“The human voice is the organ of the soul.” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
My client recently recorded his first-ever webinar and then sent me a copy to review. He did a fantastic job and I was amazed at how smoothly he executed his delivery, because as I’ve said before, webinars are a breed apart when it comes to presenting skills. I called him right away to congratulate him. And you know what? He hadn’t even listened to it, saying “I hate the sound of my own voice.”
“Really? Well, if you don’t listen to playback, how can you even know what you sound like?” He didn’t have an answer for that, but said merely that he’s always felt that way. And he’s hardly alone. Many people that I work with have said the exact same thing. I’ve realized that it’s not so much that people don’t like their voice, as they’re not used to hearing it, as odd as that might seem in these days of ubiquitous recording devices. But it’s true. So when they do listen to playback, they’re often surprised at what they hear, but that should never lead to the conclusion of “I hate the sound of my voice.”
Don’t get me wrong-some voices are grating and unpleasant-one woman I know has a strident, high-pitched voice that’s like fingernails scraping across a chalk-board. It’s hard to listen to and even more difficult to hear what she’s got to say because of it…BUT, the majority of people sound just fine. To help you get past any resistance, I encourage you to record a sample of yourself reading from your favorite literature, a book, song, poem etc. Focus on the meaning of the words, rather than the sound of them.
When you listen to playback, you want to notice a few things:
- Pitch of your voice- this means how high or low in your vocal register you are. When we get nervous, the pitch of the voice can go up, because our vocal chords are muscles, and when they get tense, they tighten up.
- Pacing-this refers to how quickly or slowly we speak. Again, when nervous, the pacing can often pick up to a point that it’s hard to follow the speaker.
- Upward or downward inflection- this is usually at the end of a sentence, and it means you are completing your thought on an up note, as if asking a question, or on a downward note, as in making a statement.
- Vocal fry- this drives me right around the bend. It’s when people try to sound husky and speak in an unnaturally lower register. It used to occur mostly among younger men trying to infuse a bit of gravitas into their sound, but now women are doing it too.
In these days of texting and emailing, the person who picks up the phone to communicate is ahead of the pack. You can convey and receive much more information using the voice…it’s more nuanced and you get the meaning of the words, but also the energy and intention that go along with them. Is your voice accurately conveying what’s in your soul, as Longfellow suggests?
