Kate's Voice

Two of the most important components of great communication are how you start and how you finish.  This is as true for a phone conversation or a WebEx as it is for public speaking.  In the first few minutes, your audience or conversation partners are making judgments about how and who you are and they will not hear what you have to say until they get that straight in their minds! As for the finish, often people finish with a dangling, “so…” or a hurried “go to my website,” and the effect is to leave the audience without a clear direction to continue or respond to the conversation.

Thus, I always tell my clients to create an opening and a close.  Period. Even if you are put on the spot to speak extemporaneously or are expressing your opinion in “a conversation that matters, “ delivering a real opening and closing help to ensure that your intention is in alignment with your content and both with your delivery.

I’ve created an acronym for each to help my clients create strong openings and closings. It will help you do the same. Practice this approach the next time you prepare an important communication.

Opening:
Here’s a way to think about an opening for a talk.  Make it NICE by including the following elements:

Name: Let them know who you are both with your name and with a personal reference such as a story or observation.
Intention: The purpose of your talk and perhaps what will be covered, or what you hope to accomplish
Call to adventure or discovery:  What you expect of them and something enticing or mysterious that they can expect to experience in your talk. (This is a term  I like that is used by Nancy Duarte in the book Resonate)
Engagement: A story or joke or interactive activity, or an unexpected provocative statement or challenge. Get them involved.

Closing: Bring it to a real finish by creating a close that has RICH elements.  Above all,  resist the urge to make “so” your final word!

Restate or summarize: Review what was presented or discussed
Inspire:  Ignite a desire to continue the conversation (motivational quote, personal statement, thought provoking idea)
Call to action: give them something to do next.
Help them on their way: Say goodbye, or simply move them along to the next activity by asking for questions, etc. If you host a Q&A, afterwards, reiterate the call to action an say goodbye.

Related posts:

How to start an important conversation

How to create a voice with executive presence

Vocal Variety is a term used by many speakers to describe variations in the sounds created by speaking.  Other terms for this are inflection, expression or prosody.

Vocal Variety is generally thought to be good.  It creates interest and helps a speaker to have more influence over the audience.  Toastmasters has a vocal variety speech in their training.  They describe effective use of Vocal Variety in this way: “An effective vocal variety speech is a speech where you convey your emotions through your voice to your audience. “

How is vocal variety created?
Here are five aspects of sound that create vocal variety:

1. Cadence: The way you end a sentence.  Variety is found in open versus closed cadence.
2. Speed: The pace at which you speak.  Variety is found in fast versus slow pace.
3. Volume:  Variety is created by contrasting loudness and softness of speech.
4. Pitch: Variety is created by using more range in your speaking voice.  Every sound you make has a pitch.
5. Duration: Variety is created by accentuating or varying the length of the sounds created.  (See example below.)

How Expression Creates Meaning
You can probably see that there is a difference between speaking slowly and speaking quickly, and that speakers use speed in different ways.  For example, if I tell you to pick up the pace of your delivery, you probably assume I want you to speak faster.  Actors use vowel sounds to draw out the duration of sound and consonants, such as “t” to cut sounds short.  To hear variety in duration, do the following:

•     Say “long” and elongate the vowel sound to illustrate the meaning of the word.
•     In contrast, say “short” and abbreviate the vowel sound and punch the “t” to illustrate the meaning of that word.

This example shows how many of our words are already expressing their meaning when we speak.  True vocal variety is the use of vocal sounds to infuse meaning into all words. It starts with recognition that every sound you make creates an impression on others.  I call this your vocal image.

How Vocal Variety Creates More Meaning
What really makes this interesting to me is the infinite variety created by combining different aspects of sound.

A recent post by Cal Habig suggests the use of a quadrant diagram (as modeled by Rory Vaden ) to better understand vocal variety. This illustrates how we can combine attributes to create a vocal image (though he doesn’t call it a vocal image.) Cal discusses only two aspects of sound: volume and pace (speed).   The quadrant contains a personality characteristic/quality of expression for each combination in the quadrant.  Here is his chart:

What’s wrong with this model?
I completely agree that attributes of sound give us perceptions of the speaker and that the perceptions may change as we combine the attributes in different ways, hence creating vocal variety.  Here’s where I want to challenge you, my readers,  and respectfully disagree with Cal’s post and even with the responses of his readers.  I am not convinced that every time a speaker speaks slowly and softly that they are perceived as authentic.  A person who is afraid may also speak slowly and softly or fast and softly.   However, it is absolutely true that the sound you create gives a perception to your listener.

How to use Vocal Variety to be a better speaker
Use this information from this quadrant to increase your awareness of your “bag of tricks,” the tools you have to make yourself heard as a speaker.  Ask yourself,  “what is the impression I give when I speak slowly and softly,  or loud and fast, with short and long vowels and consonants?  Is it negative or positive, and how can I use that combination of attributes to create more interest and also to create the impression I want?”  Listen to other speakers as well or actors in films. How do they use vocal variety to express emotions?  What vocal image is conveyed by the patterns of sound each person creates?

You may also want to read:

Breathing: Your Seductive Key to Vocal Variety on the Six Minutes blog

Five Colors for Vibrant Vocal Variety