Henry Higgins was right.  The moment we open our mouths to speak, people judge us.  If we have New York accents, we get stereotyped.  If we speak with a southern drawl, same thing, different stereotype.  And if we speak like a professor, I would bet that many people avoid us like the plague.

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.

I had an interesting session with a new client.  Let’s call her Fiona.  She came in from the field to take a position in marketing with a major pharma, and has discovered that, at her company, your career depends largely on how you present. 

Amazingly, they don’t offer any developmental support for people coming into the job.  But she pushed her boss for help, and he relented.

Here’s a rough summary of what I learned about her experience in pharma marketing.  In the spirit of full disclosure, I have not heard this before, and I have been deep into pharma marketing for 20 years.

1. Everyone wants to get promoted.  The easiest way to get promoted is to get visibility in front of senior people.  And the easiest way to get visibility is to present to them.

2.  If you’re not a good presenter, your boss will know it and will be reluctant to stand you up in front of the senior execs.  She could be afraid it will hurt your career chances and her image as an up-and-coming executive who is the fire under a red-hot group of high achievers.

3. Presenting marketing information internally is essentially selling ideas, and if you can’t get listeners to understand and believe in your idea, they are unlikely to see you as a good marketer, even though your ideas may be strong.

4.  Finally, everyone listening to your presentation is so busy that they don’t want presentations to go on for too long, and therefore they don’t ask questions.  They’re afraid of being seen as the “problem” person, or the “know-it-all” who makes everyone else look bad.   She said the preferred method of presenting is, “1, 2, 3…Poof!”

This means that you show your slide, say up to three things about it in a confident voice, and then move to the next slide (as in “Poof.  It’s gone!”)  Everyone will be pleased that you got through your material quickly, and displayed confidence and conviction as you spoke. 

5.  Finally, while every product and market is different, the process of marketing is the same across brands.  This causes many presentations to look and sound the same, i.e., they’re boring.  So listeners like it when you’re articulate, energetic, and concise because you save them from the embarrassment of falling asleep.

She says you’re especially valued  if you have a highly expressive voice.

Doesn’t sound like a lot of fun in this big pharma.  But if you want the rewards–the promotion and the fatter check– you gotta  sing for your supper. 

And the name of the song you have to sing?  “1, 2, 3…Poof!”

When bacon fries, it makes a crackling, bubbling, splashy sound and smells delicious.

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.