Changing the way you speak
How we speak is just a delivery mechanism, but it’s one that is deeply tied to our sense of identity. Is there a way to improve our speech and yet still remain true to who we are?
Written By
Kent Valentine
It seems to strike the ears like the scraping of nails on a blackboard, raising your hackles and leaving you unable to focus. The signal is lost amongst the ever-increasing noise and you just want to make it stop.
The exact cause will be unique, but we each will have a similar, adverse reaction to at least one accent, speech pattern or style. A particular mode of thinking which throws us straight into “get-me-the-hell-outta-here” mode.
It’s fair to say that political correctness has tried to beat this auditory prejudice out of us. We’re meant to focus on the content of the message, rather than how it’s delivered. “You have to judge them on what they say, not how they say it”, chirps the voice of PC self-censorship in your head. But it doesn’t take long to realise that we’re still very much enthralled by this judgement trap. We need only take a few minutes to listen to a variety of speakers to understand the extent of the challenge.
Recent studies have also shown this to be the case. How the message is delivered has a huge impact on the efficacy of the message itself.
And this impact doesn’t disappear the moment we are aware of it. The effort required to ignore the qualities of a voice and focus only on the message is simply unsustainable. It’s the kind of activity we can maintain in the short term only.
How we speak is a big part of who we are – not just to others, but to ourselves as well.
So the challenge for us then becomes increasing complex: As listeners, is it acceptable to choose what to listen to and what to tune out of based on our judgement of someone’s voice?
As speakers, it’s even harder. If we are aware of the prejudices which our speech patterns can elicit, what do we choose to do about them?
There seems to be a tension between the drive to be effective, and our desire to maintain a sense of our own authenticity. “If I change how I speak, am I pretending to be someone else?” is the question that often crosses our mind. This is at least partly because our use of voice is such a personal manifestation of who we are. If we start to change our voice to be more effective, are we denying our true selves?
It’s an interesting area to explore. This is because voice is one of the few domains in which both our performance ability and style contributes to our notion of identity. How we speak is a big part of who we are – not just to others, but to ourselves as well.
To pick this apart a little, we could compare our attitude towards how we talk, with our attitude towards how we approach something else – high jump, for example.
We all have a current level of high jumping ability. Each of us, right now. It’s likely very low (it is in my case, anyway), but it’s there. If we all put on some track shorts and teleported to an athletics field, we would have a particular style, approach and ability for high jump.
We could all, also, improve our high jump. With some coaching and deliberate practice, we could learn better techniques. Our timing would get better and we would yield objectively better high jump results.
The fact that we could improve our high jump is not the part that’s interesting though. What’s interesting is the level of permission we give ourselves to making that improvement. Our logical mind tells us that it is of course fine to invest in this improvement – it doesn’t compromise who we are, rather it will bring us a sense of achievement. If we change our high jump technique to improve, it doesn’t feel like we’re being inauthentic, but that we’re getting better.
Our voice can often carry ideas about our background, education, social class and attitude. The impact of this is that we have an intuition that, if we’re changing our speech, we’re altering our sense of identity.
But speech has a closer proximity to our notion of identity than our ability (or inability) to do high jump. It’s unlikely that people could pick us out if they saw us in silhouette, trying to Fosbury Flop over a bar at 2.05 meters. But people can and do identify us by voice.
Our voice can often carry ideas about our background, education, social class and attitude. The impact of this is that we have an intuition that, if we’re changing our speech, we’re altering our sense of identity. It’s the proximity of speech to our perception of identity which is the tricky issue. This is because any attempt to alter our speech, even towards improvement, threatens one of our main manifestations of self.
So how are we to resolve this? Since studies have demonstrated that how you speak has a huge impact on the efficacy of the message – there is a lot to play for.
At least part of the solution here, is in how we think about our authenticity and identity.
How we speak is just a delivery mechanism for our intention. That is, when we communicate with someone, we are pursuing an outcome. It might be finding out how someone feels, letting an interviewer know how good we are or reminding a family member that we love them. What’s important, for authenticity, is our intention. Do we really care how they feel? Are we qualified for the job? Do we really love them?
If our intention is true, then it should be the north star for authenticity and also the basis for our identity. Who am I? I’m a father letting my daughter know that I love her.
My authenticity and identity are now tethered to my intention, not to my mode of speech, so my focus turns to choosing the best delivery mechanism for that intention. I might be a flippant person 95% of the time, but the best vehicle for my intention in this case may be quiet sincerity. And whether or not that quiet sincerity is actually felt by the other person can often be based on how they hear us communicate it through our voice.
In the interview situation, understanding the context and the recipient’s personality is going to give you the best chance of delivering on your intention.
Changing our patterns of speech becomes less problematic when our intention is authentic – when we believe in what we’re doing. If we believe in our intention, then it becomes the anchor for our identity and authenticity. We are then free to choose the most effective delivery mechanism without compromising our sense of identity.
And in a world in which small gains add up over time, it pays to start being as effective as possible, as soon as possible.