14

Essential Extras for Speakers

TRUE ARTISTRY in speaking comes from creating a convincing blend of three elements: what you say, the way you say it, and who you are. When these pieces come together, you’ll find that your voice becomes a vehicle that moves people to listen and take you and your words seriously, whether you’re in the office, at home, or onstage.

The vocal exercises and the work you’ve done to bring varied new sounds into your voice have given you strength, stamina, and technique. You now have a great sense of just how broad a reach your instrument has, and you know how to tune it up to correct sound qualities you don’t like. What’s left? The only thing standing between you and great speaking—if you’re not comfortably there by now—is probably habit. Sometimes, even when your singing voice is thick, strong, and full of color and variety, habit can throw you back into the narrow confines of your old way of speaking. You may be used to talking so fast that you don’t give your body a chance to let the new sounds out. You may be caught in a monotone that you hardly notice, clinging to the idea that there’s a difference between the way you sing and the way you speak. But if you’re bold enough to experiment and to tear down the wall between singing and speaking, you’ll find the speaking voice that’s awake, vibrant, and uniquely yours.

In this chapter I’ll give you some techniques that will help you consciously shake up your old voice and incorporate new sounds. I’ll also ask you to turn your attention to how a number of factors shape the particular message you want to deliver. Vocal dynamics—your speed, pitch, and volume; the way you stretch particular sounds; and the way you use silence—deeply influence the way people hear and respond to you. It’s as though your message were pure water, and dynamics create the container. The same words can take on the glistening clarity of crystal, the warmth of a diner coffee mug, or the shock value of a blast from the nozzle of a fire hose. I can assure you that what you say will have impact in any context if you wrap it in sounds that emphasize, rather than detract from, your meaning.

As you’ll see in this chapter, a voice that’s effective and powerful may not necessarily be one that people say they love. It may not be a voice that they admire for its flawlessness. But because there’s a strong synergy between the message and the messenger, both are memorable.

By taking the time to match the music of your speech with the “lyrics” of your thoughts, emotions, and desires, you can connect with any listener, from a boss to a lover. And you’ll feel the unmistakable power that comes from removing vocal roadblocks and setting your voice free.

Finding a Pace That Works

Have you ever bought a car? Every time I’ve gone to a dealership, I’ve been struck by the vocal dance of the car salesman. It’s his job to make a wall-of-sound pitch for the vehicle you’re interested in, squeezing in as many extras as he can and confidently running down the specifics of the deal in language that keeps things legal by fully disclosing fees and charges. The experience is a little like being run over by a steamroller. The salesman’s voice is relentless, and after a while it’s hard to break in and ask questions. You might feel a little slow on the uptake if you interrupted with a “What was that? I didn’t get what you meant.” So, perhaps against your better judgment, you let him keep going, though you may have to step outside when he’s finished to let your head stop spinning. You hear the extremes of this kind of professional speed-speech in television commercials that rattle off the “fine print” details so fast that even an auctioneer couldn’t keep up.

What do you think when you hear this kind of fast-talking? In the case of salesmen, I think most of us assume that the speaker’s trying to create a sense of urgency (and thus pressure), or even that he’s nervous or has something to hide. The very pace of the delivery gives the interaction a tone that’s as clear as if it were marked on sheet music by a composer.

So what is your tempo saying about you? And how is it affecting what your listeners hear?

First, keep in mind that every body runs at a different pace. If you’re high-strung and restless, your metabolism is probably naturally set on high. You walk fast, eat fast, and talk fast. On the other hand, you may be a low-key, centered, and grounded person who rarely seems rushed. Your heartbeat is probably slower, along with your breathing. Tune in to your natural speed. Do you talk faster than the people around you? More slowly? Spend some time asking your friends and paying attention to how your pace compares with others’. There’s no essentially good or bad speed, but I’d like you to be aware of what happens when your natural tendencies are accentuated—which often happens when we’re under stress.

If your natural speed is medium to fast. Nerves or excitement can easily push the pedal to the metal and accelerate your speech to a pounding pace. You might be fine one-on-one or in familiar situations, but when you step in front of an audience or prepare to confront a spouse with some bad news, adrenaline kicks in, increasing your pulse rate and releasing energy to prepare for the coming stress. If you don’t tune in to your body at this point, a number of things start to happen. Your voice, mirroring your body’s “tempo change,” rushes out. As your mouth, throat, and tongue work feverishly to articulate the words, you can fall into a dronelike monotone because there’s simply not enough time or breath to allow the voice to move around freely and produce varied pitches. In all likelihood, your breathing rate has increased and you’ve lost touch with diaphragmatic breathing altogether, which means the resonances of middle and head voice are less available to you, and chest voice is thin instead of thick. This is not the voice you want to use to tell your employees that layoffs are coming, or your spouse that there’s a huge new dent in the car—yet it may seem to be the only one available.

Worse for the listener at times like this, your words and breath are probably not connected in any meaningful way. Pauses are important in speech because when they’re used effectively, they break information into units based on sense. They’re aural punctuation. If you give in to the tendency to talk nonstop until the breath gives out and pause only when you’re gasping for air, it’s as though you’re throwing periods and commas in at random. Where you pause has nothing to do with where thoughts begin and end. The only message that’s absolutely clear is the one you really don’t want to send: “Get me out of here! I’m scared!” You may also give the impression that you’re on autopilot. If you’ve ever visited a tourist attraction at the end of the summer and wound up on a tour with a guide who’s given the spiel a thousand times, you know how lifeless rushed, “canned” words can sound. You assume the speaker is bored and definitely not interested in either the topic or you. What gives the warmed-over effect? Generally, it’s uninflected, monotone speed.

If you’re like most people, and nerves are the big problem that throws you into unwanted overdrive, the first thing I’d like you to do is go back to the basics of diaphragmatic breathing, which will slow your body down with its gentle, regular pattern. Focusing on your breath is a well-known and effective technique for pulling you back to the present and grounding you in your body when you’ve been caught up in racing, worried thoughts. If you establish correct breathing, you lay the foundation for proper sound production and allow your body to remember and make the sounds it’s learned in your singing exercises.

I’d also like you to play with your pacing when you talk. You might start by recording yourself as you read the newspaper or a book aloud. Read a sentence or two at your normal speed, then change the pace. Slow down for a sentence or two, then speed up. What speed gives you the best sound? What makes you sound energetic or authoritative or loving? You might notice that different content seems to be more effective at different speeds. Play with this. If you’re a fast talker normally, try slowing your pace on every other phone call at work. How do people respond to you? When you’re face-to-face with a friend, watch for cues. Are you connecting better when you slow down? Or does a certain amount of speed buff up your message? If you’re delivering a speech, you might want to play with speed for emphasis. Slowing down at difficult or key points might draw attention to places you’d like to underline.

A lesson I’d like you to take from performers is to learn to read your audience. Are you reaching them? Are they looking at you? Are they fidgeting? Nodding? If you’re talking to your child, is she listening? What does it take to break through to the other person? Speed is just one variable, but it has a big effect on how understandable and approachable you seem to be, so it’s a great place to begin to work with this kind of experimentation. If you think of speech as music, and give yourself license to play it like a jazz musician until you find the effect you want, you’ll dissolve your limiting vocal habits permanently.

If you’re incredibly slow-talking by nature. When you speak very slowly, you run the risk of distorting the sound of your voice by causing it to waver just slightly. There’s a certain laxness to the sound that you can hear if you listen to audio 34 on the website. To my mind this speech pattern sounds weak and frail, and more than a touch seasick.

In pressure situations you may tend to pause too often to make it easy for your listener to catch your meaning. (Just read a sentence, pausing after every word or two, and you’ll see what I mean. The individual words seem to be disconnected, and it’s easy to lose track of how they’re related.) You may also start to articulate your pauses, filling them in with an ah or an um, which is like adding a layer of static to the sound of your voice.

I think that in many settings, listening to a slow speaker who frequently pauses makes you question the speaker’s credibility. The pauses suggest hesitancy or lack of authority. The speaker may seem to be unprepared or inarticulate—though the impression may well be completely false.

To get a reading on your pace, record yourself speaking (not reading). Tell me about your favorite childhood memory, and reach in for as much detail as you can. Play back the recording, listening not for content but simply for speed and the way you use pauses. Are you pausing before you finish an idea? Do you hear yourself pausing to search for words? Did you fill in the pause with a sound?

Try it again, deliberately speaking faster. If you didn’t like the pauses you heard the first time, concentrate on speaking complete thoughts. What happens to the sound of your voice? Does it gain color?

Spend a couple of days consciously matching the speed of your conversations to the pace of your companions. If they talk fast, talk fast. If they speak slowly, speak slowly. Do you feel any difference in the energy of your interactions?

There’s no magic pill for fixing the pace of your speech, just listening and adjusting, listening and adjusting. Record yourself for feedback. Keep in mind that different situations require different paces. If you’re a therapist, for example, you want to provide lots of space in your speech to encourage the other person to respond. Some comedians use extremely slow speech to set up jokes based on the conclusions their audience has jumped to while waiting for them to finish talking—and it’s very effective. Slow is not inherently bad. Just be sure it’s appropriate to your situation. Your audience will let you know.

Breaking Out of Monotone

I still remember when I took my son to his first day of preschool. In the middle of the session, a tall man entered the room and said, in a loud, bassy monotone: “Hello, I’m Ed, your coach. Please form one line and we will proceed outside to play.” The kids just sat in their seats. Most three-year-olds love the word play, and they’re easily excitable, but Coach Ed’s message left them cold. He might have been the most energetic and fun guy in the world—but his voice gave no clue. Seventeen preschoolers heard the sound that came out of his mouth and had no desire to follow him anywhere.

The work we’ve done to this point has given you dozens of vocal tones and shadings to use, but like Coach Ed, you may not yet be incorporating them into the way you speak every day. I’d like you to tune in now to how much variation you’re putting into your speaking voice. Pick up a book or paper and record your voice reading any passage you like. As you play back the recording, listen specifically for how high and low you go. Does your voice swoop and soar all over the keyboard, or does it remind you of my son’s PE coach? You have almost three octaves of range to play with, so I encourage you to move the notes around.

Listen to audio 35 on the website and you’ll hear an example of what I’m talking about. I’m emphasizing variety in my voice as I speak, giving it a lot of texture. As you experiment in this way, you’ll no doubt come up with a lot of goofy sounds and voices that you may never use. But you’ll also stumble upon qualities that you like and want to incorporate. You’ll get the best results if you spend time consciously exaggerating the highs and lows and moving into areas you’re not used to.

It might be easier for you to get an idea of how to do this if you try the following exercise: Write down ten or twelve lines of the next conversation you’ll probably have. Maybe you’ll be talking to your kids or asking someone for a date. Now take those lines and pretend they’re the lines of a song. Forget that you’re not a composer, and without worrying too much about your melody, go back and sing the whole conversation, everything from the “How’s it going?” to the “Now can you take out the trash?” I know that you’re probably muttering “No way,” but I challenge you to try this. No matter how strange the “song,” I know you’ll hear more thickness, more energy, and more pitch variation than you generally put into your regular speech. Once you’ve sung the words of your planned conversation, go back and speak them and see if you can keep some of the same resonances and variations in your speech.

Here’s one more experiment to try: Write out five or six lines of a talk or conversation and attach them to the melody of “Happy Birthday.” (Follow along with audio 36.) My sample conversation was something along the lines of: “I’m going to have lunch with Joe, then I’m getting a haircut. After that I’m going to get the laundry, pick up dinner, and go home.” You can also try singing a more negative message: “Profits are down” or “I just crashed the car.” Listen to what happens as your voice goes high and low. Notice that because of the turns, pauses, and longer notes in the music, you’re stressing certain syllables, giving emphasis to particular words. This is no dull monotone, and you can let the variety and energy you just sang into the same words as you speak them. Try it.

If you get confused about how to put high and low sounds into speech, listen again to audio 35, and do some more improvised singing followed by speaking.

Use the News

You can also practice varying the pitches and stresses of your voice by imitating the reporters and anchors on the evening news. I don’t recommend this style of speaking as an ideal, but you can pick up a number of helpful strategies and techniques that may help you break out of a stubborn monotone.

Newscasters often aim to make negative information sound intriguing but not depressing. Rather than giving in to the emotions tied to news of death and devastation, they look for ways to keep a high-energy, positive sound in their voices. The feeling of energy is created in part by the way they “punch” particular words, making them louder, or lifting the pitch, for emphasis. These speakers also end nearly every sentence by either staying on the same note or going higher. In regular conversation, most of us drop the pitch at the end of a sentence, which releases tension and lowers the feeling of intensity we’re creating. But by ending on the same pitch or going higher, news voices sustain the feeling of importance that they’ve built around what they’re saying—and leave you wanting to hear what comes next. Experiment with both of these techniques. I know they feel a little artificial, but you can use them as a springboard to more natural ways of speaking with a lot of variety.

It’s easy to turn this kind of variation into a parody, as performers like my student Jon Lovitz sometimes does. I know that those of you who make a lot of presentations or speak often in public are wary of the singsongy cadences of the “professional speakers’ voice,” or a stagey kind of broadcasters’ voice in which inconsequential words get emphasized and every sentence is molded into the same roller-coaster format, whether it fits or not. Don’t worry—I don’t want you to wind up with a voice that’s varied just for the sake of novelty. I’ve noticed that when speakers begin to sound that way, it’s usually because they seem to be completely disconnected from their meaning. But you can begin to address that problem by focusing on phrasing.

Making Phrases Work for You

We think in phrases—groups of words. We learn that way too. If you recite the alphabet, you’ll probably notice that you pause in the same places as you do when you sing the ABC song, and if you try to recite it to a different rhythm, it’ll probably feel wrong to you. As a speaker you may not need to make a lifelong imprint on your audience, but you can ensure that your message stays easily in your listeners’ minds by using phrasing as carefully as a singer might.

I’ve talked about Frank Sinatra and his masterly use of phrasing, but perhaps you didn’t make a connection between Frank singing “My Way” and the most effective way of, say, delivering a report to a group of clients. Frank used pauses to group words by meaning and let them sink in. He connected every word to a note, the melody line, an emotion, and an idea, and you can do this when you speak.

Return to the speak-singing exercise we did earlier, your ten to twelve lines of written conversation, and this time break the sentences into phrases that each convey important parts of your message. For instance, if your thought is “Helen, I want to go out with you…,” you might break it into “Helen / I want to go out with you / we’ll talk / we’ll get to know each other / after all / it’s you / you’re the only one / the only one I want.”

Before you can speak-sing it, you need to know what kind of song this is. If it’s a love song, you’ll deliver it differently than a children’s song, emphasizing different words, and of course adding very different emotions. Often we don’t stop to consider the emotional weight we want our words to carry because we’re so focused on the words themselves. It’s helpful to ask: If this speech/talk/conversation were a song, what kind of song would it be? That’s the same as asking, “What kind of energy do I want this communication to have?” Is it a stirring inspirational hymn? Rousing march? If you liken your speech to the Michigan fight song instead of a folksy country tune, you’ll help yourself produce a very specific effect. For right now, let’s say we’re working on a love song (and if you need to, you can change “Helen” to “Roger”).

If you sing “Helen / I want / to go out / with you,” you’ll notice that instead of stopping short at each pause, you’ll probably stretch some of the sounds first—for emphasis. Don’t theorize about this—try it! The more time you spend on Helen’s name, for example, the more you’re celebrating Helen. Stretch out the word “want” and you emphasize desire. You can also emphasize “out” or “go out” and that last “you.” The pause itself emphasizes the word that comes before it.

We’re used to hearing singers do this, and what we often don’t realize is that great speakers do this too. They work the words, letting them resonate into the pauses between phrases. They give words different lengths, and of course, different pitches.

Now try breaking the Helen lines in different places and sing them again. The less musical and rhythmic you make your pauses, the harder you’ll be to understand. (“Helen I / want / to go out with / you.”) It’s the pauses that make the phrase, so use them consciously, not arbitrarily. Stay right in the moment. You don’t have to pause a long time, but if you’re delivering complicated information or asking people to visualize something new, give them a moment to digest what you’ve said. Break your message down subtly, by offering your listeners space to think or laugh.

Practice phrasing by singing your written conversation. Sing the same words as a children’s teaching song, a torch song, and a dance tune, keeping in mind that your purpose changes each time: you’re trying to teach something simply, tell a love story, or get your audience to get up and move. The rhythms, phrasings, and sounds that produce those effects can be part of your repertoire when you speak, if you’re willing to try them. When you hit on a sound you like, repeat it. Don’t forget to translate these sung sounds into speech. Read your “lyrics” and try to carry the same kinds of inflections, pitch variations, and meaningful pauses into the way you talk.

Pauses are, not incidentally, your chance to breathe. Many singers mark their music to indicate exactly where they want to breathe, and especially if you’re giving a talk, I encourage you to do the same thing. Some very basic guidelines to keep in mind:

Don’t keep talking when you run out of breath!

Allow yourself to talk to the end of a complete phrase.

Let yourself be silent, instead of producing a filler sound, when you are thinking.

If you concentrate on speaking in phrases and using pauses thoughtfully, you’ll automatically shift your focus, and your listeners’, to the meaning of what you’re saying. Filling in your pauses with ums and ers and “you know”s essentially erases your phrases, so if you’ve noticed that you tend to make sounds like this, spend time breaking the habit. Record yourself often and practice filtering out the filler.

A Reminder about Volume

Every time I’ve ever worked with a speaker who’s trapped behind a small, closed-off voice and asked for more volume, the standard response has been: “No, no—I’m shouting.” But the crowd listening inevitably goes wild as the decibel level increases. We can all hear that the speaker sounds a hundred times better with the thick, strong voice that proper volume makes possible. I know I’ve encouraged you more than once to stop rationing your voice and to let the sound and energy out. Please go with me on this. Phrasing, pitch variation, and singing your way into speech aren’t going to help if people can’t hear you!

Volume, volume, volume!

A Better Way to Practice a Speech

I recently listened to a scientist give a talk about changing the way we eat. He was speaking to a friendly audience that was interested in all facets of health and self-improvement, yet within just a few sentences, I knew that the people around me had almost completely tuned out. Why? I think it had a lot to do with the way he had practiced.

The man was speaking without notes, yet he seemed to be adhering to a set script, as though he had a TelePrompTer behind his forehead. His voice moved up and down, with lots of variation, but he certainly hadn’t been thinking about phrasing his information in a meaningful way. He seemed mechanical, and after a while it was just annoying to listen to him. I sat, trying to pay attention, but I soon found myself imagining this person practicing the night before with a legal pad in his lap, reading and rereading and repeating this speech until he had every word memorized. Many speakers do this, but it inevitably makes for mechanical delivery.

What would I have suggested instead? You guessed it—singing. If the scientist were my client, I’d have advised him to take his notes and sing his way through them. When you do, you’ll find yourself discovering interesting ways to emphasize words, you’ll hear them a different way, and you’ll begin to hear the real message shining through. The scientist might have discovered that the essential thing he wanted to communicate was his excitement about ways we can all live longer by eating differently. He may have found that he wanted most to encourage his listeners, or motivate them—and he may well have come up with new examples to help him do just that. Memorizing the text only gave the scientist access to words, not to the larger sense of what he wanted to say, and it made for a dry-as-dust presentation.

Singing gives you new perspective on your material because it’s one of the only times both sides of your brain—the creative, imaginative side and the orderly, logical side—operate together. When you practice by singing a few phrases, then going back to speak them, you tap into the power of your whole brain, and when you’re connected to both your logical mind and your imagination, you can’t help but express yourself in a way that feels whole. You might even surprise yourself. Your delivery feels fresh, and people can’t help but listen.

Basics for the Stage and Presentations

A great voice and wonderful delivery will go a long way toward communicating your message, but it will also help to have a basic familiarity with presentation skills as you take your new vocal strengths out into the world. I can’t pretend to give you a comprehensive guide here, but I’d like to give you a few hints that I’ve found particularly useful.

Using a microphone. Hearing your own voice amplified can be a shock. We’re familiar with the way we sound unplugged, but the voice that travels through a maze of electronic equipment and booms back at us through speakers can sound loud and affected. It does, in fact, change with every step it takes down the road of cables and amplifiers, and I tell my students that the only true sounds of the voice are what occurs in the space between our lips and the microphone. Don’t change your sound or your technique for the sake of the mike! For most speakers, that translates: Don’t speak more quietly when you hear your voice filling the room. Many people hush themselves as soon as they step in front of a mike, assuming that because it’s doing all the work, they don’t need to. But as you know by now, a soft airy voice can’t provide the flow of air and cord vibration necessary for ideal sound production—microphone or not, you need to keep your own volume up. Does this mean you should blast directly into a microphone? Not exactly. You can adjust the volume coming through the sound system by changing your proximity to the mike.

You may find, if your technique is good, that you don’t need a microphone at all. Most of the time when I lecture in a smallish space for fifty to seventy-five people, I’m fine without one. Quite often auditoriums and lecture halls have good acoustics, and the unamplified sound you generate bounces off the walls and ceiling to create positive reverberations that make your voice sound loud and thick enough to be heard unaided.

Don’t change your voice for the microphone. Allow yourself to make the musical sounds you’ve worked so hard to develop, and look on the mike as a potential helper, not a reason for changing all the rules.

Eye contact. The goal of a great speaker is to communicate on a completely real, honest level with the listeners. The finest speakers I’ve ever heard made me feel as though they were talking to me alone—even in a room full of people. In fact, they made almost all the listeners feel as though they were part of an intimate exchange. How is this accomplished? The secret is brief eye contact. Direct eye contact for more than ten seconds can make a listener acutely uncomfortable and may make a person feel challenged or threatened. But brief contact can energize the listener—and you.

I gave a presentation to a small group of business executives recently and noticed a couple of smiling, energetic faces of people who seemed enthusiastic and happy to meet me. A couple of others were withdrawn and shy, as though they were apprehensive about what I might ask them to do. And the rest of the group fell somewhere in between. As I talked, I made frequent eye contact with the excited members of the group, which seemed to raise their level of interest and gave me positive feedback that was energizing. I also took care to look at the faces of the more reticent members of the group and made an effort to connect with eye contact. Small presentations like this are conversational—you have a chance to see your audience’s reaction up close and to address questions and concerns as you see them flash across your listeners’ faces.

It’s a great opportunity, and you can grab it and use it if you reach out of yourself by using eye contact. You don’t need to stare, but look. Be curious about how your message is being received. Open yourself up to others’ feelings and the nonverbal messages they’re sending. You’ll gain valuable information.

Using your hands. You may have a great voice, and read your audience like a book, but still fall victim to a common habit that undermines your effectiveness. I call this problem “parallel gestures,” and it involves using both hands in exactly the same way. Instead of slicing the air with one hand to emphasize a point, you slice with two. Everything one hand does, the other mirrors. The effect is extremely comical, though of course it’s not intended to be. In the course of a normal conversation, our hands move independently. We might lift one hand, then let it drop, or point with one hand while the other rests. Observe yourself as you talk with your hands. Each side of the body is controlled by a different side of the brain, and our gestures reflect that.

When nerves enter the equation, however, it’s as though you’re standing outside your body and watching yourself, or choreographing your every movement. And the second you disconnect your body and your mind, you’re in trouble. You begin to orchestrate your gestures, and instantly you create a barrier between yourself and your listeners.

If you tend to use parallel gestures, try this exercise. Stand in front of a mirror that allows you to see yourself from the waist up. Sing your favorite song or speak any passage of text you’ve memorized. Watch what your hands do. Are they mirroring each other? Make a mental note of what you see. Now go back and sing or say the same thing. Stop the moment you find yourself making a parallel gesture, and let one hand drop, or move one of them up or down. Change something. Continue speaking or singing until you find yourself making another parallel gesture. Stop again, reposition, and continue. This simple mirror work will increase your awareness and let your body know that you’re onto its unconscious habit. Notice the gestures, then stop using them. It’s really that simple and possible.

Voices That Work

In singing, the path to developing a distinctive personal style is to imitate a wide variety of vocalists and broaden the range of sounds you can use to create something original. In speaking, though, I recommend listening and analyzing instead of imitating. Many voices that we can recognize instantly—say, Larry King’s rasp or Andy Rooney’s amusing nasal whine—are memorable because they serve the persona of the speaker very well. But if you use them without the rest of the package—especially the matching personality and content—you run the risk of sounding like a cartoon. (It’s also possible that you will pick up bad habits, as character voices often accentuate a quality that may not be attractive in another context.)

I’d like to help you begin the process of analyzing what makes speakers effective by spending time with a couple of my favorite clients, people whose voices do just what I’d like yours to do: they perfectly reflect the essence of the speaker’s personality and message. Most people do, indeed, send out distinct messages about themselves: “I’m a funny guy—laugh with me” or “I’m a competent, caring professional—follow my advice” or “I’m the world’s greatest lover—come closer.” Our messages vary, and they change in different situations and at different times in our lives, but when the sound of our voice is in tune with that message, it’s like having a transmitter that goes straight to the mind and heart of our audience, and that’s the system I want you to start building.

Two Voices, Two Messages

For one of my favorite clients, Tony Robbins, the mission is motivation. Tony travels the world coaching presidents, star athletes, heads of companies, and celebrities. If I were to characterize his voice, I’d say he sounds like a schoolyard bully who’s ready for a fight. Technically, he often creates a gravelly sound, and he has a tendency to overpower his cords with huge amounts of air. On the surface, it might seem like a voice that’s ripe for a makeover, but it’s helped him become one of the most successful men in his field because it lines up perfectly with his attitude and his message.

When Tony takes the stage, he challenges you, the audience, to a fight. The contenders in this battle are the old you and the person you want to be. Both opponents are tough, he says, and they are ready to fight to the death. He puts himself in the role not of an impartial referee but of a force that will not let the wrong man win. He will destroy the opponent for you if he has to. It’s a challenging position for him to take, and it requires that his audiences believe he can deliver. What’s one of the key components of his credibility? His voice.

Before he was on TV, and before you could see his tall, imposing figure in person at a seminar, he had a radio show. His only tool was sound, and he used to claim that he could fix any psychological problem in one hour—guaranteed. Never taking no for an answer, he powered his way into his listeners’ minds and forced positive changes. He’s not a hand-holder—he’s more like an exorcist. And he reinforces his message by using a full gamut of vocal sounds. He may whisper or yell, caress or explode—whatever it takes to move his audience to action. Though some of his sounds are tough on his vocal cords and we’re working to make them healthier, his voice is a perfect motivational steamroller. It’s not always pretty, but it works.

On the other end of the vocal spectrum is John Gray, who has helped bridge the worlds of men and women with Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. John has positioned himself as a mediator and translator, helping the sexes understand each other, and his voice is a gentle blending of male and female sounds. By filling his voice with the soft resonances of middle voice rather than always staying in chest, he successfully manages to create sounds that women feel are unthreatening, inviting, and compassionate—perfectly in line with his mission of helping people open up emotionally.

His soothing sound also reaches male listeners. Rather than challenging men to a confrontation, he invites them to get in touch with the female psyche and to understand that while it may seem foreign, it’s not the inexplicable mystery it’s always seemed to be. John doesn’t drastically switch personas when working with women and men, swinging from gentle to macho. He carefully cultivates a sound that speaks to both sexes in a convincing, nonthreatening way. In incorporating male and female sounds, he never sets himself up as the “other”—so he allows himself to be an emissary to both. Would this technique work for a rugby coach? Probably not. But it’s ideal for the fertile ground that John has chosen to walk as a teacher and healer.

Matching Your Voice to You

Do I think that the voice is the primary factor in a person’s success? Of course not. I know, however, that the voice is very high on the list. Time and again I see that the people who make it to the top of their chosen field have created a vocal personality that helps them. They have mixed all of their sound possibilities into a big grab bag and continually learned to pull out the ones they need at will.

By now I hope you’ve accepted the idea that there is no one perfect voice. In some ways your voice is the soundtrack to the life you’re creating. If your voice is doing ragtime and your life has the texture and content of an English costume drama, it’s going to seem out of place and work against you. There’s nothing wrong with ragtime per se, just as there’s nothing inherently wrong or right about a voice that’s macho and booming, sweet and feminine, or brusque and efficient—as long as the voice enriches the big picture instead of working to undermine it.

When a stockbroker gets on the phone and tries to persuade his top client that he alone knows what the market will do tomorrow, his voice needs to be a blend of strength, knowledge, security, passion, and persuasion. If he sounds too airy, too hesitant, or too disconnected, the client will absolutely not have deep confidence in him.

A Realtor showing a house needs to have a voice that conveys security, compassion, patience, understanding, loyalty, and insight. Can you imagine the effect on a potential home buyer if the broker’s voice was nervous and fast-paced, or if she jumbled all of the words together in a mad rush? What if her breathing was so bad that she sounded desperate, always gasping for air. I can guarantee that it would be much harder for her to make the sale.

A doctor’s voice needs to be a blend of good bedside manner and cutting-edge technology. Each word needs to be compassionate, knowledgeable, and even technical at the same time. If your doctor were extremely nasal and sounded like he had a cold, would you allow him to get very close to you? If he blocked all of the natural resonances from going above the soft palate and sounded like Yogi Bear, would you perceive him to be incredibly intelligent? Maybe not.

Finding the voice that matches your message doesn’t mean pretending to have something you lack—to be effective you need to be genuine. If you’re a red-clown-nose kind of guy and you have to speak to a group of terminally ill patients and tell them that the cure they were hoping for isn’t working out, use what is real. Make them laugh. Show them the strength of laughter instead of tears. I’m not saying make fun of your audience or make light of a serious situation. I just want to point out that you’ll have the most to give if you use what you have and let your listeners share a moment with the real you—who cares enough to be with the real them, even at a terrible time.

Record your voice as you talk about your passion in life. When you listen to your own words, do you hear the enthusiasm, the clarity, the emotion that you feel for your subject? We spend a lot of time developing the expertise to be great parents or professionals or entrepreneurs or artists, and the fact is that if we want to put our talents into the world, we have to spend time developing the voices that will communicate what we know, instead of shortchanging our talents. I don’t have any problem persuading singers to sing or to practice imitating sounds they admire. Singing is what they love. I hope you’ll begin to look on speaking with that kind of passion.

When you begin to put yourself and your ideas clearly and thoughtfully into the world, with all the energy you feel, people will notice. Their new attention and interest may make you feel self-conscious, but keep using the techniques you’ve learned. You’ll be a more active, influential player in your life, instead of being pushed to the sidelines. Use the exercises in this chapter to experiment with the way you sound. Especially, use the speak-singing technique. Speak the way you sing. I can’t stress strongly enough just how much that will transform the way you talk—and your total way of thinking and communicating.

And don’t be afraid to play. Talk like a broadcaster. Exaggerate the highs and lows in your voice. Spend some time carefully phrasing a snippet of conversation. Shut the door and try on voices until you arrive at something you like. I hope you’ll let yourself get carried away with this project of refining your voice—and finding the precise sounds that express who you are. When you do, every conversation you have will be an opportunity to express the energy of your ideas.