Read The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism Online
Authors: Olivia Fox Cabane
The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism (22 page)
Tuning Your Voice
Voice fluctuation is the foundation for both vocal warmth and power. In 1995, Cornell professor Stephen Ceci taught a developmental psychology course in the fall and spring semesters to about three hundred students each time. During the winter break that separated the two semesters, he worked to improve his presentation style. He received training to increase the fluctuation of his tone of voice, to use more gestures while speaking, and to communicate an overall body language of enthusiasm.
When spring came, he delivered a course that was identical in content to the one he’d delivered in the fall. Ceci and his colleagues even compared recordings of both sets of lectures to verify that they were word-for-word copies. The only differences were the variations in his tone of voice and the addition of gestures. Grading policy, assigned textbook, office hours, tests, and even the basic demographic profile of the class remained the same.
And yet students rated all aspects of the spring semester class and instructor far higher. Even the textbook was rated better, gaining nearly 20 percent higher approval ratings. Spring semester students also believed they had learned far more, even though their actual performance on tests remained identical to the performance of the fall semester students. Ceci himself was rated as more knowledgeable, more open to others’ ideas, and better organized even though (as he told me himself) none of these factors had changed from the previous semester.
Studies have consistently shown that audience ratings of a lecture are more strongly influenced by delivery style than by content.
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Your voice is key to communicating both warmth and power, but there
isn’t just one charismatic voice. You can choose to play up different aspects of your voice depending on what you want to convey and with whom you’re communicating.
When the MIT Media Lab concluded that they could predict the success of sales calls without listening to a single word, these are the only two measurements they needed:
- Ratio of speaking to listening
- Amount of voice fluctuation
Earlier in this chapter, we explored how to balance speaking with listening. The second important vocal feature is fluctuation. The degree to which your voice fluctuates affects your persuasiveness and your charisma. Increasing voice fluctuation means making your voice vary in any of the following ways: pitch (high or low), volume (loud or quiet), tone (resonant or hollow), tempo (fast or slow), or rhythm (fluid or staccato).
Putting It into Practice: Voice Fluctuation
You can gain great insights into your own voice fluctuation by practicing sentences with a tape recorder. Repeat a sentence several times with as wide a variation in emotions as you can. Try to say it with authority, with anger, with sorrow, with empathetic care and concern, with warmth, and with enthusiasm.
Vocal Power
If your goal is to communicate power, set the pitch, tone, volume, and tempo of your voice in the following ways:
Pitch and tone:
The lower, more resonant, and more baritone your voice, the more impact it will have.
Volume:
One of the first things an actor learns to do on stage is to project his voice, which means gaining the ability to modulate its volume and aim it in such a targeted way that specific portions of the
audience can hear it, even from afar. One classic exercise to hone your projection skills is to imagine that your words are arrows. As you speak, aim them at different groups of listeners.
Tempo:
A slow, measured tempo with frequent pauses conveys confidence.
Putting It into Practice: Vocal Power
The guidelines below will help you broadcast power through your voice.
- Speak slowly. Visualize the contrast between a nervous, squeaky teenager speaking at high speed and the slow, emphatic tone of a judge delivering a verdict.
- Pause. People who broadcast confidence often pause while speaking. They will pause for a second or two between sentences or even in the middle of a sentence. This conveys the feeling that they’re so confident in their power, they trust that people won’t interrupt.
- Drop intonation. You know how a voice rises at the end of a question? Just reread the last sentence and hear your voice go up at the end. Now imagine an assertion: a judge saying “This case is closed.” Feel how the intonation of the word
closed
drops. Lowering the intonation of your voice at the end of a sentence broadcasts power. When you want to sound superconfident, you can even lower your intonation midsentence. - Check your breathing. Make sure you’re breathing deeply into your belly and inhale and exhale through your nose rather than your mouth. Breathing through your mouth can make you sound breathless and anxious.
Vocal Warmth
There’s only one thing you need to do in order to project more warmth in your voice: smile. Smiling affects how we speak to such an extent
that listeners in one study could identify sixteen different kinds of smiles based on sound alone.
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This is why it’s worth smiling even when on the phone.
What about cases in which you don’t necessarily want to smile? The good news is that you don’t need to actually smile: often, just thinking about smiling is enough to give your voice more warmth. Although there isn’t one single way to achieve a charismatic delivery, here’s an effective visual to simultaneously convey power and warmth. Imagine that you’re a preacher exhorting your congregation. Think of the rich, rolling, resonant voice of a preacher; he
cares
about his people (warmth), and, in addition, he feels he has the might of God behind him (power, authority, confidence).
Now that you have the tools you need to communicate presence, warmth, and power through speaking and listening, let’s take a look at body language.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Power, presence, and warmth are important for both charismatic speaking and charismatic listening.
Great listening skills are key to communicating charismatic presence.
Never interrupt people, and occasionally pause a second or two before you answer.
People associate you with the feelings you produce in them. Avoid creating negative associations: don’t make them feel bad or wrong.
Make people feel good, especially about themselves. Don’t try to impress them—let them impress you, and they will love you for it.
Get graphic: use pictures, metaphors, and sensory-rich language to convey a compelling, charismatic message.
Use as few words as possible, and deliver as much value as possible: entertainment, information, or good feelings.
To emanate vocal power, use a slow, measured tempo; insert pauses between your sentences; and drop your intonation at the end.