Public Dynamics™  Public Speaking Coach Milo Shapiro's column on the art and business of public speaking

As the author of Public Speaking: Get A's, Not ZZZZZZ's, it was my privilege to create this series that has been picked up by the Society of Human Resource Managers...and hopefully others by the time you read this.  Ideally, I would love for it to run in newspapers where many more people could benefit from it.

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The first column appears below.  You can click "Next Column" to read further.

Public Dynamics

By Milo Shapiro, professional speaker and speaking coach

 Column #1:  Vocal variety
 

Q:  I've been told that I ought to use more vocal variety, but this doesn’t come naturally to me.  What can I do?                                                                   − W.L., Tierrasanta, CA

     Having good vocal variety and using it in the right places in your program can make all the difference between being big news and being a big snooze.

When I’m coaching, I encourage the use of what I call the Seven Variants of Vocal Variety™.  These are simple things that one can work on varying to make a moment in your program different from the one it follows.  Some might be incorporated into the same sentence while others might be a whole section done a certain way, especially if you’re creating a character to differentiate individual speakers in a story.

Here are the seven points, from simplest to those requiring more practice:
 

1)       Volume.  It may sound simple but some people don’t vary this factor.  I don’t want you screaming at your audience or making them strain to hear you, but boosting volume can point out passion for a word or phrase vs. lowering volume to convey softness and ease on a topic.

2)       Pitch.  Singing is not the only place that pitch is important and with speaking, you don’t even have to be “on pitch”.  You just have to vary it.  Whether you tend to have a high- or low-pitched voice, you are capable of going higher and lower than you typically do.  Try saying the following phrase all in the same pitch and then again saying the italicized words at a somewhat higher pitch:

“We don’t sell like that and I can’t imagine why we’d want to!”

See how that sentence sounds more lively that way?  I'd be you increased your volume a bit as well, which is fine…unless you’re reading this in a cubicle…

3)       Speed.  Some of us naturally speak faster than others and that’s okay, so long as you’re not losing the audience members who might not keep up. Yet too slow…and some attendees, especially younger ones, will lose interest. The key again? Variety.

        Let’s try saying this example all at one speed and then again picking up the pace of the italicized portion:

“The key to customer loyalty − and this is especially true with women − is to show you’re really listening.”

       If your pitch went up in the middle too, good for you! Why is this effective? Because the return to the slow-down for that last phrase now seems more significant.

       There’s so much to say on vocal variety that I'll save the other four points for our next column.