If you want to be influential and have people find you credible then speaking better is the skill you’ll want to work on. Your influence over others has everything to do with your speech and communication skills.
If you want to have executive presence and be an incredible leader your communication skills need to be on point.
If you’re not closing the number of deals you want, you may want to look into how you speak and come across to others.
Great communication skills are the foundation for influence and leadership. If you want to be more influential make sure your message comes out clearly and powerfully. If you want to be an excellent leader make sure you have magnificent communication skills.
Ok, so let’s do this step-by-step:
Consider the stakes of the situation.
The first thing you’ll want to do is figure out how much you want something & what is the likelihood of your getting it. If the likelihood of your getting it is high, then the stakes are low.
If the likelihood of your getting something is low (and you really want it) the stakes are high.
Obviously chatting with your bestie or ordering food and beverages are not high-stakes situations. There isn’t an unknown in the outcome. Nor do you desire something great or life-changing. These are routine situations in your life.
But going on a job interview, meeting with a prospective client. reporting to the CEO, and public speaking all have unknown outcomes and a great desire for a particular result. You want and don’t know if people will like you. You want and don’t know if you’ll be perceived as having executive presence.
You don’t know if you’ll be able to persuade people to see your point of view and you want them to like your life depends upon it. Cuz it kinda does.
Speak better in high-stakes situations.
To get what you need out of life, you need to speak smoothly. In the last blog post, we talked about the 3 critical steps to speaking well in high-anxiety situations (like interviews, presentations, venture capital meetings, client meetings, small talk, etc.) They were:
- Be relaxed. We perform better at everything we do when we’re comfortable, and speaking is no exception.
- Eliminate Over-Articulation. The pervasive misconception is that to speak better, you must punch out on each sound. Instead, use co-articulation where you smooth your sounds together. This is how you become a persuasive speaker.
- Pause. Stop after concepts and phrases to make it easier for people to understand you. This will also help you be concise.
- Breathe. Speech is air molecules that vibrate, so “let your voice take a ride on the air.” This will keep you calm and improve your speaking voice.
- Use Back Resonance. People can understand you better when you don’t use your lips too much to speak. Let the vibration hover over the back of your tongue. You’ll learn back resonance when you take The Voice Spa.
9 Secret Steps to Influencing Others
Want to be more influential? We all want to communicate our most important messages in a way that encourages others to take action. Whether that action is voting for our candidate or picking up milk from the store, the words we use and how we speak play a huge role in getting the job done.
Speak smoothly & fluidly
The next important step is to make sure you speak smoothly & fluidly. Why do you need to speak smoothly? Because choppy speech doesn’t hold people’s attention for very long.
Choppy, staccato, monosyllabic speech causes your listeners to work too hard to follow your message. And when they’re working too hard to follow your message, they’ll have a harder time following your call to action.
While it’s essential to listen more and better, it’s even more important to speak so effectively that people can’t help but fully understand your message.
Choppy speech, the opposite of smooth speech, even causes people to interrupt you. If people are interrupting you frequently, you’ll want to assess how you sound and think about using very smooth speech.
Stressless Holiday Conversations–Dealing With Difficult Relatives
Speak Smoothly
Want super choppy speech? Go ahead & use over-articulation. That’s the exact opposite of speaking smoothly.
Here’s how to smooth out your speech: instead of popping each consonant sound, link your sounds together between your pauses. This results in words that are connected to each other.
Following are some fun/amazing tricks to transitioning from the last sound in a word to the first sound in the next word. 🙂
An Introduction to Accent Reduction
This brief introduction will get you started on the road to speaking Standard American English.
From a Consonant to a Vowel
When one word ends in a consonant, and the next word begins in a vowel, say it so the word beginning with the vowel starts with the final consonant of the last sound.
For example:
“I have an apple” becomes “I_have_anapple” where there are no sound breaks between any of the words. All the sounds are connected. Make sense?
How does this impact your speech? You end up sounding smooth & fluid, making it easier for people to listen to you.
Making them really want to listen to you. And making it almost impossible for them not to hear what you say.
How To Improve the Sound of Your Voice
From Vowel to Vowel
When a word ends in a vowel & the next begins in a vowel, you add a “glide” sound between the 2. If it’s a front vowel like the sound /eee/ use a y, and for a back vowel, use a w.
Let me show you:
“She is” becomes “Sheyis“
“Going to the party on Saturday” becomes “…”partyanSunday” (of course the letter “o” is not pronounced like an “o”!)
Consonant to Consonant
When one word ends in a consonant & the next begins with a consonant, slide your tongue from one place to the next.
If the 2 consonants are the same, say the sound only 1ce! (the only exceptions are the ch & dz sounds as in orange juice–say those 2ce!)
Like this:
Whatisshedoing? Your tongue goes from the /s/ spot to the /sh/ spot (further back on your palate) without stopping. It’s a continuous sound.
Speak Smoothly Tip II
There’s another trick to sounding smooth. Because speech is air molecules that vibrate, we need to use a lot of air when we speak. That results in having a full resonance that can easily project across the room & in a loud environment.
For every breath group you utter, make sure the air comes out continuously. Don’t stop the air from coming out in between breath groups. This results in a very smooth sound that really holds people’s attention, consequently doing what you need them to do.
Get in touch with me if you have any trouble speaking smoothly. 🙂 I can sort it out for you in no time flat!
My anxiety causes over articulation/ loss of smooth sounding speech.. how can I fix this other thn dealing with my anxiety
Hi Hayden,
Thanks for your question, sorry it took me forever to get back to you!
What you describe is very common. Much more so than most people think.
I’d recommend doing relaxation exercises (mine are awesome :))
Also, practice some things you’re going to say gliding all the words together.
Feel free to grab a couple of microsessions and I will walk you through it.
https://conveyclearly.com/product/mini-sessions/
Warm regards,
Ita
Hi Hayden. Take The Voice Spa and you’ll have smooth-sounding speech. Just be sure to do all the homework I assign you in the course. It’s not brain surgery, but you’ll want to do 10 minutes 2 times per day.
The way you speak on Youtube embodies what you wrote here. And most international people struggle at THIS point. Thanks for a nice piece of article!
Pauses are very important, not just for those listening. But for the person giving the speech as well! This is great!
Thank you, Jasmine!
I fell into the trap of thinking that in order to speak better, I needed to articulate each sound in every word. So happy to know that over-articulation is not necessary to being a good speaker.
This is exactly the opposite of what I’ve been doing to speak better! Everything I’ve learned on the internet tells me to make my sounds more distinct and to use my articulators. I kept following that advice even though something in the back of my mind told me it wasn’t right.
“Sheyis” makes perfect sense! Gluing your words together makes perfect sense. I just recorded myself, as I always have when doing the move my face/diction thing, and I’ve never sounded better. Holy Mackeral! How come I haven’t found you before?
I’m glad you’re here now, Liza!
Hi everyone.
I have the problem of using filler words more than most even though I know what to say or what I want to say. I often can’t get the word out I want to say. I have a very mild speech issue. Any ideas how to tackle this issue and have clearer speech?
Schedule a consult so we can assess your needs and provide you with your options! There’s a link at the bottom of this article! 🙂
I recommend The Voice Spa online course and/or take one-on-one sessions with me. I’m here for you!
Woah! I just did tip 2! I just recorded myself using air as you say and I felt crazy, but I sounded so much better! Haha! I can’t believe it!
Thank you for your generosity!
My pleasure, Tom! Keep me up to date on your progress!
It’s the exact opposite of what I learned in my voice and diction class! But it makes perfect sense. I’ve been chopping up my speech and it needs to be smoother. I’ve been trying to speak better but I have been doing it all wrong!
Hiya Gracie!
Yes, there’s a lot of bad advice out there. I know those voice and diction classes.
Follow through with The Voice Spa, it’ll make you smooth at silk!
Yes, Gracie, it’s true! Glad you found us!