Five Reasons Why You Fail at Delivering Your Message (Part 1 of 2)
- Daniel Avinash
- Feb 1
- 9 min read
Updated: May 12
“When I say speak, I don’t mean be heard and clear, but be fully present, connected and engaged with the plays, form and language” Patsy Rodenburg.
If you want to put something out there into the world today, a product, an idea, or even who you are as an individual, you must know how to tell a story. I mean, we all love stories, don’t we? We crave for gossip (yes, that too is a story!). We even tell ourselves stories — some real and some not, and they shape the way we see this world. Professor Howard Gardner of Harvard University describes stories as the single most powerful weapon in a leader’s arsenal. I’d dare say… anyone’s arsenal!
People must first buy into your story, and only then will they embrace your product, idea, or whatever you’re trying to “sell”. Notice I used the word embrace and not purchase. To embrace something requires the element of emotion. The idea must resonate with the listeners values. They must feel a connection to it. Stories, therefore, is the conduit that allows for that emotional connection!
But how exactly do we speak that story? You might have it perfectly worded, but without proper execution and delivery, it might fall short of its intended message. In this blog, I’m not quite interested in the story per se, but rather how we connect through that story. How do we have a conversation with the listener? In this blog, I seek to answer just that!
But I’m not going to lie. It’s not easy and that’s why many fail.
Many speakers speak but do not converse. Many speakers are heard but are not remembered.
There is hope, however. There are methods you can practice and then subtly deploy to get the audience’s attention bearing in mind to not over do it. There are ways to deeply connect with them. It’s simply a fine juggle between your story and the way you deliver it. I’m going to now share with you five ways that will help you move away from giving a "presentation" to a having a "conversation". Big difference!
Not engaging your audience
Not dramatising yourself enough
Not being yourself - Creative & Free
Not adapting to your audiences needs
Not being clear with your message
Also, you will notice I use the word “speaker” and “storyteller” interchangeably at times. Because I believe that
a good speaker has to be a good storyteller, and a good storyteller must be a good speaker. They are quite inseparable! Remove one, and you might be good… but not great.
1. Not engaging your audience
From the start!
If you want to be a good speaker, you must understand the art of engaging the audience from the start. The very moment you walk onto stage, the moment the curtains open, or the moment you've been introduced by the host, your performance has begun! Command their attention from the beginning. No fidgeting with your script or pretending to look busy or humbly nervous. No testing of your mic going “hello… hello can you hear me at the back” nonsense. Just get straight into the performance! You have 7 seconds to make an impression. Don’t waste it on a mic check.
Breathe
To engage your audience, you’ll need to be mentally present with your audience. How? One way is to simply breathe! Unless we practice yoga or some ancient meditative practive, most of us have forgotten the art of breathing.
Breathing centre’s your mind and body. It sharpens your focus and grounds you on where you are, what you’re doing, and why you’re doing it.
You certainly DON’T want to live up to that gaming slogan seen on the London Underground that goes,
“Wherever you are, be somewhere else”
When presenting, you must be fully present with your audience, mind, body, and soul connecting and resonating with them.
Hand gestures
“Do not saw the air too much with your hand… but use all gently… and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special purpose that you o’erstep not the modesty of nature…” Hamlet III, ii, Shakespeare
Your hand gestures also play a part in drawing the audience into your story. The late Harry Johnson from the London College of music states that gesture should be as naturally performed as speech should be naturally uttered. Gestures influence the inflections of your voice and makes it more melodious and interesting to listen to. It grabs the listeners attention.
Let’s try it! You’ll have to record yourself for this experiment. Just use your mobile phone. You may not like what you hear in the recording but that’s ok; it isn’t the point of this exercise. Once you’ve placed the phone on a table and pressed record, drop your hands to the side and say the line
“I walked over the bridge to meet James while holding a basketball”.
Now say the line again but this time, use your hands to express all the action verbs in the sentence, like “walked” and “holding”. Point far away for the word “over” and bring your palms facing each other as though holding a ball, and so on.
Did you notice anything different in the two recordings? Did you notice any difference in your articulation and word emphasis? It’s ok if you didn’t. My point is, if you consciously attempt to articulate properly and make your speech more melodic in nature, gesturing (and facial expressions) might help you achieve that much faster.
2. Not dramatising yourself enough
Musicality in speech wasn’t my forte. It is now! What I’ve learnt is that a dramatised voice is what makes heads turn and want to listen to you. Even if they aren’t keen on the topic, they’ll still listen for the sake of entertainment. And when onstage, it’s quite alright to overdo it a little.
Overdo the melody
Overdoing the melody is quite alright as long you don’t do melody-on-steroids. It must be within context, then pushed slightly more when on stage. I’ve heard the great British actors Sir Ian McKellen and Sir Patrick Stewart do it with ease in the comedy play Waiting for Godot.
Unless of course the situation requires pushing the melody beyond normal like when speaking to a group of children or when narrating a children’s story like what I’ve done in Cinderella and Robert Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses. It’ll be interesting to note that my reading of Cinderella has a childish type of melody while the other a more mysterious type of melody.
Over articulate
Over articulating words are fine because the audience is quite some distance from you. Over doing it will balance it out by the time your voice reaches them. If you under articulate your words, they may be understood at the first or if you’re lucky, second row of seats — the folks who can see your lips moving clearly. Remember, part of the performance is them seeing you and feeling you fill the entire space. Otherwise, they’ll feel cut off from you. Eventually, they’ll disconnect from you and connect to the local Wi-Fi and your voice will fall into the background of their Uber dinner arrangements.
People cast with their eyes as much as with their ears.
How do you over-articulate? My advice is pay special attention to the vowels.
The vowels allow for ‘emotion’ to emerge while consonants are the ‘intellect’.
To get an idea of what I’m talking about, just listen to British actor Chiwetel Ejiofor speak in a large auditorium and realise how he’s very so slightly over-articulating his words. You’ll have to pay close attention because he’s a professionally-trained actor and throws in only what’s needed to be understood.
On a side note, notice he’s also speaking a tad bit slower. By slowing down he’s working with the natural echo in the hall rather than fighting it. I’ll cover this in Point 6: Timing & Pace.
Now watch an interview of him on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
At the start of the interview, they play an introductory clip from the movie The Man Who Fell To Earth and you’ll notice there as he speaks to Sonya Cassidy, his voice moves low, resonating primarily in his chest, he leans slightly forward, maintains occasional eye contact to show he’s thinking (although it’s all scripted), mellows on articulation yet remaining exceptionally clear.
We then observe during the actual interview with Stephen Colbert, his tone goes slightly up and resonates in his nasal region that naturally improves vocal projection so Colbert can hear him clearly, and he doesn’t over-do the articulation. He sits relaxed and has a conversation.
In these two clips, we observe how he adjusts this voice and speech patterns to three different situations:
Public. Social. Intimate.
So, there’s no one size fit’s all approach to speech patterns. You’ll have to adapt depending on your situation.
3. Not being yourself - creative & free
Become a child! Think like one. I dreadfully need to remind myself to loosen up my body, mind, and most difficult, my voice.
I was a creative thinker. Then I grew up.
My 7-year-old daughter is amazingly creative. Unlike me, she has no inhibitions or formalities in her thinking. She just uses her uninhibited imagination and draws the most abstract image, or speaks freely about almost anything on her mind. She’s not afraid to imagine and be herself.
Almost all children can do this without training, until their parents tell them to sit-up, shut-up, and grow-up".
Many parents, especially the conservative Asian ones like mine, bury their children’s creativity with all the formalities and mental inhibitions they dump on them while growing up. By the age of 10, they put on a different persona. They’ve forgotten how to freely express themselves. They end up disconnecting with their primal self. That primal voice and free-imagination they once had as a child. They then pay thousands of dollars to unlearn all those mental barriers and relearn what they once naturally possessed.
Creativity requires you to connect with your primal self — your primal voice — your primal instincts. The original who you are!
Only once you’ve torn down the walls of inhibition can you find your voice. You’ll find your buried persona and suppressed emotions. When you find your voice, you’ll find yourself.
4. Not adapting to your audiences needs
When you perform, you’ll rarely have one type of audience. There would usually be differences in age, varying levels of understanding of the topic spoken of, and diverse cultural groups. An adaptable speaker can tailor their content to the needs of all these people. Of course you can’t please everyone all the time, but finding a middle ground and balancing the tone, complexity, and themes of the story to resonate at different frequencies for different groups is, I believe a possibility.
Not everyone will understand everything. But if some can understand something, it’s better than “the some” not understanding anything.
Depending on the context and audience, an adaptable storyteller can pull the audience into the scene by shifting the tone of their storytelling — from humorous to somber, lighthearted to serious, adjusting their pace, energy, emotional delivery depending on the situation.
5. Not being clear with your message
For just a moment, I’m going to veer off the topic of speech “delivery” and touch on the actual “content” because I think this one’s quite important.
Coherence, flow & distractions
If your content is incoherent and difficult to follow, it’ll fail to deliver the intended message. The audience will perfectly understand your individual sentences but not grasp and connect to the overall message. Remember,
a good speech is coherent and well-structured. It must flow logically from one point to the next. There must be a rhythmic, an almost poetic flow to its composition.
For example, Shakespeare and many great poets write mainly in what is called iambic pentameter which makes their work so beautiful to read and be listened to. If it helps, try to think of your speech like a song. Not just a bunch of un-flowing sentences stacked one over the other and delivered dramatically!
You’ll want to avoid unnecessary jargon, eliminate distractions, such as unclear descriptions, vague references, or inconsistent pacing. As mentioned above, there needs to be a flow from one point to the next. Never leave the audience guessing unless it’s intentional and you clearly know what you’re doing. If you’re new to public speaking, just avoid this altogether.
But Hollywood does it! Well, moving picture is different. Movies have visuals, sound effects and a professional crew to ensure the message gets across. Furthermore, movies have about two hours to deliver the message. You only have you, yourself, your voice, your body, and probably about 15 minutes if you’re lucky. So be practical and realistic!
Eliminate junk information: KISS
Ask yourself:
Who’s your audience?
Do they really care about such details?
Does the detail add any value to their lives?
Do I want to sound intelligent or get a simple message across?
Will they even remember all this extra detail?
A great mindset to have is,
KISS: Keep It Simple Stupid
Note that the word “simple” is a relative term. For example, presenting a new groundbreaking method of cardiac surgery to a group of cardiologists will be considered “simple” to them but not as simple if you are presenting it to a group of first year doctors. They are all doctors but differ in levels of proficiency. Again, we are back to the first question of who is your audience? Based on that, just KISS!
Regardless, you can’t go wrong if you make the entire session fun, interactive, and relatively simple to follow.
And it’s a win-win! You get their attention, and they get the information! Everybody’s happy!
As the former AT&T presentation research manager, Ken Haemer said,
“designing a presentation without an audience in mind is like writing a love letter and addressing it ‘to whom it may concern.’”
till we meet next…
Becoming a confident speaker is a journey, not a destination. You’ll need daily persistence to remove bad habits and invite in the new ones. In my next blog, I’ll dive into five more points to help you refine your skills even further to truly own the stage.
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