(Note: I do use em dashes. I’m a voice-over actor who hears what she writes, and the em dash is part of my rhythm. I have that in common with AI, I hear.)
There is something happening in the room before you finish your sentence.
Research on prosody — the musicality of the voice — shows that the brain begins reading the emotional tone of someone’s voice within about 200 milliseconds of them starting to speak. Anger and frustration register fastest of all. Which means your listener has already begun building a story before your actual words arrive.
That story is almost always about them.
I was working with a group of leaders — a mixed room, leaders and direct reports together — and we were talking about prosody and the impact our voices have on the people around us. One leader had a quiet aha. He was a genuinely humble person who wanted to grow, and was hard on himself when he felt he wasn’t showing up the way he wanted to. He thought that was obvious. He thought his frustration read as self-directed because, well, it was self-directed.
He was wrong. It wasn’t reading that way.
His direct reports had experienced him as an angry leader. Angry at them. The opposite of what he was feeling and the opposite of what he thought he was sending.
Once you have power and status in a room, people put your tone on themselves. It’s not a character flaw in them. It’s how human beings are wired. We are the protagonists of our own story, which means incoming tone gets filtered through the question: “Did I do something wrong?”
I learned this in a recording booth.
As a voiceover actor, the expectation is three takes. Any more than that and you’re burning time and money — the producer’s, the engineer’s, yours. So when you’re on take four or five, a self-defeating feeling often starts to grow. You wanted to nail it. You think you know the character and messaging you want your voice to express and you can’t quite get there. When the producer comes in with more direction, your “yes, got it” might have a little spin on it. A little stressed energy. Not at them. At yourself.
The producer doesn’t know that.
What the producer hears is that they have upset the talent. The number-one response to feeling like you’ve upset someone is to stop doing whatever seems to be upsetting them. In this case, it means stop giving feedback and direction. The exact thing the actor most wants and the project needs.
I asked a producer once what the hardest part of working with voice talent in the booth was. He said: “When they get upset at him when I’m giving feedback. The project suffers because I stop directing.”
They aren’t getting upset at him. I can tell you with near certainty that 99% of the time the actor is only upset at themselves. That’s not what’s landing. We’ve taken off from one airport and landed at a completely different airport on a totally different continent! Our intentions and our landing are misaligned with the other person’s.
This plays out in business communication every day.
The last thing most people think about is their tone — how they’re saying what they’re saying. If they do think about it, they usually assume they have it under control. We aren’t as good at vocal poker as we think we are. Our voice betrays what we’re feeling. Especially frustration. Especially the particular flavor of frustration that is being hard on yourself.
Add a power dynamic, and it compounds. A leader with more status in the room doesn’t realize how much extra weight their tone carries. A direct report doesn’t realize they’re creating a story. Both of them walk away from a conversation that was never about what either of them thought it was about.
Here’s what helps. Three things, and none of them are complicated. This is what we are focused on coaching and leading workshops about so connect if you are interested in growing in this area: link to the scheduling? Or to the website?
Be aware. What you’re putting out may be landing differently than you intend, and what you’re receiving may also be landing differently than they intend. Pause and consider.
Be transparent. If you notice your tone has more spin on it than you meant — name it. “I realize I might be sounding frustrated. That’s at me, not at you.” It takes about two seconds and it changes everything.
Ask for a do-over. Etch-a-sketch it. Come back and share what you meant to share, with the intention clarified behind it.
If you sound mad and someone responds as if you sound mad and you deny that you sound mad — you’ve missed it. Maybe you’re frustrated. Maybe it really is with yourself or with a situation and not with them. Honor the fact that they heard something different. That is the opening.
So, your tone got there before your words did. Your listener made it about themselves before you finished the sentence. That’s not a problem to fix once and be done with. It’s something to stay curious about, learn to navigate your own vocal instrument, every time you open your mouth in a room where it matters.
Which is most rooms.
Hilary Blair is a leadership keynote speaker based out of Denver, CO, and is the co-founder of ARTiculate: Real&Clear. She is also a highly regarded actor, improviser, facilitator, voice-over artist, and voice expert coach.
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