Are you boring in the boardroom? Here’s how to correct that.

Have you ever been told that you’re boring in the boardroom?

You’re standing there giving your best presentation, you’re fully rehearsed, you know exactly what you’re going to say, but you haven’t prepared your voice. You may have prepared your presentation but maybe you haven’t presented the information in an interesting and dynamic way. Simply put: you’re boring.

So many people, especially in business these days, they misuse, abuse or under use their voice and the most common thing in the boardroom that I find with my clients is they sound boring.

Have you ever heard people say that somebody sounds monotone? When somebody sounds monotone, it just means that they’re not using enough melody in their voice. They’re not using enough notes to make their voice sound interesting.

I’m going to show you a little bit today about your voice and how important it is to use more than one note.

Today, I’m going to show you how to use your voice in a way that you don’t bore people in the boardroom and it’s called prosody.

When you look at a musical instrument like this, here we have a guitar. And when you play the guitar, it’s a bit wonky and out of tune, this one, it’s got many, many colours that you can hear in a guitar. The great thing about an instrument, and especially this instrument, it’s so beautiful. When you listen to someone play, if they’re standing on the corner being a busker, they could be singing something that’s Australiana. They could be doing rock. They could be doing blues. They could be playing jazz. They could be singing musical theatre. There’s so many different elements to music and when you listen to someone play the guitar, they can finger pick or they can strum. There are so many different things that they can do with their instrument.

Now, why do you think that our voice is any different? Our voice is an instrument and it’s meant to be used in exactly the same way. We’re meant to inspire people and engage them and educate them and teach them about something. That’s what it’s for. Remember: when we’re speaking, we’re not speaking for us. We’re speaking for somebody else. If you’re boring, if you’re boring your audience, you’re not doing your job efficiently. You need to add more prosody.

Let me explain what prosody is, so we’re on the same page here.

If you’ve heard the word “melody” in music, it’s where we go up and down when we’re singing and we change the pitch all the time. Well, that’s exactly what we do with voice. You don’t have to bore people to death in the boardroom and you also don’t have to bore a whole into their head with the same note. All you have to do is use more prosody in your voice, which is musical inflection.

To finish off, I’m going to give you a little exercise that you can start using right now.

Start exercising that melody in your voice, so you can start getting some more interest in your sound and stop putting people to sleep. Because I’m sure that what you have to offer in this world is very important. It’s your job to share your message, and if you’re boring, your message is not going to get across, they’re not going to hear it and they’re going to be fidgeting and not paying attention.

All of us want to share our message with the world, and of course, when it’s your job, you want to stand in the boardroom and deliver the best speech possible to your staff and your manager. You want to do a good job. You want to keep your job and you want to be dynamic and engaging, so that people walk away understanding the content and inspired by what you had to say. Here’s a little exercise that I’m going to give you to be able to loosen up the melody and the voice and to really explore that in a big way.

All you’re going to do is pick a sentence. Now, the sentence that I like to use is “I am climbing up the mountain.”

Now, when I’ve done this with my clients that suffer from monotone syndrome, they say this on the same pitch like this: “I am climbing up the mountain,” and they give it a little bit more energy as though the pitch is going up, but it absolutely does not go up. This is how it’s meant to sound: “I am climbing up the mountain. I am climbing down the mountain.” Now, you can realize that that’s way too much melody for the boardroom but some people really need to extend and expand their voice before they can even get to the few notes that they actually need.

Let’s try a little less range. “I am climbing up the mountain. I am climbing down the mountain.” “I am climbing up the mountain. I am climbing down the mountain.” If you just do that, on any sentence or numbers or days of the week, a few times a day, you’ll notice that your voice starts to loosen up and you get more interest in your voice. That’s what you need if you want to do your job more effectively.

I hope that helps! If you’re interested more in-depth training, be sure to check out my Love Your Voice Special, on now until March 31, 2018. In this private, 90-minute session, I’ll work with you to identify your areas of growth, fix your bad vocal habits, and create a personalized blueprint, so that you can create a voice you LOVE.

I’ll see you soon!