Color refers to those various effects in speech that bring your speech to life. Another way to describe color is the excitement and animation heard in your voice and seen in your body language and facial expression as you speak.
The interesting thing about color is that you don’t want too much or too little. Similar to fairy tale, Goldilocks and the 3 bearsyou want the right amount of color when you speak to keep your audience’s attention on your words.
If you’re too expressive, you’ll sound like you’re acting or talking to children. One of my clients was a former preschool teacher. When giving introductions to him, he used exaggerated body language as if he was speaking to a group of 4-year-olds. Another client was a law professor, and when giving his presentations, he sounded like he was acting because he exaggerated the vocal variety of his voice.
On the other hand, if you speak with too little color, then your delivery will be boring, a sure method of putting your audience to sleep or losing them to their iPhones. The interesting thing about some people who speak with very little color is that, in a normal conversation, their emotion or life is not lacking in their pronouncement. At the podium, however, their nervousness inhibits their ability to speak as they normally would in conversation.
So how do you know if your color is too little, too much, or just right? By recording yourself, preferably on video, and studying the playback. How is the vocal variety of your voice? What are you doing with your hands? Are you completely still or do you move when you talk? These are questions you need to answer honestly about your delivery skills.
Your next step is to practice your presentation as if you were having a conversation with your friends. This will be much easier if you know your material well. (By the way, the only way to really know your material is to practice it out loud many, many times.)
If you speak with very little color, both in conversation and at the lectern, your first step is to give yourself permission to allow emotion into your speech. Until you can accept the fact that talking to color is normal and preferable, you won’t be able to make the change.
Public speaking is simply a conversation with a larger audience. With the right amount of color, not too much and not too little, your message will be much more interesting to your listeners.