Your Voice and Vision

Have you ever worked really hard on the content of your message--whether it's a presentation you want to share with thousands, or an assertive one-on-one with your employer about that promotion--and found that your way of presenting, of voicing, that carefully developed information wasn't up to the job? That your presentation wasn't consonant with your content?

Of course, we don't always hear ourselves the way others hear us. We may just be mystified as to why we aren't making the impact or getting the results we want. So, let's put the shoe on the other foot--yourself as the listener. How many times have you heard a teleseminar or watched a webinar, and been turned off immediately by the tone or style of the presenter? Suppose you really liked their content, assuming you got that far (people often decide in 10 seconds whether to stay on a web site!), but something in the way they delivered it felt "off" to you.

Maybe the tone was too breathy for a strong idea, or the voice was pitched too high for a guided meditation, or the sound too tense to convey a message of peace and calm. A passionate idea got deflated by a monotone. Someone overcoming their fear of the microphone, or fear of public speaking, may have overcompensated by being too aggressive. Or hey! that heavy Bronx or Philly accent would be 'way better suited to a sportscaster than someone selling a high-end training program!

You've noticed these things instinctively, even if you didn't know exactly why they bothered you.

Then there's the visual piece. A "consonant" speaker's good ideas and message are reaching you--till they start playing with their hair or tugging at their jacket hem when they have to say something they're not completely sure about. (It's what poker players call a "tell.") I've seen this not just with novices, but internet entrepreneurs who've been making millions for years, they say. The physical comfort or discomfort we display, telegraphs our level of ease with ourselves and our mission. To succeed, we need to stand for something--and to stand up for it before our audience.

New ideas have such power to transform people's lives! Of course, it takes a while to hear and digest someone's message, discover whether we like it or not, if it fits our beliefs, our needs, our filters. That's where the 10-second "rule" comes in.

Because meanwhile, we're sizing up whether a voice "rings true" in a nanosecond, automatically, and the body language very soon afterward. These "knowings" are instinctual--though we can always analyze them later to understand what the disconnect was about. These first impressions of sound and sight register through a different, and faster, part of the brain than the part that evaluates content.

In the 1960's, modern-day philosopher Marshall McLuhan made some prophetic observations about various communications media and their effect on us. McLuhan, by the way, is the person responsible for the expression "the global village"; and he predicted the development of the world-wide web a full generation before it existed. So we could think of him as the Godfather of the internet.

In two of his books, The Medium Is the Message, and The Medium is the Massage (see link below), he discussed what he called "cool" and "hot" media. A cool medium is one whose contents ("message") you can digest at leisure, like a book, a magazine. A hot medium--TV, radio, now a teleseminar or webinar--is right in your face. It presents the information to you, and you take it in and make sense of it, simultaneously. McLuhan went further, to suggest that hot media in particular were now shaping the messages themselves; and that the medium was in the process of becoming the message, and of massaging public opinion in any direction a skillful "masseur" could direct it. Content was playing second fiddle to presentation.

Read any current discussion on the influence or state of mass media today, and you'll find these early observations of McLuhan's have come to pass, and not always for the better. So it's up to us to marry a fine message with a relaxed, confident presentation, that's what I call consonant with the content.

The bottom line: When our vocals and visuals match up with our message, and can reach the people we want to share our message with,

THAT's our vision, told in our own true voice!

You don't have to be a singer or an actor to need to develop your voice! Increasingly in our information age, people in all walks of life are finding they need to present themselves effectively via their voices, in order to:

• Build a business--especially internet entrepreneurs, for whom teleseminars and webinars are absolutely essential tools for communicating their special message;
• Enhance their job skills--to retrain for new employment opportunities, discuss that promotion with their manager, give an effective power point presentation, manage a department with calm authority;
• Corral a group of students or trainees in a classroom or workshop, and keep the voice not only vibrant and charismatic, but healthy--day in, day out. Those who speak for hours at a time without proper technique, over the long term can develop serious conditions like nodules, cysts or varix.

We're a communication-saturated culture. Those who not only have good ideas, but present them effectively in the dominant "hot media" of radio, television and internet audio/video, will be the ones to lead us into the future.

I want to be your guide to your true, essential, powerful, on-message voice.  I offer expert one-on-one evaluation and training, via the internet, and in person in New York City, the Hudson Valley, and other locations by special arrangement.  

Your Golden Voice is your Golden Ticket!