Public Speaking Requires A Voice That People Want To Hear

Make Sure That Your Audience Wants To Hear You
Make Sure That Your Audience Wants To Hear You

Going to the effort to prepare and deliver a speech is a big deal. As long as you are going to make the effort to do all of this, you sure want your audience to get the most out of your speech – you want to change lives (that’s one of the benefits of public speaking)!

No matter how well you dress or how clever your speech is, if your voice isn’t something that your audience wants to listen to, you won’t be able to make an impression on anyone no matter how good their listening skills are…

Testing Your Voice

Before you can make any changes to your voice, you’re going to need to determine just how to go about doing that. Eve Cappello is a speech coach and she has some suggestions on how to go about doing this.

The simplest way to understand what parts of your face are used by your voice is to do a simple experiment. Close your lips. Then go ahead and hum the words “happy birthday”. What you should feel is parts of your mouth and nose starting to vibrate while you do this. Speech coaches refer to this area as your “mask”.

If you don’t feel the vibration or if it is very faint, then you are doing something wrong. Take the time to experiment and find out how you need to change your voice in order to get the vibrations to show up.

How To Breath

You’ve probably heard this before, but good speaking is all about good breathing. If you can figure out how to breathe correctly, then you’ll have found a way to add quality to your speaking voice.

It turns out that using your breathing to boost your speaking voice is not all that easy to do. The reason is because what you are going to want to do is to speak as you are exhaling. This is how you use your breath to boost your voice. Unfortunately, this is going to seem a bit odd at first and will take a bit of getting used to. Spend the time because the results will be well worth it!

Adding Punch To Your Next Speech

Finally, after having taken all of the time needed to create a better voice, you are going to want you next speech to benefit from this work. In order to do that, there’s one simple step that you need to take.

As you prepare to start to deliver your speech, you are going to want to take a big breath before the first words come out of your mouth. Once you’ve done this, start to exhale. As you are breathing out, start to speak.

What this will do is to create a richer and fuller voice that your audience will hear. No matter what words you choose to start your speech off with, they will emerge with more energy and enthusiasm than they would otherwise.

What All Of This Means For You

We all know about the importance of public speaking. It turns out that no matter how important the message that will be contained in your next speech is, you may not be able to get your audience to listen to you if your voice is not up to the task. Forget researching any presentation tips, you need to make changes if your voice is holding your speaking back.

You can start to make changes to your voice by experimenting with how it sounds. Use the techniques that we discussed to study how your voice sounds. Then take the time to make sure that you are breathing correctly. Knowing how to breathe can add a great deal of quality to your speaking voice. Finally, start your next speech off on the right foot by taking a deep breath before you start.

No matter how your public speaking voice sounds today, you have the ability to make it sound better tomorrow. By taking the steps to study how your voice sounds and to make changes in order to improve it, you’ll have found a way to better connect with your audience and change more lives every time that you give a speech!

– Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills™

Question For You: What do you think would be the best way to get honest feedback on how your voice sounds today?

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Note: What we talked about are advanced speaking skills. If you are just starting out I highly recommend joining Toastmasters in order to get the benefits of public speaking. Look for a Toastmasters club to join in your home town by visiting the web site www.Toastmasters.org. Toastmasters is dedicated to helping their members to understand the importance of public speaking by developing listening skills and getting presentation tips. Toastmasters is how I got started speaking and it can help you also!

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

How long should your next speech be? Or maybe the more important question is, how long is too long? When we are asked to give a speech, there is an implied amount of time that we are being asked to fill. We are generally part of a bigger program and this is why time is so important: you need to know how to use your time in the right way…