{"id":93,"date":"2007-11-20T12:50:30","date_gmt":"2007-11-20T11:50:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elementally.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/2007\/11\/20\/going-down-a-simple-straight-forward-tip\/"},"modified":"2007-11-20T12:50:30","modified_gmt":"2007-11-20T11:50:30","slug":"going-down-a-simple-straight-forward-tip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/going-down-a-simple-straight-forward-tip\/","title":{"rendered":"Going down!  (A simple, straight-forward tip)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Presentations are about making a connection with your audience &#8211; even in business- and this is a tip you&#8217;ll have heard in action: I (almost) guarantee it.  If you were ever read a story at school by your teacher you&#8217;ll have been on the receiving end of this one!  It&#8217;s an advance tip in that you shouldn&#8217;t go for it unless you&#8217;re confident of your technical ability first &#8211; but if you are it&#8217;s really effective.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s also very simple &#8211; <strong>drop your voice<\/strong>.  Just the volume, perhaps the pitch, but <strong>not<\/strong> the &#8220;projection&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Get this right and you create a greater sense of intimacy between you and the people you&#8217;re talking to (think of them as individual people, not an aggregate of people called &#8220;an audience&#8221; and you&#8217;re half way there).  If you can combine the clarity of a fully-fledged speech with the cozy atmosphere of a &#8220;fireside chat&#8221; the effects can be quite startling.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, you can&#8217;t just drop the volume out of the blue because you&#8217;ll not be heard &#8211; you have to make sure of a few other things first or the effect will backfire&#8230;..<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Check the audience are &#8216;on your side&#8217;; if you drop your voice when people aren&#8217;t actively listening to you, all you&#8217;ll do is alienate them because they&#8217;ll feel excluded and won&#8217;t be able to hear you.  They have to be interested <em>before<\/em> you do this<\/li>\n<li>Check that there&#8217;s not too much outside interference; sudden, odd or loud sounds outside your room can be difficult<\/li>\n<li>Check that you&#8217;re breathing <strong>absolutely<\/strong> correctly; any significant breathing in your upper chest will make a dropped voice sound more like a Dalek!<\/li>\n<li>Check that you&#8217;re not stopping <em>projecting<\/em> your voice just because you&#8217;re dropping your volume; you still want people to be able to hear you after all<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&#8230; but if you&#8217;re confident and your audience is ready for it &#8211; go for it.  There&#8217;s nothing more effective than an audience already interested in you and your message really buying into the intimacy of the feeling that it&#8217;s just you and them having a chat&#8230;&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Presentations are about making a connection with your audience &#8211; even in business- and this is a tip you&#8217;ll have heard in action: I (almost) guarantee it. If you were ever read a story at [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-presentation-tips","category-voice-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}