TJ Walker says nervous presenters speak too softly, which makes audiences reach for their phones instead of listening. Fix it by rehearsing on video, testing in your actual room with someone there, and deliberately speaking about 15% louder while varying your pace and pausing for emphasis.
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So how do you make sure you're not speaking too loudly or too softly when you're giving a presentation? Because either extreme can affect your audience's ability to hear you, to understand you, to process you. So volume is essential. Well, here's the number one problem most people have with volume is they stand up to speak, and without realizing it, they're nervous, they're tense, their body tightens up, their muscles tighten up, tense up, their vocal cords tense up. And all of a sudden they think they're doing fine and as loud as ever, but their volume is so low the audience can't hear them. Or the audience has to really strain to hear them. The audience has to work to hear them. Guess what? Your audience doesn't want to do any work for you. They want you to work for them. If you make it hard for your audience to hear you, they've got a plan B. Everyone has a plan B these days. It's called reaching into your pocket, pulling out your cell phone. And maybe I'm not going to listen to something on TikTok, but I can read text, I can read emails, I can read comments from friends. If you're going to make my life difficult by speaking too soft. So that's the number one problem most people have with volume. It's speaking too, too softly. Now, there's a very easy way to correct for that. The number one way to figure out if you're speaking loudly enough is you have to rehearse what you're saying on video multiple times. Watch yourself and then listen. Ask yourself, does this person sound like they're using the full range of their voice? Do I have to strain to listen? If the answer is, yeah, I've got to strain to listen, you have not speaking loud enough, do another practice where you're speaking a little louder than usual, Keep doing it until you really like how you sound. Now, the next way is to test in front of a real audience. If it's an important presentation, an important speech, and you're speaking in a conference room in your organization or at your school or your city town hall, and it's tomorrow and you're going to be speaking to 50 people, why not do an actual rehearsal there today? Find one person, a friend, have them sit in the back of the room, give your whole presentation, and then ask them, how did I sound? If they say, well, I couldn't quite hear you, you got a problem, you need to speak louder. Here's the issue for the vast, vast majority of humanity is we are programmed to feel nervous Speaking in front of people as a defense mechanism. Adrenaline is going through our body telling us to run away. But you can't do that without looking like a fool. It's tightening your body, it's bringing your volume down. If you want to be more successful, then improve your communication skills. The best way to do that, smash the subscribe button right now. So the number one thing you can do to solve that is to speak a little bit louder than normal, a little more energy than normal. When you are giving a speech, a presentation, a talk, a briefing, it won't sound like you're yelling at people. You'll simply sound more confident. You'll be easier to hear, you'll be easier to listen to. So that's my number one piece of advice to you and most people, is intentionally boost your volume. Maybe 15%. Something that feels a little bit out of your comfort zone. In my experience, when I ask clients to do that and we record it on video and they finish, I said, well, how did that feel? They'd be like, well, that felt ridiculous. I just did that for practice rehearsal because you said so, but I'm sure it looks ridiculous. We then watch the video and the response is, well, looks pretty good, sound pretty good. I sound normal. So your perception of how loud you are is quite often very different from how you actually came across to other people and even to yourself if you're watching yourself and hearing yourself on video. So please, please be aware of that. The biggest problem with speaking too softly is it makes you monotone. If all of a sudden you're talking like this and everything comes out at the same volume, it's not just that it's lower volume and harder to hear, although that is a huge problem. It's that it's making you more monotone. And because it's making you monotone, it's making you boring. And if you're boring people again, everybody these days has a plan B at all times. Pulling out their cell phone, checking sports scores, checking the weather for tonight, checking texts from friends. So we simply don't have the luxury of speaking in that lower volume and being monotone. And when you come across as monotone, you seem like you're lacking in confidence. We are conditioned to, as human beings, to not believe somebody, even if what they're saying is great advice, accurate advice, actual information. We're conditioned not to believe you if you seem like you're not confident. For example, I could have said everything I've said so far in a video, but if I said it like this, looking down with low energy. You wouldn't believe me. You wouldn't find me confused. Incredible. So realize you've got to unlock the power of your voice. It does not mean you have to speak with a low rich resident. You don't have to lower your voice. You want to use the full range of your voice. Go high occasionally to make a point. You want to use the full range of your voice. And that's the problem, once you lower the volume is you lose all the range, all the musicality of your voice. You're no longer doing the highs, the lows. Typically, it even affects your speed. When you lower the volume, quite often the speed becomes consistent because all of a sudden you're kind of talking like this and everything is going through the same process. It's boring. So focus first and foremost on boosting your volume and making sure you use the full range of your voice. That's going to make you easier for your audience to understand, easier for them to pay attention, easier for them to take the actions you want. Now, is it possible that you go too far? The other extreme? Of course it's possible. And in fact, it can be annoying to be two feet in front of someone. You're in a small room with four people and the presenter is up talking like this, like it's a kindergarten room with 30 kids in the class. And it's too loud. And what some people do is they not only speak too loud, but they speak in a flat way where it's monotone. They sound almost like they've memorized something. It's too consistently loud. So that is a real danger. The way to solve it is you need to practice on video in advance and watch yourself. Because if you are speaking too loud and annoying, it's going to be obvious to you. You've seen people do it before. You know what you don't like. It's going to be very easy to turn the dial down from 11 to 7 or 8. So it's not a mystery. You don't have to wonder about it. Practice in advance on video to detect your volume. Now it's okay to be a little louder than the average person. Again, it's about variation. If you're allowed one minute, be softer, next, pause more. What people do with their voices, who are really effective communicators, is there's constant change. Sometimes louder, sometimes softer, sometimes faster, sometimes slower, and sometimes pausing. You want to pause. That's one of the most effective things you can ever do with your voice, believe it or not, is to not use it occasionally, it's punctuation for your presentation allows people to think about what you just said, allows people to digest what you said. It allows people to have an interior dialogue with you and what you said by pausing. So don't be afraid to do that. So you want to use the right volume, but remember, it's not a consistent right volume. It's a whole range of loud and soft, fast and slow, racing occasionally, and pausing. That is the most effective way to get the right range of volumes for your next presentation.
