Articles
Ungained Business
Being Understood: It’s EVERYTHING!!
When people can’t understand you, they can’t buy what you’re selling, understand your requests, offer you a job, or promote you to a better position. The inability of professional, managerial, and sales staff to communicate clearly or intelligibly present complex ideas in English can also cost the employer new clients and have significant negative impact on keeping existing clients and on the credibility of the manager’s, professional’s, or salesperson’s expertise.
Have you ever ended a business, professional, or customer service conversation in anger and frustration because of the inability to understand or be understood? Does poor speech or writing ability have impact on your confidence in the service provider or professional? How confident do professionals feel when constantly asked to repeat what they say?
Many metrics exist in business to track “business lost” but nothing exists to track business ungained. Consider this real-life scenario described to me a few years ago by a business acquaintance who happened to share an elevator with two attorneys in her Manhattan accounting firm. The lawyers had just finished interviewing a forensic accounting associate for the purpose of bringing him into a matter they were handling. “Well, we certainly can’t use this firm, ” one attorney was overheard in comment to the other. “I didn’t understand a word he said.” Business ungained. No one will ever know why the firm did not get the business and no one will ever tell the associate that it was because of his heavy accent, which made his expertise unintelligible and questionable.
Could this scenario happen in your business?
Fortunately, improving pronunciation and/or writing are very teachable skills. Business owners and decision-makers are now realizing that it makes economic sense to provide language and culture-related support to their skilled and loyal employees. Professional and non-professional employees can be helped to overcome language challenges. This firm began providing accent reduction coaching to its talented foreign-born financial professionals who would be client-facing and giving oral presentations.
Language Directions can help you to help your valuable accent-challenged employees. Quickly, Efficiently, and Confidentially.
One State Many Languages
One State + Many Languages = Countless Communication Challenges
The US Census Bureau recently released the most comprehensive statistics concerning languages other than English spoken at home by U.S. residents. This past Sunday, Craig McCarthy of the Star Ledger put together the Top Ten Languages spoken in New Jersey:
- Arabic. Spoken by 59,729
- Hindi (India). Spoken by 63,342
- Polish. Spoken by 33,346
- Gujarati (India). Spoken by 75,414
- Korean. Spoken by 76,224
- Italian. Spoken by 78,856
- Tagalog (Phillipines). Spoken by 81,134
- Portuguese. Spoken by 84,160
- Chinese (all dialects). Spoken by 111,151
- Spanish (all dialects). Spoken by 1,277,000
Why are these numbers significant?
Armed with these statistics, it’s easy to understand why effective communication in the workplace can be a challenge. With each language comes corresponding cultural behaviors which can be mystifying to those not born into that culture. On the other hand, the cultural behaviors of American born residents are equally mystifying to those not born in this country.
A lack of understanding leads to a lack of trust and loss of credibility, which can negatively affect business. If confidence and mutual respect erode, safety and production errors can occur. If the only time these employees speak English is at work, an astounding 1,973,356 residents of New Jersey will have great difficulty in overcoming their language challenges to become comfortable and fluent. How can an employer be assured that all employees understand essential compliance and safety training and can ask the necessary questions to clarify what they don’t understand? Assuredly, most won’t ask those questions either for lack of sufficient English ability or fear of losing the respect of supervisors or co-workers. Is the company protected if only the English speakers receive important training? I can’t answer that one; I can only ask the question…And you should too!
A quick fix can be arranged through use of bilingual “Facilitators.” Education levels and cultural considerations often make word-by-word interpretation (spoken) inappropriate. Similarly, literacy levels might make the cost of translation (documents) irrelevant if they cannot be read. In many cases, “Facilitation” can address the challenge of communicating essential information across languages.
One or more bilingual Facilitators work in tandem with your internal trainer or vendor to paraphrase the content of the presentation to deliver it at an appropriate level of understanding to the various cultures represented in your workforce. Prepared Facilitation allows your limited-English employees to ask relevant and appropriate questions to assure their total understanding of the subject being discussed. No mutual mystification. Simple, straightforward, unambiguous understanding . In any language. In your workplace.
3 Easy Tips for Being Understood the First Time!
- Final letters can say it all. The letter at the end of a word is important. It’s there for a reason. Pronounce it. To be better understood by EVERYONE, let the listener hear the ends of your words, as well as the beginnings — carry that voice energy all the way through the word. Is it “fifteen pounds” or “fifty pounds?” Without pronouncing that final ‘’n’’ your listener won’t know. Misunderstandings and errors happen. That little letter at the end provides the key to comprehension the first time. Complete the word production and don’t leave people guessing what you mean!
- Speed kills understanding. Clear communication will improve by as much as 50% when you slow down your speech. Putting spaces between your words and speaking at a slower pace can allow those who may be translating in their heads or need more time to process complex thoughts or technical explanations the time to “decode” each word. Record yourself in normal speech and listen objectively. It may be time to apply the brakes to your speech.
- Keep it simple. People whose first language is not English and people who do not share your knowledge level of a particular subject may not be able to easily understand multiple syllable or technical terms….and definitely not idioms. Keep it simple. Choose uncomplicated words that are commonly used. This is not a time to showcase jargon or an extensive multi-syllable vocabulary.
How Your Vocal Presence Influences Your Success

February 19, 2016
W.H. Auden was partially right when he said that, “All I have is a voice.” As a professional, one’s success is heavily influenced by one’s physical appearance, but one’s voice is the song of persuasion and a game changer. Your voice, like a great tune, has composition, rhythm, melody, phrasing and emotional content carried by words that move the listener. Highly acclaimed songs persuade us to listen, affect our feelings and sometimes make us dance. In truth, each of us sings a different tune.
Being successful at work requires our best “song” of persuasion in various settings, one to one, to a crowd, up the chain of command, down the chain, to insiders, outsiders, foes and friends. It matters dearly that we get that song right. Business voice is almost always a negotiation: multiple people with differing concerns trying to reach a useful solution that involves money.
Enter the Internet age, globalization and migrations of people to new places of work and life. Vast gulfs of bilingualism, culture and multiple generations of just plain English permeate our work and personal lives, and are obstacles to communication. To be a successful professional, to persuade and negotiate, which is what most business speak is, you must pay attention to your vocal presence.
Speaking + Body Language = Vocal Presence
Pair your vocal style with your body language and you get vocal presence, a song that works or doesn’t. Your vocal presence can change the arc of your career and your paycheck. Chances are very good that your public appearance will be recorded on the Internet as a speaker, alone or on a panel, a webinar, on a video newsletter, in a press conference or a networking event. That recording will serve to magnify the good and bad combinations of your vocal style and your body language: your vocal presence.Social media has given every participant the right to be a commentator on both the substance and style of your captured image.
Remedies for more effective communication and negotiation skills do exist, and they address the variables that make vocal presence different. The undermining variables include: accents; uptalk, aka, Valley girl voice; leftover teenage phrases (Dude!); growly voice, aka, vocal fry; rhythm and pitch; word choice; distracting space fillers, such as “ummmm,” “OK,” “like,” “you know” and other repeated meaningless words and phrases; and even body movements, like wiggling eyebrows, lip licking, constant head tilting, looking bored or angry, or large hand gestures.
Reading the Audience: Minimize the Differences
The point of this article is not that one style of vocal presence is better than another. The true message is that if you understand and read your audience and know its generalized style of communication, you can minimize your vocal presence differences that prevent effective communication.
A small example: as a native of New Jersey, in my early twenties I lived in New Mexico, just off the Texas panhandle. I started giving tennis lessons there. My first client was a young woman who in telling me about her life, mentioned that her husband, “holled sheet.” Translation: living in the cattle fattening capitol of the southwest, removing animal waste was an important business. Now you know. To be understood, I had to learn to speak slower, spend more time saying howdy, and severely downplay my “Joisey” accent to teach in a state where row-day-oh (rodeo) was a varsity college sport.
Of late, there has been a spate of articles focused on how women speak to their detriment at work, such as using “like” too much, making every sentence sound like a question (uptalk) or that cutesy growl (vocal fry) and diminishing phrases such as “Can I have a minute?” or “I think…,” or “I just want to say that…,” etc. There’s also been a backlash in articles questioning why, to be perceived of as competent, women have to speak like “older white men.” Fair enough.
This article advocates being less different from your audience so that you can negotiate better results for yourself. This effect is true for both men and women, because we are all actors on the same stage, and we all exhibit a lot of differences. As a result, we look at voice first, then vocal presence in action, meaning, negotiation.
Elements of Vocal Presence
Your vocal presence is a professional brand to convey gravitas, substance and likeability, and to minimize the differences between you (the transmitter) and your audience (the receiver). Whether you are informing, persuading or presenting, this vocal image is a major factor in the success or failure of your intended outcome. Other factors include, but are not limited to:
Voice into Action: Negotiation
We use our vocal presence at work for conversations that are preponderantly negotiations: two or more people in a discussion trying to reach a fair result for all with a financial impact. We hold these negotiations up and down the chain of command and in endless types of high and low stress situations inside our workplaces and with outside parties, like vendors, clients/customers, suppliers and potential new hires. High impact negotiations, as in a performance review or contract with a vendor or customer require our best vocal presence to communicate and persuade effectively.
In highly crucial negotiations, it is vitally important to reach an equitable result for your company and the other side—basic win-win strategy. Diving deeper into the research of the financial impact of business negotiations demonstrates a very serious top and bottom line financial effect: retaining high performing (good partners) vendors, clients and workers improves the revenue and profit results of your company and are not to be ignored.
There are numerous vocal presence factors that make a positive difference to a high impact negotiation, but the two subtle factors that are often most neglected are:
- Establishing a greater degree of rapport by asking (and researching) questions about both the professional and personal goals of people across the table so you are better prepared for the give and take; and…
- Preparing at least two pricing outcomes based on costing out the dollar values of potential concessions, trade-offs and value adds. Being certain of your financial range allows you to appear considerate of the other side’s requests rather than seeming to make up prices on the spot, which always appears untrustworthy.
In our digital and diverse world, there is no room for troublesome communication behaviors. Vocal presence is grounded in the projection of competence and the ability to read an audience, which decrease the differences between you and them. It is the key to achieving success at work, in thought leadership and in competitive leadership, because we use words and physical presence to achieve results in negotiations that matter deeply.
Filip is an attorney and the president of Business Development Partners in New Jersey. Vichness is the president of Language Directions in New Jersey. Together they present a workshop, “Change Your Voice. Change Your Fortune,” for businesses, higher education and professional firms.
Copyright 2016. ALM Media Properties, LLC. All rights reserved.