3 Simple Ways To Develop A Friendly Tone Of Voice

One of the most frequent questions my clients ask me is, "How can I develop a friendly tone of voice?" They tell me that friends and colleagues say their voice sounds angry and intimidating. The perception by others is that friendliness and approachability is lacking and this is regularly effecting personal and business relationships.

It is difficult to assess your own voice as you get used to hearing yourself and it becomes normal. It’s not until someone raises the issue that it suddenly becomes a problem and Business Voice Coaching is sought out.

An intimidating voice deters your listeners from engaging because everyone wants to feel a compassionate voice rather than a frightening voice when listening.

When I am working with this client In a business voice coaching session I notice that the voice tone sounds stern, deeper pitched and lacks breath. To help my client have greater control over their voice, I ask my client to pretend they are speaking to a particular person and tell me about how they are feeling and thinking as they are using their voice.

Over the past 20 years, after working with over 5000 voices, I have found that the secret to developing a friendly tone of voice has to do with your mindset and vocal tone.

I usually recomend 4 voice coaching sessions to create awareness, flexibly and greater control over your voice. To find out more check out voice coaching details here.

Here are three ways to develop a friendly tone of voice.

Listen to and practice these exercises to change your tone.

1. Don't be stuck only using a low speaking tone which makes you sound serious. Your voice must be balanced with enough breath and muscle. The imbalance of these two critical elements create tone issues. Once breath and muscle is balanced you can easily access both low and high voice pitch. Warm up your voice with a lip trill exercise in the morning before you start your day. Listen to this recording here

2. Your voice may just sound heavy and deep lacking brighter tones because your vocal cords are swollen or just not flexible enough. You can thin out your vocal cords and get more energy in your tone, helping you sound more exciting and friendly. Have greater flexiblity in how you choose to use your voice with this exercise. Listen to this recording here.

3. You may not be able to access your higher voice pitch because you have only ever used your voice tone in a deeper way and the muscle memory of your voice automatically keeps bringing you back to the usual sound. Especially if you are a man you will lack a higher voice pitch. Everyone has both high and low pitches in their voice but its often feels like two separate voices. You can develop a complete blend of high and low with this exercise. Listen to this recording here.

“Our voice tone is loaded with resounding non verbal information about our true emotions and opinions”

A friendly tone of voice is what all of us want from time to time. We are often puzzled why people don’t get back to us or just drop off our connection list. I have often asked myself, “Did I say something wrong?” or “I wonder what she/he thought of me when I said that?”. Sometimes through our tone we may have intimidated the other person or just put them off any further communication.

We all have an assorted range of vocal tones because we have different face shapes and emotionally we express ourselves diversely. Some of us are naturally more serious, funny, excitable, demanding, our personalities are varied. We can learn from each other by modeling the speaking tones we like and just try them on and see if it’s a fit.

Recording yourself can help too because you can hear what you really sound like and control it. You can play with you voice changing it from lower to higher pitch and see what works best. By listening to a recording of your voice you can have some control on how you choose to use your voice. You can become more aware of what others are hearing and feeling when you speak.

"The only reason to master this technique is to be sure the body does not interfere with the soul's free expression."La Meri

Are you speaking with

monotone and struggling to be interesting and memorable ?

mumble or accent making you unclear but you want to be concise and understandable ?

An Intimidating but you want to be engaging?

A powerlessly speaking voice and you wish you could be confident influential?

93% of communication is non -verbal. That means your voice tonality is speaking louder than your words.

Click below and download your FREE Ebook on 7 speaking elements that empower your leadership credibility

Voice tone is the most important aspect in speaking, even more than the words you use.

Voice tone carries loads of information to listeners. They can tell if you are truly aligned with what you say or something is just not right.

Charisma is the most important aspect of speaking and having a lower, boring or demanding voice will deter your listeners and will destroy engagement. Even our leaders and influencers know how important the tone of their voice is when delivering their message. Check out the research here.

Voice tone can effect how your message is heard, appreciated or absorbed.

When you have an annoying voice, too loud or an angry tone you distract your audience from wanting to listen to you. Your speaking becomes an obstacle to others fully engaging with you. The sound quality of your voice always effects the balance of hearing words.

Speaking tonality matters. Find out how you can improve the tone of your voice and become more engaging and enjoyable to your audience. We all love to be entertained even if we are having to listen to a serious message. You can make your speaking more interesting and bring to life your spoken words. Listen to the video below.

Loudspeakers are sometimes labeled as woofers and tweeters. Woofers are large and tweeters are small. Vocal folds can produce nearly half of all the pitches of the strings on a piano.Ingo Titzi.