On the Phone, Your Voice Represents You

Hello Communicators!

When you use the phone as a means of introducing yourself, your product and/or your service, you have only your voice and your words to support you.  It’s easy to be misunderstood without being able to make eye contact to prove how swell you really are.   The phone can seriously undermine your chance of building a new relationship — unless you are mindful of how you say what you say.

Recently, I semi-interviewed a woman I was thinking of partnering with for a training project. Our first introduction had been by phone.  I tell you, her words said, “I”m eager to do this with you,”  but her tone of voice lacked any kind of enthusiasm, energy or zeal.   I thought, if she isn’t aware of how her voice is creating a negative impression, how then can I possibly align with her to train other people?  Lo and behold, I did not take on this project with her.

There is a well-documented study by Albert Mehrabian, a Ph.D and professor at UCLA, who discovered that when a speaker is talking about something emotional, that a listener will believe the non-verbal cues (body language, 55% and tone of voice, 38%) over the actual words (only 7%) when the delivery of the message is incongruent or out of sync. So, if you meet someone and say, “I’m happy to meet you,” with anger, disgust or apathy in your voice, making no eye contact and giving a wimpy handshake, you can bet you won’t win that person over.  We must match up our words, tone of voice and body language to successfully deliver our messages. When we are on the phone, we completely lose the benefits of making positive impact with body language; hence the weight falls very heavily on how we say what we’re saying.

So please consider how your voice is representing you on the phone!

Wishing you flowing congruence in your communications today.

Jackie

Copyright, Jackie Kellso and PointMaker Communications, 2009-2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Jackie Kellso and PointMaker Communications with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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