Articulation

When you address an audience, whether be it for a product, service or even for a concept, the importance of proper and effective communication is unparalleled. To get your message across, you need to have a certain level of command of the language with a rich vocabulary of words and phrases. Clear expressions along with appropriate body language can do wonders for your cause. However, if the audience cannot understand what you are saying or miss out on a few words or phrases, your message is completely lost on them, no matter how good of a presentation you have had going on. Often, it is said that a message lost is a business lost or a chance at establishing solid business relationships. Therefore, articulation is the need of the hour in today’s business world, to ensure that you successfully achieve your goals and objectives by establishing both formal and informal relationships.

Articulation, simply put, is one’s way of pronouncing words or producing sounds. Some of the prominent types of errors we make while speaking are:

• Substitution: In this type of error, one sound is replicated for another sound. 

For example’s’ is substituted by ‘th’, and hence, ‘soap’ becomes ‘thoap’

• Omission: In this type of error, a sound in a word is omitted.

For example, ‘brown’ becomes ‘bown’

• Distortion: In this type of error, a word is pronounced in an unfamiliar way. 

For example, you might want to say, ‘sun’ but end up saying ‘son’

• Addition: In this type of error, an additional sound is inserted inside the word. 

For example, ‘back-bone’ becomes ‘black-bone’

One might make an error of using the wrong tone, expressions or language to convey his message. You need to have a different tone, expression and language for different segments of people you interact with on a daily basis. For example, while using a stern tone might be acceptable while conversing with your sub-ordinate, using the same while having a conversation with your senior or customer isn’t well received. Hence, we need to understand who we are speaking to and choose tones, expressions and language accordingly, to avoid making this kind of error.

Another common error that we make sometimes is that we often don’t differentiate between the language used in a leadership role from that used in a non-leadership role. The language used in a leadership role cannot be bland, casual or vague. Sometimes, we end up using words or phrases like, “what’s up?” in our leadership communication. While it is fine to use such a language in our personal lives, it may not be well received in your communication with your stakeholders.

To achieve proper articulation and to have an error-free conversation, because even the best-spoken person can have problems at it, we need to:

• Observe: We need to watch and listen how others speak. We can start by assessing how they speak, their expressions, their body language, their approach with different sets of people, how they form their sentence or how they pronounce the words they speak.

• Reflect: After observing a set of people, do reflect on why they did certain things or why they choose certain words and how their behaviours & communication pattern changed when they conversed with different people. Also, reflect on yourself. How would you have behaved in the same situation, how would you have pronounced certain words, etc, and try to come up with a strategy or things you would like to use in your daily conversations.

• Listen to yourself: One of the most effective ways of overcoming the problems of articulation caused by mispronunciation or mumbling, softly speaking, using too many filler words, or abruptly blacking out while speaking, is to listen to yourself speak and identify the areas you would like to work upon and improve and work on the same.

• Pronunciation and choice of words: It is not necessary to use fancy words all the time as simple language with a clear thought process and meaning tends to be more effective in getting your message across. At the same time, it is important to pronounce each and every word clearly and to avoid making any of the four errors mentioned earlier. To improve your knowledge on the pronunciation of certain words, you can take the help of Google or YouTube where the correct pronunciation is easily available.

• Practice: “Practice makes a man perfect.” This idiom is also true here. Practice as much as you can on your identified problem areas, whether in front of the mirror or with your family and friends. You can also watch English movies and listen to songs, to get a better grasp at the language and its different pronunciations.

• Think before you speak: If you are asked a question or asked to speak on a particular topic, pause for a bit before speaking, gather your thoughts, be sure of what you want to speak and then start speaking. This will help you in avoiding awkward pauses, using fillers or mumbling because you are not sure of what you want to speak.

Businesses are built on relationships. To foster and maintain a good relationship with different stakeholders of an organisation, you need to be an effective communicator. One of the keys to being an effective communicator is being a good articulator, as it is really important for the other person to clearly understand what you want to convey. Observe, practice and ponder as much as you can on a regular basis and in no time, you will be one of the most articulated persons in the room.