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.)

This morning a woman told me that when she hosted a company radio show, she heard herself on tape and was horrified to hear how often she said “er” and “uhm.”  She resolved to stop.

The next day, while on the air, she heard herself  “ering and uhming” and began to have a dialogue with herself.  One voice was telling her that she was “ering and uhming” and the other voice was trying to talk to the audience through the microphone.  She described it as an impossible situation.

Athletes practice until their bodies know what to do.  Musicians practice until their fingers know what to do.  Why should speakers be any different?  If you have the habit of “ering and uhming” you need to practice speaking until you’ve created a new habit–the habit of flawless speech.

However, if you are obliged to perform during such a “practice period” in your life, you would be better off forgetting about your “ers and uhms” during performance and simply let your talent take over.

If you ride shotgun on your talent, as the radio announcer did, your conscious mind is trying to interfere with what should be a well-grooved habit.  Psychologists call this “conscious override.”  It’s the mind getting in the way of the talent.

Work on your skills in practice, but when it comes time to perform, give it your best shot.  When the performance is over, you can go back to ridding yourself of those “ers and uhms.”

Cicero, the great Roman statesman and orator, said that he preferred tongue-tied intelligence to ignorant loquacity. That’s a convenient polarity, and one we’re familiar with.

We see the former occasionally when college professors make an appearance on national TV. They can look like owls with ruffled feathers blinking in the glare of daylight. We see the latter in religious and political demagogues, strutting across the stage belching clouds of rehearsed phrases in predictable cadence. We all prefer thoughtful speakers who have something to say.

But it’s not really a fair distinction. For instance, we can have tongue-tied ignorance and intelligent loquacity. An example of the former would be the poor unfortunate Miss South Carolina, who got nervous when asked why Americans couldn’t find their own country on a map of the globe.

And then we have Hans Rosling, a doctor, researcher, and inventor of the Trendalyzer, who is intelligent and loquacious. Substance, style, humor and surprise combine to make this guy one of the best presenters you will see.  If you have a few minutes, click on this gripping video.

Cicero was being a snob and had his tongue in his cheek. His witty remark only draws attention to his own erudition when he says that he prefers substance to style. And he was known as a great orator who had both, only he didn’t want you to notice his style. He wanted you to pay attention to what he was saying.

Style that is unrelated to substance we see as antique, grandiose, and phony. We worry that if we wave our arms around too much when we speak, people will think we’re imitating William Jennings Bryan.

So we choose a different style–one that is conversational and carefully moderated for the intimacy of our zoom lenses and lavaliere mics. We might like to think of it as “natural,” but in reality it is as much a style as any other. It is a behavior that we choose to achieve an effect.

19th Century orators waved their arms around and shouted over the rooftops because they wanted to be seen and heard. There were no video-magnification screens around the battlefield when Edward Everett spoke for two hours at Gettysburg before Lincoln got his chance. No microphones allowed him to give an intimate grave-side chat to the grieving throng. Horses were neighing. Dogs barked. The wind pushed his voice back into his mouth . To focus the eyes and ears of the audience, Everett needed to pump it up.

Let’s not be snobs and argue that we prefer substance to style. Such a stance often masks an inability or unwillingness to capture and hold the attention of others.

Instead, let’s say that style brings life, texture and nuance to substance.

Let’s say we prefer our speakers to be confident, to know what they think, and to feel the truthfulness of their thoughts as they speak them. The substance of style is the feeling of truth in the words being spoken.

I prefer intelligent loquacity to tongue-tied ignorance. I prefer style that brings substance to life.

A friend of mine, who is a very successful consultant, told me that she has lost her confidence as a speaker. For twenty years she has been speaking to large groups of clients and potential clients with success.  Now she feels very unsure of herself.

She reports to me that she’s terrified of going blank.  While she used to trust herself to speak without slides, and instead drew pictures on a flipchart or whiteboard, now she prepares a script and a set of detailed slides.  She says that her voice shakes, her hands tremble, and her eyes dart from side to side as she speaks.

I respect this person, and feel honored to be trusted with her struggle.  She told me that she has gotten a medication to help her, and it works.  She’s feeling better.

But that solution is not appropriate for everyone.  It’s expensive, might cause side effects, and some of us are opposed to pharmaceutical assistance when it comes to our “valor under fire.”  Plus, it could take the edge off–the edge that makes great musicians play dramatically better when under pressure to connect with a live audience.

What can you do if you lose your nerve, and feel your performance skills deteriorating?

Refuse to speak?  Few of us have that option.

Confess to the client or the meeting host that you are having a crisis of confidence and ask to be relieved of the duty to address the room?  Not a good idea–not unless the client or host is a long-time friend who will keep your secret and cover for you.

Lie, and say you’re not feeling well?    That’ll work.  Once.

Pray?  That could work for some.  After preparing like a maniac, throw yourself on the mercy of your God.  Trust your fate to His/Her guidance.  Give it everything you’ve got and hope that Someone is watching.

Rehearse more than usual?  Prepare so thoroughly that even if you pass out with anxiety you can still get your point across?   Yes!   The knowledge that you did everything within your power to ensure your success will strengthen you.  Anticipate everything that could possibly go wrong and develop a strategy for dealing with each potential disaster.  The performance will probably seem easy compared to the rehearsals.

Act as if you’re confident?  Absolutely!  We know instinctively that confidence is the essential ingredient for our success, and we constantly make every effort to demonstrate confidence to others.  A speaker without confidence does not inspire others to have confidence in her.

As a matter of fact, you can use posture and gesture to alter your inner state.  Just as emotions tend to shape our bodies, our bodies can also influence our emotions.  In private, find a gesture that gives you a good feeling (like Tiger Woods pumping his fist) and do it over and over.  Try it at different tempos.  Then, simply imagine you’re doing it while standing still.  The image of the gesture will inform your behaviors and stimulate a sensation that can help you overcome your negative feeling.

Smile?  Yes, if you can manage to do so.  Anxious speakers tighten the muscles of the face which makes a mask that listeners recognize.  Work hard to smile.  Charles Strobel of Yale University demontrated that a smile literally changes your brain chemistry and diminishes your experience of fear.

Lift your eyebrows?  Believe it or not, yes!  Lifting the eyebrows is a universal gesture that indicates surprise and delight.  It will help you feel those emotions, and it will make the audience respond positively to you.  By the way, raising the eyebrows also brings the voice forward and helps you be more expressive.

Remember to breathe?  Yup, that works too.  As you prepare for the event, and you feel anxiety rising, sit quietly and become mindful of your breathing.  Watch it come in and out.  Try counting your breaths while saying to yourself, “I’m breathing in ONE; I’m breathing out ONE.  I’m breathing in TWO; I’m breathing out TWO,” all the way to TEN.  Then start again.

While you’re doing this, send your mind on an inspection of your body.  Check out your legs, your lower back, your shoulders, your neck, your forehead.  See if any area is experiencing tension.  If so, tell it to relax.  Or imagine that you’re breathing in and out through the tense spot.

Here’s another technique.  Count your breaths from 100 to zero.  The effort to concentrate on your breath while counting backwards takes the mind away from your pre-occupation with your anxiety.

Finally, envision yourself succeeding–over and over again.  Picture it in detail.  What do you look like when you’re succeeding during the speech?  What do you sound like?  What are you doing?  What’s the audience doing?  How do you feel while you’re succeeding in your vision?

Confidence can be defined as the expectation of positive outcomes.  Talk to yourself in a positive manner, so that your subconscious mind absorbs positive messages.  Do that long enough, and your self-image changes.  You begin to think of yourself as, “The kind of person who speaks well in public.”

And that can make a huge difference in your performance.

Um and His Cousin Er

I hate speech coaches who don’t let you say “Um!”  I listen to a lot of speakers, and a few “Uhms” don’t bother me.  They make the speaker seem normal and conversational.

On the other hand,  I try not to say them myself, and I DO get annoyed when the “Uhms” are too frequent, loud, or long.  For instance, I have occasionally had “Uhmmers” who take a breath and then emit a trumpet-of-an-uhm with the full force of their brand new tank of air.

Michael Erard has written a book about verbal slips and blunders called UM…SLIPS, STUMBLES, AND VERBAL BLUNDERS AND WHAT THEY MEAN. Here are a few tidbits.

• Verbal ”disfluencies” constitute 5% to 8% of the words we utter every day
• Verbal slips are different from verbal blunders
• We tend to-uh-notice slips and ignore-uhm-blunders

Well-known slips include the malapropism, as when Curly of the Three Stooges says, “I resemble that remark!”  It’s a confusion of words that sound alike–usually humorous.

Then there’s the eggcorn, a word used incorrectly, such as, “for all intensive purposes,” or “when all is set and done.”  “Eggcorn” itself is an eggcorn for acorn.

The spoonerism is also common.  It’s a reversal of the initial letters or syllables of words, as when Mr. Spooner (the supposed originator) toasted Queen Victoria: “Here’s to our queer old dean!”  More relevant for us is an intentional one attributed to Dorothy Parker: “I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.”

Other common problems are, naturally the pause fillers (Um and his cousin Er); repeated words (“Will-will you marry me?”); repeated sounds (“B-but I just can’t!”); prolonged vowels or syllables, and restarted or repaired sentences.

Mr. Erard does not discuss “Like, you know, I mean,” but I think they do serious damage to one’s credibility.

By the way, did you know that tying down a person’s arm induces blunders while gesturing reduces them?

Did you know that speaking with your hands in your pockets increases blunders?

Did you know that Thomas Jefferson was “a verbal bungler with a lisp?”

Finally, the book makes the case that verbal blunders are normal, “an indelible mark of humanness,” although I have a suggestion.  Someone should begin to track the number of blunders the presidential candidates make and see if, over time, the one with fewer blunders wins more often.

Many of us are familiar with the work of Dr. Albert Mehrabian of Stanford University, who demonstrated in his research that 85% of emotion is communicated through voice tone and body language.

Many of us have read Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell, who reported the work of Nalini Ambady of Tufts University, who discovered that some doctors who make serious medical errors are not sued, while some who make no errors are sued.  The cause for both these surprising findings comes down to voice tone: Ambady recorded all her subjects.

Error-free doctors who get sued have authoritative (non-empathetic) tones, while error-prone doctors who do not get sued have empathetic voices.  Perhaps the empathetic tone innoculates the less than competent physician by making patients less willing to damage his career.  (Patients might be thinking, ”He’s such a nice man.”) And likewise, the authoritative tone of doctors without medical errors may annoy patients, who will look for something to get upset about.

Now comes a study testing whether members of a native tribe in Ecuador, who know no English, can understand what English-speaking mothers mean when speaking to fellow adults, and then to their babies.

The answer is mostly yes.  When listening to recordings of the mothers, they identified the correct meaning of the speech to adults 64 percent of the time.  But when the English-speaking mothers talked to babies, they succeeded in grasping the meaning of the speech 75 percent of the time.  The report appears in the August issue of Psychological Science.

Those of us in business seeking to influence and lead others–what can we take away from this?  Most simply, that we might be able to improve the power of our spoken communication (to tribesmen and to our colleagues and customers) with greater expressiveness in our voice tone.

In my experience, some of us are reluctant to explore this aspect of effective communication.  We put more faith in mastering our content and organizing it in a logical manner.

I can only say what many have said before me:  expertise is necessary but not sufficient.   Logic may be the language of reason, but style adds to it life, sentiment, and shading.

The tone of a human voice is often more powerful than the words being spoken.   Ask the doctors whose insurance premiums have gone up.

Presenting ideas is largely about getting and keeping attention.  Most of us are ambivalent about being the center of attention, but we have to be willing and able to focus many minds at once if we want to be convincing.

Here are a few techniques to capture and hold attention.

1. Say something unexpected.  Start with a bang, not a whimper.  Smokers like matches that light with the first strike, and listeners like presentations that ignite interest with the first sentence.
2. Start where they are, not where you are.  Put the audience in the role of the hero, the person who must slay the dragon in order to save the fair maiden.  For instance, speaking to pharmaceutical sales executives on the subject of Medicare Part D, you might say: “With the advent of Medicare Part D, many companies invested significantly in the potential of a large new market.  You led the charge on this initiative, launching marketing and sales training programs way before your competitors.  And yet you have not seen a return on your investment.  Formulary adoptions have not led to greater market share, and messaging has not changed to meet the needs of the target audience.  How did this happen, and what can you do to regain momentum?”  This is better than saying, “I have done some research into the results of efforts to capitalize on Medicare Part D.  Let me tell you how the research was conducted and then I will tell you some of the results.”  The first is dramatic, the second is boring, and you should strive to have carved into your tombstone the epitaph, “She bored them less!”
3. Keep it concrete.  In the old days, great speakers told stories, used analogies and metaphors to make the abstract more easy to grasp.  They gave examples.  For instance, Lincoln once made fun of an opponent’s argument by saying that his point of view had “as much substance as a soup made from the passing shadow of a starving crow.” Since most Americans at the time lived in the country on farms, and made soups, they knew just how insubstantial Lincoln’s opponent was.
4. Keep it moving.  Not just in terms of pace, but in terms of development.  Make sure that every new bit of information you provide builds on what came before.  We don’t like movies that stagnate, or novels that stop while the author describes a bucolic setting for two pages.  Your listeners are saying, “Okay, I got it.  Now what?”  Make sure there’s always something happening.
5. Shift back and forth between ideas and examples. Your listeners can’t survive in the thin atmosphere of abstraction and generalization.  Bring them down to brass tacks.  Physician speakers who are highly effective at influencing the prescribing habits of their peers are good at this.  They report the data from clinical trials, but they also tell stories about individual patients.  In other words, they use case studies to illustrate what the data means.
6. Get to the point.  Your audience is time-pressed, content-driven, and results-oriented.  A business-like approach adds to your credibility, without which you are sunk.  Credibility is the main currency of influence.  If your audience trusts you, they will pay attention the best they can.
7. Arouse emotion.  Humor is inherently persuasive.  It gives the speaker an unfair advantage.  Or reveal something personal about yourself that enables the audience to identify with you.  I had a client recently–a wonderful woman who works in the pharmaceutical industry–who said in a presentation that she had been an exotic dancer in order to pay for her college tuition.  The audience was shocked because she is a highly respected senior person in her company, and you can bet she made her point that we can all achieve our objectives if we are willing to step out of our comfort zones.
8. Finally, the voice of a person with intellectual conviction sparkles with change–changes of pitch, volume, and speed.  Your voice should be animatedly alpine.  And your body should be full of purpose.  From the patterned tips of your fingers, to the furrows in your forehead,  to the exquisite dance of your hands, you should say, with your words, voice, and body, that you are in love with the topic, and in love with the chance to engage the audience on it.