Don't look at me in that tone of voice

Don't look at me in that tone of voice,
It smells a funny colour.

It's a popular saying from way back, and it carries a lot more meaning than at first appears. "That tone of voice" implies a critical note, and one that causes offence. Equally, you can convey much more than the words you use, through the way you speak. As Louis Armstrong sang, "It ain't what you say, it's the way that you say it."

The way you use your voice can make you persuasive and plausible, or it can lose you business. It can inspire people to follow you or it can distance people from you. Unfortunately, too many people cause upsets without realising it, just through their tone of voice.

Does it matter? Only if you want people to like you.

Can you do anything about your voice? Almost certainly. It depends on two things: your mental attitude and certain physical changes. I'll come to those in a moment, but first let's consider a couple of situations in which the tone of voice has mattered.

I was running a training session in which I introduced the idea of the Elevator Speech. It's something I do very frequently, and I usually do it the same way. I start by asking all the delegates present "What do you do?" and inevitably they give me their job titles. I then jokingly say, "That's so BORING!" and they all laugh. Not this last time, though.

There must have been something on my mind as I said it, and it upset the people there. Later they said I had been rude. Whatever had been on my mind, it changed my tone of voice. Everything else was exactly as it has always been - or so I thought. But that slight, almost imperceptible change in my tone, made it sound as though I was being rude instead of funny.

Consider how you might sound on the phone.

A customer calls and asks a question. You are a bit busy, but you want to be helpful, so you give what you consider to be an efficient answer, to the point and without wasting the caller's time. You think you've done a good job. The caller, on the other hand, may go away thinking you have been rather offhand, possibly even rude.

So what can you do to sound your best?

The most important starting place is in your own attitude. A New York hotel owner was once asked how she trained her staff to be nice to customers. She replied, "I don't hire people who know how to be nice. I hire nice people." Be friendly, and you'll sound friendly.

It's not advisable to develop different voices for different situations - haven't we all heard some people's "telephone voices"? But it is certainly worth developing a better sounding voice, one with credibility and authority as well as approachability. Here are a few simple techniques:

1. Keep a mirror on your desk to check if you are smiling when speaking - until it becomes a natural thing to do.
2. Practise speaking lower than usual, especially if your voice is high pitched.
3. Get feedback from trusted friends on the sound of your voice. Change what they don't like.
4. Sit up straight. Posture affects the voice.
5. Drink lots of water, especially if you do a lot of talking on the phone.
6. Practise proper breathing from the diaphragm.
7. Use the inner smile: think of some incident involving a child or an animal that always makes you want to smile. Your spirits will lift and your voice will change.
8. Put a note on your desk that reads: "Hello old friend!" to remind you to speak to everyone as you would to an old friend you haven't seen for ages.

Be friendly, show everyone respect and develop a mellifluous sounding voice. It's an unbeatable combination. And if you need help with it, email me: phillip@mainspeaker.com