The Three Ones(tm): The Secret Elixir for Great Speaking

Ah, the secret elixir for great speaking! And yet, it is a secret no more. The Three Ones(tm) is your guide to always sounding smart, crisp and knowledgeable. Here are the three secrets:
-One sentence
-One topic
-One breath

Make each sentence about one topic, and one topic only. Brains can only understand one thing at a time. If you have more than one topic in your sentence, your audience will not know what they are supposed to remember. The result? They probably won’t remember anything. You will have overloaded their brains. So keep it simple.

The most important thing you can do to signal the end of your sentence is to lower your pitch to indicate a period or full-stop. This is the signal your audience is waiting for. Until they know the sentence is over, they will stay in ‘listening’ mode. Once they know you have finished, they will switch to ‘processing’ mode. This is when they will review what you said and commit it to memory. If you have given them one topic, it will be easy for them to remember it. This ease will translate into a positive feeling about listening to you. Sort of like, “Hey, I can follow what this person is saying. I could listen to MORE of this!” And isn’t that what we want people to think when we speak?

Next time, we will talk about how The Three Ones works with your brain. After all, you can only think about one thing at a time, too!

How to be a trusted guide through uncharted territory

Last week I promised to help you learn how to guide your audience successfully to your point. Since I live in the great Northwest, I am going to use some mountain climbing imagery to describe this, just for fun!

Imagine yourself as a mountain guide. Your audience is on a tour with you. They need you to take them from the bottom of the mountain to the top. They are going to follow you every step of the way. Without you, they will get lost in the forest. That means that you need to clearly show them where to step each time.

It really is the same when you speak. Your audience is relying on you to tell them what you what them to know. They can only understand you one step at a time (I call these steps, ’sentences’). If you speak to them in unclear sentences, they will surely get lost. They will not understand your point.

Does this make sense so far? Remember, you are the guide. Your patient, clear directions will help your audience reach the mountaintop happily. I think I will will close before I start mixing my metaphors!

Next week I will describe an easy way to make your sentences clear and succinct. With this technique, you will be the most popular guide on your local mountain!

The Brain-Voice Connection(TM)

Understanding how the voice works is the brain-voice connection. This applies to both speaking and listening.

For example, the more you understand the role your brain plays in creating the sounds and effects you want to make, the more confident and consistent you will be about making them. Knowing your brain’s role in speaking equals a better speaker.

However, understanding how the brain listens is also crucial to speaking well. For example, the brain is always seeking patterns. When you speak, your voice is like a pattern to the listener’s brain. In order to keep the listener’s brain interested in you, it is necessary for you to vary your pattern. That way the brain of the listener will never know your pattern absolutely, and it will keep listening to you.

Other benefits include knowing how to breathe correctly, changing your pitch from too high or too low, learning to project your sound if you speak too softly, sounding confident when you speak, and even applying all this knowledge when you listen to a colleague speak. You can often benefit in negotiations if you understand why your fellow negotiator sounds the way she does. After all, she has the same equipment you do; it is pretty easy to deduce what is happening inside her head by reading her voice. Unless, of course, she has the technique to hide it from you!

These benefits equal better opportunities in work and life. The way I describe it to my clients is, everything you are as a person comes out in your voice. It is how you share your essence with the world. Let’s make sure you have a speaking technique that matches who you really are, so the world can really hear you and your unique qualities.

A voice expert walks into a bar and says…

Hello Everyone,

Welcome to my first blog! I am thrilled to connect with all of you, and I look forward to your comments. Please feel free to post any questions regarding your voice, communication skills and accent reduction here, and I will answer them in a future post. For more information about me, please visit www.brain-voice.com. I am located in Seattle, and work with clients via phone and in person.

So, a voice expert, eh? What in the world is that? Let me answer by telling you a story about a client.

A gentleman came to me with an unusual problem. He normally speaks in a baritone-range voice. Every once in a while, without warning, his voice came out high and squeaky - VERY squeaky! Think Alvin the Chipmunk! He could not control when it happened, or stop it while it was happening. Since he is planning to become a personal coach, he knew he needed to get it under control. He had consulted several doctors, but no one could tell him the problem.

I listened to him for about 20 minutes. I determined that he did not have any vocal cord damage. I could also tell that he was not suffering from vocal spasms, since those wouldn’t result in such a high pitch. I realized what the problem must be: too much weight on the vocal cords! Now, I know this sounds exciting to you all, so let me explain what I mean.

Think of your vocal cords as muscles. You add weight to them, not by lifting a barbell, but with volume. The more volume you produce as you speak, the more weight this feels like to your voice. While everyone has about 25 separate pitches in their vocal range, each pitch has an individual profile. This profile includes how much volume, or weight, that pitch can handle. You may have two pitches right next to each other, and one can get quite loud, but the other can only handle a whisper.

I realized that the reason my client’s voice was jumping from his baritone register to this high pitch was the amount of volume he was exerting. He was speaking louder than normal, sort of belting for speakers. Because this volume was beyond what his voice could handle normally, 23 of his pitches could not emerge. But the 24th pitch, this high, squeaky pitch, could handle the volume (he was a boy soprano, so that may have helped). When he wanted to move to a higher pitch for emphasis, the only pitch that could handle his exaggerated volume level was the high one!

I helped him by demonstrating a softer volume to use while speaking. As he practiced this, wouldn’t you know it, about 23 pitches emerged! They were there all along, waiting for a volume level that they could handle. After his first session with me, he didn’t squeak again. Now he uses lots of pitches when he talks, which makes him an entertaining speaker. I will discuss how you can be an entertaining speaker, too, in my next blog.

Till next time,

Anna Bernstein

anna@brain-voice.com