Don’t you want people to listen to you and hear you, so that your voice completely obeys your will, so that you can speak calmly and passionately, and expressively, and inspiredly, and pathetically, and simply, and briefly – in every way, in different situations, depending on your own desire? Learn to control your voice, arbitrarily hiding or, conversely, revealing your true essence to people. Your voice is an extremely effective tool with which you can exert a powerful influence on others. Don’t let others influence you – influence yourself!
Voice and influence
It is not difficult to influence other people with your voice. When a person hears your voice, it always affects him somehow. Even if others perceive it simply as a sound, sometimes as an annoying sound, they can be deeply impressed by what you say and how you do it. You will influence the listener even if that was not your goal .
So, how can you influence others the way you would like it to be? Your voice is the primary means of communication, and you are able to make it change in ways that broaden the impact.
There are only three factors required for this:
- your voice should create a positive impact, be pleasant to the ear;
- you need to be in agreement with your audience;
- your voice should express your inner energy, including feelings and emotions.
The voice should be pleasant to the ear
He had all the makings of a popular politician: a
terrible voice, bad background and bad manners.
Aristophanes
It is pleasant to listen to you when your body is relaxed, your voice is supported by breathing and can resonate freely. You also need variety in speech. In other words, everything you’ve read so far also makes your voice sound good.
How to make an impression
What really impresses the audience?
They must be interested in order to become your followers. So tell them which path to follow – not just by the meaning of your words, but by the way you pronounce them.
When you are traveling by train, what gives the interest to the road? The diverse views make everyone live up and look out of the windows. When the landscape does not change kilometer after kilometer, people begin to doze.
So you need to add variety to your landscape, and that means …
Use your voice to its fullest!
Look at the voice wheel, remind yourself how many ways you can make your voice richer to impress:
Resonance – rich chest, warm heart, deep abdominal.
The tone is rough or even, smooth or intermittent.
Silence is wonderful pause.
Rhythm – dam-di-dam, tu-ty-tu-tu, long and short phrases.
Pitch – high and low sounds.
Volume – loud or quiet.
The pace is fast or measured.
Vowels are carriers of emotions, ” feel it!”
Consonants – clear articulation, clear understanding.
Emphasis – the weight of the words, “only for SLU shayte!”
Achieving diversity is not just a mechanical task.
You need to know that you can change your voice by training different ways of speaking: fast and slow, loud and quiet, full and dry, high and low, light and expressive. Only then will the sounds follow your thoughts. An important thought evokes an expressive sound, enthusiastic – high, sympathetic – soft, and so on. There are many ways to add variety to your sound! Your listeners don’t have to be bored!
A few words about embarrassment: I know that working with the voice may seem unpleasant or even dangerous to you, it is going beyond the limit, and possibly an encroachment on the interests of other people. But remember that you are encroaching on much more with a boring voice. Just imagine what might be going on in your listener’s head: “Why does this person dare to bother me? Who is he, anyway?
Rapport
Think of “us”, not “them and yourself”
Your state of mind is affected by your voice, and the latter is affected by who you see in your listeners. If you see them as potential enemies or judges, you will be on your guard from the first word. If you have friends and associates, your attitude will be different. “But if they are not friends, and not associates me?” – you can argue. How can they become such?
In the book “Inspire and Control!” ( The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling , 2005) Stephen Denning tells the story of a classical singer whose accompanist was late for her performance. At the appointed hour, the singer went on stage alone, then suddenly walked to the edge of the stage, sat down on it and began chatting with the audience – about herself, her art and life. By the time the accompanist arrived, 40 minutes late, the singer and her listeners had become best friends, and the rest of the performance passed with a special cordiality that the singer had never experienced before. New relationships with people make communication better than it was before.
You don’t have to convince yourself that “this is an important audience,” “the experts are here,” “they don’t want to hear it,” and all the other things you can imagine. Your main task is to find contact with the audience as with ordinary people. Start speaking as if you are opening a dialogue and expecting a response. People love it when you connect with them personally. Queen Victoria complained about her prim prime minister, Gladstone: “He’s addressing me like I’m a public meeting.” Instead, get a response: “He talks to us like there are only two of us in the room.”
Create a link
The play was simply magnificent,
but the audience was not good anywhere.
Oscar Wilde
To become truly influential, you need to create a bond between you and your audience. Perhaps you want the audience to be inspired, or you want to convince them, intrigue them, give them confidence. But if you just rush forward with an inspiring introduction, compelling reasoning, or entertaining examples while your audience is in a different mood, like indifferent or distrustful, you are doomed to fail.
The solution is to start from their starting point, not yours. You will find it by putting yourself in their shoes and feeling the situation from their point of view. If the audience seems a little hostile, start by not getting aggressive, but with a similar energy, perhaps active and ready to resist.
You might say something like, “I know some of you may be wondering if this meeting will be helpful to them. If so, I would like to hear your opinion so that we can find out what our common views are … “If the audience is wary, start like this:” You may be wondering why we are here today and are afraid of the worst turn of events. I would like to assure you that things are not so bad. Moreover, I suspect that some of my proposals may even turn out to be a pleasant surprise … ”
This process is like trying to keep up before you start running alongside.
Empathize with your listeners
The greatest gift of people is our power of empathy.
Meryl Streep
A connection is formed when you pay attention to your audience: by really seeing people, listening to the sound of their voices or silence, feeling their mood and energy.
Observe someone who empathizes with another. If he feels a connection with his interlocutor, then automatically adjusts his communication for him. For example, if such a person meets his girlfriend who is upset about something, he will naturally start talking to her in a low voice, because he empathizes with her, and may ask if she wants to talk about it. Some people in such circumstances defiantly do the opposite and cheerfully exclaim: “Today is such a wonderful day! Let’s quit being sad! ” Depressed people will respond with misunderstandings and even more frustration.
If a compassionate person meets a good friend who has just been incredibly lucky, for example, to win the lottery, he will naturally boost his own inner energy to share the joy with him. She knows that if she mutters (even jokingly) in a grumpy voice: “Some are lucky!”, It will not be considered funny and the connection will break.
So being in harmony with others means sharing their view of the world. In practice, this manifests itself in the fact that you tune in to the inner world of another person with the help of energy, breath, body language and voice. Many people adjust their voice quite naturally when talking to another person. Those around you will follow your voice lead once you have established a warm connection with them.
If you put yourself in the shoes of others, then naturally you will adjust to them. In cases where this does not happen by itself, you can consciously tune your voice to match the voice of your interlocutor, mimicking their tone, pitch, speed, modulation, volume, and rhythm.
