by Peter Meyers
A raise in pitch is the way we signal empathy and excitement. This is a particularly good technique for men in management who need to express empathy or concern in dealing with an emotional topic. Women tend to use the higher register, or what we call the “head voice,” meaning that they tend to be automatically perceived as empathetic. To signal authority, women should develop the ability to drop their pitch when needed.
The idea is to be flexible, and able to vary your pitch to match your meaning. There is no right pitch or wrong pitch; the only mistake is to fail to vary your pitch. A constant high note will lose its impact and become annoying. A constant low note will signal a lack of warmth and emotion. It’s not a question of which note to play, but of whether you can create a variety in your range that paints a rainbow of emotion. Think of changing your tone to create distinctions between different ideas.
Give yourself permission to go further up and down the scale than you normally would. How high can you go up, and how low can you drop down? For women, cultivate the chest voice—these are the darker vocal tones: the burgundies and chocolates. For men, it’s important to develop the lighter tones: the blues, pinks, and yellows.
Tempo is the speed at which you speak. Again, the only way to get tempo wrong is to fall into one single speed.
The speed at which you speak conveys levels of excitement or emphasis. If you’re speaking at a good pace, the places where you slow down convey to the listener that what you’re about to say is important. If you speak slowly the entire time, however, the listener will check out after about eight seconds. We believe that nobody speaks too fast. The brain can process auditory information much faster than you can speak. What we often call “too fast” is actually a problem of rhythm. If you don’t find the natural pauses in your thoughts, they won’t have a chance to absorb the meaning. And if we mash our ideas and words together into one ongoing running sound, the result is monotony.
We shape the thoughts with our rhythm. As long as you create blocks of meaning so that the listener can absorb and digest an idea, you can talk very quickly and still be understood. To direct focus in a sentence, slow down. You can speed through the parts that are less important, and slow down to make your most critical point. Fast is not bad; slow is not good. What’s important is to vary the speed. There are times to speak quickly, and times to slow it down. It’s the extremes that are interesting. To hold the listener’s attention over a long period of time, imagine that you’re a cabdriver in Rome—go fast, go slow, slam on the brakes. Experiment with your speed to avoid predictability.
The pause is not just the absence of speech—it’s an intentional part of your vocabulary. It’s like a powerful secret weapon that almost no one dares to use. Why? Most people are afraid that if they pause, either (1) they will look like they don’t know what they’re going to say next; (2) someone will interrupt them; or (3) they will lose momentum. But an effective pause actually creates more momentum. It is created by building to a point, like the moment of stillness before a high dive.
You lead up to the pause with tempo, pitch, and volume. Bring the listener to the edge of what you’re going to say—and hold for a moment. You’re essentially teasing the listener in such a way that they become interested in what you’re going to say next. “There’s one thing I’d like to share with you guys” . PAUSE. It creates a quality of curiosity. The pause is where you create space for the other person to have an experience. That’s where discoveries are made.
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MASTER TIP: Communication occurs in the silence. Use the pause.
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In singing, phrasing refers to the breaths or “stops” between notes. Phrasing helps a singer make sense of a song, and avoid awkward pauses for breath. It’s the same when you’re speaking. When we phrase, we cluster a group of words together because they make more sense together than apart. Sometimes in phrasing, we deliberately separate some words to emphasize them. This creates a kind of musicality of ideas, without which it is difficult for the listener to understand what we’re saying. When you’re phrasing effectively, you finish an idea all the way to the end, allowing your voice to put together the ideas in clusters. When you separate a word or two out for emphasis, do it deliberately. (You can download examples of phrasing at standanddelivergroup.com.)
Meet our two Italian cousins, staccato and legato. These are musical descriptions that indicate how long you hold on to the sound. Staccato is short and quick; legato is long and fluid. In staccato, each note gets its own emphasis, or value. It can be used to punch out key words in the phrase: “Yes we can.” Staccato can be very powerful, but will drive your listener crazy if you carry on too long. In legato, one word flows into the next, instead of each word standing on its own, like, “I have a dream . ” Generally legato is easier to listen to, but will lull a listener into a stupor after a while. Again, the key: VARIETY. Never get stuck doing one thing all the time. Try to make the words sing.
An operative word is the word in any phrase that gets emphasis, and allows the listener to understand what you’re trying to say. Like using a highlighter to pick out the most important word, you can alter the entire meaning of a sentence by changing the operative word. “Do you want to go to the dance with me?” is a different sentence from “Do you want to go to the dance with me?”
Pick a phrase and experiment with altering the operative word. The nuance of the sentence shifts when you change the stress on the words. The only wrong choice is making no choice at all. In the beginning, this may feel forced and unnatural. Eventually, like all techniques, it will fade into habit as you use it. Once you become aware of operative words, you will naturally hit the ones that are important. The critical thing is to become conscious of which words you are stressing.
You can practice vocal variety in the following ways:
READ BEDTIME STORIES TO YOUR KIDS. Isolate the vocal qualities of volume, pitch, and tempo, and practice using them one at a time as you read to your children. Tonight, try varying only your volume as you read: up and down, crescendo and decrescendo. Pick out certain words and make them very loud, or very soft. Pay attention to the way you can change the meaning by changing the volume. Tomorrow, try working only with pitch. Vary your pitch, running up and down the scale. The next night, work only with tempo, practicing staccato, legato, and pauses. Then start combining the three. Bedtime will never be the same!
READ A BOOK OUT LOUD TO YOURSELF. Pick a favorite book by some wonderful thinker, like Ralph Waldo Emerson, and read it out loud for a half hour per week. Ask yourself how you can give life to the thoughts. Imagine that you are playing classical music with your voice; find pleasure in the sound of the words. Linger on the notes.
TRAIL AN AUDIO CD. Trailing is a learning technique in which you learn by following an expert. On the tennis court, the fastest way to improve is to play with a pro. Most of what we learn, we learn by seeing someone else do it, and then we make it our own. Imitation is the best way to learn. So, while you’re driving in your car, put in an audio CD of some speaker whose voice you particularly admire. Talk along with it, mirroring the sounds a split second after you hear them. If you feel crazy doing this, put an earpiece in, and pretend you’re talking on the phone. Any CD that you enjoy will do; the content is less important than the voice of the person reading it. This exercise is not about adopting someone else’s accent, or imitating someone; the point here is to jump-start your vocal technique by stretching yourself as you mirror a master.
A few suggested audiobooks to try:
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot, read by Cassandra Campbell. Riveting nonfiction about the history of genetics, medicine, and racial politics, told through the story of the woman who unknowingly donated her genes to science. Chosen by the New York Times as one of the best books of 2010.
• The Reader, by Bernhard Schlink, read by Campbell Scott. Beautifully written and moving best-selling fiction: a May-September romance, mystery, suspense, an
d World War II.
• Four Blondes, by Candace Bushnell, read by Cynthia Nixon. Guilty-pleasure chick lit, read with wry sophistication by Nixon.
• The Harry Potter series, by J. K. Rowling, read by Stephen Fry. A not-to-be-missed rendition of this children’s classic, read by that British master of all voices, Stephen Fry.
READ POETRY TO YOUR PARTNER. On the way home from work tonight, stop off and buy a copy of Twenty Poems of Love by Pablo Neruda. Poetry is candy for the voice, and you’ll have the added benefit of creating some serious romance!
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PETER
When I was at the University of Southern California, the famous John Houseman was running the drama department. I went to see him, and said, “Mr. Houseman, I want to be a director. Where should I go to study?”
“My dear boy,” he said in his English accent, straightening his bow tie, “if you want to be a director, whatever you do, don’t go to graduate school.”
“But how will I learn?” I said.
“The same way everyone else has learned,” Houseman said. “Go and watch a master. That is how painters learn to paint, how sculptors learn to sculpt. You won’t learn in a classroom. Great artists have always found someone to follow. Find someone to watch and build on his wisdom.”
So, that’s exactly what I did. If it was good enough for John Houseman, it was good enough for me.
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5
POSTURE AND MOVEMENT
THE ART OF delivery is learning to use your body in a way that is congruent with your message.
Congruence is defined as “the state achieved by coming together; the state of agreement.” In communication, this means that your words, face, body, and eyes are all in a state of agreement—they’re saying the same thing at the same time. When human beings act with integrity, we look congruent. Congruence equals trust.
When suspects tell lies under questioning, the police look for a lack of congruence: something in their voice, eyes, and body that doesn’t match up. Our brains subliminally record these tiny incongruent movements and register them as a general sensation of mistrust. “There was just something about his eyes—I don’t know why, but I just had a funny feeling about him,” victims will report afterward.
Here’s the problem: when you’re onstage, in the grip of an amygdala hijack, the fear ripping through your body can make you incongruent. When you say, “I’m confident that we can do this,” you may believe wholeheartedly in what you’re saying—but your chin is wrinkled up because you’re terrified. The audience is going to register a lack of authenticity in what you’re saying, because your words and your face don’t match. If you say, “I’m really excited to be sharing this with you today,” and your arms are folded across your chest, your words and your body are saying two different things—and the audience will distrust you, without knowing why. How do you solve this problem? We will offer you some long-term solutions to conquering your fear in Part Three of this book, which is all about mastering your state. But for the moment, let’s focus on some immediate recommendations for working with body language.
Some presentation trainers will teach you to make a certain gesture at a certain time. We don’t. We believe that your body has been accompanying your words with appropriate gestures for nearly as long as you’ve been alive—it’s perfectly capable of doing a great job. All you have to do is to get out of your own way and allow your body to line up with the meaning of your words. As Shakespeare said, “Suit the action to the word, the word to the action.”
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MASTER TIP: Make your body congruent with your words.
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The good news is that no special equipment or training is needed. You’ve been doing this right since you were a baby. You simply have to allow your natural impulses to come through, joined to an awareness of technique. Culture informs nuances of distance, gesture, and style. But there are universal core principles of stagecraft that you can learn to use to your advantage.
SPEAKING TO A CROWD
Speaking from a stage is the most powerful—and for most people, the most terrifying!—position for a speaker. This is the place from which elections are won, and history is made. Here are a few techniques that will help you master the format, and make you look at ease onstage.
Plan your entrance. When you can control your entrance, enter from stage right, and cross down on a diagonal. Stage right is the speaker’s right, as shown in the diagram below. “Upstage” is the area farthest from the audience. “Downstage” is the closest to the audience.
In Western culture, since we read from left to right, entering from the audience’s left and moving to their right gives you a positive association. In movies, you will often notice that the good guy enters from the audience’s left, while the bad guy comes in from the audience’s right. If you can arrange to be standing in the corner before you come on, you will have a valuable moment to adjust to the lights and eyes of the audience. Find a reason to smile slightly, and begin to make eye connections with the audience as you are walking on, before you reach the podium. This way, by the time that you begin to speak, you’re already engaged with the listeners. An exception to the enter stage right principle: If you have to shake someone’s hand, it’s an advantage to enter from stage left. When you shake, your body will be open to the audience, and the guy standing stage right will have to turn his back on them.
If possible, try to avoid entering from the audience. This is the toughest entrance to make—for the first few seconds, the audience has nothing to focus on but your back and rear end. When you turn around, the impact of the lights and the audience’s eyes will hit you abruptly, triggering an amygdala hijack.
Find the power point. (And we don’t mean the slide program!) Be strategic about where you’re going to stand, if you have a choice. On every stage, there is a power point. It is generally the closest you can possibly be to your listeners, without losing sight of the periphery of the audience—i.e., the last person on the edge of the first row.
There are three basic things you must do before you speak to anybody:
1. STOP. After you’ve entered, hit your mark and stop. Stand still, in heroic neutral (explained on page 123 ) for one beat. It will feel like an eternity. But in that second of stillness, you focus the audience’s attention like a spotlight. More important, it allows you to settle in. You only need one second. But in the absence of that moment, people walk right through their openings without ever really connecting with themselves or their listeners.
2. BREATHE. It’s the thing that every athlete does right before an event—they breathe. As you breathe in, you bring life, energy and intention to your body. This one little move brings brightness to your eyes and prepares your voice to speak.
3. SEE. In the stillness, during the breath, see your listeners and allow them to see you. You are using one of your first seven seconds to send the most important message your listener needs to hear before you begin: “Boy, am I glad to see you.” If you can’t see your audience because of the spotlight, then pretend that you can. Imagine their faces as clearly as possible.
Here are a few of the most common physical symptoms of nervousness —and what you can do about them:
1. SHAKING HANDS. Hold one of the following props: a clicker, pen, book, notebook, or magic marker. This gives your hands something to do. Avoid putting your hands in your pocket or grasping them in front of you, and don’t come out onstage holding a coffee cup or bottle of water—it makes you look too casual. Don’t use a laser pointer. And whatever you do, don’t hold loose papers—that will amplify the shaking effect.
2. SHAKING LEGS. Wear baggy trousers. Really! Avoid wearing skirts or tight-fitting trousers that will accentuate the shaking. Move around; get some circulation going. Your body is being infused with energy for good reason. Find reasons to get out there and burn it up.
3. SWEATING. If you sweat excessively, keep your jacket on and make sure that you have a 100 perc
ent cotton handkerchief handy. No one wants to watch you wait for that drop of sweat to fall off your forehead—so just wipe your forehead when needed.
4. DRY MOUTH. This one is simple: drink water. Make sure there’s water near where you’ll be speaking, and don’t feel self-conscious about pausing for a sip when needed.
5. WAVERING/CRACKING VOICE. To get a steady, consistent sound, you need a certain volume of air moving at a certain velocity over your vocal cords. If your voice sounds strange, it’s a problem with your breath. It’s natural to hold your breath or breathe shallowly as a response to fear. To counter this effect, take deep, full abdominal breaths; this will both sort out the problem with your voice and steady your nerves. For more on abdominal breathing, see Chapter Four: Voice.
6. TURNING BRIGHT RED. There are people—generally with fair coloring—who consistently go bright red onstage. If this happens to you, don’t worry about it! Even though you may feel like you’re glowing, chances are that the audience won’t notice a thing. Just breathe and carry on. If you don’t suffer over it, the audience won’t, either.
Hands
It is instinctive to bring your hands up in front of your body to protect your core when facing a perceived threat, which can lead to speakers adopting some strange body postures onstage.
The problem occurs when you begin your presentation with your hands in one of the following positions. Your hands will nearly always remain trapped there for the whole talk:
1. T. rex —both arms up in front of your chest, hands dangling down, like a dinosaur.
2. Fig leaf —hands cover genitals. Is that really where you want your audience to focus?