Executive Presence Gets Lost Because You Are Talking Too Fast

Hi Voicepower friends,

Speaking too fast for listeners to keep up, to understand clearly, and definitely too fast for making any sort of lasting connection with your listener is one of the worst speaking problems, second only to mumbling. Slowing your speaking rate cannot be stressed enough. Let me tell you a story.

Marilyn?had been a lawyer with an East Coast insurance firm. She then relocated to a major city in Texas, where she continued to practice law.

At the time, she thought to herself,?this is a big city. I'm now a successful attorney. People here will appreciate my skills in the courtroom. In almost no time, she landed with one the best law firms in town. The next thing she heard, however, unsettled her.

On her first day in court, after presenting her client's case and giving a brief in front of a male judge, a man with a heavy Texas accent, told her, "I'm sorry, little lady. You gotta slow down if you expect me and the jury to understand you."

Number one, Marilyn was shocked to be called the little lady, and two, she was shocked that her fast-talking, which had been prized in the East Coast insurance world, was now being ridiculed in front of the entire courtroom.

I was so shocked, she told me, that I checked in with the head of my law firm, thinking that this particular judge had a bias against woman lawyers from back East. Her boss supported her by saying, "Get help with your speech." It's not a gender thing, it is because he can't understand you. You need to slow down, so the judges will feel more comfortable while you're speaking in court on behalf of your clients.

I told Marilyn, Yes, maybe the judge has a bias against woman lawyers from back East. Who knows! However, as I suggested to Marilyn, you can level the playing field by slowing down and speaking more clearly.?Fast-talking—or what I like to call "data dumping"—is one of the most prevalent bad speech habits today, and it can stop your career.

The reason I call it data dumping is because it implies that the speaker—the person dumping all that data at a mile-a-minute pace to her listeners—is saying all the relevant information on a particular subject as fast as possible and with little regard for her listener and, worse, it's a pattern that implies that the speaker has just as little regard as to whether or not her listener understands her.

In normal conversation, the average American speaker speaks at a rate of about 120-150 words per minute (WPM). To put that in context, book publishers try to get the readers of their audiobooks to clock in at a more chipper 150-160 WPM, and auctioneers generally move at a hasty clip of 250-400 WPM.

Fast talkers have a tendency to shoot themselves in the foot. As Bruna Martinuzzi, a communications coach and founder of Clarion Enterprises, pointed out in a recent blog for American Express, "Talking fast can make what you're saying appear "salesy," as though you're trying to sell something rather than imparting your expertise or knowledge to help someone decide. No one likes to feel that they're being sold to."

Or, in Marilyn's case, "You can have a well-thought-out and beautifully crafted message for your presentation," as Martinuzzi writes, "but if you speak too fast, your audience may miss out on it." Which is what the judge had essentially said. Martinuzzi refers to The Art of Presenting: Your Competitive Edge, by Jim Stovall and Raymond Hull. In it, the authors cite studies showing that people who talk too fast can "speak at speeds exceeding the central nervous system's ability to fully understand what's being said unless we exert some concentrated effort," observes Martinuzzi. "When this happens, the audience might politely nod at what you're saying, but they're not engaged. They have checked out."

Even worse can be the other impressions that fast talking can have on listeners. "It can also," writes Martinuzzi, "make you look impatient, aggressive or even lacking empathy for the listener. You may appear as someone just trying to get a transaction over with as quickly as possible without regard to the other person."

Or it can leave listeners thinking that the fast talker is rushing through their words because they're anxious or insecure. They lack confidence in what they're trying to tell people, so they blast through it as quickly as they can.

What's also common among fast talkers, like Marilyn, is that they don't see—or hear—themselves as talking any faster than anyone else. Sure, they know when someone else is speaking too slowly (or too slowly for them), but they don't necessarily hear themselves as speaking at too fast a clip for other people to hear them.

But to others, fast talkers can be perceived as trying to double-talk a point in order to confuse the audience. In his own perhaps patronizing way, the judge who suggested Marilyn slowdown may have been doing her a favor—not wanting her to be seen as any of the above.

In any case, slowing down one's speaking rate levels the playing field enhances one's communication, and helps build many long-lasting and effective relationships. Speaking at 150 WPM allows people to understand you and to react positively to the non-verbal messages in your voice that powerfully influence and persuade others to your point of view.

Marilyn had never thought of fast-taking in this way and immediately stepped up to the challenge. She slowed her speech, and the positive results in her communication, combined with her enormous legal talent, opened many doors in her career.

A confident, powerful, and persuasive speaker always wants the listener to fully comprehend?the?message.

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For 30 years, Sandra has trained business professionals from the USA, China, India, Africa, Ireland, Japan, and Australia in voice, speech, accent reduction, improvisation, and acting skills. Clients include Intel, JP Morgan, HP, and Genentech.

Warmest Wishes,

-Sandra McKnight

and the Voice Power Studios' Team

voicepowerstudios.com

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