Kate's Voice

Recently a reader wrote:
“I was putting together some info for an article on body language during a job interview. Some of these articles mentioned the voice as well. Do you have any articles from your perspective on that?”

Although I like to think that my general message is one that can be applied to any situation, I think it’s a great idea to feature a post on using your voice effectively in a job interviews, and highlight some deeper reading in other posts and resources you can view on the subject of job interviews.

Vocally, there are three areas that are the most important considerations in an interview.

Intention: Know who you are and what you are looking for.  Create a personal statement of intention for the job you want as well as for the interview.  Make it short and sweet and memorize it .  Then let it guide your discussion.  If you are clear about who you are and what you want, answering questions and asking them will be much easier.  In addition, intention can be heard in your voice.  If your delivery, content and intention are not in alignment, your credibility may be affected. For more on this topic, dig deeper by reading  How to start an important conversation: an exercise in intention.

Stories:  Always tell stories rather than merely listing a lot of facts.  Personal stories make you “real” and engage others in your story.  People are drawn to stories.  When you tell your interviewer a story, it can’t help but remind her of her own story, and that creates a connection.  When people tell personal stories, their voices reflect more of the emotion behind their words, and, again, their genuine nature is revealed rather than a superficial persona.  This is good.

For more on this, please read From Information to Imagination: Delivering a good story,  and please visit Kathy Hansen’s excellent story blog with an emphasis on storytelling in business, A Storied Career.

Three considerations for dealing with nerves and your voice:
Ground yourself and your voice:  Sit forward in your chair, with both feet on the ground, or one slightly behind the other as if you were ready to stand up.  Keep energy in your thighs.  Be sure you are breathing! For more on this, here’s a post I wrote for Six Minutes,  Breathing:  The seductive key to your vocal variety. It includes some exercises to get you breathing correctly.

Hydrate for energy and clarity.  Drink lots of water before the interview and during, if it’s offered.  Being dehydrated makes you have to clear your throat.  Nerves will do that as well.  Don’t make it worse!  It takes about 30 minutes for the voice to get lubricated if you are not hydrated so be sure to tank up at least 30 minutes before you go “on.” For more on this topic, see  Water it! Feed your voice, Part 2.

If your voice shakes or quakes, stop.  Breathe to get oxygen.  Swallow to make sure your larynx isn’t going up (a high larynx will force you to swallow and make your voice rise in pitch).  Then go on.  For more on this topic, please see “Who let the Frogs Out? 3 quick remedies for voice malfunctions.

If you have questions or comments, please post them!  Or let’s continue the conversation on Twitter or on my Facebook Page.

For more help job seeking, see How to Curate Your Own Personal Job Feed by Lindsay Pollack on the Harvard Business Review Blog Network.

What if you could step back from the rhetoric of the debates and hear the candidates differently?  What if there were hints about who they are hiding in plain site?  Well, there are.  That’s not to say that I can tell you who is the best candidate, but I can tell you what their vocal delivery might be saying about their character and even their conviction. You might listen differently tomorrow night.

There are at least two dozen aspects of sound that effect our perception of a speaker (or a piece of music!)  They are such sound attributes as pace, pitch, volume, cadence, tone color, and rhythm to name a few. Let’s explore just two aspects of sound:  Pitch and cadence.  First, I’ll explain how these elements create the picture you have of another person. Second, we’ll examine the four Republican candidate’s voices for their use of these elements.

Pitch:  Every vocal sound you make is a pitch, or a tone on the musical scale. People generally speak within a certain pitch range most of the time, with more or less variety of pitch from time to time. There are cultural preferences for the pitch of the speaking voice.  In addition, the area in the voice that people use the most gives us an impression of their character or personality.
Cadence: Cadence is the way a sentence ends.  It is also the inflection of your speech.  There are two basic kinds of vocal cadence: open and closed.  An open cadence goes up in pitch, especially at the end of a sentence, sounding much like a question.  The other kind of cadence, closed, goes down in pitch at the end of a sentence or idea.  To use the two forms of cadence effectively, you mix them up, sounding open when you are friendly or inviting others to join in, and using closed cadence to finish your thoughts or state an opinion.

Mitt Romney:
Pitch:  His voice is low, a bass baritone range.  A low pitch is considered to be a foundation, a stabilizing factor, as in the bass in music.  We also equate low voices with authority.  The fact that he also has a steady pace and a lack of much vocal inflection in his speech might add to a perception of Mitt Romney as an authority who is stable and dependable.

Cadence: Romney uses more closed cadence than open.   Closed cadence indicates that you have opinions and answers.  It is the sound of conviction.  On the flip side, too much closed cadence can sound dogmatic and not open to others’ opinions.

Notice, here where a lack of certainty can change his cadence, however.  Listen to how much open ended cadence he used when he was confronted by an interviewer about releasing his tax info.

Newt Gingrich:  
Pitch: His voice is high and his pace is fast.  A high voice can carry well across a room.  It cuts through other sounds. However, his voice is higher than it needs to be (there is a pitch level for every voice that is optimum for resonance and strength, and his is above that) and he often sounds agitated or whiny.

Cadence: Gingrich uses more variety in his sound than Romney for the most part.  He stresses colorful words and uses more variations of pitch overall.  As I said before,  this implies friendliness. If you combine that with the fact that he uses a lot of open cadence, the impression can be that he is open to others’ ideas and is a nice guy.  However, the down side to so much open ended cadence is that it can also give the impression that the speaker is flaky, unable to commit, and unreliable.  The other problem with too much open ended cadence is that it creates run on sentences.  In Gingrich’s case, run on sentences sometimes get mixed with unfinished ideas and make his statements hard to follow. Listen here for an example.

There is no question that he can make definitive statements with commitment, however, as in this clip where he lit into John King regarding comments made by Gingrich’s ex-wife.

Rick Santorum:
Pitch: Rick Santorum has a sound that is right in between Romney and Gingrich in terms of pitch, more of a baritone/tenor sound.  He does, however, have a bit of a growl in the back of his throat from time to time.  What impression does that give you?

Cadence: Santorum uses more inflection, or vocal variety in his voice than either Newt or Mitt, which can add to a sense that he is friendly and open.  Early on, he overused open cadence in his speech, combined with a great deal of filler words such as “uh” and “um.” This can make a speaker sound unsure, even non-committal.  Here is an example in an interview on FOX.
However, in the January 19th debate, he was vastly improved and he used a lot more closed cadence.

Ron Paul:
Pitch: Ron Paul’s voice is pitched at a good place for resonance and strength. Consequently, he is able to use a lot of inflection because his voice is flexible. Of the four, his speech is the most varied in both pitch and cadence.  On the down side his voice tends to rise very high when he gets emphatic and then it sounds a little edgy.

Cadence: He mixes open and closed cadence so that he sounds convicted and also open. He exhibits energy.   Like Romney, he usually finishes thoughts and ideas before going on to the next idea. He overuses the word “but” as a connector and he stumbles from time to time, but more often than not he is able to avoid filler words completely.   As his energy rises, his articulation can get a little sloppy, making it more difficult to understand his words.  In the end,  I have to wonder if the reason he has gotten this far is because his colorful yet clear vocal image encourages us to listen and, in doing so, hear his ideas.  Listen to some clips here.

Update:  Now that the Arizona debate has happened, you can watch it below and see what you think about my analysis.