When it comes to how to use your voice in a presentation, keynote, or everyday conversation, one of the most useful distinctions we can learn is the difference between tone and intensity.
Tone is the emotional color of your voice. Intensity is the force behind it.
For example, a violin and trumpet can play the same note at the same volume. But they don’t feel the same. That’s tone.
When that same violin plays softly or powerfully, that’s intensity.
Speaking works the same way.
Your tone signals how your audience should feel. The intensity is how they should experience that feeling.
When speakers struggle with delivery, it’s often because everything is played in the same tone and at the same intensity.
Great speakers don’t just choose their words. They choose how those words feel.
