This ain’t your grandpa’s world folks.
This is you in a world where you’re constantly proving yourself. There’s tremendous competition. If you want to get ahead and stay ahead you need to communicate your message clearly, effectively and persuasively. You need to get people to follow your call-to-action.
Chances are you’re not blowing them away with your communication skills.
If you’ve been reading my articles you know that only very recently have the situations we’ve been confronted with been much more anxiety ridden than any time in our history. By far. And you know that our brains haven’t caught up.
How many times have you walked away from a situation and realized that you were well-equipped to deal with it but for some reason it didn’t come out right? There’s no surprise there. Our brains go into a version of “fight or flight” when we get nervous. Being interviewed on a podcast. Interviewing others on a podcast. Going on a job interview or giving a presentation.
How to Sound Amazing
1. Just know that you can sound amazing
It’s much easier than you think. It’s super easy, actually. The problem is most people think speaking better is going to be hard & they put a lot of effort into it. The truth is you must do the exact opposite! You have to be completely relaxed & use no effort.
2. Stop over-articulating!
I can hear you over there! Using choppy speech with too many popped consonants! Solution: Divide your speech into breath groups–or units of meaning and glue all of the sounds together without the awful chop!
3. Use a varied intonation pattern
Choose the words that are most important for your listener to hear and make them longer in duration and louder in volume. Take the other words, the “grammar glue” and make them shorter and quieter. Grammar glue are your articles (the, a), prepositions, pronouns, etc. Use contractions whenever possible. I know it’s counter-intuitive. Just do it.
4. Practice the easy stuff first
You can’t obtain new skills and then apply them to all areas of your life at once. Pick your battles and improve them first. Once you master the easy levels you have a rung on your ladder on which to stand. Then it makes it easier to master the not-so easy speaking situations.