By Mark Jeffries
Author, What's Up With Your Handshake?

The more senior or apparently successful someone becomes, the more this self-belief applies. Now, there is nothing wrong with a healthy dose of self-confidence but occasionally, like a finely tuned piece of machinery, you need to conduct a self-diagnostic, an honest “self-audit”.

I want you to be the best you can be.With this in mind I would like to draw attention to one of the items that people often entirely overlook when evaluating their performance – their voice. Your voice has many components: volume, projection, diction, pace and tone.

Your voice is your single most important instrument in conveying your message. If your words are great but your delivery of them is poor, or worse, annoying in some way, then people aren’t going to want to listen to you for very long.

VOLUME

Think of the last time you were in a restaurant or on a plane or anywhere else that people may gather in a confined space. I’ll wager that you could hear one or two voices above everyone else’s. I was recently dining with a client at a smart place in Chicago and on the table next to us were three business sorts having a dinner meeting. Fine. Nothing wrong with that. Except that I could clearly hear one of them over the others. I heard about

the value of the property deal they were working on ($20 million), I heard who he did and did not trust. I know that during the following weekend he fully intended to fly to Miami. Meanwhile, I could not hear a single word from the other two participants in the conversation, I could only hear the “shout lout”!

Setting aside the rules on dining etiquette for just a moment, this entire “broadcast” could well have been a major breach in client confidentiality……I could have been a journalist or, worse, a competitor.Walls have ears and so do we.

But here’s the thing.He clearly had no idea about his bullhorn megaphone voice. His colleagues were clearly too embarrassed or did not feel sufficiently empowered to draw attention to the fact that he was bellowing like an over-excited soccer coach; he carried on with his public pronouncements throughout dinner.

I glanced over several times and pointedly made eye-contact, attempting to communicate that I could hear every word he was saying. But he was too busy enjoying listening to the sound of his own voice to bother with reading the reactions of people around him.

So, for his benefit and for the benefit of others like him, here are my three top tips regarding volume control. If any of these apply to you, you may want to turn down the volume a little:

1. Your interlocutors seem to be talking very quietly – subtly encouraging you to join them at that level

2. People keep looking at you – and you’re not famous

3. Someone comes over with the opening comment “I thought I recognized that voice.”

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