How to Stop Mumbling & Sound More Influential at Work

Over the past decade, I’ve met hundreds of clients struggling to speak clearly and persuasively in my work as a speech pathologist and executive communication consultant. In many cases, they’ve enlisted my assistance to eliminate mumbling from their professional lives so they can finally make progress and make their message delivery match their expertise!

Today, I’ve decided it’s time to discuss mumbling with you! Why? Because 58% of my clients often or nearly always mumble! So, if you’ve not yet worked with me to learn how to overcome mumbling, this blog post is for you.
Today, we’ll look at the top 5 causes of mumbling, and then I’ll make some recommendations for what you can do to improve your professional speaking and get rid of mumbling.

What is MUMBLING?

First, we need to define- what’s mumbling.
We can best define mumbling as speaking quietly in a way that is unclear, making the words difficult to understand (Cambridge Dictionary).

Is mumbling normal?

Mumbling is a sign of communication issues when speaking, interacting and sharing your message. Although not technically classified as a speech impediment, if you find yourself mumbling in conversations that matter, your listener will no doubt notice reduced confidence and clarity while you share your message.

Do mumbling exercises work?

Now, if you search YouTube for solutions for mumbling, you’ll find many videos of people showing you all sorts of mouth exercises to stop you from mumbling. But please don’t waste your time on this! In today’s episode, you’ll learn that the first step to solving mumbling issues is to identify what is causing the speaking clarity issue.

What is mumbling a symptom of?

Mumbling is always the outcome of a communication issue.

Overall, 5 core communication factors can leave you mumbling; I’ve outlined each of these factors below to help you determine what might be holding you back from speaking eloquently at work.

1) Poor Articulation can cause mumbling.

Sometimes, mumbling results from bad articulation and a small jaw opening. When speaking, your jaw unhinges to release the sound wave into the room. If you’re inclined to hold your jaw incredibly tight, your speech can sound muffled because all the sounds you produce have to squeeze into a similar space, compromising their clarity and contrast.

Every language has a mix of consonants and vowels. And each pronunciation sound has a slightly different position with the jaw, tongue, and lips. So, if you start releasing your sound through the one mouth position, the speech patterns start showing less contrast, which can cause reduced speaking clarity.

So is the solution to open your mouth more to prevent mumbling?

It depends! First, you need to know what is causing your mumbling. I don’t recommend artificially adjusting how you move your mouth without getting detailed insights into what contributes to the mumbling behaviours – changing your mouth position on your own and hoping for the best could lead to bigger issues. Your jaw’s position, alignment and movement substantially impact your voice quality, so don’t make massive tweaks without consulting a speaking expert first.

2) Mumbling can result from incorrect breath management.​

If you sound too soft when speaking and don’t project your voice correctly, your speech may sound mumbled and less clear.

If your voice is soft and inconsistent and you’re finding it hard to speak loud enough when presenting, you may need to work on your breath management skills.

When we fail to coordinate our breath correctly, our vowels and consonants can start to lose clarity because we can get some speech noises coming out that interfere with our intelligibility.

For example, noisy breathing while speaking can distract from the core words in your message and make your speech less articulate.

Voice projection will be affected if you fail to coordinate the correct air pressure to achieve sufficient volume. This can also explain why you may sound like you’re mumbling if your conversation partners are struggling to hear you.
A low volume due to not knowing how to organise the power source of your voice – your breath- makes your listeners work harder to understand your message, so they may give you feedback that you’re mumbling when presenting.

3) Incorrect voice production can also cause mumbling.

If you’ve not learnt how to use your voice correctly, you may start showing voice quality factors that reduce your speaking polish, executive presence, and credibility while speaking.

Mumbling is a form of imprecise, low-effort speaking that is usually accompanied by voice quality issues like vocal fry and strain. Vocal fry reduces the integrity of your voice vibration and impacts the projection and power of your opinions.

When our tone of voice deteriorates, it also erodes the power of our opinion and argument for the listener! So, if you’re mumbling, get serious about improving your speaking quality. It can hold you back at work and make your insights sound hesitant and less confident.

4) Language structure difficulties can make you mumble.

Sometimes, mumbling can be an immediate outcome of struggling to organise our thoughts when speaking under pressure at work. 

Imagine your client asks you an unexpected question…

Your thoughts start racing…

And suddenly, when you start speaking, your words are racing too. 

It’s a fact that speaking confidently isn’t in our DNA. Instead, it’s a specific skill set. Part of learning to express ourselves confidently is learning how to articulate our ideas, especially when speaking under pressure. 

Do you find it challenging to organise your ideas when speaking in impromptu conversations during team meetings or answering random questions when giving a presentation?

If you’re nodding, let’s discuss how you can get on top of speaking issues!  

When you give responses at work that sound mumbled, anxious and unclear, research shows that your listeners will instantly form an impression that your ideas aren’t prepared; worse still, they may even conclude that you lack expertise on the topic. So, I have to be candid with you – research into leadership communication skills shows that if you can’t express yourself confidently, you’re losing communication capital. It may even account for why you’re failing to score a promotion or get the influence you need to do your job comfortably. But remember, as I always say on this channel- Communication confidence is built on strategy, so instead of feeling like a bad communicator, check yourself. ⁠Maybe your speaking confidence issues are arising because you don’t have a system⁠ for dealing with high-pressure conversations. 

If that’s the case, focus on strategy, not difficulty! ⁠And, if you get stuck, you know where to find me. I can help you with the proper training to speak up with clarity, impact and elegance. 

5) Mumbling can be a sign you need to improve your vocabulary.

Just like struggling to get our message structure organised can lead to mumbling and hesitations while speaking, we can lose our message clarity when our vocabulary is weak. There’s nothing like not being able to find the precise word we need to make us want to hide behind our response which can lead to us speaking with less conviction and mumbling!

Find the right words and solve your word-finding problems at work! The vocabulary wonder board program uses science-based methods and trains you in a powerful step-by-step system to strengthen memory networks for new words that get you using them. I’ve linked the details below so you can get instant access today.

If you’re unsure which is the root cause of your mumbling, don’t panic. There may be a mix of causing factors. It’s frustrating to know you’re mumbling, but what’s more useful is to understand why and put some solutions in place.
Here’s where I can help you.
I’m utterly obsessed with boosting your communication confidence, which is why I scrupulously researched corporate communication tactics for over a decade and created the total fix for your career communication. It all begins with my high-performance communication audit.

So, if you want to improve your communication in daily life and polish your professional speaking so that you can achieve the career outcomes you want, you should consider enrolling in the High-performance communication audit.

• Bonaccio, S., et al. (2016). “Nonverbal Behavior and Communication in the Workplace.” Journal of Management 42: 1044 – 1074.
• Krause, J. and L. Braida (2004). “Acoustic properties of naturally produced clear speech at normal speaking rates.” The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 115: 362-378.
• Pfordresher, P. Q., et al. (2021). “Spontaneous Production Rates in Music and Speech.” Frontiers in Psychology 12(1943).