005 Can Your Mask Make You A Better Public Speaker?

This is Dr. Torrey. Welcome to the Influence Every Day show, where we make every day better and we influence for good.

Can wearing a mask help help you improve your public speaking abilities? Absolutely. Here's the thing. If you were to look at the advice that coaches and public speaking trainers give those who are learning to be better public speakers or to improve their skills, that advice that's given to them is the same advice that someone would give. Establish rapport and connection from behind a mask. The tips that they give to both of those groups are the same. Let's go over those. My name is Dr. Tory with influence Everywhere. I'm an expert in influence, persuasion, body language and rapport for better relationships and behavior change. Now, how can this help you? First of all, when you're wearing a mask, it's an opportunity to practice. So let me tell you the three some, just three quick things that you can use, three tools in your tool belt that you can use while wearing a mask that will help you improve your public speaking. The first of those is the power of your voice. Your voice is an incredible tool, and it has lots of assets and qualities and things that can be altered, adjusted, and changed in such a way that it improves your ability to engage and establish rapport. And there are some things where we will have a deficiency in communication, where it is related to our voice. In other words, we might be talking and then slowly trail off. And that trail off isn't heard well and gets miscommunicated. Either is not heard or it's misheard and thought that you said something else or something like that. So voice coaches exist. Voice coaches are. They help people who are either improving their voice for singing or actors and actresses as they imitate a singer or imitate another person. Your voice is not something that is static. You can change it. And voice coaches exist to help you adjust your voice. You can adjust not just volume. Volume is extremely important, by the way, especially when speaking from behind a mask, because you don't have the added benefit of reading lips. So your volume is important, but there are other qualities to it. There's pitch, there's tone, there's melody, there's pace, like, how fast are you doing things? Your voice is an incredible tool, and how you use it is very powerful for establishing rapport and engaging. When you are speaking behind a mask to someone else, try adjusting your voice, especially if they ever say, I'm sorry, or they lean forward and they ask, or they look like they're trying to listen a little more, you're not loud enough. So Change the volume if they're not engaged, Perhaps you need to change the pace of how you're talking. Maybe you need to speak faster, or maybe you need to slow down, have some pauses. Or maybe you need to use silence after making an important point. In any case, you use your voice. You can, you know, vary the pitch and the melody and all these things as you speak. This helps you maintain engagement. And this is something that public speakers are being taught all the time, how to be better public speakers, not just on video, but also from the stage, also in meetings. A lot of that has to do with your voice. So look up, voice coaches, look up. Try to find more information. The top tips from voice coaches and things like that. You can find more information. There's a person I absolutely recommend, Roger Love. Roger Love. L O V E. He has lots of materials and courses and things like that out there. There's enough free stuff out there just by him that is enough to completely change how you communicate from behind a mask. And every time you're communicating from behind a mask, you're improving your voice for public speaking. What's the second thing? The words that you choose. Any word that you choose when you're speaking to someone else, you can use it to convey its meaning. What do I mean by that? I used to have a hypnotherapy teacher who would say, you have to squeeze the meaning out of the words. Squeeze the meaning out of the words. Listen, squeeze the way I said squeeze, the way I gestured with my hands, the way I move my face. All of that implied squeezing. In other words, I conveyed the meaning of the word with my body, with my words, with the, like, the way I said the word, right? So, for example, if I'm saying, you know, that meeting was so long, long. It's a long duration, right? It went on forever. When you say it went on forever, that's expressing the word in such a way that the expression itself conveys the meaning. The manner in which you convey the manner in which you say it, how you say it, not just what you say, but how you say it conveys the meaning of the word. So if you're talking about something that. And by the way, that's not just a word. It could also be a phrase or a sort of an entire paragraph. If you're talking about, like, you know, during COVID 19, oh, gosh, March, just felt like it went on for so long, but then everything after that was so quick paced, that one thing after another after another after another. You see how I was so Long and slow and monotone. And then I started picking up the pace as I started talking. You adjust your words in such a way that they express the meaning themselves. The words have meaning, and the way you say it conveys that meaning. So that's tip number two. Now, the most important of these three tips would be to over emphasize emotion when you are behind a mask. If you over emphasize emotion, it will show more in your eyes, your eyebrows, your neck, your body. When you are on stage doing public speaking, they say there's a saying among public speaking trainers, there's a saying that the larger the stage, the larger the emotion. The larger the stage, the larger the emotion, the more exaggerated the emotion. If I'm talking to you one on one, I might just say, you know, I was really excited. That event was great and it just, it was a lot of fun. Whereas if I'm on stage, I would be like, I was so excited to be at that event. I mean, I got to see all of you. So you become larger than life when you're on stage to express. And the larger the crowd, the larger the emotion. If it's 15 people, you might be like, I was so excited. If it's 15,000 people, you'd be like, I was so excited to be a part of that. And you emphasize that's what they recommend to public speakers. So too with using a mask, if you are conveying an emotion, over emphasize it, over feel it, and over express it. If you are expressing concern, if you're talking to somebody and they say, you know, yeah, I lost my father this past weekend, you might just be like, oh, I'm sorry to hear that. But if you're behind a mask, you might take a deep breath. Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. Much more like, emphasize it. And maybe even more than I just did right now. If you are happy for somebody, you are more than happy when you express it to them from behind a mask. Wow, that's wonderful. Big eyebrow, flash, big eyes. Because it's all happening behind the mask. That's wonderful. And nodding the head and moving. One good place to look at and learn from others is when there are these superhero movies, right? Like Spider man and Deadpool and these sort of things where they have a complete facial covering when they're wearing that full mask. How do they convey emotions? You'll see, especially in those movies that have all the full range of emotions. Fear and sort of jokes and sarcasm and deep concern and empathy. Those characters that are wearing a full mask and express all of those, you can Learn a lot from their acting. Those who are better at it, you can really learn a lot. Deadpool, Spider man, even some of the Star wars movies, right, where people have like sort of expressionless masks on. How do they still convey emotion? Look at their body language and look at how they exaggerate things. And so exaggerate the emotion from behind a mask. Exaggerate the emotion when you're on stage. What's the point of all this? Why am I bringing this up? The thing about changing a behavior or improving a skill is that you need to have deliberate practice. And while everyone else is complaining about the mask, everyone's, oh, you know, what it does to the ears and what it does. And it's uncomfortable and I'm having trouble breathing and I feel like people don't see me. People don't see that. You know, they're complaining about all the stuff about wearing a mask. The fact is, while you're wearing it, why not look at that as an opportunity? It's an opportunity to improve your public speaking skills by simply focusing on these three things. Anytime you want to improve a skill, you need to practice. And anytime you want to practice, it's not just practicing and doing it over and over again. People sometimes have this sort of misconception that the more you do something, the better you are at it. That's not necessarily the case. The more you do something, the more you do it that way. But the fact is you need to practice very deliberately. Shaquille o' Neal is sort of known for not being great at free throws or foul shots from basketball, right? Spectacular basketball player, no question. Gifted athlete. Gifted at the sport, but couldn't make foul shots. Why? Because he was practicing. He shot more foul shots than anyone that. That will ever watch this video and probably anyone that will ever watch this video combined. He shot more foul shots. But why just by shooting more foul shots, does it make you better at them? It's the technique. It's how. What I'm suggesting to you is to have deliberate practice, deliberate practice of those three things. Voice, volume, pitch, tone, cadence, the words you use so that the words express the emotion and. And over exaggerating your emotions Every time you're wearing a mask, say, I'm going to practice these three things. Or pick one and say, I'm just going to try to say the words in a way that expresses the meaning of the word. Then just do that while you're wearing the mask. The whole time you're wearing a mask instead of focusing on the fact that you're uncomfortable or it looks silly or you should have worn the other one or it's, you know, whatever, why are we doing this thing? Or is this really working? Or whatever your thoughts are on these things? Instead of doing that, focus on how can I use this to improve how can I use this to improve my skills of rapport and engagement and in turn, public speaking?

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