Your Voice Is Crucial In Public Speaking

How you use your voice in public speaking is crucial. Research shows a full 37% of an audience's first impression of a speaker is based upon the speaker's voice. It happens in seconds. What your voice does is every bit as impactful as what the rest of your body is doing.

Your Voice Needs Life

Most of us have had "conversations" on the phone with voice-recognition computer systems. It can be a little unnerving because the voice on the other end has no life to it. It's just repeating what it was programmed to do. A similar effect happens when a speaker is either just reading a script or rattling off memorized lines and not actually talking to the crowd.

When a voice has life, it has a personality behind it. That personality has emotions, intentions, and agendas. It can portray spontaneous happiness, sadness, nervousness, excitement and more. It can even showcase a person's honesty or dishonestly. So be transparent and sincere in the way you speak to an audience.

Your Voice Betrays You

In our voices are subtleties that convey many things we're often not even aware of. All these physical manifestations are a reflection of what's going inside ourselves. If you're feeling negative or less than enthusiastic about your presentation, your voice will reflect that. So check your thoughts and attitude before you step up on the stage. Your voice, like many other parts of your body, will be expressing much about you.

Your Voice Needs to be Dynamic

One trick to making your voice more interesting is to vary your range and pitch. Women especially in the broadcasting industry are taught this. The next time you're able, listen closely to an established female news anchor. Chances are you never really noticed the dynamic vocal fluctuations, but all the good ones employ the technique.

Broadcasting professionals use their voice in ways so that listeners are focused on the content. They use subtleties that don't draw attention to the actual vocal techniques. Your voice is the platform for the message, as well as a vehicle for your personal feelings about the message, but it should never distract from the message itself.

Start your sentences with your voice about where it is in a natural speaking tone, but then as you work your way through the line, use tone and pitch to stress points. End your sentences lower than when you start. This will create distinct breaks between thoughts and sentences.

The last thing an audience wants to hear is a mono-tone person who has no variance in his or her voice. Such a person sounds dull, boring, and not at all passionate about the message. This doesn't mean deliberately exaggerating different tones of voice, and yelling rarely works on stage. The idea is to enhance, not to be phony. Be natural, but more animated than you'd be when talking one-on-one to someone under normal circumstances.

Your Voice Needs Feedback

The best way you can improve your voice is to listen to recordings of yourself. If you have video feedback, listen to just the audio portion of it. Whenever I hear myself in a recording, I cringe, because it just doesn't sound like me. But it's crucial that you know how you sound to others. Remember that your own voice is vibrating around inside your head and it doesn't sound the same to others.

Your Voice Needs to be Loud

One of the most effective techniques I ever learned was the importance of being able to speak loudly and clearly, but without shouting. You need to speak at a higher volume than when talking in normal conversation situations. This will shed a huge I'm confident light on you from the get-go. You'll want to do this even when in a small conference room. It grabs interest and gets people to listen. When you first start practicing being louder, it'll feel uncomfortable. But doing this will immediately cause people in the room to focus their attention on you.

It's painful trying to listen to someone who's speaking in a volume that's difficult or impossible to hear. Such a person gives the impression that he or she is uncomfortable and would rather not be speaking--which is often the case! When you convey that kind of message, your audience ends up agreeing with you. People don't want to strain to listen to you, and won't make the effort for long. So speak up! Speak like the confident public speaker you are who knows exactly what message you want to deliver to the audience.

Kelly Libatique is a professional speaker, technical trainer, and author. He holds a Master's in Education and a Bachelor's in Psychology. He resides in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife Anne and two sons.

Presentation Skills Courses - Top 10 Basic Improv Rules

Whether you are charged with the task of delivering a presentation at work, school, or for social purposes, there are a few factors to keep in mind.

The best presentation skills courses will teach you the following rules for improvisation, which is extremely important when speaking to the public.

1. Learn to think on your feet. This is one of the most important speaking and presentation skills to work on in general, whether you are improvising your speech or reading from prepared notes.

2. Establish rapport with your audience. You can draw in your audience by giving them facts that may relate to them personally, starting your presentation with a personal anecdote, or using humor. In presentation skills courses, students learn more about how to maintain this important line of contact and rapport.

3. Anticipate tough questions. Your biggest tool during improvisational presentations is the research that you conducted in advance. When you are researching an issue, be sure not to focus only on your own viewpoint, but read all you can about the opposing side as well.

4. Work on your timing. A good presentation will involve speaking skill combined with the right timing and delivery to inspire confidence in the audience.

5. Stand up straight to deliver your message with confidence. Imagine a string holding you up from the top of your head to the ceiling. This is taught in presentation skills courses to help speakers stand up straight, improving posture as well as vocal tone.

6. Maintain a positive attitude. Even when it seems like your views are under fire, if you stay positive, your point will come across much more palatably to your audience. Techniques to stay positive are taught in many courses in public speaking.

7. Listen to and accept other viewpoints. Show your audience that you are willing to take their views on board, and they will be more likely to listen to you in return.

8. Go in to the presentation with a clear goal in mind. Don't forget what your main aim is with your presentation. All of your statements, visual aids, and supporting facts should help support this main message.

9. Use your body language to support your message. As shown in presentation skills courses, a well-place gesture or movement can help bring your audience in closer to you.

10. Maintain a sense of immediacy. If your audience feels that your message is relevant to their lives now, it will help them stay interested.

These methods and more are covered in many presentation skills courses. By learning more about how to improvise in the real world, you can make your communication more effective not only in the workplace, but also in your day to day life.

At IMproSolutions we are passionate about helping you to overcome fear of public speaking. With courses in public speaking, including presentation skills courses, speaking and presentation skills training, and speaking skill tips. Read about our public speaking program from Author Scott Topper a three-time Emmy-nominated television show host, professional actor and speaker.

How to Put Your Nervousness to Good Use

In public speaking or any other type of live performance, the idea of trying to get rid of your nervousness is definitely not the right approach. Nervousness is that wonderful rush of adrenaline that can make you sharper, more alert and more focused. In fact, the benefits of nervousness are so powerful that trying to eliminate it is a huge mistake.

If you're not nervous, then you lose that wonderful edge.

The secret in dealing with nervousness is to learn how to take control of it. In doing so, you will find that it will work for you and not against you. And, the best means of controlling those nervous jitters - instead of your nervousness controlling you - is by breathing with the support of your diaphragm, something most people are unaware and most definitely not doing. The majority of the population resorts to upper chest or lazy breathing.

I am sure that you are wondering how breathing can make such a difference. First of all, many novice public speakers never even bother to breathe when speaking. This is why you often hear the pitch of their voice going higher and higher and their speed getting faster and faster. They are trying desperately to catch up on their limited air supply. The problem with this scenario is that lack of air, coupled with shallow breathing, actually increases nervousness.

It is a known fact that when someone is experiencing a panic attack, the 1st thing they are taught is to sit and take a deep breath. When you breathe in this manner, your body is able to rid itself of toxins in the blood that shallow or upper chest breathing is unable to do. Therefore, if you are a lazy breather and you are nervous addressing an audience, your breathing is actually increasing your nervousness.

When you learn how to breathe diaphragmatically, which is the same type of breathing used in meditation and yoga, you will discover that you are in control of your nervousness. When that happens, you are able concentrate on your message and your delivery instead of your nerves.

One woman with whom I worked thought she was going to vomit before addressing my class during our 1st session. After learning how to breathe with support, not only was she able to give presentations without being nauseous, but she actually got a promotion at work and was on the road speaking to all the branches of her bank.

Don't try to get rid of your nervousness. Learn how to breathe correctly and watch what your nervousness can do for you!

If you're hesitating to take the plunge into public speaking, ask yourself: "What's the worst thing that can possibly happen, even if I fail miserably in my first attempt at public speaking?" I'll tell you. You'll be embarrassed. Perhaps you'll be very embarrassed. That's it! And then what? Nothing, absolutely nothing!

What Happened Before?

Instead of imagining how terrible even that would be, do this: Think back to the most embarrassing incident in your entire life. What happened after that? Nothing that matters to you today, right? So, any discomfort you felt was just temporary, wasn't it? So, for all practical purposes, you could say that the result was... nothing.

Only if you've allowed that experience to control some aspect of your life can it be said that the experience actually harmed you. And, if that's the case, it's so only because you chose to allow it to. It's over, so let it go.

What If You're Criticized?

Back to the present. Suppose you somehow manage to give an absolutely horrible presentation. What then? Most people will be in your corner. The next time you speak, they'll pull for you, and will admire you for your courage.

But what if someone says something negative to you about your presentation? It's unlikely, but if they do, take it away from them by beating them at their own game.

If they say it was bad, you thank them and say they're just being kind to you, that it worse than bad, it was simply atrocious! As you go on and on, they'll soon tire of it, stop you and say that you're getting carried away, it wasn't that bad. They'll try to balance the scales, and will wind up complimenting you. So, you can effectively neutralize even your worst critics by outdoing them.

However, the odds are maybe 100 to 1 that you'll never have to employ that device. So, where does that leave you? With no audible critics except the worst critic of all - you. Let's go back to your most embarrassing incident. Who has been your worst critic about that incident since it happened? You. So, self-criticism was the most harmful result of the incident, not what others did or said.

You're In Control!

That's good to know, because it tells you that the worst outcome of your giving the worst presentation of all time will be the criticism you'll level at yourself. What's good about that? Well, that's the only thing you can control after your presentation! So, the outcome is in your hands. You'll determine how things turn out by how you choose to view the matter afterwards.

Of course, you can easily avoid what's mentioned above, and make it a good presentation, and you will. We'll talk about what you can do in other articles. The point of this article is that you can effectively deal with whatever may happen, even it you hit the jackpot and give the worst presentation ever!