I recently witnessed two presentations that reminded me of the importance of clarity when speaking.
One of the definitions of clarity on Dictionary.com is: “Clearness or lucidity as to perception or understanding; freedom from indistinctness or ambiguity.” This is what you want to achieve when practicing and delivering your speech. You want to make sure the important words or sentences are understood by your audience. Especially if you have a strong accent, or have a topic that an audience is not familiar with.
Two examples of clarity (or not)
A few weeks ago I heard two presentations by two separate presenters. One of them is from Uganda with a very, very strong accent. She actually spelled out some words that she knew she had a hard time pronouncing to make sure the audience stayed with her. She only did it three times, but the three words were important in the content of her message. She took the effort and care to ensure clarity in her talk.
The second presenter had no accent, but she shared a less popular story of a mythological figure that turned men into swine. This person has no accent, is a strong accomplished speaker. But upon the round of oral feedback from the audience (this was at an advanced Toastmaster club), a few people thought she had said the men were turned into SLIME, which sort of made the tale a bit confusing.
Clarity begins before the talk is ever given
When preparing your talk, identify the keywords and phrases that are critical to the message and make sure you don’t speed over them when talking. As in the mythological speech, the challenge wasn’t an accent, it was that the speaker just spoke too fast.
An effective way to make sure those words and phrases are clear to your audience is to record or videotape your presentation and listen to it. Ask another person to listen to it. Are they coming across loud and clear?
Clarity when delivering the talk
A great technique is to repeat those important words and phrases, adding emphasis with rate, pitch, voice and body language. For example, when the speaker mentioned that the mythological character turned men into swine, she could have said it once then pause, lean into the audience and repeat it slower and louder: “She t-u-r-n-e-d t-h-e-m i-n-t-o S-W-I-N-E!” I doubt there would have been a misunderstanding then. She could even engage the audience by asking, “What did she do? She turned them into _____” and invite the audience to repeat swine back to her.
In conclusion – seek clarity
When you seek clarity, the audience is able to FOCUS on what you are saying because they are not distracted by trying to figure out what you just said, or confused because what they thought you said doesn’t make sense. I think this quote by Thomas Leonard, a major contributor to the coaching movement, underscores the importance of clarity when you speak:
Clarity is Focus
