How to Be More Articulate and Speak More Clearly (Be more articulate and well spoken)

how to be more articulate and speak clearly at work in this video i'm going to share with you nine steps that you can take so you can be more articulate when you communicate with other people in the workplace i know some of you watching might come across situations where you stumble over your words where your thoughts come out muddled where what you want to say doesn't come out as structured or as eloquent as you would like well what you need to remember is that being more articulate and speaking clearly it's a skill and like any

other skill it's something that you can learn so just because you may not speak clearly or eloquently right now it doesn't mean that you can't and my hope is that by the end of this video you will know exactly what you need to do to be more articulate and speak more clearly at work so let's first talk about articulation what does it mean to articulate well well according to the cambridge dictionary articulation means the way in which you pronounce words or sounds so it's really about your pronunciation and the way that you produce the words

or the sounds that come out of your mouth and when you articulate well those words and those sounds they come out very clearly and people can easily understand what you were talking about in any conversation you need to be understood this is really important the words that you use and the core message that you have this needs to be understood by the people you are speaking to and this is incredibly important in leadership and management because this is how you have impact when you can clearly communicate and when people understand exactly what you're saying that

is when you can make them move that is when you can make them do things so you can achieve your overall goals so articulation is really a core concept that all leaders and managers need to understand it helps you convey a clear message and helps you have more impact and influence in your job but how do you achieve that well you're going to learn nine ways that you can be more articulate and speak more clearly we're going to start with number one right now good articulation starts with your posture if you want clear sounds to

come out of your larynx your voice box area you need to have good posture to allow those sounds to come out without any hindrance but most of us nowadays spend a lot of time and perhaps too much time hunched over our phone using our smartphone we curl our shoulders we put our head down we restrict the movement in our larynx and in our throat area we put pressure on our facial muscles and on our back as well this bad posture prevents you from speaking clearly and it prevents you from articulating well when you're in a

conversation with somebody i mean do this posture right now to see how restrictive it actually feels when you're trying to talk with somebody well what i found is that a lot of people carry that posture into their regular conversations with people so even if they're not on their phone talking to someone they still use that type of body language and posture in those conversations and this bad posture will prevent you from being able to articulate well and speak clearly this bad posture puts a lot of strain on your neck on your jaw on your facial

muscles as well it also restricts your larynx and prevents it from moving freely which means that your voice can't pronounce the words or the sounds properly the result is you don't articulate well and you don't speak clearly so you really need to become more aware of your posture when you are speaking to ensure that you can articulate well and you can speak clearly and also be aware that if you're in a stressful situation say you're giving a public presentation or you're in a meeting and you don't like to speak up in meetings it's likely you

will use body language or a posture where you try to hide yourself so again the slumping of the shoulders the curling of the shoulders keeping your head down as well all of these things will prevent your larynx your facial muscles from moving properly you won't be able to articulate well you won't be able to speak clearly so keep this in mind if you are in a situation that is making you stressed or nervous before we get into the second tip if you like what you've learned so far and you want more videos like this every

week then make sure you subscribe and hit the notification bell below it's a fantastic way for you to help support my channel and to help it grow every week i release videos on leadership for you to help you advance in your leadership journey and i would be honored to have you a part of this community so linked to your posture is a position of your head when you talk now a lot of people especially when they're shy or introverted or stressed they put their head down they look to the ground and as i mentioned before

this restricts your larynx it prevents you from being able to clearly make the sounds or the words that you need to make in order to speak clearly it puts extra stress on your neck on the muscles in your neck and your jaw and prevents you from speaking clearly whereas when you raise your chin it opens up this area it relaxes your muscles and allows you to speak freely and clearly to other people plus it makes you look more confident so when you raise your chin just a little it makes you look confident to other people

so the neck is the most vulnerable part of our body and when we lift our chin we reveal our neck it's like saying to people i am unafraid think of a time when you were scared or when you were startled did you put your head down did you raise your shoulders to protect your neck this is a natural human instinct we have when we're feeling vulnerable or when we're feeling scared we're trying to protect this vulnerable part of our body our neck because we feel that we're in danger somehow but when we see people use

this type of posture we interpret it as them being scared we interpret them as having no confidence as them being afraid you don't want people to think this about you so by lifting your chin you're saying to the world you are unafraid but you do want to be careful that you don't lift your chin too much because when you do that it can make you look arrogant and that's not something that you want people to think about you either now we're moving away from body language advice and the third strategy i want to share with

you is to record yourself so what do i mean by that well what i want you to do is record yourself in a natural conversation with somebody it could be a co-worker or it could be a friend so record yourself during a conference call for example a video conference a podcast interview or you can even ask a friend to interview you so you have the opportunity to record yourself and what you want to do here when you listen back to your recording is see if there are any habits you use that make you sound inarticulate

so this could be filler words upswing bad pronunciation signs of hesitation in your voice or anything that detracts from you sounding articulate and speaking clearly there are many free programs that you can use to record yourself audacity is one of them and i'm sure your smartphone has some kind of voice recording device that you can use to record a natural conversation one thing that's a real challenge for me to have good pronunciation is when i speak fast or when i try to speak fast it seems that when i speak fast my mouth can't keep up

with the words that i want to say and they don't come out clearly at all this quite often happens in my youtube videos but luckily there i can repeat myself or i can edit out the mistakes that i make so you probably don't notice in my youtube videos that i pronounce incorrectly some words but it's likely that speaking fast has the same repercussions for you as well and if that's the case then you need to work at slowing down your speech slowing down your speech also enables you to use the pause you've heard of the

pause before the famous two second pause that you use during conversation to create anticipation for what you're going to say next this is a very powerful communication technique and if you're somebody who speaks slower it really allows you to do this well the pause also gives you time to think before you speak and this is really important if you want to be more articulate and speak more clearly and sound intelligent as well if you're somebody who tends to get their thoughts muddled then thinking before you speak is really important for you when your thoughts start

from a place that is muddled there is less chance they will come out clearly and less chance that you will sound articulate and this quite often leads to confusion when you're talking and much less impact for you as a leader so if you really want to have more impact if you really want to speak clearly and have your thoughts come out clearly and not muddled then you need to think before you speak in case you find this challenging what i find helps is to separate your thoughts into points points that you want to talk about

like bullet points that you'd see on a written document so point one point two or point three or four or however many ideas you wanna talk about get those separate points clear in your mind those talking points clear in your mind and that will help you become a lot more articulate it will help you speak a lot more clearly as well and help you stop getting your thoughts muddled being more articulate doesn't mean you need to use complicated vocabulary or you need to make your sentences longer and in fact if you use complicated vocabulary you're

more likely to confuse your listener or alienate them because they won't know what you're talking about and if you use longer sentences you're more likely to bore your listener because you keep going on and on without getting to the point speaking clearly is all about connecting with your listener using words they understand using words that will make them move that will motivate them or inspire them so you need to put yourself in the shoes of your audience put yourself in the shoes of the listener and use words that they understand and shorten your sentences so

you can get straight to the point as well you also need to be careful of filler words now filler words can prevent you from being articulate and from speaking clearly i mentioned before in this video about filler words when i talked about recording yourself so what exactly are filler words filler words are meaningless words we use in a conversation to fill up space while we are thinking of what we're going to say next so for example um basically literally actually just like you know these are all examples of filler words that you may or may

not use in your general conversations now filler words aren't always a bad thing that's why i say be careful of filler words not eliminate them completely so filler words we quite often use to indicate to the other person that we're not finished what we're saying yet that we're thinking of what we want to say next and they shouldn't jump into the conversation and interrupt us so they do perform a really important part in communication and in general conversations so you probably don't want to eliminate them entirely but if you tend to use filler words a

lot or perhaps too much they can detract from your core message and they can stop you from sounding articulate and stop you from speaking clearly so you really need to be careful of the filler words and how often you use filler words in your communication and when you record yourself like i mentioned in one of the earlier points this will really give you an idea of whether you use filler words too much or you have the right balance in your communication and if you find that you do use filler words too much then try to

tone it down try to remove some of the filler words that you use in your communication this will help you have more impact sound more articulate and speak more clearly to other people checking in with your audience and making sure they're following what you're saying is a really important part of being more articulate and speaking more clearly so you're communicating to somebody else right they need to understand your message they need to understand what you're saying if they're not following you in the conversation you are going to lose impact you're going to confuse them as

well so you really need to keep on top of this and identify whether they are still following you and with you in that conversation now quite often you will be able to see or detect whether somebody is not following you in the conversation if you've lost them in the conversation and this is usually detected through non-verbal or body language signals so you might see their eyes start to glaze over they might get that blank look on their face they might be looking at you still eye to eye contact but they're not actually following what you're

saying and you don't feel they're 100 with you you may have been in a conversation like this where you have experienced this yourself with other person who you were talking to wasn't following what you were saying you might have detected this through their facial expressions through their body language so you may know what i'm talking about here or some people may have more obvious signs they might look over your shoulder they might look away from you when you were talking whatever the case is you really need to check in with your audience and see if

they're following you when you're talking you can do this through a simple question ask people are you following what i'm saying so far or let me know if you want me to clarify anything this is very effective at ensuring people are still with you in the conversation it also allows them the opportunity to clarify something you've said maybe you did have bad pronunciation or a bad articulation throughout what you were saying to that person maybe they didn't understand something that you said this gives them the opportunity to ask you a question and ask you to

clarify what you have said to that person remember some people in conversations might be too shy or too embarrassed to say that they're not following you if you're having a conversation about something technical something complicated and that person is not understanding what you were saying on the technical side of things they might be too embarrassed to tell you that so this gives them the opportunity to clarify what you have been telling them and it saves them the embarrassment of stopping you in the conversation and saying they didn't understand what you said and my last tip

is to study speakers you admire i'm sure there are people you've come across who speak in a very clear way people who speak in a way you admire they speak clearly they speak eloquently they can articulate their thoughts in a captivating way study these people what words do they use what body language do they use what articulation do they use tone of voice do they use do they use longer sentences shorter sentences do they check in with their audience take note of the things that these speakers do really well the things that you admire and

try to replicate them this reminds me of the film working girl with melanie griffith and sigourney weaver i don't know if you've seen that film but there is one scene in the film where melanie griffith who plays a character called tess mcgill she is a secretary and she really admires her boss who is played by sigourney weaver and her character's name is catherine parker so tess mcgill wants the job of catherine parker she really admires her she thinks she speaks in a really eloquent and captivating and clear way so one day tess mcgill is in

the apartment of catherine parker she comes across a voice recorder one that they used back in the 80s and on the voice recorder is catherine's voice where she's listing out to her secretary a number of tasks or things that need to be done and tess mcgill she finds this and she listens to the recording and she listens to how she speaks she listens to the words that she uses the pronunciation that she uses the speed at which she speaks as well and she replicates this in the home she actually copies what she says on the

voice recording so she can sound exactly like catherine parker so this studying speakers that you admire it's basically the same concept and you can do this with people in films tv shows podcasts or even youtube videos being more articulate and speaking clearly is absolutely a skill that you can learn and i hope that the nine tips i shared with you in this video will really help you with that if you liked what you learned in this video then please help my channel grow by hitting the subscribe button below and the notification bell so you know

when i release new videos thank you so much for watching this video and i will be back next week with another one