Why are so few business leaders good communicators, given all the education they have received, starting at varsity and then later, through their workplace organisations? Leaders are often told they need to be “authentic”. That means to some, that it is fine to be dull, obtuse, monotone and forgettable. While dramatic oratorical flourishes are not required, congruency is a must. For leaders this means matching the way we communicate with the content of our message.
Here are six things to pay attention to, in order to differentiate our leader voice:
Don’t speak using a monotone delivery. Our audience start to look for other points of stimulation, such as how we are dressed, our body language, our voice quality – almost everything except the actual key message content.
Leaders need to match their vocal variation and facial expression to the message being delivered. Congruency means emphasising key words or phrases, through either adding or subtracting voice projection. Whispering is as powerful as yelling, as long as the message content is aligned with the delivery mechanism. Dialing up and down the energy and speed when speaking, creates the necessary vocal variation.
Business leaders are often notable for maintaining the same facial expression throughout their talk. Good, striking, even exceptional news is greeted with the same fixed expression as announcing disaster, doom and gloom.
Voice speed can be an indicator of confidence or terror. Most of us, when nervous, tend to speed up and our ideas can rapidly begin to overtake each other. Pausing is needed to allow the audience to process and digest what they have just heard.
We can also speak using our eyes. The front, middle, back, the sides – the leader makes eye contact to engage with people in all parts of the room. Eye contact means actual engagement – looking an audience member in the eye and speaking to them for around 6 seconds. Less than that makes for a rather fleeting, perfunctory type of engagement. Locking on to their gaze for too much longer starts to burn into their retina and becomes uncomfortable.
With our hands we either overemploy them, so that everything gets the same unbroken level of emphasis or we don’t deploy them at all. Gestures are powerful to emphasise the key points we want our audience to remember. As a general rule, 15 seconds for each gesture allows it to have impact. After that point, the strength subsides and the gesture just becomes annoying.
You are the brand and what you say and how you say it matters. We judge the entire organization on you, so how leaders perform in public matters. Be congruent, authentic, be you, but be the best possible you.
Remember: always be congruent between our content and our delivery; use vocal tone, facial expression, power and speed to vary the delivery; keep our eyes fixed on our audience the whole time engaging them one by one; work the whole room and not just one side and understand you are the brand
