In an age when you
apparently need a distinctly regional or ethnic accent to get a job as a
continuity announcer, Prime Ministers drop their aitches and even Royals are
not averse to a touch of ‘Estuary’, the concept of enunciation may seem all
very 1950s. My experience as a Presentation Skills coach, however, suggests
that business people who ignore or struggle with their diction may end up out
of pocket!
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Rex Harrison gets to grips with enunciation in 'My Fair Lady' |
You always need to aim for
absolute clarity when giving a presentation – there is simply no facility to
turn back the page or rewind the tape if you mis-hear or fail to comprehend
a point! So presenters need plain language, short sentences and a rather more
forthright approach than you might adopt in a one-to-one conversation.
You also need to ‘spit
out’ any words that are prone to confusion. Anything with an ‘s’ or a ‘f’, for
instance, can easily be misheard; if your name is Cross of Croft you are
probably aware of this. When it comes the numbers, the problem becomes all the
more acute: 15 can sound like 50 and vice versa; 17 can sound like 70 and so on. That’s why you often hear experienced number
crunchers say the number and then spell it out out eg: “...revenue is up 15% this
quarter – that’s one-five”.
Enunciation
needs to be put back on the agenda for two main reasons. First, we all talk in a more casual way these
days, so we all have the potential to be mis-heard. Second, in an increasingly
data-driven world we are talking numbers more than ever before; and the numbers we are talking are bigger than ever. I was recently helping a client prepare for a
big presentation and he referred to a ‘20 million dollar opportunity’ in what I
considered to be a rather off-hand manner. “Hang on a minute”, I said, “if you have a 20 million dollar
opportunity, then you need to ‘spit that out’ loud and proud and then pause for
a moment to let the notion sink in with the audience”. “Oh no”, he said, “it’s
a 20 billion dollar
opportunity”.
“In that case”, I replied,
“all that I said applies – but multiply it by a thousand”.