Scales
In my childhood, I used to enjoy watching the super-funny advertisements for ‘Paan Pasand’ candies.
A girl (Archana Jogalekar) is shown in a bad mood at the start when she refuses to marry someone. After she savors a Pan Pasand candy, she uses those exact (earlier used) words but conveys an entirely different message by using a vastly different tone 😊 … that’s the magic of tone.
During one of the communication skill development workshops, first time I came across the importance of having ‘right’ tone in any communication.
Research shows that, if we are communicating face-to-face, the way we talk (body language, tone of voice) matters much more than simply what words we are using.
I was vaguely aware of the importance of body language, but ensuring an appropriate tone was a big revelation for me.
In telephonic conversations, since we cannot see the other person, making use of body language becomes irrelevant. So, the tone does all the heavy lifting here to make that communication more effective (86% tone, 14% words).
Make no mistake - spoken words are important too.
But the appropriate usage of correct (or incorrect) tone & body language has far bigger role to play in making (or breaking) that communication.
I remember attending a seminar some years back where I got opportunity to listen to a number of eminent personalities from my domain (Factory Automation). I could ‘connect’ with only a handful of them because they were portraying a down-to-earth image through their body language & (more importantly) they were using the ‘right’ tone of their voice to explain various points.
Others were equally knowledgeable but the moment I detected a faint smug on their face (I-know-it-all type), a pompous edge in their voice or (worse) an unnecessarily super-polite or super-polished (fake) accent, I automatically disconnected from what they were saying.
When I talked with others in the audience later, I got more or less a similar feedback about these speakers.
Setting ‘Tone from the top’ is one of the regular practices in many corporate organizations. I used to be quite apprehensive about such things earlier but then I realized that the quality of results is quite linearly proportional to the tone set from the CxO levels.
If their tone is not displaying the urgency to achieve the required growth or if they are not able to instill confidence in the employees (especially in a slow moving economy), things can get astray quickly.
How you speak is far more important than what you speak.
By the way, this scene from Harry Potter & the Order of Phoenix comes to my mind whenever I think about ‘setting tone from the top’ 😊
Professor Dumbledor displays the characteristics of a down-to-earth, wise, kind, & sincere person while Professor Umbridge is the exact opposite (a pompous, sadistic & bigoted person). Their body language & tone set them a world apart.
Both the actors have played their parts so well.
I suddenly recalled this ‘Pan Pasand’ advertisement & the use of an appropriate tone because of a recent ‘eureka’ moment in my Guitar class.
I was learning to sing a song while playing Guitar. But my voice was faltering at various places. With a sad face, I told my teacher about this problem. He smiled & said, “No worries. I will change the scale of the song.”
He gave me new notes in lower scale (from ‘Am’ to ‘F#m’) & voila … I was suddenly able to sing with much better control on my voice 😊
Be it an interpersonal communication or playing a musical instrument, ‘right’ tones or ‘appropriate’ scales always work wonders.
Have you experienced any moment, where you got ‘disconnected’ or ‘connected’ just because of the tone of the other person?