Beat That Monotone (I)

Are you monotone?

There's nothing wrong with monotone except that it's boring. Studies show monotone is the No. 1 thing that your audience can't stand.

Whether you are giving me a presentation, or leading a team, you have to overcome it. A monotone voice shows no enthusiasm and interest in what you are talking about, even though it might not be the case. If your audience, be it one or a group, can not hear your interest in your topic, they are not going to be interested either. How are you going to engage, persuade and motivate them?

You might have read a list of tips on how to overcome monotone. It didn't seem to work well, however. In fact, I've never believed those tips. They told you to vary your volume, pitch, speech rate, etc. The problem is, do you really spend time marking on your script where you will increase your volume or raise your pitch and where you'll drop them? Even worse, most people don't even have scripts before they talk anywhere anytime. Moreover, it will sound fake when you do mark out and talk that way.

Interestingly, almost all my clients found them monotone when they talk to a group while in real life they could be very interesting people. Are you in the same boat? You are not alone.

You are not born with monotone. Think about the last time when you were sharing something you love, it could be sports, a movie, etc. or something that made you sad or angry. Were you monotone? The likelihood is pretty low.

Then why did you become monotone when you were talking in front of an audience? The main reason is nervousness. We won't discuss how to overcome nervousness here as we've featured it before.

We'll take a look at some other effective means to beat that monotone besides overcoming your nervousness.

• Get into Your Topic

Own your material. Know your topic inside and out. Internalize your topic.

I can't tell you how many times I've heard presentations that just don't belong to the presenters. I can hear obviously there's a mental space between the presenter and the topic. Most likely, the presenters don't like the topic and didn't spend time and energy making it their own.

Even if you don't like what you present, you have to think for the audience, the people to whom you'll talk. You are there for them. You are there to give them valuable information. When you have that in mind, you'll be more concerned about what and how they are going to get value from you.

For example, if you want your audience to take home three major points. You have to highlight those three points, make them stand out and get your audience attention when you come to these three points.

You'll be sure to pause before you state the point and maybe even increase your volume. Why? Because you care and you don't want them to miss the point.