For many of us, we open our mouth, words come out; people listen. It all seems so straight forward most of the time.
A while back, over a cup of coffee, a friend asked, ‘Do I sound boring to you?” “What are you talking about?” I said, as I grabbed a handful of Pringles to silence my growling stomach. “Well” my friend continued, “yesterday, after speaking at one of my meetings, I heard someone say that I was boring, and they could hardly wait until I was finished. Can you believe it? Me? Boring!”
Munching on the last chip, I thought about what my friend had said. Fond, as I was of my friend, I could see where people might think of him as boring. The knowledge was there; so was a wealth of business savvy, and the determination for success. But being labelled a boring speaker wasn’t because of the words he used or the amount of information he had; it was because of his sound. It was how he used his voice.
When we speak with others whether we are standing on a stage, at the boardroom table, or networking with peers at an industry function, we like to speak with people who sound interesting, convey expression and add to our comfort level. Just as our body language, or words we use, or our approach to people can pull them closer or push them away, so can our voice.
How you and I make use of our voice is how we connect and forge relationships with those around us. Your voice carries what you have in your head out of your mouth to your listeners’ ear. As for your family and friends, they know you and are accustomed to you the way you are. And besides, friends wouldn’t be friends if they constantly nagged at you about how you sounded.
While there are different elements to having a good speaking voice, it’s important that when people listen to you, they hear your voice as expressive, pleasant, and easy to follow.
An expressive voice is a voice that is sprinkled with slices of emotion, vocal variation and energy. Instead of sounding flat and monotone, your voice covers the highs and lows, and changes in pitch which help clarify meaning. For example:
- My daughter gave me a car for Christmas. (She didn’t, though I wish she had…) ‘My’ refers to ’My’ daughter, not yours, or someone else’s.
- My daughter gave me a car for Christmas. It was my ‘daughter’ not my brother, sister, son, niece, nephew or lover …
- My daughter gave me a car for Christmas. She didn’t give me a handbag, waffle-iron or a pony; she gave me a ‘car’.
Depending how we use our voice for emphasis, different meanings surface. Of course, there is a fine line between being an over-the-top drama queen versus demonstrating the subdued, almost non-existent, expressiveness of Julianna Marqulies, star, and a fav’ of mine, in the TV show, “The Good Wife”.
Do you have a pleasant voice? Your voice tells others how you’re feeling, your state of mind. If you let the stresses and strains of a project come through in your voice, it might be difficult for you to make that positive connection and create a favourable impression. This doesn’t mean that you can’t have a serious tone; it just means that you don’t flatten the other person with your intensity. People respond to a voice that is warm, friendly and comfortable to the listening ear.
Easy to follow refers to your rate of speaking, in other words, your speaking speed. And while we can process information faster than we can speak, in our day to day activities, few of us would follow in the footsteps of Steve Woodmore, who holds the world record for being the fastest talker; he speaks over 600 words per minute. The speaking speed in North America is somewhere between 125 to 190 words per minute.
Speak too quickly, and you chance losing some of your vocal expressiveness. People may lose track of what you’re talking about, and tune out. Speak too slowly, and impatience sets in. People lose their attention and mentally drift away from you, and what you have to say out of boredom. The ideal is to vary your speaking rate so that it compliments you and your topic.
A few days after our conversation, my friend phoned (just as I was dashing out to get more chips) and said that he was thinking of practicing the musical scale to help him add more colour and variation to his voice. “Great idea”, I said. “It worked wonders for the Trapp family in the Sound of Music, so why wouldn’t it work for you?”
9W83GQDS3SVX