How to sound like yourself

Volume 2, Number 8  |  August 2008

I'm gearing up for my first-ever conference as a speaker in a few weeks (yay! woo-hoo!), so the thing I'll be talking about--How to Communicate in Your Authentic Voice (or, as I put it to my friend, Scot, "How Not to Sound Like a Boring and/or Pompous a**")--is much on my mind these days.

As I summed it up for my Toastmasters club a couple of weeks ago (Tip #487: Trial Runs Are Your Friend), while the medium of communication may change, the fundamentals remain the same: keep yourself supported, and you'll stand a much better chance of preventing that all-of-a-sudden leap into Wacko Voice from happening.

Think about it: when do you usually start sounding like someone else has taken over your body? When you're nervous, when you're unsure, when you're unprepared. Work from the bottom up to eliminate those things, and you'll give your natural voice--that thing that makes you "you", and that allows you to connect meaningfully, and even--GASP!--enjoyably with other people.

Some things to think about as you're sitting down to write the next email, draft the next proposal, prep the next speech or gird your loins for a super-dee-dooper important meeting:

Figure out exactly what it is you want to communicate

Not seven things; not one gloopy, amorphous thing. One thing. When I was in advertising, we would tell clients over and over that the deal was one message per commercial or print ad, with maybe some supporting points. The smart ones got great ads. The rest of them got the stuff you either laugh at or tune out completely because--surprise!--they sound like ads.

And remember, in the words of my former acting teacher, Cameron Thor, "The heart of the thing is never the thing itself." If you're a designer going into a meeting with a nervous client, your job is to put them at ease about the job, period--not to explain the history of design, not to explain why you're right and they're wrong.

It's good to get your facts straight and your ducks in a row. But if you leave out the human part, you can be the right-est person in the world and still be wrong. You must address the subtext of whatever "scene" you're playing, whether with a reader or a listener, or they will never hear the text.

Give yourself the gift of time

Before you do a thing, mark down the event in question on one end of a sheet of paper, and where you're at on the other. On a separate sheet (or in a corner, if you're really neat), write down everything you think you would need to be prepared for the meeting, or that you would require to create a stellar piece of writing.

And that means everything: from your outline to your outfit, and all the stuff in between. As realistically as possible, guesstimate how long you'll need to accomplish each task (break bigger tasks into smaller ones first). Add half again the time for each. Then schedule into your timeline or calendar.

When in doubt, go for simple

Finding yourself in unfamiliar, uncomfortable situations, especially of the extra-fancy variety, seems to trigger feelings of inadequacy that result in the putting on of what I call Sunday-go-to-meetin' voice. You know the drill: one little confab with the Queen and you're falling all over yourself with five-dollar words, awkward "polite" phrasing and extensive substitution of the word "individuals" for "people".

I'm working up a list of practical links, tips and how-to's for the conference, but until then, get yourself a copy of the classic Strunk & White text, The Elements of Style, and maybe subscribe to Grammar Girl's podcast: they'll more than do you good in the interim.

The bottom line is this: fear creates interference no matter what part of your life it touches, and its effect on communication is no different. Work to eliminate as many of the circumstances that can send you to the scary place, and you give yourself room for the you that is uniquely fabuloso to come through.