Voice Coaching Tips and Voice Coaching Articles

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Why does it matter what my voice is like?

How your health and emotional state can affect the quality of your voice

Why does it matter what my voice is like?

Most of you reading this will have heard of the statistic that states that in any face to face communication only 7% of the meaning is conveyed through the content. The other 93% is made up of 55% body language and 38% voice tone. Even if you take statistics with a bit of a pinch of salt, as I do, you probably have some experience of listening to someone speak and thinking I don’t believe what they are saying. Or just getting bored during a talk or lecture because the person talking conveys the information in a boring manner! I have certainly sat through talks where I know the content is interesting but it has been hard to absorb the information because of the delivery! Even if you have had no experience where that was the case, you will know that you can say “yes” sounding really definite, excited, enthusiastic or the same word “yes” as if you are not sure at all. Same word, different tone, different body language.

Of course, that statistic may be true in a face to face situation but what about over the telephone? In that case you only have your voice and the content. The body language side becomes irrelevant. So on the telephone the way you use your voice becomes even more important.

And it isn’t just a case of sounding boring, or as if you are not telling the truth. I heard a lecture recently in which the speaker spoke very quickly. The topic was fascinating and important to me, but I could barely keep up with the speed of the delivery, and I am a quick thinker! As this lecture was on a DVD I had the luxury of being able to pause every 10 minutes or so to give me time to process the information. But I felt sorry for the people who were there at the time.

The first sense that develops in the womb is hearing. By the time you were born you already knew the sound of your mother’s voice, as well as the other people who were regularly around and close to your mother during her pregnancy - your Father, siblings etc. Before you understood the content of what was being said to you, you understood the feelings behind the words. You knew when you were being soothed or played with. You knew if your Mother was upset. When you began to understand the content, you overlaid the information you were hearing with your understanding of the content. Underneath the words, behind the words, the information that you receive now is still coming with the content on top of all the feelings that are being conveyed through the tones and tunes.

For most people, the information coming through the tones and tunes of a voice is being processed unconsciously. To me, that means it is even more powerful than if it was conscious. If it was conscious you could adjust your perceptions with your logic. If it is unconscious then you just have the feeling or the impression without noticing how and why.

And one of the problems that I come across a lot is that as human beings we often overlap our feelings or opinions about the speaker onto the content. So if some material is being delivered in a boring way, not only might we judge the speaker to be boring, but more importantly we might think that the subject matter is boring. Imagine telling someone about your organisation and making them feel it is a boring company!

Some time ago I worked with a Chief Executive and a Finance Director who called me in because every time they presented their results to the city the shares went down! Understandably they wanted to know what they were doing wrong. As soon as I heard them I knew what the problem was! The CEO spoke very quietly. In his head it sounded quite loud, but to us on the outside it was very quiet. The Finance Director spoke very quickly. Although it was not the case at all, it sounded as if the CEO wasn’t very confident - of the company - and the Finance Director sounded as if he was trying to ‘put something past us’ before we had time to process the information. Not a very helpful combination!! By slowing the Finance Director down and making sure he paused enough and by turning up the CEO’s volume the next time they presented their results to the City the shares went up!

The same principles apply in many situations. Your Corporate Voice; your Trainer’s Voice; your Teacher’s Voice; your Therapist’s Voice as well as the voice you use to your Husband, Wife, or lover is going to have its impact and the responses you get will be coloured by the way you say what you say.

Happily, working on your voice to get it to serve you better and be a more effective tool is not difficult. To begin with, just noticing the responses you are getting and asking yourself whether you could have conveyed the information more effectively will give you a good start. And in my next article I will be giving you a few tips on things you can do very easily to become a more effective speaker.

How your health and emotional state can affect the quality of your voice

Your biological, chemical and physiological state at any time has a direct effect on the sound of your voice and therefore how your message comes across when you speak.

For example, adrenaline causes the vocal tract to stiffen which can make a voice sound more monotone which is perceived as boring or high pitched which sounds stressed. It only takes under a quarter of a second for adrenaline to reach the vocal tract, so even a moment of fear or panic, which produces adrenaline, will change the way a message is delivered.

On the other hand, when your vocal cords are very relaxed, like when you first awake in the morning or after having just had sex, your voice can sound gravelly, and be perceived as unenthusiastic or disengaged.

Conversely your physiology can make your voice sound more open and resonant. For example, yawning opens the back of the throat (you can feel your tongue go down at the back and your throat open when you yawn) and chest beating Tarzan style helps to open up resonance in the chest.

The tunes that you hear behind the words give you information too. For example when you drop the pitch at the end of a phrase it sounds like a command or a statement and when you raise the pitch at the end of a phrase it sounds like a question regardless of the content.