Not listening to the voices inside your head
How to open a speech or presentation successfully – 6 tips!
Sometimes we need to speak loudly to be heard.
Perhaps it’s the murmurings of a fidgety crowd that we have to overcome, or simply just a large venue with no microphone – there are just some days when we need to crank our vocal volume up.
The problem with turning the volume up, is that it becomes harder to keep the intonation in our voice, and as a result harder to build empathy with our audience. When volume increases, we quickly become seen as ‘just’ a preacher.
Subtle changes in pitch and pace are always more difficult to achieve at the limits of our vocal range as we are already straining just to achieve volume.
To overcome this we need to turn up the dial on the rest of our voice too, to ensure we keep our expressiveness.
When we’re speaking at louder volumes, our voice must become a caricature of itself. Every change of pitch must be greater, every pause longer and every change of pace more extreme.
Without this extra effort to make sure our voice matches our volume, we’re simply just shouting!