How to Improve Your Public Speaking Voice
There is nothing more important to public speaking than your voice. Yes, there are other factors to consider. Your voice, however, influences how impactful your speech will be. Your voice can make or break your speech. Therefore it is important to work on how improve your speaking voice.
Fortunately, you can learn to use it properly, which will allow you to increase your persuasiveness and power in any speech that you present. You just need a bit of guidance on how best to improve your speaking voice.
Slow it Down
Your voice will hold more authority and power when you speak a bit slower. It allows the audience plenty of time to absorb what you’re saying and reflect on it. When you race through a speech, it doesn’t just fail to hit the mark with the audience; it shows them you’re nervous.
Whereas, slowing it down will lend importance to your words as you’re filled with confidence. Just look at some of the world’s most powerful or influential people. They enunciate, they speak slowly, and they are confident in expressing themselves.
Vocal Exercises
Think of your voice as a muscle. You can make it stronger the more you exercise it. You might have a weak voice right now, but there is nothing stopping you from becoming a confident speaker.
Here’s how you can do it! Take a short piece of poetry or a specific monologue from a play and memorize it. As you go about your day recite it. Only, inject it with strength and emotion, imagining yourself on a stage, giving it as a dramatic presentation. Take it slow and change the emphasis as you slip into each different line. This is a great way to get in touch with what your voice is capable of.
Record & Review
If you want to improve, record yourself as you read a monologue or a passage of poetry. Review your recordings repeatedly and look for ways that you can improve your pacing, pronunciation, and delivery.
The Pauses
There is power in the pause. A little bit of silence never hurt anyone, and it’s actually a great way to build interest. There are different types of pauses, too.
Breathe
Breathing properly is a big deal. If you fail to breathe from your diaphragm, it can leave your speech shallow and pinched. You’ll get your pauses all wrong and lose the emphasis you are trying to achieve. A voice coach can help you with proper breathing, but so can deep breathing exercises that are typically considered appropriate for relaxation.
Prepare
How do you practice? Do you read your speech to yourself repeatedly and hope for the best? You have to rehearse your speech out loud. Why? You need to become familiar with how the words sound and look when they are coming out of your mouth. This will help you become more familiar with your content.
The best public speakers are able to read ahead in their notes while performing behind. This simply means they can deliver the speech and convey the message while knowing what comes next. You don’t stumble and insert incorrect pauses when you know what’s coming.
A great example of this would be someone who can read a storybook to children and show them the pictures without ever breaking from the story. They read ahead and repeat that line from memory as they show off the image.
These six tips will help you improve your public speaking voice. Your newfound confidence will make you unstoppable. Greatness is already within you; you just have to tease it out.