The tone of your voice and how your tone shapes the rest of the communication is an essential element, not only when you give a speech but also when you talk. Every one of you yearns to be a better leader and a part of leadership is communication. Communication includes the ideal tone of your voice. The tone of your voice communicates a lot more than you realize.
What is the tone of the voice?
It is the musical notes that your voice communicates, separated from words. You all must have noticed when two persons are talking, you might hear them speaking but what their words are, is unclear. The thing you hear is the tone of their voice.
The Academic Sense
In an everyday conversation in a professional setting if someone says their tone they generally mean much than that. Essential they mean any other kinds of vocal nonverbal cues that a person is giving off. So they are pacing their tone, volume, emphasises and pauses. Hearing all of that is what we say is the tone of their voice.
It is very hard to isolate, in an everyday situation only be musical sound to their voice. We are hearing all of those non-verbal vocal cues together. When listening to someone we not only hear the tone but their pacing, volume, pauses and every little emphasise. You can even tell if the conversation they are having is pleasant or unpleasant. Even though you can’t hear words but can hear the tone. All vocal combined and collapsed together is all we can say as tone.
Overall Impact and Influence
So this kind of communication has a lot of influence on the person who is hearing you or what you hear. It gives an overall message and impression. It adds shades of meaning, emotion, attitude to what we are hearing. More often we will believe in the nonverbal cues than the actual words. The nonverbal cues speak a lot more than just plain words, which could be simpler. They are only words, but their meaning in the sentence changes depending on how you emphasise those words. Remember every time you change the tone of a sentence the meaning changes with it.
Our vocal cues when added with our words, the overall tone of voice shapes the way we are hearing it. You will notice it is very hard to separate the tone from words.
How do visual cues influence perceptions of ideal tone?
Non-verbal cues also influence what people are getting from us. They might see visual cues as well as that those visual nonverbal cues also emphasise. What they are seeing and hearing can change their attitude and emotion. For instance, rolling your eyes, making weird faces, shaking your head, gesturing, etc. All of those visual nonverbal cues add another layer to how people are receiving our tone. So except for hearing we also see the person generally and that adds to the nonverbal communication we are receiving.
What is your ideal tone?
A couple of checks with a gist of practical application is something you can try.
- What kind is your tone of voice?
- How do you sound?
- You might ask someone who loves you and is not going to judge you.
- Ask a person who is honest with you.
What does your tone communicate to the people around?
If you hear someone with a frustrated tone, you don’t think of them as frustrated with themselves. All you think is that the person is frustrated with you. As somebody in a professional setting, what does your tone communicate to the people around you? What does it say to them? You want to make sure you are sending off the right nonverbals to accompany your words.
Seeing such a huge impact of tone on your day to day activities, one becomes more conscious in the matters of communication. You want to be heard right, the way you want to express things. This is possible when you know what is an ideal tone for your speech.
Following are some tips that work :
- Be soft-spoken: People who have a soothing and soft tone, tend to influence and attract more audience towards them. The soft tone just speaks about the personality of the speaker. It shows the humbleness and modesty in the tone itself. It is not very difficult to be soft-spoken. All you need is patience.
- Positivity: A happy and excited tone shows the audience how optimistic you are about your subject. It makes them feel confident in trusting in your words. The tone will become much more motivating than your words. Once your tone and words are in sync, it results in a wonderful speech.
- Confidence: With speech comes confidence. Your tone portrays three-fourth of your confidence. Becoming nervous too much shows your lack of knowledge. A confident tone shows your familiarity with the subject.
- Formal tone: When giving a speech to a large number of people or in a business meeting, make sure to not use slang. Appropriate use of words with the right tone make your presentation fantastic.
- Consistent speed – Don’t rush towards ending your talk. Take the appropriate time to speak words properly. We tend to mix words when in hurry. This gives an impatient tone to our speech, which is not a good impression.
- Seriousness: Don’t use much humour informal speech. It seems good in an informal one. The seriousness in your tone sets the scene for the audience as to how your speech is to be perceived.
In short and precise form, your tone speaks about what kind of person you are. It defines your strengths and flaws. Adjusting your tone according to different situations is a useful technique in today’s dynamic world. Analyze this with some patience to succeed in life. This is not only useful in a business meeting but also for people you interact with, individually or at large.
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