Habits such as talking too quietly, or too quickly, or going up at the ends of sentences, or sounding too breathy, or too stereotypically “blue collar”—all these, and other vocal habits, can cause listeners to dismiss our ideas.

This is most obviously a problem for professional people whose job demands that they communicate their expertise, compete for promotion, and sell themselves and their ideas both inside their organizations, and out in the marketplace.

What can be done to help them?

1. Make them aware of the problem.  We are reluctant to do this because the voice is such a deeply personal part of us.  To criticize the voice of another, we think to ourselves, would be hurtful to them.  Quite the contrary, if done in a supportive manner.  Broadcasters and actors were not born with the voices we hear on  radio and TV.  They work with voice and speech teachers to improve the appeal of their on-air presence.  Since we in the business world are always “on” at work, why should we not do what we can to improve our chances to climb to the top?
2. The voice is a wind instrument.  In order to play it well, we must know how to breathe to support the sound, and how to use our tongues and lips to make crisp, intelligible sounds, just as the fingers of a flautist move to stop the air to make specific notes..  These behaviors are easily learned with practice.  A good voice and speech teacher can be found at any university with a drama department.  He or she can help improve the credibility of a voice, and reduce the effect of any accent that might be getting in the way.
3. Finally, someone who seeks to improve his or her vocal presence should expect that it will take some time.  One does not learn how to play a wind instrument in a day. But with effort, one can improve the expressive range, the strength, and the resonance of a voice, and discover an ancient truth: that we are judged by how we speak.

I say the truth is ancient because I recently discovered this quote from The Book of Sirach, written in Hebrew in the 2^nd Century BCE.

When a sieve is shaken, the husks appear;

So do a man’s faults when he speaks.

As the test of what the potter molds is in the furnace,

So in his conversation is the test of a man.

The fruit of a tree shows the care it has had;

So too does a man’s speech disclose the bent of his mind.

Praise no man before he speaks,

For it is then that men are tested.

Sims Wyeth is an executive speech coach in Montclair, NJ specializing in presentation skills and public speaking training in order to give accomplished people the knowledge and skill they need to become accomplished speakers. Learn more public speaking tips at www.SimsWyeth.com.

Angela Lansbury

They were not alone.  Most Broadway actors have strong speaking voices.  The question is:  did they become successful because they were gifted with such speaking voices, or did they work to develop their instruments?

The answer?  Who knows?  Some of us are born with a distinctive speaking voice, some of us are not, and others work their butts off to develop their speaking voice so they can have the career they want.

You are not an actor, and yet like an actor, your success depends on the impression you create and on how you perform on the job.  In fact, the sound of your speaking voice is arguably the most memorable thing about you: it echoes in the minds of those who have met you and worked with you.  Yet most of us get no training on how to use our speaking voices.

That’s too bad, because the speaking voice is perfectly trainable.  It can be tuned, like a guitar or a piano.  And training your speaking voice can be incredibly fun.

Here in New Jersey, training the speaking voice is a personal and professional goal for many.  Whether they are young women seeking to increase their image of authority and gravitas when they speak, or men with successful careers who want to minimize the stigma of an accent, they seek out private or group instruction in training the speaking voice as a passport to success.

Training the speaking voice covers:

• how to breath in order to support your sound
• how to release habitual tension in the speaking process
• how to expand the range, resonance and deep dark color of the voice
• and how to enunciate vowels and consonants with clarity and precision

Because New York and New Jersey are melting pots of ambitious and successful people—people who see opportunity and want to take advantage of it—many of them want to develop their speaking voices as their number one calling card.

Also a large number of major corporations in New York and New Jersey want to retain highly skilled knowledge workers who must interact with teams and present their specialized knowledge to others.  Helping these people to contribute to the organization is one of the many reasons why companies seek out training for voice and speech.

The speaking voice is the world’s greatest instrument—of leadership, change, and communication.  Tune your instrument.  Practice your instrument.  Become a master of your instrument. 

The rewards, for you and your company, will be positively resounding.

Sims Wyeth is an executive speech coach in Montclair, NJ specializing in presentation skills and public speaking training in order to give accomplished people the knowledge and skill they need to become accomplished speakers. Learn more public speaking tips at www.SimsWyeth.com.

What does she mean by this?  Here’s my take on it.

She means that speakers can’t hold the attention of a room full of people when they get stuck on the same channel for too long.

What is a channel?  Well, it’s something physical, mental, vocal, or verbal that you are doing too much of.

For instance, if your voice springs forth at the same volume all the time, your audience will tire.

If you plod or speed at the same pace for the duration, they will grow weary.

If you lack variety of pitch, and fail to make important words stand out from the less important, they will struggle to follow your reasoning.

If you stand in the same place for too long, your listeners will get fidgety.

If you move constantly back and forth across the floor like a shark, they will get distracted.  Such movement is noise, not signal.  It distracts from what you’re saying.

If you gesture too much, they will be drawn away from your content.

If you don’t gesture at all, they will struggle to understand your point of view, or how you feel about the issues, and will be less focused.

If you talk about yourself ad infinitum, their eyes will glaze over.

If slide after slide shows data, they will fatigue.

If you use fat words too often (big fancy ones) some listeners will withdraw in shame, and others will attack in a rage.

If you use skinny words (simple everyday ones) you may lose the more sophisticated members of your audience.

If you spend too much time in the world of the general and abstract, they will lust for particulars and stories.

On the other hand, if you deal exclusively in facts, they will wonder what your point is.

And if you make a theoretical case for action, they will drop out of listening because they hunger for a real world example to help them SEE what you SAY.

To paraphrase Adlai Stevenson, the way of the speaker is hard, requiring constant channel surfing in order to retain the attention of the viewer. 

Sameness is your enemy.  Variety, diversity, and surprise are your greatest allies.

Bring them with you to your next presentation.

Sims Wyeth is a speech coach in Montclair, NJ specializing in presentation skills and public speaking training in order to give accomplished people the knowledge and skill they need to become accomplished speakers. Learn more public speaking tips at www.SimsWyeth.com.

Of course, we can overcome these stereotypes with the positive qualities of our character.  We can sound like Tony Soprano and act like Mr. Rogers.  But the lingering effect of the stereotype remains.

In our practice at Sims Wyeth & Co.  we are asked to improve the voice and speech of employees whose are having trouble being heard.  This takes several different forms.

First, there are those who have difficulty getting to the point.  This is most likely a thinking problem and a habit with obscure roots, not a voice and speech problem.

Then there are those who speak English as a second language.  We are a country of immigrants, but when 12 individuals in one department come from 10 different countries, there are many accents and many sets of ears trying to listen to many different pronunciations of English.  If the conversations are crucial to strategic business issues, it’s a problem.

Then we have some good old American mumblers.  These people need to learn how to use their articulators.

And then there are fast talkers, slow talkers, close talkers, soft talkers, and too-loud talkers.  And up-talkers, nose-talkers, and talkers who sound like they have marbles in their mouths.

Sims Wyeth is a private speech coach in Montclair, NJ specializing in executive speech coaching and public speaking training in order to give accomplished people the knowledge and skill they need to become accomplished speakers. Learn more public speaking tips at www.SimsWyeth.com.

Four-hundred and six years later, what he says remains good advice for a presenter too.  Look how he’s telling them to speak clearly—“don’t talk as if you had marbles in your mouth,” he’s saying.

Also, he warns them not to wave their hands around too much because while passion is a great thing in a speaker, too much passion damages their credibility and distracts the audience from what they’re saying.

Here it is:

“Speak the speech I pray you as I pronounced it to you,

trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it as many of your players

do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the

air too much with your hand thus, but use all gently; for in the

very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of your passion,

you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it

smoothness.”

Hamlet, by William Shakespeare

Act 3, Scene 1

Go to executivespeechcoachny.com to see more ancient wisdom from a speaker coach who was actually a Prince.

Sims Wyeth is a private speech coach in Montclair, NJ specializing in executive speech coaching and public speaking training in order to give accomplished people the knowledge and skill they need to become accomplished speakers. Learn more public speaking tips at www.SimsWyeth.com.

Everywhere on earth man is born with a voice able to rouse households from their slumbers.

And everywhere in business, he struggles to keep his listeners attentive to his presentations.

Vocal power

We underestimate the importance of the human voice and we do so at our peril. 

Surgeons are more likely to be sued when their tone is too authoritative.  Air traffic control is more apt to keep planes in fatally prolonged holding patterns when pilots request permission to land without expressing urgency. And business presenters, who may be dealing with dry material, are doomed to lose listeners if they cannot set their reasoning on fire with passion and conviction.

Reason with passion

Of course, too much passion may lack credibility, but business presenters would do well to communicate excitement! I often hear from clients that they can’t express excitement because the material is so dry.  And I reply that the drier the material, the greater the need to make it relevant and appealing to the audience.

Think of a pair of scissors.  One blade is reason, the other is passion.  In a good presentation, it is hard to know which blade does the cutting.

The voice that lost the client

One of my first clients was the consulting arm of KPMG now known as BearingPoint.  When they called me, the firm had  lost a major sale because, they were told, the presenters had sounded bored.  The prospect did not want to hire a firm that was not excited about the engagement.   They wanted me to help, and here’s what I did.

Human bag-pipe

The first thing I did was teach them to breathe properly-by filling the lungs and then contracting the  abdominal muscles to drive the breath up and out to strike the vocal cords with force and thus create a full sound.

Sound making for humans is the same as it is for bag pipes.  Pipers fill their goat skins (their bags) with air, and then squeeze the skins to release the air to produce sound.  Same with people-sort of.

We fill our lungs with air, then squeeze our lungs with our lower abdominal and intercostal muscles (those between the ribs) to push out the air and create vibrations in our vocal cords which produce speech.

However, if we don’t take in enough air, or we don’t use our muscles properly, we won’t have enough energy to make our voices rich and powerful.

Uncork the bottle neck

Next I had to uncork the bottle neck.  It’s amazing how many people try to talk without really opening their mouths and throats.  In order to teach this basic skill,  I introduced the yawning exercise, which stimulates the throat to open wide, and the “Floppy Jaw” exercise, which teaches how to open the mouth all the way for each and every syllable spoken.  Both these exercises made the consultants sound like morons, which is very upsetting for people who are 1000% invested in appearing to be highly intelligent.  But the experience reminded them that “to speak is to make a noise,” and noise, like music, has emotional qualities.

“You won’t believe it!”

Then, I modeled the “You won’t believe it,” exercise.  I asked each of them, one at a time, to cup their hands around their lips and call out across the Grand Canyon to their friend Joe.

“Hey, Joe!  You won’t believe it!  I found the most amazing thing!  You gotta get over here to see this!”

“What is it?” Joe yells back.

Here I would coach and say, “More excited!  More amazed! More buzzing with energy!”

The exuberant, long-distance dialogue would continue.

“I found the most amazing consulting firm.  They have this process designed to streamline the financial systems of global companies.  It’s amazing!”

“All right, I’m coming,” Joe yells.

At first, clients struggle with the exercise, but soon they get the picture.  They realize that a significant portion of their emotional impact on others depends on their verbal and vocal expressiveness.

Phone charisma

Most of us think that charisma-that magical appeal that some people exude-has something to do with beauty!   It doesn’t.  It has more to do with communication-the ability to send and receive emotional signals.

It is widely believed that the ability to communicate emotion over the phone, without the support of gestures and facial expressions, is a good indicator of your capacity for charisma.

To explore this, I asked my consultants to team up with a colleague and sit down in separate chairs with their backs to each other, taking turns speaking as though on the phone.

They either improvised a conversation, or used a script like this:

Jack?  This is Jill.  You won’t believe what just happened.  Frank went into Bob’s office and told him he was quitting.  (Listening)  Yes!  Flat out.  He told him everything-that he was sick and tired of Frank’s meddling, that he was tired of being the last one to know, and…(listening) He’s already gone.  He took his coat and left.  Cindy saw him storm out.  He was beet red-I mean crimson!

While each participant took the part of Jack, the other consultants served as Olympic judges.  At the end of each performance they held up papers with scores. The room resounded with lusty cheers for great vocal variety.

On a more technical note

English works best when a change of pitch occurs at every stressed syllable. To address this aspect of vocal expressiveness, I gave them a passage to read aloud . 

Developed in 1941 by a committee from the faculties of Harvard, Princeton, and Yale, among others, it describes a vision of a liberally educated person.

The liberally educated man is articulate, both in speech and in writing. He has a feel for language, a respect for clarity and directness of expression, and a knowledge of some language other than his own. He is at home in the world of quantity, number and measurement. He thinks rationally, logically, and objectively, and knows the difference between fact and opinion. When occasion demands, however, his thought is imaginative and creative rather than logical. He is perceptive, sensitive to form, and affected by beauty.

I found that introducing movement techniques helped with identifying speech patterns.  As participants used their hands to “hit” the stressed syllables, they more readily brought emphasis and meaning to the text. 

In addition to using the body to connect to expressiveness, I also asked them to use their imaginations.  Some people responded to the suggestion that they speak like an eccentric British professor.  Once they allowed themselves the freedom, they began to pontificate with greater color and expression.

And there was one consultant who channeled  a pompous Southern Senator.  It helped him to imagine he was stepping inside the skin of the senator, just as a hand fits inside a puppet. You step into the skin of a good-ole-boy Senator from Alabama, and all of a sudden, you’ve got a voice that can raise the rafters.

Caveat speaker

These exercises are meant for practice.  They are stretching exercises for the voice.  Just as dancers extend their legs at the barre,  and pianists practice scales, speakers need  to awaken their most human instrument-the voice.

And if you know someone who thinks this approach  is foolishness, let me give you a few words of advice.

Admittedly, we have fixed traits-such as shyness, perhaps, or an unflappable reserve. But we also have free traits-behaviors that are outside our comfort zones that we can embrace for projects aligned with our deepest values.

For instance, many professors are introverts, but in order to earn a living, they force themselves to give lectures.  And if they want to attract many students, and not have the dean drop their course due to lack of interest, they may even strive to improve their lecturing skills.  Who knows? They may even try to improve the quality of their speaking voice.

These professors choose to act out of character in order to do their jobs well. One definition of courage is acting out of character!

If your mind is sharp but your voice is dull, your ideas may not cut through the clutter.

Your greatest calling card is a pleasing and effective voice.  I urge you to explore your most human instrument.

We are judged by how we speak, write, and think-in that order.  That’s why it’s crucial that professionals speak their thoughts in a manner that is easy to understand, and inspires trust and respect in their listeners.   Training the Speaking Voice, is a developmental process customized for each individual and group to achieve targeted outcomes.

I created the program after an increase in demand from executives and professionals seeking ways to improve the clarity and impact of their sound and enunciation, or with those who speak English with a regional or foreign accent.

The program is excellent for public speakers or executives looking to enhance their professional opportunities with dynamic speaking capabilities.  The exercises open up new possibilities for self-awareness as well as professional and personal growth. 

Typical voice and speech training issues include:

• speaking too softly
• speaking too quickly
• lack of expression (monotony of pitch, volume, and speed)
• vocal fatigue
• too many “ers” and “uhms”
• an accent that makes the speaker hard to understand

 About Training the Speaking Voice

Training the Speaking Voice  is an Executive Education Program, customized for each individual and/or group, to achieve targeted outcomes.

 Candidates for the program include those whose clarity or personal impact is impeded by an accent, or by less than optimal voice and speech habits.

 The program follows an intuitive path.

1. First, we record & identify the voice or speech challenge.
2. We introduce exercises to address the issues.
3. The candidate receives coaching in person, and practices on her own.
4. We measure the change, report the results, and provide guidance for continuing growth and awareness.

To support the face-to face instruction, we provide easy to use written materials, customized recordings for home (or car) study, and web and phone tutorials.

More information is available online at http://www.simswyeth.com/services/voice-speech-training

When young women fry their voices, they make a grinding sound in the back of their throats, and regardless of how they smell, they are undermining their stature and impact by doing so. 

I am going to call the Center for Disease Control to announce that I have detected a dangerous new epidemic of The Vocal Fry. (Please see the bottom of this posting for a definition of Vocal Fry.)

It has mostly infected young women, and it makes them sound as if they’ve run out of air, and are generating their voices by grinding their vocal chords together.

It manifests itself mostly at the ends of sentences. To me, it makes them sound tense, cerebral, and unappealing. I do not want to listen to them speak about anything.

No doubt this is a failing on my part, but I am confessing now, in public, that The Vocal Fry is like fingernails on a blackboard to me.

I think it’s mostly educated young women, maybe even educated young women from a certain background that have developed this as a fashionable way to talk.

I am going to capture recordings of it and put them up here on the blog, or on my other blogs at www.simswyeth.com/blog or at executivespeechcoachny.com

The human voice must stand guard over the content of a spoken message, or the content will evaporate, no matter how precious it was in itself.

The Vocal Fry has to go.

Definition:The vocal fry register (also known as pulse register, laryngealisation, pulse phonation, creak, glottal fry, glottal rattle, glottal scrape or strohbass), is the lowest vocal register and is produced through a loose glottal closure which will permit air to bubble through slowly with a popping or rattling sound of a very low frequency.