Five Ways to Improve the Delivery of Your Message

How you deliver your message is essential for your audience to hear, react and process your message.  Here are 5 tips to improve the delivery of your message.

1. Speak with a powerful, mature voice. Speaking on a full breath of air will give you a voice that can be heard and a full breath of air will slightly lower your voice.  Your voice will now exude knowledge and confidence.
2. Stand up straight. Good posture allows you to take a full breath and projects confidence.  Even if you do not feel confident, stand up straight, shoulders back and use an inner dialogue that says, “I can do it!”
3. Smile! Smiling helps you feel happier, adds energy to your voice and shows your audience that you enjoy the topic of your presentation.  Smiling engages audience members.  Be sure to smile at other speakers to show your support too.
4. No Up Speak! Deliver your message using confident statements that use a falling inflection.  Falling inflection means that we start the sentence at a slightly higher pitch and the pitch falls over the sentences.   We sound nervous and apprehensive about our content when we speak with a rising inflection pattern –a questioning inflection when we make statements.  Remember, you are the expert on your topic!  Present your information with confident, falling inflection statements.
5. Reflect critically on your speech pattern—does your audience accurately and easily understand you? Research has found that when we listen to speech that differs from ours we need longer time to process the information, remember less and fatigue sooner.   Many additional strategies can improve your speech, and some skills may be learned to neutralize your accent so that you will be accurately understood.