YOUR VOICE IS YOUR PERSONAL BRAND

I would like to share with you my most recent speech at the speakers club about some of the insights that I have learned about voice. 1) Your voice is the most powerful communication tool that you possess and yet many of you are trapped behind voices that don’t convey the very best of who you are. 2) All speaking is public speaking, so you are responsible for the sounds that come out of your mouth and whether you are only talking to 1 person at the market or whether you are talking to 20 people! 🙂

Here are some things that you might not know yet, for example, your voice was not designed for you! Here is an example. If I want to talk to myself, I don’t have to open my mouth. I don’t have to let sound come out! I am going to tell myself a joke right now! Ha, ha, that was a funny joke! But when you do open your mouth, sound travels away from you in the form of invisible sound waves. And when the sound waves reach people that are listening, their brains interpret those sound waves into thoughts, emotions, and memories.

The pitch, tone, pace, volume, and what you are doing with your body while you are making those sounds are far more important than words! You can have all the perfect words, but most people won’t remember what you said, but what they might remember is how you made them feel.

A lot of people speak on the same note, over and over, this is called monotone. And you are saying, “Lenka, I would never do that. I never speak on the same note over and over”. But when you do, the listeners think they know what you are going to say and that you are boring, and they simply disconnect from you. You have to mix it up with some melody!

It is really simple! There are only 3 directions you can go. I can be walking up the stairs, from a low note to a higher note, then I am going to walk down the stairs and now I am going to stay on the landing. Most people are really good at standing on the landing! When you go from a low note to a high note, that is called an ascending scale, and it makes people happy! 😊

Now, try this little exercise to vary your pitch and say it with a smile, higher pitch, and using gestures, “I really love yoga!” As opposed to “I really love yoga”, which you say with a lower pitch, no smile, no gestures… And the same here again, “I love you so much!”, and here again as opposed to “I love you so much” Can you feel, hear and see the difference? The same words, yet a different result.

Spend more time walking up the steps because it makes people happy! And spend less time walking down the steps because it makes people sad. And spend far less time standing on the landing! 😊

The conclusion is, you know now that your voice is the most powerful communication tool that you possess. You need to think about it and use it differently. Remember, the pitch, tone, volume, pace, and what you are doing with your body are very, very important when communicating and it also makes you more interesting to listen to. 😊