, you will need to be prepared to start your presentation on a solid vocal grounding without the benefit of a warm up.  Of course, you will have done as much talking (or singing) prior to your presentation when you had the opportunity, even if it was a few hours before your time. 

When you take the floor, take a moment to take a grounding deep breath – just don’t make it too overt.   If you are in a training or workshop session, and if it is part of your plan, you can then launch into an introduction round where your participants briefly introduce themselves.  As they do so, you are able to greet each one, therein giving yourself a bit more time to get familiar with your role and your voice.  At the end of the introduction session, you will most certainly feel comfortable, confident and clear of the vocal wobbles.

In other situations where there will be no introductions and you need to launch straight into your presentation, use your first couple of sentences as introductions to yourself and to your topic.  You will be more comfortable with saying your name and the subject of your presentation then you would be simply launching directly into the substance of your presentation.  You should use those first few sentences to develop a vocal grounding and familiarity with the microphone and acoustics of the venue, and make any necessary adjustments to your delivery. 

Don’t forget to watch your audience for cues about how you sound to them.  If you’re unsure, and think that the people in the back row can’t hear you, you’re better off addressing your volume at the outset of your presentation.  Your goal is to find the appropriate volume for your audience, venue and the subject of your presentation.   Aim to sound neither like the town crier nor the audience whisperer.  You will project your knowledge of your subject through your confident, warmed-up voice, so get singing!

Check out some other tips at:  http://www.onlinecollegecourses.com/2012/07/15/25-online-tools-to-teach-yourself-public-speaking/

Fear of Public Speaking? Congratulations, you’re normal. Now start talking.

The fear of public speaking, is a shockingly common trait.  Of the numerous studies devoted to the topic, one can find support that the fear occurs in 50-75% of the population and rank it as the number one fear held by people (above the fear of death).  There is no shortage of articles about both causes of and tips for overcoming one’s fear of public speaking.  Regardless of the reasons why you might feel anxious before or during a public speaking presentation, you would probably take comfort in knowing that not only is this kind of anxiety prevalent in our society, but also that such a fear is not a barrier to being an effective public speaker. 

We could fill a library with books written to assist individuals with overcoming their fear of public speaking.  I would agree that there are many excellent and helpful tactics that can help a person learn to address and overcome the fear.  Of all the methods, tips and techniques available, some will likely resonate more greatly with you while others simply won’t work for you.  Nonetheless, there is one very simple technique which is extremely effective and universally applicable.  Everyone can do it and it takes no special training.

In order to utilise this simple technique, you must understand that when you feel anxious about public speaking, you are perceiving a fear of something that is actually not threatening.  Being chased by a lion is threatening and one would justifiably be afraid in such a situation.   In contrast,  you may perceive the act of public speaking as threatening, and hence you may be attempting to legitimise your fear, but there is nothing inherently dangerous about public speaking.  Instead, sometimes our brain sends us messages that something is scary when there is really nothing to fear, and after we feel the fear, we will justify the fear with what we feel to be logical statements (“I will sound like a fool and everyone will laugh at me.”).[i]

When this brain trick works, you believe that your fear of public speaking is reasonable and consequently, you act accordingly.  Thus, you avoid public speaking because you believe that you have a legitimate fear (one that falls into the same category as being chased by a lion).   The reality, of course, is that avoiding public speaking is probably far more detrimental to your professional reputation and image than actually delivering the presentation or speech. 

So, what’s the simple and effective technique?  Deliver the speech.  Just step onto the stage, or stand at the front of the boardroom and start talking.  Don’t give any credence to the fearful messages in your brain.  Have you ever just jumped into the water, all at once, before your brain told you that the water would be cold?  The longer that you wait at the side of the water, the more messages of fear will be flooding through your brain.  The same principle goes for public speaking.   The more you listen to the fear messages in your mind the stronger the fear becomes and the more you believe it.  You will become “paralysed with fear.”  To counter this, you must act.  Don’t try to think your way out of this mess of fear, just get up there and talk before you convince yourself otherwise.

[i]   One great resource for helping you to put fear in its place is the book   Feel the Fear . . . and Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffers. 

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The Power of the Pause

We all know to avoid using fillers in our speech, such as “um,” “uh,” or “like.”  Think of these word fillers as the public speaking equivalent of junk food.  Although you’re making sounds when you utter these fillers, they are devoid of content.  Sometimes, the use of fillers can become a habit that we may not even be aware of during public or professional speaking.  I’m sure that you know of some people who pepper their speech with “like” and “you know what I mean.”  You may also find that you use fillers when you are thinking of what to say next, how to respond to a question or have forgotten what you were about to say.  Regardless of the reasons, when it comes to public and professional speaking, you must train yourself to never use these sorts of fillers.

There is a very easy and effective tool for eliminating fillers from your public and professional speaking.  If you train yourself to use this tool not only will your speaking appear more professional, poised and polished but you will actually increase the level of your audience’s interest.  The trick to replacing filler with substance is to learn to use a powerful pause.  Whenever you feel the itch to utter a filler, simply take a deep (but not perceptibly deep!) breath to regain your focus and rhythm.  Don’t make any sound and don’t utter any fillers, just pause and be silent.  The time of your pause will usually feel longer to you than your audience, so don’t worry about telegraphing anything negative by the use of a pause.  Ultimately, a commanding use of a pause exhibits confidence, unlike the use of a filler.

If you find that your nervousness causes you to speak a bit too quickly, then you must try to infuse more frequent pauses between your sentences or phrases.  This technique will give you greater time to allow your thoughts to catch up with your words.  It also helps you to stay more focused and in command of your speaking.  Training yourself to comfortably use the pause will prevent the use of repetitive fillers.

An additional benefit of the pause is that a well-placed pause in your speech is a cue to your audience to intensify their focus on you.  The change in rhythm and lack of sound automatically causes your audience to look at you.  Your listeners will become more curious as to what you are about to say next.  By using the powerful pause instead of a filler, you have actually heightened the energy in the room and have drawn attention to you. 

Next time you give a professional presentation or deliver a speech, use the pause to your benefit.  Experience the power of the pause to captivate your audience in public speaking.

Know Your Audience Part 2: The First Step to Captivating Speaking!

It is absolutely critical to your speaking success that you captivate your audience’s attention.  In order to successfully captivate and sustain the attention of your audience, you must maintain an ongoing awareness of your audience during your presentation.  However, you ought to have been considering your audience long before you take the floor.  In fact, it is important for you to spend some time thinking about your audience prior to preparing your material.  As it is true that a comedian should not tell the same jokes to a class of elementary students as she would to a group of night club patrons, it is just as true that your material and delivery should be as tailored as possible to your particular audience.  Here are the three key steps to zeroing in on your audience’s particular characteristics in a manner that will help you to deliver a speech with impact that keeps everyone’s eyes and ears on you the whole time.

Step 1:  The Background Research

Know Your Audience

Although it may not always be possible to know who will be in your audience, it is most probable that you will have a general idea of the number of people attending, their general backgrounds, their goals and interests for attending and perhaps even some general demographic information.  Take some time to think about who will be in your audience and why they will be listening to you.  Will the audience be looking for entertainment, education or inspiration?  Do the audience members share a similar professional background? 

Know Your Context

You should also be sure not to dismiss the importance of gathering information on the context of your presentation.  Will you be appearing at a professional conference or a casual gathering? As you prepare, always keep in mind the appropriate tone for your context and audience.   Will your presentation be one of many, or the only one?  If you are presenting at an event with many speakers, what time of the day will you be presenting?  If you are at the end of the day, or just before a meal break, you may need to pay greater attention to ensuring that your presentation starts out lively and maintains a very high level of energy.  How many people will be in attendance?  Will you need to use a microphone or multimedia?  Will you have time to have a question and answer component and if so, how will you structure it given the number of audience members?

Take the time during your preparation to imagine how to ensure that your presentation will be relevant, informative, entertaining and appropriate for your audience.  Good speakers never deliver the same presentation with the same style of delivery in different situations

Step 2:  Preparing your Material and AV for Your Audience

Have you decided that you will be using a microphone or multimedia?  If these details are your responsibility, you must communicate your needs to the event co-ordinator.  Ask about the size and set-up of the room, and be detailed about the type of equipment that you require.  Make sure to follow up on the confirmation a few days prior to your presentation.  When you arrive at the venue, try to have time to test the equipment with your materials to ensure that everything runs smoothly, the visual aids appear properly on the screen and that the sound volume is appropriate for the room and audience number.  If possible, travel with your own back-up equipment in case the venue’s equipment fail to work or synchronise with your equipment.

If you will be circulating documents, make sure that you have thought about a system for this or will be using assistants.  Don’t  let paper shuffling detract from your performance or interrupt the flow of your delivery.

Decide if you will be presenting from a podium or if you’ll be moving around.  If you are doing a very short presentation, if your context requires it, or if you like to have written materials in front of you to present from (more on that in a later post!), you may want to use a podium.   If you don’t want to be stuck standing stationary behind a podium, and you’re presenting in a large room or to a large audience, ask for a lavalier microphone so you can move around.   You can still have your notes set on a podium or table, but this way you can stray from one spot during your presentation.  Just don’t forget to take it off before you take a break or go to the restroom - there are already too many audio clips of that scenario! 

Step 3:  Observing the Audience

The importance of knowing your audience doesn’t stop once your presentation begins. I guarantee that if you don’t pay attention to your audience, they won’t pay attention to you.    As you speak, you should be monitoring your audience very closely to note their interest level and their reaction to your material.  Watch to see the signs that your audience is drifting away such as, looking around the room, watching out the windows, talking to each other, moving around or generally not focusing their attention on you.  Do not ever make the mistake of focusing only on one or two people in the audience, unless you have an audience of only one or two.  You can gauge whether you need to pace faster or slower, leave a topic, spend more time on a topic, inject some humour, or even take a break depending on the energy level and attention of the audience.  Be dynamic and responsive to your audience and they will respond back by listening to you.  Just like any good relationship, public speaking is a connection between you and the other party.  To captivate your audience, you must be aware of and responsive to, their needs and interests.    

Final Thought: 

Remember, you can strengthen your professional or public speaking presentation by ensuring that you’ve paid attention to your audience before you prepare your materials as well as remaining receptive and responsive to the audience during your delivery.  Captivating, engaging public speaking is dynamic, so stay alert and responsive.  Your audience will thank you for it!

Feel free to send me your comments or questions, which I will feature in future posts.

Introduction: Know Your Audience: Part I

Motivate. Educate. Advocate.
CAPTIVATE Public Speaking Consultant Services

If a tree falls in the forest, there's a good chance that nobody (of the human variety) will hear. The tree falling may be a striking and significant event, but without an audience, the gravity of the event will go unnoticed.

Whether your context is the boardroom, the courtroom,  the political forum, the classroom or another venue, it is critical that you develop and refine the skills required to hold an audience's attention throughout your presentation.

This blog will contain key information on how to captivate your audience during public and professional speaking events. As a seasoned trial attorney, former college instructor and professional advocate/ educator/ speaker in Canada, the United States and internationally, I will be sharing my expertise with you as a public speaking consultant in this blog on how to ensure that the reception of your message is optimised for any audience and any forum.

I would like to leave you with one simple point to consider, namely, your audience.  How well do you know your audience before you give a presentation?  Sometimes, as in the courtroom, you will not necessarily know the identity of the particular judge that will be presiding.  Nonetheless, you will have general knowledge of the type of audience that you will be advocating before (a judge or justice) and can make certain assumptions based upon general truths about this type of audience. 

In the classroom, you may or may not be teaching the same group of students each time.  The same is true for presentations in the boardroom.  Either way, you will use your prior knowledge of the audiences in previous presentations to develop the next presentation.

In other contexts, you may be presenting to an audience with an unknown composition.  Yoo will usually have a certain amount of information available about how many people will be attending the event and how they came to be there (voluntary, mandatory, etc.).  You may also have a good idea about why the people are attending your presentation and thus can deduce some ideas about the audience's interests.

When delivering to a completely unknown audience, such as at a public forum, you may believe that you will not have the benefits of being able to make an audience assessment.  This is not true.  While you may not know the number of people that will attend, you will probably be able to have a good idea about why people will be attending your presentation.

Spend some time before each presentation reflecting upon your audience.  Who are they? What do you know about them?  Why are they coming?  What are they probably hoping to get out of your presentation?  If appropriate, based upon previous presentations to the same audience, what do you know about their expectations and reactions?

When you start your presentation preparation by considering your audience, you are in a better position to tailor your delivery for maximum effectiveness.  Each audience is unique and dynamic.  If you want to captivate your audience, you must be aware of their needs and respond to them.

Please send me your own questions ( lisa@captivatespeaking.com )  and I'll respond to them in future posts.