I think there are all kinds of voices that work for the audience, as long as they feel real and communicate enough emotional energy to engage the interest.

A few vocal things that can get in the way are:

1. Uptalk. Rising intonations at the ends of sentences, making the speaker sound like a goofy teenager.

2. Glottal fry. Gargling your words. Grinding your vocal chords to make the sounds at the ends of words. That bubbling splashing frying sound that comes (mostly) from young women.

3. Mumbling. Failure to shape the consonants in your speech, and failure to project belief in what you’re saying. It’s both a mechanical and a psychological problem.

4. Speaking too fast. Not good when you’re speaking to senior leaders–makes you look nervous. Studies show you and your point of view are more likely to be “derogated” if you speak too quickly, although listeners tend to rate fast talkers as more “extroverted.”

5. Speaking too slowly. A much rarer problem. Makes you sound like you just fell off the back of a pumpkin truck. Kind of a country bumpkin pumpkin. Plus, you’re a stark contrast to all the fast talkers around you.

All of these things can be addressed and corrected with some basic voice training.

We have been helping speakers for over twenty years increase the persuasive impact of what they say and how they say it.

The voice may not demand the same intellectual resources as strategic messaging, but like it or not, it is required equipment if you want to move the mountain of corporate opinion.

We are judged by how we speak, write, and think…in that order.

And people will long remember what you sound like after they’ve forgotten what you said.

(Unless you happen to be like the speaker in the picture, in which case they will remember what you said and how you sounded.)

No one likes to be pulled from a warm bed and thrust into a cold shower.  And many people I’ve met feel the same about being plucked from the blanket of everyday life to stand alone on a stage with a thousand pairs of eyes on them.   And so, when they find themselves on stage, they naturally seek refuge.

They seek refuge in two ways.  They disappear emotionally by making themselves small, or they try to dominate by increasing their size.

Disappearing emotionally is a remarkable human art.  Some of us have had an “out-of-body” experience when presenting, which is similar to the experience of passing out when in great pain: It’s a way of avoiding a difficult reality.

When I was very young, I caught a baby rabbit in my bare hands because when he saw me coming, he froze and played dead.  I walked right up to him, picked him up and took him home to show my mother.  I was very proud of myself.

Some of us become adept at disappearing emotionally as children, either because we observe that others are not emotionally present,  or we are taught that we should keep our thoughts and feelings to ourselves.  As adults, we might therefore use words, gestures, and a tone of voice that basically say, “I wish I weren’t here.”

We make ourselves absent or small by using words such as, “I guess,” “I think,” “Sort of,” “like, you know,” “kind of,” and many other common expressions that communicate uncertainty.

We absent ourselves by avoiding eye contact, slouching, hiding our hands, stepping back, and shifting our weight back and forth, as though we felt safer as a moving target.

And finally, we communicate absence or smallness by speaking too quietly, speaking too quickly, or using a rising intonation at the ends of our sentences, as though we were asking a question or seeking approval for our thoughts.

How do we make ourselves appear to be bigger than we actually are?

We use words that make us sound important, such as, “We anticipate experiencing considerable weather,” when we actually mean, “The plane ride will be bumpy.”

We might say, “We need to precipitate brand loyalty before the advent of competitive intrusion,” when we really mean, “Let’s get ‘em hooked on our stuff before the other guys come out with theirs.”

In other words, we try to sound like an institution instead of a person.

We make ourselves bigger with our bodies too.  We wear suits with padded shoulders.  We wear shoes with high heels.  We expand our gestures to occupy more space, like peacocks spreading their tails to frighten other males away.  And we practice a look of stern intention, focusing our eyes on one person at a time, as if to say, “I am a force to be reckoned with.  I will brook no dissent.”

Finally, we make ourselves bigger with our voices, by projecting more forcefully, be elongating vowels, by actually speaking in a sing-song cadence that echoes from the early 19th century but still lives in some of our political candidates.

We make ourselves smaller and bigger because we are scared.  We are scared because we are afraid of the audience.  We are afraid of the audience because we don’t know them, or we know them too well, or we simply have no experience speaking to groups.

We make ourselves small in the hope that we will not be noticed.  We make ourselves bigger hoping that the audience will not notice that we are small.  We change into something we’re not because we are afraid that, as we are, we are not all that impressive.

It’s a cop-out to be smaller than you are.  It’s a put-on to be bigger than you are.  The sweet spot is to trust that you’re big enough.

You’ve been invited to moderate a panel.  The question is: How can you do it really well so that the meeting is rated highly, you look good, and your chances of being invited back are good?

First, you should look at the job of moderator as a great chance to create a host of positive impressions.  It’s great marketing for you and your company.  Let’s look into the details.

What’s the topic?  Can you change the topic, or re-phrase the title of the topic to make it more appealing?

Who will be on your panel?  Can you invite your own panelists?  Can you prep them so they don’t all say the same thing, so they dovetail nicely with each other?

What is the room like? When can you get into the room to test the microphones and get a feel for the place?  Who is in charge of the logistics?  Can you make sure they are on hand in case one of the panelists can’t be heard, or God forbid, you can’t be heard? Can you have it audio-taped, or video-taped?  Can you distribute copies of the tape?

Can you put a slide up with your name on it?  Can it stay up there the whole time?

How many important people can you invite or at least inform of your role in the meeting?  Can you get complimentary tickets for those you invite?  Free parking?

Once you’ve answered all the above, you should craft some strong opening remarks.  I recommend this outline:

1. Why this topic?
2. Why this topic at this time?
3. Why this topic at this time for this audience?
4. Why this topic at this time for this audience by these panelists?

Only then, after four ringing assertions, should you introduce yourself.  And once you’ve done that briefly and humbly, devote all your enthusiasm to the dignity and stature of your panelists.

Either they are already sitting on the stage, having come to their seats as you approached the lectern, or they wait for you to introduce them before moving a muscle to step forward.

Don’t allow them to move while you’re talking.  Nobody will pay any attention to your brilliance, but instead will goggle at the bodies moving into the limelight.   Panelists need rehearsal and firm stage directions.

Speaking of firm stage directions, your panelists should be instructed to prepare short opening remarks.  Do not let them take this assignment lightly.  The last thing you want is a boring, long winded, meandering, unprepared talk from the panel–it can drain the energy out of the discussion.  If such drainage occurs, it falls upon you to put a stop to it, and that’s hard to do without hurting feelings.

If you’re a stickler, you may even ask the panelists to send you their opening remarks a week ahead of time, and help them do better.  Certainly, gathering all their notes will help you steer them away from redundancy.

Familiarity with their remarks will help you prepare questions, and you can ask them if they have questions they would like to be asked.   You don’t have to oblige, but if the asking will make the meeting shine and illuminate the expertise of the panelist, why not?

Listen to your panelists talk, and interrupt them to ask questions.  Get them to clarify, or expand on particularly interesting or controversial issues.  Get them to stop talking if their response to a question is lengthy.  Moderating panelists is like herding cats.  You’ve got to be quick and alert.  And you have a responsibility to the audience to keep the meeting on track and on time.

You would do well to recall that panelist number one said something that contradicts what panelist number three is saying.   Interrupt number three, and point out the contradiction.  Or interrupt and ask number one to comment in light of what three is saying.

The whole point of having a panel is to take the burden of energizing the room away from a sole presenter and shift it onto the shoulders of a lively group.  Your job as the moderator is to keep them doggies rolling.  A little friendly verbal jousting will serve your purposes well.

At the end, remind the audience of the beginning.  “Why this topic, at this time,” etc., etc.  Try to summarize, or better yet, synthesize the key themes in the discussion.  Tell the audience where they can find more information.   Invite them to speak to panelists at the break.  If you’re willing and able, offer to provide notes on the discussion.  Thank your panelists and the sponsoring organization.

And then get the heck out of Dodge.

In a political revolution, insurgents quickly target the media outlets. Their reasoning? He who controls the language controls the thinking.

Now comes another study to suggest that insurgents may have it right. In this experiment, one group of volunteers was shown a shade of yellow on a strip of white paper for a few seconds. The group was then shown another strip of paper with several shades of yellow (including the first) and asked to identify the original color. In this group, 73% were able to identify the original shade of yellow.

A second group was shown the same shade of yellow, told to describe the color aloud, and then were asked to identify the original color from a strip containing multiple shades. Only 33% of the “describers” were able to accurately identify the original color.

How do we account for this difference between the two groups? Scientists think that the language we use to describe our experience overwrites or distorts our actual experience. In the case of the “describers” mentioned above, they ended up remembering not what they had experienced but what they had said about what they experienced. And what they had said about what they experienced was not clear and precise enough to help them recognize it when they saw it again thirty seconds later.

Our own political parties fight over language. Should it be “global warming” or “climate change”? The “estate tax” or the “death tax”? “Starvation” or “calorie deficiency”? These word choices soften or sharpen the impact of what they describe, and thus have a profound impact on how we think about the underlying phenomena.

One of the functions of language is to help us extract and remember the important features of our experiences so that we can analyze and communicate them later. The New York Times online film archive stores critical synopses of films rather than the films themselves, which would take up far too much space and be far too difficult to search. Experiences are even more complex than movies, and were our brains to store the full-length movie of our lives, our skulls would have to expand.

So words have power, and savvy presenters use them carefully. For instance, avoid business jargon unless you want to be seen as talking much and saying little. Because we hear business jargon all the time (visions, missions, strategic objectives) it sounds to many of us like verbal oatmeal–its meaning is not clear–so the words have no snap, crackle or pop.

We should be careful to make concrete that which is abstract. Instead of saying, “We need to occasion customer loyalty to avoid competitive intrusion,” we should say, “Let’s get ‘em hooked on our cookies before the other guys start cooking theirs.”

The take away? Stick your thoughts into the minds of your audience with vivid language, as Martin Luther did when he nailed his theses to the door of the church.

If you don’t assert your story well, another story will prevail.

I have a new puppy named Little Bear.  He has shy moments that make my wife and I want to pick him up and cuddle him.  I also have clients who are shy when they stand up to speak.  I don’t want to cuddle them, but I often feel drawn to what they’re saying because of their authenticity and vulnerability.  Their willingness to stand and fight for their equanimity in the face of their internal discomfort gives them a degree of heroic power.

I also know many people who have worked to overcome their natural shyness, (a VP of R&D at Cisco; a Co-Chairman of a wealth management firm) recognizing that their careers demanded the ability to engage with strangers in a sociable manner.

Brian Little, a lecturer in psychology and former Radcliffe Institute Fellow, has specialized in studying the human personality.  Little argues that we can “act out of character” if we are motivated by our deepest values to do so, and that “courage often means acting out of character.”

Little says he is “wary of spurious genetic postulations and claims of a genetic basis for fixed traits.” Another of psychology’s pioneers, William James, asserted that our psychological traits are “set like plaster” by age 30.

Little counters that James was “only 50 percent correct – we are half-plastered. There is a heavily genetic aspect to the first stratum of personality. But our brains evolved a neocortex, which enables us to override these biological impulses to act in a certain way.”

In his book, Human Natures and Well Beings, Little bucks the current trend of biological determinism in psychology. He argues for the existence of “free traits”: tendencies expressed by individual choice.

Furthermore, Little argues that traits do not exist in the abstract, but are evoked in important ways by our “personal projects.” He defines these commonsensically: personal projects are meaningful goals, both small and large, that can range from “speak with confidence at this meeting” to “transform the way we go to market, slowly.”

Individuals activate their free traits, expressing or stifling inborn tendencies, in service of “core projects” – the endeavors linked to their deepest values.

“Out of love for our wives or kids or our professions, we enjoin ourselves to act ‘out of character,’” Little says. “For example, even though I’m a classic introvert, when I give a lecture for my students I perform with great passion. Introverts, when they are ‘on,’ become pseudo-extraverts. Can you tell the difference between a born extravert and a pseudo-extravert? Usually you cannot.”

Because speaking well is important in most executive positions, nearly half of American colleges and universities require a public speaking or communications course.  Even universities without a requirement have put more emphaisis on speaking in class, developing courses labeled “speaking intensive” in departments not associated with class participation.

Some students are simply shy or experience stagefright; others are paralyzed in social situations.  In extreme cases, an instructor might suggest a visit to university health services.  Communication professors aren’t equipped to provide counseling, and they make an effort to avoid talking about their students’ feelings.  They don’t try to identify the root of a student’s anxiety.  Instead, they focus almost exclusively on behavior.

Apparently, there’s a whole population of students who go through their college career and don’t get their degree because they can’t bear to take public speaking.  I’m certain there is also a population of professional people in the workforce who “drop out” of the climb up the corporate ladder because of their fear of public speaking.

Some experts question whether it’s really possible, or necessary, to ease the anxiety of highly apprehensive speakers.  A new branch of thinking, called communibiology, argues that the problem is one of nature, not nurture.  “For most people, there is no solution,” says James C. McCroskey, a professor at the University of Alabama, Birmingham.  “Except maybe for gene replacement,” he adds with a laugh.

A leading scholar in the study of communication apprehension, he says forcing students to talk in public can be counterproductive.  His reasearch shows that students nervous about speaking learn less if they anticipate having to communicate in class.  Rather than paying attention, they fret about whether they’ll be called on and what they will say.

That may be true, but learning to speak may be indispensable to their future careers, so when should they learn how to speak in public?  After school, when they get a job that requires them to speak?

It is my self-taught opinion (based on my enthusiastic, if spotty, reading of popular neuroscience articles) that we can change and develop the structure of our brains by doing certain things (e.g., meditating, or playing the piano.)   So I would ask Professor McCroskey, “If my neuroscience is right, wouldn’t it be better for the shy, and for the society that needs the clear expression of their considered opinions, if schools, universities, and businesses provided the training and instruction to help them overcome their reticence?”

Can shyness be cured?  Maybe not, but it can be overcome.  Should shyness be overcome?  Yes!  We should be able to put aside our shyness for projects that are close to our core values.  The benefits of being interpersonally skilled and effective on the podium far outweigh the discomfort we experience learning the skills.