Authenticity and your Speaking Style: Episode 14

Find Your Authentic Speaking Style: From Formal to Facilitator

This episode explores how a speaker’s authenticity is connected to their unique speaking style and how to identify it. It suggests starting with outward cues like stage wardrobe (formal vs. informal) and aligning dress with language and delivery to avoid disconnects. 

Jenn outlines four core speaker personas—informative (data-driven), narrative (storytelling/performance techniques), entertainer (physicality, props, magic), and facilitator (co-creating interactive experiences)—and notes people may blend elements of each. 

Jenn also discusses vocal and cultural nuances, especially among women and women of color, including musical cadence influenced by traditions such as church and ministry, along with techniques like vocal fry, upspeak, pitch, and the importance of clear enunciation. She encourages recording and listening to audio to self-assess cadence, pacing, pauses, emphasis, and content balance, then leaning into natural style while practicing new techniques.

Get the free guide to evaluating your presentation skills: www.jennspingo.com/free-guide

Video on vocal techniques unique to women: https://youtu.be/ueVYU6jZ8-Q?si=hDQMOOY5u0IHYOgQ

00:00 Speaking Style and Authenticity

00:45 Dress Sets the Tone

01:54 Informal vs Formal Vibes

04:52 Stage Personas Explained

05:20 Informative and Narrative Types

06:59 Entertainers and Facilitators

09:25 Cultural Cadence and Musicality

10:51 Vocal Habits to Watch

12:13 Enunciation and Self Review

13:40 Key Takeaways and Next Steps

Have a question or suggestion for a future episode topic? Email me jenn@jennspingo.com.

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Looking to book a speaker for your corporate or association event on topics including leadership and communication? View my programs at www.jennspingo.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Is there a connection between your speaking style and your authenticity? Today we're going to focus on what your unique speaking style might be and how that might pertain to how authentic you appear on your next stage. Let's dive right in. For speakers, we have quite a wide variety of speaking styles. And I think most of us have a certain style that we gravitate towards. I know there are certain speakers that I've listened to, and whether they're delivering TED Talks or something different, and I either like them or I don't like them. Today we're not concerned about whether you like a speaker style or not, but here we're going to dive into how to define and identify your own speaking style. Now let's get started with kind of the outer trappings of being a speaker. So when you show up to speak on stage, how do you like to dress? This is a good indicator of how you're going to show up. For example, if you like to wear Sileto heels, a dress, uh, you want to wear something very formal, something you would wear if you were a lawyer, maybe you're wearing a suit and tie, cufflinks, the whole chibang. That could indicate that you're of a more formal or professional type of speaker. Now, that could be something that just goes really well with your content. For example, you might dress that way when you're speaking about a leadership topic or how to build a team, but that's not mutually exclusive. So look to how you prefer to dress as a speaker. Um, there are plenty of speakers these days who are showing up on stage in tennis shoes, whether those tennis shoes are blinged out or sparkly. I even bought one of my own sparkly tennis shoes. Check out my social media if you have not seen them yet. I have not worn them on stage yet. But there is a desire for speakers to show up more informal, and these speakers will reflect it within the language they're using when they're on stage as well. So, what could that sound like? If you show up on stage in a monochrome outfit, such as black t-shirt, black pants, and tennis shoes, or um, you know, very comfortable kinds of shoes, loafers, you might be speaking more informally. So the type of language you would use when you're presenting your topic, regardless of what the topic, might include, you know, bold language, might include fiery language, and I would describe that as cussing or swearing. You might prefer to use jokes or keep the atmosphere lighthearted. I'm not saying that you can't have an informal dress when you go on stage and have a formal presentation style, but that could create a disconnect for you and your audience. So, for example, I'm thinking through to um who's that guy who always wears black when he's on stage. Steve Jobs. I believe it's Steve Jobs. So he'll come on stage with his black monochrome outfit, very understated, very simple, but he's going up there to talk about being a successful business person. He's going up there to talk about innovation. So that might make sense and be on brand for him. Now, I like to work with women, women of color, people who go outside of the norm in terms of what you might expect in terms of dressing as well as speaking styles. So that might look quite different for you. Maybe you refuse to wear heels on stage if you're a woman. Maybe you prefer to wear more cultural dress when you go on stage, which I love seeing people who wear head wraps and show up with different cultural jewelry. If you've seen some of my podcast episodes, you would see I typically wear a lot of jewelry from my mother-in-law back in India. She gives me with a lot of really cool gold pieces. So you'll notice I'll be wearing some of those on my podcast recordings. So these are different ways you can show up. Now, what are some of the terms that come with these if you're an informal speaker? Again, starting with the outside, how you look, but also how you show up based on how you dress. So that could be you're more humorous, you might be more conversational. So, as if you're speaking to someone right across the aisle from you, you might swear, drop some F-bombs, things of that nature. That's more of an informal style. And you might also find yourself dressing up very informal, like you're just going to the grocery store, you know, you're not dressing to the nines, you're not wearing your Sunday best. That might be your unique, authentic style as a speaker. And then across from that aisle, we have the formal speaking, where you're dressing up in your Sunday best, you're wearing your suit and tie or your beautiful dress or suit jacket, you're commanding on stage, you might use more powerful industry-specific language or jargon. You might show up as more authoritative and use particular gestures on stage that someone who's more conversational would not use. The only time you can be inauthentic as a speaker is if you're trying to cross and use a different type of style, then you personally like to show up as in your own life off stage. Now, that doesn't mean that you can't try on a different persona when you're going on stage. So let's talk about some of the different personas that might show up for you when you're on stage. Because one thing that's true when you're speaking is you will do it bigger, you'll do it bolder, you'll do it more powerful because you're in a different platform, you're in a different environment. It's not the same as being stuck into a little small Zoom window. You need to be yourself just on a bigger scale. So, some ways you might show up on stage in terms of your style and your expression. You might be more informative. And so that would look like using data, facts, statistics, case studies. You might like graphics. This might be for you analytical folks out there who use spreadsheets and numbers, and you just dive deep into the logistics of everything. That might be your informative style. Or you're a person who used to be in law or used to be in research. Brene Brown is a very famous researcher. She uses a lot of informative words and studies within her talks. Then there's more of a narrative speaker. Now, these might be folks who came from the performance world. And they are folks who might bring in performance techniques, acting techniques. This would look like Michael and Amy Port of Heroic Public Speaking, now named heroic. They use a lot of performance techniques because they were trained as actors. This might also be people who used to be dancers, musicians. When they come on stage, they have more of a storytelling vibe. Now, you don't have to come from that world, that performance world, to show up in a narrative way. So these are people, if they show up on podcasts, they tell a story like nobody's business. They're weaving and telling, and you get so caught up in the moment of what they're sharing. Those are more of the narrative style speakers. Now, this is a gift which can be learned. So if you're feeling like, well, Jen, I'm definitely not a narrative speaker right now. That's okay. You can learn these things through open mic contests or um improv techniques, spoken word, those types of things. If you do poetry, those are ways that can open up your narrative technique. And then we have the entertainers. Now, entertainers, I would lead more towards people who like to use physicality on stage. I know some speakers who are on roller skates, I know some speakers who do puppetry, who are using props on stage, who are even doing magic on stage. Those are the entertainers. And full stop, if you're an entertaining speaker, you're probably really good for a gala, a nonprofit annual fundraiser. You might be really perfect for a thank you, a teen-building thank you annual event. You might be an after dinner speaker. There are plenty of opportunities for these types of speaking. It's less about the content and it's more about your entertainment value. So you're really good at reading the room, you're really good at feeding into the energy of the room and keeping people on anticipation with you. Those are the entertainers. And then lastly, we have the facilitators, last but not least. So facilitation is less about a presentation and more about creating an experience with the audience. So it's a very much a co-creation with between you and the audience. It's a different skill set than just your talking head kind of TED presenters. Facilitators have very unique skills. So they have a loose format and process that they follow and they completely rely upon what shows up in the room. There's a lot of improv techniques that show up when it comes to the facilitators. They also are very open to exploring what the audience brings to them. As you can imagine, these are people who don't do as well on keynote stages because there's less audience interaction possibilities when you're a stadium of thousands of people. However, facilitators do really well in breakout rooms. They do really well when there's a lot of engagement with the audience. The audience is very deep into the subject and is willing to engage with the subject. And usually there are some hands-on activities, there are ice-breaking activities, there are ways for you to connect and collaborate with the people you're in the room with. So these are different types of speaking styles. And these are not, you can have elements of all of these, but I'd love to hear from you which of these do you feel you're strongest in? Now let's go a little deeper than just what kind of speaking style you have. Let's talk about specifics around how women, and especially women of color, might show up a little bit differently, regardless of what speaking style you have. I was at an event recently in Milwaukee. It was called Fearless and Flourishing with my colleague, Dr. Melanie Gray. And I would say about 90% of people in the audience were not white. And the interesting thing about this is most of the speakers on stage had this cadence to their presentations, this musicality to their voice that most white people don't have. So if you listen to all the TED Talk speakers, not all of them have this particular cadence or this musicality. Some of it has to do with cultural traditions and that came from gospel, that came from church, that came from ministry. I'm not saying it's always that way, but you'll notice that that's something that tends to be specific with specific groups of people, including people of color. I just, I wish I had that. And that's something you can train yourself to do. So if you appreciate speeches from people like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., he has that musicality in his voice. There are quite a few other speakers I can mention as well in the show notes below who have that musicality. There's a spoken word artist who is fabulous at creating these stories. And again, it's not necessarily what they're saying, but how they're saying it. So there are ways you can incorporate that. Also, some speakers tend to use other vocal techniques that either aggravate you or draw you in. Now, unfortunately, for a lot of women, there were some popular techniques, vocal techniques like vocal fry that kind of hit the airwaves. You know, the Kardashians were using that. And a lot of women in corporate environments also have up speak. And I just demonstrated what upspeak is. So up speak is where you end a sentence with a question mark and leaves people a little bit confused as to how confident you are in the statement you just said. So it sounds like you're ending on a question rather than a statement. This is something that is very common for women, especially women in different corporate environments. But also there's your pitch. This is one of the reasons a lot of people do not like to listen to podcasts. So if you're listening this far, thank you so much for being here with me. When I listen back to my own voice, I don't hear it the same way that you hear my voice. And women in general have higher pitch than men. But there are ways to train yourself to have a lower pitch. In fact, I was reading a book on news anchors and how women in news are trained to lower their pitch to be more appealing to their audience members. So these are all things, regardless of your storytelling style or your speaking style, you can improve and practice on. Let's also talk about enunciation. My daughters are in theater and they have a lot of really great productions. She's in the middle of a production right now. One of the actors is a fabulous actor. His physicality is amazing. But I can't understand a word he says. It's not until the end of the sentence that I'm like, oh, oh, is that what he said? Oh, that's what he said. So enunciation is going to be extremely important regardless of where you're speaking. And you may have heard if your audio is no good, then um, yeah, you might as well throw out your video footage if your audio is no good. So if you feel like challenging yourself, listen back to an audio recording of you. You can record it right now. Take five minutes and record it and listen back to that audio. What do you hear? What do you notice about your pitch? What do you notice about the stories you're including? Do you include more information-heavy elements? Notice how fast you're speaking. If you use pauses, which indicate a different kind of musicality or cadence to your words, are you emphasizing certain things? And how are you emphasizing those things? Just listen to yourself and see what stands out for you. Because until you listen to yourself intentionally, you're not going to be aware of what you sound like when others are listening to you. Today we talked all about your unique speaking style. I'd love to hear what takeaway was most important for you today. Just comment below this episode. What I would like to leave you with is lean into your natural speaking style, whatever that looks like today. Once you understand and embrace what your natural speaking style is, then you can start rehearsing and practicing and trying on some different personas, some different elements, some different vocal techniques, so you can show up as the best speaker you possibly can be, and no less authentic than the next speaker on stage. Until then, join us for our next weekly episode. I'll see you on stage.