What Does Your Voice Say About You?

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StrategyDriven Practices for Professionals ArticleUnless there is an obvious problem, most of us don’t give more than an occasional passing thought to how our voice sounds. However, recent research on how vocal quality affects others’ perceptions may make you think twice.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal discusses a study that shows that the quality of your voice has an even stronger impact on how you are perceived than the content of your message. As listeners provided feedback on speakers, it was found that their vocal quality mattered twice as much as the content of the message. The article cites another study as well, which showed that people who heard recordings of rough, weak, strained or breathy voices judged the speakers to be negative, weak, passive or tense. On the other hand, speakers with ‘normal’ voices are seen as successful, sexy, sociable and smart. This difference in perception can be particularly important in a professional environment where the way others perceive you can make the difference between gaining or losing a client or moving up the corporate ladder. A study in Forbes magazine even showed how poor vocal quality can actually cost you money in the long run.

One of the key components to a strong, dynamic voice is breath support. Your breath is the power behind your voice. If you aren’t breathing properly and getting enough air, you will strain your voice trying to be heard. Often people try to compensate for poor breath support by using muscular tension to increase volume. Over time, this will cause your vocal quality to suffer, and may cause physical damage to your vocal cords. Proper breath support begins with breathing from the abdomen, not the chest: your stomach and lower ribcage should expand outwards as you breathe, and your chest should not rise. If you have trouble mastering this technique, lay on your back with your hand on your stomach and take a deep, relaxing breath as though you were about to go to sleep. When in this position, our body naturally reverts to proper breathing. After you’ve gotten used to how this type of breathing feels, stand up and take a few deep breaths, maintaining the technique. Then, practice speaking aloud with this type of breathing.

You can also improve your vocal quality by eliminating habits that are damaging to your vocal cords. One common vocal sin is not drinking enough water. Parched vocal cords can be easily damaged and decrease the quality of your voice. Keep a bottle of water with you throughout the workday, especially situations in which you’ll be speaking for a long time or in front of a group of people. Also, be aware of other factors that can be dehydrating. Caffeine and alcohol are both dehydrating substances; if possible, limit your consumption of both prior to speaking in public. Some medications, such as antihistamines, can also have a drying effect.

Another bad habit is raising your voice to speak above noise. While there are certainly situations that call for more vocal power, consistently raising your voice above its natural volume can be damaging. Before shouting, make your first line of defense modifying the environment instead. Step out of a noisy room, shut the door, or walk closer to someone who is standing far away. If you are giving a presentation, use a microphone instead of trying to shout to the back of the room.

A powerful, dynamic voice is critical to professional success in today’s competitive workplace. Luckily you can change the way you sound! Follow the strategies above for a strong commanding voice. If you’d like to make more significant changes in your general vocal quality, you may want to enlist the help of a corporate speech-language pathologist who can provide vocal training to target your specific needs.

Remember: it doesn’t matter how strong your professional skills are if your listener is distracted by your voice or communication style. But with a little time and effort, you can make your communication skills your most powerful professional tool!

About the Author

Jayne LatzJayne Latz is an expert in communication and CEO of Corporate Speech Solutions, LLC. She has worked as a speech trainer, coach, professional speaker, and has co-authored two books titled, Talking Business: A Guide to Professional Communication and Talking Business: When English is Your Second Language. She was recently featured in The Wall Street Journal and on The TODAY Show.

If you are interested in learning more ways to improve your business communication skills, contact Jayne at [email protected] or visit www.corporatespeechsolutions.com.

Job Seekers Should Consider What Their Online, In-Person and On-Paper Personas Say about Them

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StrategyDriven Practices for Professionals ArticleA potential employer takes just a moment or two to size up a potential candidate, leaving job seekers little room for error when trying to make a positive first impression. Whether presenting themselves online, in-person, or on paper, job seekers relay a lot of information to a potential employer in the first few minutes. Employers quickly assess confidence, energy level and professionalism – all key traits that tell the employer what a candidate might bring to the workplace. As a result, it’s very important to present yourself in the best possible light.

Job seekers need to focus on their accomplishments and fit for the role first and foremost, which can make them feel pressured. But, there ARE steps they can take to ensure another interview or – better – a job offer.

Here are suggestions for making the best first impression:

  • Long resumes are a turn-off. It’s perfectly acceptable for executives to have a resume that’s as much as three pages long, but longer than that is overkill and employees looking for more junior positions should shorten their resumes even further. There is no reason to offer every detail in your resume.
  • Make sure the resume is up to date and written to highlight your relevant skills and experience that fit your current search.. Most people merely update their old resume. It’s important to write a new resume from scratch with each new job search, because typically you are interviewing at more senior levels. For example, five years ago you might have written about your individual contributions to a team; today you need to emphasize your management experience and what you have done to lead the team.
  • Resume style matters. Don’t overlook how the resume is organized and presented visually with regard to fonts and layout.
  • Make sure your online presence puts you in the best possible light. Keep your LinkedIn profile updated at all times. Clean up your Facebook page of anything that might raise an eyebrow to recruiters or an employer.
  • Dress for your environment. Dress for an interview in accordance with the employer’s office dress code, whenever possible. If it’s a suit-and-tie environment, dress the part. If it’s business casual, then it’s perfectly acceptable to forgo the jacket. There is a risk in overdressing; you need to demonstrate that you understand and fit the workplace culture.. When in doubt, ask the recruiter how you should dress for the interview.
  • Be aware of your speech patterns. Don’t speak too quickly or too slowly, too quietly or too loudly. Employers will consider this when they envision having to speak with you or be present in meetings with you daily.
  • Other physical cues. Always use a firm handshake and make eye contact with the interviewer. Sit up straight in your chair. Those rules have and will always apply.
  • Be mindful of your energy level. People gravitate to others with a good energy level because they look forward to working alongside them every day. Be enthusiastic but not over the top.
  • Don’t patronize a younger interviewer. Just because someone is younger or less experienced than you are does not mean they lack the authority to put a halt to your interview process. Further, it is good form to show anyone that interviews you the due respect they deserve.
  • Make them notice your accomplishments. Minimize distractions such as excessive jewelry or makeup and pull back very long hair.
  • Keep your answers to the point. Avoid going into too much unnecessary detail in your answers, but always offer to provide additional detail to your interviewer if they are interested in knowing more.
  • Don’t dress like you don’t need the job. Always dress like you achieved career success but leave your fur coats and very expensive jewelry at home. You never want to look like you don’t need the job.

The rules about only having a few moments to make the right impression still apply. Today, though, it’s about making sure you put your best foot forward in multiple media, including the Internet. But promoting yourself through multiple channels should be the catalyst to prompt a prospective employer to take the next step.

About the Author

Kathy HarrisKathy Harris is Managing Partner of New York City-based Harris Allied, an executive search firm specializing in Technology, UX/UI Design and Quant Analyst placement services in the Financial Services, Professional Services, Consumer Products, Digital Media and Tech Industries For more information, visit www.harrisallied.com. Contact Kathy Harris at [email protected].

The Big Picture of Business – Cut the Weeds: Focus on Priorities and Strategy, Avoid the Time Zappers

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One of the by-products of being high-profile is that you get hangers-on. Most mean well and want to associate with someone successful. Some are groupies, and some are outright users. The art is to discern and marginalize the weeds from your path.

One mean-weller kept hounding me. He wanted to introduce me to people to form “strategic partnerships.” Turns out that they were people with their hands out, thinking that somebody (anybody) could magically open doors for them. I tried to set boundaries with that person. He would not respect perimeters.

One of his ‘strategic partners’ called me and conferenced in the introducer. This was not a scheduled conference call, and I felt blind-sighted. Neither one asked if this was a good time to talk or apologized for calling with no warning. In a rapid-fire sales delivery, he proceeded to talk, starting out selling stock in a venture, then shifting from one idea to the next. I patiently listened and tried to get away. This person had already called me weeks before but could not remember who I was or what I was all about. This was a ‘dial and smile’ sales call, and it was one-sided and self-focused, all about him.

The caller then announced that he had a time commitment and that I had one minute to state my case. I explained that they had called me and that I could not tell my ‘story’ in one minute. I said that if he did not remember talking to me before, then that was the problem. He challenged that it was my obligation to ‘make a difference,’ defined as me giving time and money to his pet causes. I suggested that they turn their attentions elsewhere. The caller then got hyper and talked all over me. I stated that I wasn’t interested in his projects and needed to end the call.

People who hound and use you in business are out for whatever they can get, from whomever they can get it. If you resist, they will go on to the next warm body. This is why I have a problem with networking: some are users and others are used by them, while others don’t know what they are doing.

One must be resolute in protecting their most valuable and limited commodities: time, knowledge and resources. Weeds are everywhere, crying ‘gimme.’ One can never cut all of the weeds down because they re-grow elsewhere. I’ve learned the hard way the value of prioritizing time and focusing on the people and projects that matter.

Questions to Ask About Weeds and Networking

  • Is the person making the request a true friend, a business associate or just an acquaintance? Who are they to you, and what would you like for them to be?
  • Will there be outcomes or paybacks for the other person? Will there be outcomes or paybacks for you? If there’s a discrepancy in these answers, how do you feel about it?
  • Are there networking situations which are beneficial for all parties? If so, analyze and align with those situations, rather than with the fruitless ones.
  • What types of ‘wild goose chases’ have you pursued in your networking career? Analyze them by category, to see patterns.
  • Is the person requesting something of you willing to offer something first?
  • Are the people truly communicating when they network? Or, are hidden agendas the reason for networking? Without communicating wants, it is tough to achieve outcomes.
  • How much time away from business can you take? How does it compare with the business you can or will generate?

Cut the weeds by seeing your time for networking and volunteering as a commodity. Budget it each year. Examine and benchmark the reasons and results. Set boundaries, and offer your time on an ‘a la carte’ basis. Associate with those who feel similarly. Show and demonstrate respect for each other’s time. Be careful not to pro-bono yourself to death.

About the Author

Hank MoorePower Stars to Light the Business Flame, by Hank Moore, encompasses a full-scope business perspective, invaluable for the corporate and small business markets. It is a compendium book, containing quotes and extrapolations into business culture, arranged in 76 business categories.

Hank’s latest book functions as a ‘PDR of business,’ a view of Big Picture strategies, methodologies and recommendations. This is a creative way of re-treading old knowledge to enable executives to master change rather than feel as they’re victims of it.

Power Stars to Light the Business Flame is now out in all three e-book formats: iTunes, Kindle, and Nook.

Lead Like it Matters… Because it Does, part 4 of 4

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Lead Like it Matters… Because it DoesWe asked Roxi Hewertson about the 8 overarching leadership insights that kick off her new book Lead Like it Matters…Because it Does hitting the stores in just a few weeks. She agreed to share them with us as a four-part series. This is Part 4 of 4.

Insight 7: Most Change Efforts Fail and They Don’t Have To

Charles Darwin did not say “It’s all about survival of the fittest.” Someone else decided to interpret his words and really screwed things up for a lot of us, including having people use that phrase to justify a lot of bad behavior. And that’s not how life truly works. What Darwin actually said is, “It’s not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”

People are naturally inclined to resist change. The irony is… what you resist will persist. When change is ‘top-down’ and those impacted feel they have no voice, people resist it even more. The wasted human energy and other resources that go down the big black sink-hole of most change initiatives is truly astounding.

Do we learn from our mistakes? Sometimes – but too often not a lot, and nearly always, not enough. Leader need to be able to lead change – there’s no getting around it. How well you do that part of your job will make or break your organization and maybe even you.

Here are 4 suggestions to lead change initiatives that go well and actually stick instead of being dead on arrival:

  • Have and USE a change process
  • Empower and engage those affected by the change process
  • PULL don’t PUSH change
  • Communicate, communicate, then do it again and again

Insight 8: Leaders Create and Destroy Cultures!

I love this quote from John Mackey of Whole Foods, “If you are lucky enough to be someone’s employer, then you have a moral obligation to make sure people DO look forward to coming to work in the morning.”

Indeed, you have responsibility for your workplace culture wherever your ‘responsibility pond’ may be, wherever your sphere of influence resides. It is your number one role to create, model, and support a workplace culture where the intended culture will thrive and the desired results will occur. It can take a lot of work to build and sustain a positive and productive workplace. And it can take a ‘heartbeat’ for one ineffective, bad, or lousy leader to destroy it. This IS your ecosystem and how healthy or toxic it is matters and you are the keeper of your ‘responsibility pond’ no matter how big or small it may be.

The leadership revolution I want to see happen in my lifetime would mean that we each are committed to building healthy ecosystems within our workplaces for generations to come.

Here are 4 suggestions you can do to help make that happen:

  • Know that the culture in your ‘pond’ IS your responsibility
  • Articulate your mission, values, and vision
  • Assess, correct, assess
  • Celebrate your people and your success

About the Author

Roxi HewertsonLeadership authority Roxana (Roxi) Hewertson is a no-nonsense business veteran revered for her nuts-and-bolts, tell-it-like-it-is approach and practical, out-of-the-box insights that help both emerging and expert managers, executives and owners boost quantifiable job performance in various mission critical facets of business. Through AskRoxi.com, Roxi — “the Dear Abby of Leadership” — imparts invaluable free advice to managers and leaders at all levels, from the bullpen to the boardroom, to help them solve problems, become more effective and realize a higher measure of business and career success.

How can you make the leadership leap gracefully? Well, learning and practicing effective leadership skills is a good place to begin. When you read Roxi’s book you’ll be well on your way! Click here to learn more.

The StrategyDriven website was created to provide members of our community with insights to the actions that help create the shared vision, focus, and commitment needed to improve organizational alignment and accountability for the achievement of superior results. We look forward to answering your strategic planning and tactical business execution questions. Please email your questions to [email protected].

Lead Like it Matters… Because it Does, part 3 of 4

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Lead Like it Matters… Because it DoesWe asked Roxi Hewertson about the 8 overarching leadership insights that kick off her new book Lead Like it Matters…Because it Does hitting the stores in just a few weeks. She agreed to share them with us as a four-part series. This is Part 3 of 4.

Insight #5: Leading is All About Relationships

Let’s get to the heart of the matter. If no one is following you, you aren’t leading. Period. You can manage all kinds of tasks that might involve schedules, money, projects, budgets, and so on, and yet everything you do with your staff and other stakeholders involves relationships. How well those relationships work has a lot to do with how much TRUST is at the center of them. Susan Scott, author of Fierce Conversations, sums it up well. “When the conversation stops, the relationship stops.”

The question is not IF we will have relationships at work; the question is what will the quality of those relationships be? Each leader plays a critical role within her and his ecosystem in what I call your ‘responsibility pond.’ This is where your leadership ripples are most strongly felt, no matter how big or small your ‘pond’ may be.

As a leader, informal or formal, you contribute to – often create, model, and nurture the norms, culture, and environment that everyone who lives and works in your ‘pond’ will experience. You can sustain and strengthen the culture or you can weaken and sicken it. Are you part of the solution or part of the problem? Understanding this reality is often a huge wake-up call, and in my opinion, not a moment too soon.

I’m sure you know that it is not enough to be really, really, smart. Emotional intelligence matters a heck of a lot – more even than IQ, particularly if you want to have healthy and productive relationships. Bad and ineffective leaders can create a lot of damage. Good and effective leaders can accomplish incredible feats with their followers.

I believe most of us would choose the latter as our legacy.

Here are 4 suggestions about what you can do to pay attention to those important relationships:

  • Create a healthy culture
  • Build trust on purpose and often
  • Walk around a LOT
  • Model how you would like others to behave

Insight #6: Learning the ‘Soft Skills’ is Hard!

I’ve noticed that adults tend to resist learning or re-learning good interpersonal and social management skills. These involve thinking about relationships, behaviors, and even emotions. This is very different than an impersonal or technical task – and still it is a task – just a human one.

This IS hard work. Most of us know that we need to engage and energize employees, build trust, and communicate so that people understand us and know where the organization is going. They want and need to know what part they can play in getting there. We will not get all that good stuff from our people without doing all the hard soft stuff. It’s really that simple.

Mastering leadership skills is not rocket science. It is a lot harder, precisely because it is far more qualitative than quantitative, and because we are leading people, not machines.

Building trust is one of the key outcomes of mastering interpersonal skills. Try to resist the urge to say, ‘Oh, no, not the touchy-feely stuff!‘ Because, really, you can’t get far in life without knowing how to communicate so people understand, how to have tough conversations, or how to transform conflicts into solutions.

While it does take determination, practice, and feedback, nothing is beyond you when you are committed to learning or honing your interpersonal skills. And I know I’m not telling you anything new; I’m just reminding you to pay attention and grow your emotional intelligence competencies to improve your effectiveness. When you do this… your teams will thrive and of course all of this flows directly to your bottom line.

Here are 4 suggestions about where to focus some of your attention:

  • Listen more than you talk
  • Increase staff engagement at every opportunity
  • Make improving your dialogue skills a priority
  • Take or revisit what you learned in a good leadership course

About the Author

Roxi HewertsonLeadership authority Roxana (Roxi) Hewertson is a no-nonsense business veteran revered for her nuts-and-bolts, tell-it-like-it-is approach and practical, out-of-the-box insights that help both emerging and expert managers, executives and owners boost quantifiable job performance in various mission critical facets of business. Through AskRoxi.com, Roxi — “the Dear Abby of Leadership” — imparts invaluable free advice to managers and leaders at all levels, from the bullpen to the boardroom, to help them solve problems, become more effective and realize a higher measure of business and career success.

How can you make the leadership leap gracefully? Well, learning and practicing effective leadership skills is a good place to begin. When you read Roxi’s book you’ll be well on your way! Click here to learn more.

The StrategyDriven website was created to provide members of our community with insights to the actions that help create the shared vision, focus, and commitment needed to improve organizational alignment and accountability for the achievement of superior results. We look forward to answering your strategic planning and tactical business execution questions. Please email your questions to [email protected].