Kate's Voice

As we have become more and more inundated with data and information, we have grown more and more hungry for stories.  Stories help us find the human elements in the information.  They remind us of why we care about the data in the first place.  Presentations skills coach, Jerry Weissman, prevents scientists and doctors from getting mired in the data by asking them a simple question: “Do you have any patients?”

There are  some basic delivery techniques that will make the story come alive.   Although everyone has a story to tell,  not everyone is good at telling them.  Stories can certainly be told by anyone even if they don’t use these techniques because the very nature of the story is that it is engaging in its own right.  However, as Seth Godin says, “Making pastries the way they do at a fancy restaurant is a lot more work than making brownies at home.”

So here are three elements that will add zip and vigor to your storytelling and set you apart from the every day story cook.  They are: emphasis, pause, and contrast.

Emphasis. Stimulate the senses. Find color words Find emotion. Get others involved.  Pull them in with an emotional phrase  and sound like you mean it.  n order to do this, write down your story and then highlight all of the emotional words.  If you don’t have any, add some!  Then practice telling your story with an emphasis on those highlighted words.  In addition, it is important that you stimulate your own senses but using emotional memory, an actor’s trick for triggering an emotional response today based on a memory of a similar response.

If you think this is just for actors and traditional storytellers, think again.  The brilliant Julian Treasure has created an entire business around “sensory marketing,” showing us that “better sounding brands achieve better results.” And what makes it sound better?  For starters, sound that appeals to the senses.

Pause: Give the listener time to take in what you’ve said.  Give them time to catch up with you.  Run-on sentences and ideas are prevalent in speakers today.  Maybe it’s the same problem of  too much information.  And the challenge with this is that people need silence in order to process what they have heard.  Enter, the pause.

In an essay about how to tell a story, Mark Twain said, “The pause is an exceedingly important feature in any kind of story, and a frequently recurring feature, too. It is a dainty thing, and delicate, and also uncertain and treacherous; for it must be exactly the right length–no more and no less–or it fails of its purpose and makes trouble.”

To practice the pause, tell your story aloud and consciously stop to breathe each time you present a new idea or a new part of the story.  Take a good breath, and then move on.  Then, when actually telling the story to an audience, let yourself take a breath and hear the silence before moving on.  Sometimes, silence elicits an emotional response all its own that you can feel.  That’s ok.  Let it be there.  And then move on.

Contrast: Keep audience attention by contrasting loud with soft, long with short, fast with slow, and dark(sad or angry) with light (hopeful, joyful). Contrast catches a listener’s attention.  It keeps us hooked.  When there is contrast we pay attention. It’s a surprise for the ear.  And audiences like surprises.  However, Mark Twain also cautioned  that if the audience knows a surprise is being set up, you can’t surprise them at all.

To practice contrast, try the following:

• Speak in a normal tone of voice, and suddenly speak softly on the next change in the story.
• Speak at your normal pace, and then slow down a description of someone, or an important element of the story.  Then do the opposite.
• Draw out an important story element by elongating the vowels of your words, followed by a quickly-spoken descriptive word.

Power Point and its use in conference calls, Web-Ex sessions,  and webinars has made the sound of the voice more important than ever.  Yes, just when you thought you could again hide behind a slide show, your “disembodied” voice starts to take all the focus.  Your history, education, emotional state and preparedness are out there in front for all to hear!  And there is no smiling face or firm handshake that can be offered to soften the impressions or invoke forgiveness for mistakes or poor first impressions.

So what’s a 21st Century business person to do?  Here are three areas to focus on to improve your vocal image on important calls and conference calls when you must read a script:

1. Practice reading aloud
2. Practice storytelling
3. Practice speaking with intention

Practice reading aloud every day.  Reading aloud is difficult, even for actors.  Some people claim it’s because we’ve lost the art since we don’t even read aloud to our children  anymore.  An article in the New York Times in May of 2009 addressed this ; ”But one of the most basic tests of comprehension is to ask someone to read aloud from a book. It reveals far more than whether the reader understands the words. It reveals how far into the words — and the pattern of the words — the reader really sees.”  This is just as true when reading a presentation script as it is when reading from a children’s book.  In order for your voice to convey meaning, you can’t just think meaning; you have to feel meaning.  Your voice reflects what’s on your mind.  In fact, it is the voice of the mind.

One way to find and feel meaning is to emphasize “Color” words.  These are words that may have an emotional pull or that can be stressed for emphasis.  They may be words like “exceptional,” or “increased” or “successfully.” They may be descriptors like adjectives and adverbs, or they may be names of people and places or dates such as September 11.  When you use color words they evoke a response from your listeners, but they also evoke a response from you, the speaker, if you pay attention to them. Let them create an image in your mind that is meaningful to you.  It will reflect in the sound of your voice.

Practice storytelling. A wonderful way to vary the presentation when you must read from slides is to add stories to illustrate points. In his new book, Letters to a Young Entrepreneur, my friend Ricardo Levy  says this when discussing the external qualities of an entrepreneurial leader. “You need to become an engaging storyteller, one who conveys an authentic and convincing message.”  The power of story is that it creates meaning out of data and information.  And your story reminds me of my own and connects us.  Collect stories and use them to illustrate meaning in the numbers. Work them into your calls to get away from just reading the slides, even if just for a moment.  For more on the power of storytelling,  I highly recommend Denise Graveline’s smart post,  “Six Smart Things a Story Adds to Your  Speech.”

Practice speaking with intention: Your impact as a speaker is dramatically increased when you align your intention with your content.  The voice that is infused with passion and intelligence is the one that is connected to the meaning of the words as well as the reason for the conversation.  Set an overall intention for your work as a communicator, and a specific intention for each call.  For example, your overall intention as a speaker may be “to engage others to follow my lead.”  Your intention for a specific conference call may be “to get the customer to buy our product today,” or “to make sure the listeners understand the current challenge.”  Different intentions invoke different sounds in our voices because the voice IS the voice of the mind.

Suggestions for practice: When preparing to give a presentation using slides or a script that you must read, focus your practice like this:

• Spend time every day reading out loud.  Record yourself and critique the reading for variety and expression.
• Find color words and highlight them in your script.  Then practice reading the script aloud, emphasizing the color words and infusing them with emotion and meaning. Exaggerate at first then tone it down.
• Create a collection of stories to use in presentations to illustrate points. Make sure they have a beginning, middle and end. Practice telling them with expression. Always have them ready to use.
• Set an intention for every meeting and write it down.  Keep the intention in front of you during the meeting.  Afterward, jot down your observations:  Did you stay with the intention?  If so, did it change the way you presented your points?
• Give yourself feedback and get feedback from others.  You will only be able to make changes if you are aware of what you are doing now.