Perfecting Your Message
Communication is all about what your message is and how it is received by your audience. However, what you intend to say and what your audience actually hears can be two different things. This is why understanding how you can strategically use your body language and adjust your tone of voice to perfect your message is key to becoming a strong communicator.
So how do you use body language and tone of voice to perfect your message?
1. Hand Gestures
Do you know someone who talks with their hands all of the time? Or perhaps you know someone who doesn’t use their hands at all. Part of perfecting your message is making sure that your hand gestures align with what you are trying to say.
Your gestures should be intentional, well thought out, and engaging so that it can have maximum impact.
Using the right gestures can help you convey a variety of feelings and thoughts. Especially now that many people are working remotely, learning to use your hands while speaking during a video call is important. You don’t want to use it too much as that can be distracting, but you also don’t want your hands to be stuck to your sides, which can make you appear stiff and nervous. Variety is key.
Your hand gestures is there to help your audience understand the intent and impact of your message.
2. Listening
Sarcasm. Facetiousness. Satire. Irony. These are all examples of the way the sound of your voice, the tone of your voice can change what you actually mean.
One of the biggest ways to perfect your message is to make sure that your tone of voice matches what you are trying to convey.
Having an amazing speech, presentation, or pitch will not be effective or impactful if your tone of voice is off. In fact, your tone of voice can be the number one reason someone decides to pass on your idea or suggestion.
One of the easiest ways to make sure you are using the right tone of voice is to speak slower so you become more self-aware:
- Does your tone of voice match the energy of what you are saying?
- Does your tone match the heaviness or lightness of your message?
- Does your tone of voice change and create ebbs and flows that take your audience on a storytelling journey?
- Does your tone of voice seem authentic to you and your message?
- What do your friends and colleagues think about your overall tone?
If you can answer these questions and make adjustments to your tone, your message will be received the way you intended it to be.
3. Practicing
Sometimes applying the right gestures, body positions, and tone of voice doesn’t feel easy. That’s okay! That’s where practicing becomes so important. This means testing out the different tonal functions and hand gestures to find the ones that are most comfortable to you. In other words, finding what is authentic.
You may feel a bit silly testing out different tones and gestures, but this will help you perfect your message. The beauty of practicing is you can do it from the privacy of your own home where no one can hear or judge you.
When you are practicing – putting the right gestures together with your intended tone of voice, your message will become much more impactful and powerful.
__
Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways we can help you:
- Discover your communications style so you know where to start. Over 4,000 people have found theirs here.
- Attend our monthly communication workshop to build communications confidence (new topics: public speaking, advocating for yourself, building credibility, etc) here.
- Get your brand in front of 43k+ people by sponsoring our newsletter or Soulcast Media | LIVE LinkedIn events [contact: hello@soulcastmedia.com]
