Variety vs Monotony or How to Never Bore Your Audience

Variety and monotony are total opposites. While variety wins the audience over, monotony is boring and an audience killer. It is a destroyer of a quality presentation. Variety is conversational and a natural connector. That’s why I like unscripted speeches. The speaker knows the material and just needs to connect it to the audience.

Speakers who are excited, enthralled and captivated in the moment of a conversation, express a natural variety; whereas a monotonous speaker lacks connection and expression, and instead dulls the listener to sleep.

Vary your speech and vocal patterns, such as pitch, tone, inflection and volume. You might even whisper to get attention, which is far more effective in some cases than raising your voice. Get the oil can out – practice going up and down the scale with your pitch and tone, but only as it is appropriate and supportive of your message. I like to call this “stretching the rubber band”.

Yes, articulate so as to be clearly understood. But, just as valuable is to practice, drill and flush out any inappropriate speech or dialect additives or dull “samenesses”.

Emphasize different parts of you speech, so it is compelling, engaging and exciting. Vary attitude and emotion in terms of telling a story. Use rhythm, pace, tempo and vary the speed of your delivery; slow it down, speed it up; this creates better transitions and segues to the major and minor points you are going to deliver. You can employ phrases such as “Oh, by the way,” or “Did I tell you, or “Incidentally…..” as bridge words and phrases to vary speech.

Humor, comic relief, or an amusing, entertaining story, are effective transitions that will help the speaker illustrate a point. Make each point you express sound new. Emphasize by expressing each thought in a new period of time. Practiced and seasoned politicians often repeat the same speech from one location to another, but make it sound new on each occasion and never give the audience the feeling their message has been said many times before.

Body language, physical movement and gestures create variety and won’t put the audience to sleep. Mix it up – you might burst out with a thought or gesture that will create a surprise wake-up for the audience and prepare them for the next key point. This tool is effective in consistently involving the audience and in maintaining their interest throughout the presentation.

It is said that variety is the spice of life and it certainly is the solution to keeping your presentations alive with zest and an element of surprise, which in turn, relays the genuine sense you are truly in the moment with what you are communicating. Variety dissolves monotony! – use it and your speeches will never be boring.

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Joe Yazbeck, Founder, President, Prestige Leadership Advisors

727 489 2349; [email protected]