We all want to sound “natural” on the microphone, but we rarely define what that means. True naturalness—like how you speak in your kitchen—often doesn’t translate well to a podcast or business presentation.
“Natural” is not a fixed state; it is a performance adapted to context. We learn these behaviors by modeling others we have seen in interviews or on stage. Paradoxically, when you try too hard to sound natural without a plan, you often sound forced. The solution is intentionality. By practicing specific delivery techniques like pauses and pacing, you internalize the performance until you can truly relax into it.
In this micro-episode:
- Why your “kitchen voice” isn’t necessarily “right” for your podcast
- How context dictates what feels natural to the listener
- How to use intentional practice to achieve your sound
Resources: Find more episodes and subscribe at stereoforest.com/minute.
Transcript
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::This is a generalization, but I've never really heard the opposite, so I think it's fairly truthy.
Everyone wants to sound natural on the mic. But also what's fairly rare to hear out there is what does that
even mean? What is natural? Because I doubt that many of us are talking like we would in a kitchen making
dinner with our partner, which is also really natural.
::And it's not the same as like say the natural energy I have when I'm performing on a stage to a room full of
fitness students which feels really me but I can't do that on the microphone. None of you would keep
listening to that. So really all of these places are natural but we're modeling our natural to the context
that we're fitting ourselves into. So natural isn't really something you just are.
::It's something that you've kind of learned from watching other people perform naturalness in these
different scenarios. Like you've been in and watched conversations in a whole bunch of different
settings. We've seen TV interviews and performances. We've listened to other podcasts and YouTube
videos and various niches. And they all have their own styles. We're all going to put our own thing on them.
::But overall, there is kind of a natural for you in each of these different things. We've kind of absorbed
what is sort of a style for a given context and found our natural within it. So trying to be natural is
actually just trying to perform something without really kind of just admitting that we're performing.
Because that seems unnatural, but we really are our
::This is really me on the microphone. So then to try to sound natural, if you're trying to sound it, you're
like forcing yourself. I'm going to sound natural in this podcast. You oftentimes sound worse because
you're trying, right? You're forcing it. Or perhaps you haven't really thought about what you're aiming
for specifically. So you don't really know and it's kind of confusing. Becoming intentional about what
your goal is, then
::You might decide on purpose to pause in a certain spot in your notes or your script. You might choose to speed
up there or emphasize this word or drop your voice for that phrase, which you might even get a lot closer to
say how you are in the kitchen, that kind of natural, but just sort of applied to the podcast context. So
intentional starts to sound natural because
::you're moving towards something specific. And when you know that, practice it over and over, then it's
going to allow you to start forgetting that. It gets out of your head. And that's when you can really
actually just relax into the delivery and sound much more natural for that context. Because even though
it's technically a performance, it's now really natural to you in this specific context.
::this and get your reps in. Pick one thing at a time to work on. It might be those pauses or perhaps it's the
speed of your delivery. What you say faster or what you slow down to emphasize but pick one of those things
and then record and see how it goes when you listen back. And do that listen back after a little space of time.
Take a beat so your brain doesn't focus too much on it which will make it sound weird and unnatural no matter
what. Notice how it serves the show and
::what to work on further, and then it becomes clear on what you want to work on further until you meet that
goal. I'm Jen DeHaan. This is a Credibility Minute. Find more episodes and get in touch with me at
stereoforest.com slash minute.