‘Voice Modulation’

We hear a lot about voice modulation in the age of public presentations.

What is modulation? And why is it so important?

Voice Modulation is your ability, rather, talent to bring in variance in pace, pause, pitch, emphasis on the key word and the tone. Unless you modulate your voice while speaking to a group or even a lone listener, the chances are that you speech will not be effective at all. We have often seen some members of the audience dozing away while the speaker continues his/her speech. Now, I will explain- pace, pause, pitch, emphasis on the key word and the tone.

Pace: if you speak very fast you will not be understood but, if you speak very slowly you tend to become dull and listeners will not like to listen to you. However, when you speak with a medium speech, though audience can understand you but the same pace of your words will render your speech monotonous. 

Pause: Just as in written text you have coma, full stop, paragraph and other punctuation marks, your speech too must reflect the same by means of pauses of different durations. This will make the speech effective.

Pitch: It is the note on which you speak. While attending a solemn meeting you cannot speak on higher pitch. But at the same time if the commentator of a football match speaks at a low pitch, nobody will like to listen to him.

Emphasis on the key word: Just as you get unwanted results if you Google a wrong key word, different meaning will be conveyed by the same sentence when you emphasis a wrong word.

Tone: Tone is most dicey. It is easy to control the words and the sentences. But it is very difficult to control the tone. Tone represents the emotions with which you speak. Often times, due to inappropriate tone the speaker lands into trouble.

Benevolent Badri

I had a friend who was always looking for people whom he could help. He could never see anyone suffering. He would get so involved in the problems of others that he would forget his own.

I had read in our scriptures that persons with ‘Devi Prakarti’ are the ones who are always concerned about the welfare of others. They would even find how the enemies after death could go to heaven and not the hell. Indeed it was the concept of ‘Ma Durga’ who would want to destroy the demons with her swords and/or other arms instead of destroying them with a just a fierce gaze. It had been further explained that the very touch of the arms of Mata Durga is enough for the salvation of these demons. Devi thus bestows salvation and not damnation even of demons

But, Badri was not an angel. He was a human being like all of us.

Due to his extreme concern for others, his own business invariable suffered. Most of the time he was in financial difficulties. His wife remained upset and the family life was disturbed. Poor benevolent Badri.

Mumbai's Lifeline

At a recent training program, we wanted to conduct a debate. There were about twenty participants- all executives of a medium size organization. There were nine ladies and eleven male executives. Most of them had been using Mumbai’s Lifeline- Local Trains.

The topic was defined as,

Commuters themselves are responsible for poor services of Mumbai’s Local Trains.

Two groups were formed. By consensus, it was decided that ladies would speak for the motion and men would oppose the motion and hold Government responsible for the malady.

Ladies group made out a strong case that commuters are either misusing the facilities provided by the railways or were not coming forward to notify their genuine complaints.

Male participants enumerated various issues like delays, shoddy  announcements, hawkers & beggars infesting the stations and the compartments, thefts, accidents etc, But, somehow they did not speak with conviction. So it seemed that the ladies had carried the day.

Then, the motion

“Commuters themselves are responsible for the poor service of railways”

was put to vote.

Contrary to the expectation - the motion failed. All the male and female participants voted against the motion and held the railway authorities squarely responsible for their mismanagement and all pervading corruption.

Are you listening?

While talking on the telephone often you ask the listener - "Are you Listening?" If there is no sound of response such as 'hmm', 'yes', 'please go ahead', 'I understand', etc. you tend to feel that your words are falling on deaf ears. More so when you are negotiating on the telephone. 

But what happens when you talk face to face? 

The significance of your words is reduced to just 10 to 15%. 'How you say it?' - becomes more important than what you say. Even when you are articulate the efficacy of your words will not go down unless you compliment your words with voice modulation. 

Modulation is your ability to bring variance in Pace, Pause, Pitch, Emphasis on the keywords and the Tone.

Further, you body language* too is extremely important for making the communication convincing and effective. 

Attentive listening to others is the key to build good relations. Listen to others and they will listen to you!

*(facial expression, posture, gestures, eye contact)

Ms. Manners

A few years ago I had joined  ‘A poetry club’. I fail to remember the club’s name.

A number of persons trying to call themselves Poets! The chief undoubtedly is a poet. His poems constitute a part of the English literature curriculum for students of master of arts degree in English literature. Frankly, I did not read his poems. He recited some of theses from time to time in our poetry meetings

And we had a lady member whose name I would not like to reveal. Let me call her Ms. Manners.

We were at the get-together hosted by a Business Chamber. The Chief Guest was Counsel General from an African country. After the speech of the Chief Guest and a Vote of Thanks, the chamber had arranged cocktails. Guests were enjoying conversations in small groups. I was a part of one such group. Our Ms. Manners was enthusiastically speaking about something to the Deputy Counsel General. He too, was deeply engaged and added a comment here and there. I was a mute spectator because I didn’t understand what they were talking about. The conversation swung from trade to tradition and from African Jungles to Railway Networks. Meanwhile, the Diplomat was approached by another guest. Ms. Manners took me aside and started advising me discretely and confidently. “You must find space and enter the conversion. One should be able to contribute to any topic to make his or her presence felt. Otherwise, you are left alone, you know”, she said. And did I not know!