What's up everybody? This is Charlie from Charisma on Command and today I'm gonna be
doing another video breakdown, this time on how you can use your voice to captivate attention
and be more charismatic.
So you can see here I have selected Neil deGrasse Tyson to illustrate this point. If you don't
know who he is, he's a science educator and a scientist. He has recently started the show
"Cosmos" and I think something like 8.5 million people watched the first episode, which speaks as
much to the interest behind the public's general interest in science as it does to the ability
that Neil deGrasse Tyson has to captivate people. And I think this video will do a really
good job of showing what it is about him that makes this happen. So I'm gonna go ahead and
play this and you'll hear the question that he's responding to now.
So first thing that I'm gonna highlight here. He's got this silky, smooth Barry White quality
of voice. I can't, I can't even fake that; a lot of people can't. What you can do though
is generally, again, particularly for men, this is gonna be very helpful and for women
as well in some cases. By exercising your diaphragm, by doing diaphragm exercises, which
I don't have time to go into here, but will be in the book or you can just Google "diaphragm
exercises." By doing those, you can actually lower the timbre of your voice in conversation
without stretching to do it and I've been doing singing lessons and I'm seeing personally
a shift in how I sound over different recordings that I've done. So that's the first thing
about him.
The second thing about Neil deGrasse Tyson to notice is how he uses silence and how he
shifts the cadence of his speaking to draw people in, to make them wonder what he's going
to say next. So pay attention to that.
So I want you to notice this. He's got an incredible range of ways that he speaks. When
he says crucibles, he's got a very "breathy" quality to that. You'll notice that he whispers
at times. Whispering when you have someone's full attention is a way to indicate that they
need to listen up, that what you're saying is fascinating and you'll oftentimes see when
people are telling stories and they get to that emotional moment and they have people
right there "the whisper' like this. And as they continue to go on, that draws people
into the story and they switch the cadence up. So pay attention now on how Neil deGrasse
Tyson does that.
So, notice the cadence. At the end of his periods, he doesn't always have that long
pause. In fact when he said, "these stars" it was right on the backend of a previous
sentence. Mixing up the cadence like that, of the way that you speak, keeps people engaged.
So pay attention now to the rhythm on how Neil deGrasse Tyson speaks and how that makes
this even more captivating.
A great example of a couple of very important things to keep in mind. When you're trying
to be more charismatic in the way that you tell stories, or in the way that you use your
voice, the first, and this is true for both men and women, studies have found that a deeper
voice has a more commanding and a more authoritative tone. So the greater that you can do diaphragm
exercises to lower your voice is going to help. You want to breathe from your stomach,
you'll feel it there, as oppose to your chest. So when you take a deep breath, you should
feel the expansion right around your belly and your sides and your back as opposed to
the expansion in your pecs. It's a complicated thing. I talked about that more in the book
and you can read more just by Googling "diaphragm exercises."
The second is that you need to have a range of tonality. You can imagine what this sound
like if I talk like this the whole time and I'm sure you know someone who speaks like
that. A range of tonality is gonna help engage people and a range of cadence too. This is
something I personally am working on right now. That is one of the things that makes
Neil deGrasse Tyson such an engaging speaker is that he sucks you in with those pauses
and puts you almost back on your heels by jumping right back in at unexpected times
with new enthusiasm.
So I hope that's helpful in terms of breaking down charismatic things that you can do when
telling stories and using your voice. If you like this video, we've got other ones on eye
contact, gesticulation. So feel free to check those ones out as well.