How to Ensure Your Voice is the Best It Can Be

• 00:04 What are the biggest mistakes you can make with your voice when you are speaking,
• 00:09 presenting on a live video, conference call, or a webinar, or online meeting?
• 00:15 It's not that you have an ugly voice, or that you have a bad voice, or
• 00:20 that you need accent reduction or any of that, no.
• 00:24 The two biggest problems by far most people have with their voice,
• 00:28 they speak too quickly.
• 00:29 If you speak quickly, no one can understand what you're saying.
• 00:32 That happens when you're nervous, so you really have to monitor how fast you go.
• 00:38 Don't speak too quickly.
• 00:39 The other big problem, speaking too softly.
• 00:43 When people are nervous, they tend to speak faster than normal,
• 00:48 softer than normal.
• 00:49 If you're speaking softly, people can't understand you.
• 00:54 If they can't hear you, they're going to just tune out,
• 00:57 they're going to go check Facebook or do something else.
• 00:59 So be mindful of those two areas.
• 01:02 Now, you've heard me mention this before, but the solution is you
• 01:07 have to practice on video, you have to know exactly how you are coming across.
• 01:13 You can calibrate your speed and your volume by practicing and hearing it and
• 01:18 tweaking it.
• 01:20 But if you spend all your time just gathering information,
• 01:23 worrying about the camera, and then you're speaking for
• 01:26 the first time in front of important audience in online meeting,
• 01:30 you'll have no idea how quickly or how softly you're speaking.
• 01:34 So I'm begging you, practice in advance on video and
• 01:38 calibrate that speed and volume just right.
• 01:43 What do you do if you hate the sound of your own voice?
• 01:46 You think your voice quality is bad, it's deficient, it's irritating.
• 01:51 So you don't like speaking into any kind of microphone.
• 01:53 You don't like recording it and you don't want to hear yourself on the playback.
• 02:00 Okay, timeout a second, let's be real.
• 02:04 Everybody hates the sound of their own voice.
• 02:06 Or I should say most people don't like the sound of their own voice.
• 02:10 So if you don't like how you sound you're in good company.
• 02:14 Chances are your voice is perfectly fine.
• 02:17 It just sounds weird to you coming out of the speaker from your computer or
• 02:21 a cell phone because you're used to hearing your voice all day long distorted
• 02:25 through the bones in your skull.
• 02:28 So when you hear your own voice coming through a speaker,
• 02:32 you're hearing it relatively less distorted than how you normally do,
• 02:38 so it sounds weird to you.
• 02:40 It's not your self image of your voice, relax.
• 02:44 I've worked with more than 10,000 clients for the last 25 years all
• 02:49 over the world preparing them to speak to the media and in front of cameras.
• 02:53 95% didn't like the sound of their own voice and I've never had a single client
• 02:58 whose voice was so awful, irritating that it was driving people away.
• 03:02 So my advice, get over it.
• 03:06 Nobody cares about your voice.
• 03:08 You're not trying to be a movie voiceover artist.
• 03:13 The simplest way to get over this, practice more and listen to yourself.
• 03:18 Now this doesn't mean that your voice can't be improved.
• 03:20 If you've done your rehearsal on video,
• 03:23 as I've asked you to, then you can hear your voice.
• 03:28 If you find yourself speaking too quickly, slow down.
• 03:32 If you find yourself speaking at a monotone, realize that's a problem.
• 03:37 You need to speak sometimes a little louder, sometimes softer,
• 03:40 sometimes faster, sometimes slower.
• 03:42 And most important, you gotta pause.
• 03:45 That's what people do in real life conversation.
• 03:50 For effective in person meetings,
• 03:53 that's what you have to do for your video online meetings too.

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