Impressions matter.
First, second and third.
Some people are easy to listen to.
You pay attention. So do others.
They have an audience.
Be it a gift or a learned skill, most of us would like it.
After a well-rehearsed presentation, Kai invited questions. He was feeling confident. Speaking faster, thinking less about word choice and using too many fillers, he lost clarity and engagement. His impact dissipated, the audience got restless.
Magda led a call from her iPhone in the departure lounge. The agenda was clear, everyone briefed, pre-meetings completed. Thirty minutes to boarding. Why was the meeting still running when her flight was called? Magda would never know that her team were distracted by the grossly magnified image of her nose filling their monitor screens.
Ciaran was instructed to use the corporate virtual-background when facilitating online round-table events. He didn’t have a Chroma-Key (green) screen and was unaware of the lava-lamp effect each time he moved. Ciaran’s corporate backdrop was mandated; choosing your own whimsical scenery makes you ‘not serious’.
Marie, like many women, practised a lower voice pitch in order to sound authoritative. She would run out of breath at the end of long sentences but thought the creaky voice (‘vocal fry’) it produced was fashionable. She didn’t know how much it annoys.
The audience is sophisticated and demanding. It has a daily feed of professionally produced short videos and a habit of scrolling when attention is lost. From TikTok influencers to the boardroom, communications are about video. Companies long ago replaced the corporate magazine with in-house multi-media operations. All have studios. Some are buying their own talk-shows. Executives communicate through soft interviews.
Kai, Magda, Ciaran and Marie are everybody who speaks regularly to audiences and wonders why they are not becoming expert. The word for it is Valence.
Behaviours, mannerisms and distractions make some people attractive speakers; others less so. Valence is the pleasantness or unpleasantness of an emotional stimulus. Events and experiences (faces, sounds, music, art, pictures, written or spoken language) can be classified on this dimension. Positive or negative. Valence is usually unconscious or subliminal. The audience cannot say what led to pleasure, annoyance or inattention – often it is a number of small and individually insignificant mannerisms or artifacts but the net effect is positive or negative Valence. Even the brightest, alert to how emotions interfere with logic, confused if unaware of the emotional stimulus.
Magda, Ciaran and Marie each sensed, without knowing why, that their valence in meetings was less positive than required. It was a sense of unease they tried to bury. Seniority has a way of doing that – turning unexplained unease into something you stop examining. Kai was fortunate. A voice coach in the audience saw what was happening and shared her insight. It’s about feedback. It’s impossible to develop self-awareness without feedback.
An aim of SWISSUES is to help a community of subscribers become better communicators in speaking and writing. Forvm is open, free, live discussion. Podcast episodes go into depth with a panel. Viewpoint articles are longer-form opinion-posts. SWISSUES Valence provides an online audience for your five to ten minute presentation on any topic you choose, and gives you honest feedback afterwards. It’s waiting for your call.