People often speak to me about the challenges that they face with their Voice when when they present. In short, they say that they speak in a monotone voice and don’t know what to do about it.

While there are many things that you can do to improve your voice, here is the best advice I know for lasting results: Read children’s books. Out loud. To children.

I read dozens of books to my daughters when they were little. From Dr. Seuss to Maurice Sendak to Eric Carle. It was a great bonding experience but it also taught me the importance of having an expressive voice.

You can’t read a book to a child the same way you read the 3rd quarter financial report. They won’t put up with that. They expect more.

My biggest accomplishment was reading the first five books of the Harry Potter series to them out loud. With voice characterizations! (I made sure that Harry and the narrator had my accent!)

Sometimes a day or two would go by without reading and if I got a voice wrong, they quickly put me in my place. “No, Dad! That’s not how Dumbledore sounds. Do Dumbledore! Do Dumbledore!”

It was tremendous fun and it taught me how to be expressive and play with my voice. You can get the same benefit. Just pick up a children’s and read it to a child.

Of course, this does not mean that you will speak to your audiences as if they were children. But when you read to children, you get a chance to play with your voice. To stretch to see how far you can go. Then, when speaking to an audience of adults, you adjust your voice accordingly. But you will find that it has more energy and emotion.

*Full disclosure: When Book 6 in the Harry Potter series finally came out, the girls were old enough to read it on their own. When they told me, I silently breathed a sigh of relief! And yes, I finished the series on my own.