What is the difference between a great speaker and a bad one? How is it that one presenter can make one topic come alive and another, using the exact same material, can bore you? How is it possible to be fantastic in front of one audience and terrible in front of another?
It’s all in the voice. It’s not about content, if no one would watch TV or listen to the radio to access information, most people can assimilate information faster through the written word.
There are three main elements to your voice and each can be used to great effect to either hold your audience’s interest or destroy it.
swing
Rhythm is simple, it’s a measure of how fast or slow you speak. One of the first pieces of advice given to new speakers is to slow down. It is true that when you address large audiences you need to be slower and more measured than in real life, you will never see a politician who looks in a hurry to reach the end of a sentence for example.
But (and there’s always a but, isn’t there?) that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t vary your pace, slowing down even further can denote “gravity” for your points, while speeding up (even just a little bit) can show enthusiasm and so on.
The worst speakers show almost no variation in rhythm and their speech almost always becomes a “ringing” in the listener’s ear.
Tone
The rise and fall of their speech is in pitch, if you listen to Australian talk you will often notice that they rise in pitch at the end of each sentence. This can be confusing to Northern Hemisphere listeners who associate that climb with a question.
Variation is key, but understanding the audience’s preference for tone is also important. I was turned off during what I was told was an excellent speech by a leading trainer because the steady rise at the end of each sentence made me turn around.
tone
The final and most important part of your speech is tone, tone is the inflection you give your words to add extra meaning. In everyday life you can tell the difference between anger, humor, happiness and a million other emotions by the tone in which you speak.
Your speeches should do the same, if you want to take your audience with you. You must use the right tone to convey your message.
These three simple qualities of your voice are often the difference between the success and failure of your speech. It’s not just about the content.