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“My friends don’t laugh at my jokes.”
I know, I know. you are probably asking yourself why this has to be turned into a post, it isn’t even that serious. Or you’re probably wondering what you will earn by reading this post, right? Don’t worry, we’ll not teach you to rack lame jokes. This is an attempt at understanding the first line.
I discovered that this lack of response came from the fact that I had a flat voice. I never used any voice modulation(never in English, but sometimes in Hindi/Punjabi).
Leave talking in presentations or team meetings, but if your friends are not interested in what you say, not for any other reason but your flat voice, that’s the last nail on the wall.
I worked on it consciously and improved myself. Yesterday, while trying to share tips and advice with a student of ours, I came across this article by Hrideep Barot who wonderfully gives tips on how to improve voice modulation:
1. Adjust the Pitch - Pitch is how high or low your voice sounds. You can adjust the pitch according to the sentences in your speech. If you have to say, “I am so excited to be a part of this organization!” Try saying it in a higher pitch and then in a lower pitch. You will immediately see the difference for yourself. When you have to say a sentence, which is authoritative and important, use a lower pitch and a slow pace.
2. Stress on Keywords Whenever you speak, make sure that you stress keywords in your speech to create a good impact on the audience.
For example, try saying “Climate change is real” in a plain tone without stressing any word and then say the same sentence emphasizing the important words in the sentence- CLIMATE CHANGE is REAL!”
When you stress the keywords, your audience starts remembering these important words, which creates an impact.
3. Keep an Eye on Your Pace - The most common misconception that people have is that the best way to speak is speaking very fast. But that is not true.
You should speak at a slow, controlled, and natural pace. When you speak slowly, you can also avoid the use of filler words like ‘uh’, ‘um’, ‘er’ etc. Take pauses wherever necessary.
If at all you do have to speak fast, choose a few sentences that show excitement and thrill and say them fast and then pause so that it gives your audience the time to process what you said, and it also adds a little emotion to your speech.
6. Pause Pauses are one of the most important things when it comes to speaking.
“The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.” - Mark Twain
Use pauses when you are about to talk about something important and you want to emphasize something. Pauses can be used when you want your audience to process the information you shared while moving on to a new topic, etc.
Keep practicing and don’t be me(past me)!
PS: Check out Blackboard Radio's 1:1 communication program. Here you get access to a personal coach for 1 hour.