The reason why vocal cues are pivotal while communicating a crisis is that they can strengthen the clear delivery of a message and can highly influence the credibility of the speaker.

Here’s what De Waele et al. (2020) suggested to help you ace communication, precisely vocal cues, in times of business crises:

Your Voice Pitch

• Speak with a low voice pitch in order to be perceived as credible and trustworthy.

Pauses

• Using enough pauses helps you be heard more and better;
• Pausing in crisis communication is very important since this will help you emphasize certain things and ensure that people will listen to you more and better.

Vocal Emphasis

• Like pauses, use vocal emphasis smartly to emphasize on important things that should be highlighted and stuck in your audience’s minds.

Intonation

• Avoid being monotonous.

Volume

• Your voice should be loud enough to be intelligible;
• Yet, pay attention not to shout!

Speech Rate

• Do not go too fast; otherwise, people will think that the spokesperson has either rehearsed the speech too much or is too stressed;
• Do not go too slow either!

Dialect or Accent

Experts have different views regarding dialect

• Many believe that dialect is appropriate as long as the message remains comprehensible because it could add a certain authenticity to your message, which is especially relevant for regional topics;
• Others think that it diverts attention from the message.

Remain very aware of your ‘crisis vocal cues’ and do not forget to avoid speech disturbances and coughing as much as possible!

Source

De Waele, A., Claeys, A., & Opgenhaffen, M. (2020). Preparing to face the media in times of crisis: Training spokespersons’ verbal and nonverbal cues. Public Relations Review, 46(2), 101871. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2019.101871

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