Find Your Human Voice
Back in the 1980s the corporate clone style was the rage among professionals. We wore three-piece pinstripe suits and sought to distinguish ourselves by blending into a larger corporate culture. Individualism was frowned upon. Like our fashion, our communications styles were equally stiff. When we wrote documents and spoke before groups, we strove to project an image of the corporation we were representing. Our language was often stuffy and impersonal. Writing in first person was practically forbidden. Too bad if our communications efforts failed to explain issues with clarity or inspire our audiences to take action. It seemed more important to emanate seriousness.
Those days are gone. Professionalism has been redefined. The Internet culture has freed us from a rigid, impersonal way of doing business. As entrepreneurship boomed in the last decade of the last century, it became okay to take a more casual, personal tone when discussing matters of importance. You can now humanize yourself, your company, and your brand without suffering rejection from monolithic institutions. You can even get bank loans and find investors while expressing your personal style.
BE A HUMAN
It just so happens that the radical notion of making content more human is what learning specialists recommend. The serious, stilted, impersonal style of yesteryear is not conducive to helping content developers deliver meaning. People work harder to understand subjects when they feel engaged in a conversation. If they feel alone, left unengaged as they receive information, they are less likely to be motivated. But create a situation where they feel as if they are interacting with a visible author, and boom—they engage at a deeper cognitive level.2
Crafting your own unique voice that shows your humanity yet retains a professional tone is essential to win over audiences. Don't be a faceless entity devoid of emotion or character. Develop a personality with distinct viewpoints so your audience can engage with you on a personal level. Let them know that you're human—communicate with a tone, style, and pitch reflective of your own distinctive voice. Striking the right style will put your audiences at ease and help you develop a relationship with them.
Adopting a more human style may be more difficult than you'd expect. Seasoned professionals who learned how to write decades ago may find that it's not so easy to put the formal, impersonal stuff in a box and move onto a style more befitting the digital era. Making the transition will require lots of practice, so be patient. I'm not talking about a few cosmetic changes to your writing—I'm suggesting taking on a new persona. Flipping the switch from impersonal communication to speaking human requires developing a personality that some might not be comfortable with. We've been hiding behind a corporate veil so long that finding the perfect voice that represents whom we want our audience to engage with can be uncomfortable.
Tips for Communicating Like a Human
To get the process started I recommend experimentation and practice. Write a lot and speak a lot, but pay close attention to listening to your voice.
- BE GENUINE. Open up and let the real you emerge. Share experiences that make you sound like a real person trying to get through life just like everyone else. Think of ways to make yourself authentic. Tell people stories where you come across as an Average Joe who faces learning opportunities and struggles. Never brag or put yourself on a pedestal. Audiences are adept at spotting fakes, so be truthful, not pretentious.
- EXPERIMENT. Engage in a playful experiment of communicating with different voices. Push yourself to see how you can let your human self emerge.
- LISTEN TO YOURSELF. Practice your new voice and listen to how it sounds. Read your content out loud. Is it written by someone you find engaging?
- DIG DEEP FOR CLARITY. Your new voice should resonate with clarity. Remove all the unnecessary fuss and reduce your content to simple thoughts.
WRITING IN FIRST PERSON
Speaking human often means writing in first person—as if you, your actual self, is engaging in a conversation with your audience. People respond to documents written or presentations given from the perspective of “I” or “we” (first person plural). This casual style of communication resonates with audiences because it's less stilted and more real. It fits nicely into the “be human” approach because it avoids the awkwardness that can accompany the formality of third person (he, she, or it).
This book is written in a combination of first, second, and third person. I want to be your human guide—to walk you through the journey of becoming a supercommunicator. First person helps me be more real. Yet if I wrote in first person only, this book would quickly grow tedious. Alternating between first, second, and third person creates energy to keep the book lively.
In your professional pursuits you may still encounter people and organizations that reject the use of first person in formal documents. In some cases you could challenge the system and shake things up with a more human tone. In other situations, emoting too much humanity and informality could spell trouble. Like many of the suggestions in this book, use your judgment.
A Lesson in Humanity from Dame Judi Dench
In the 2012 comedy/drama The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, we meet Evelyn Greenslade, a British woman of retirement age who finds herself with financial problems following her husband's death. In a touching scene, we see Evelyn, played by Judi Dench, speaking on the phone to a customer service representative. As she tries to explain her situation, Evelyn tells the representative that she is recently widowed. The person on the other end of the phone shows no compassion. The representative presses on, sticking to the company's script, offering no acknowledgment of Evelyn's loss, let alone empathy.
Out of financial necessity Evelyn moves to Jaipur, India, and checks into the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Ironically, she lands a job at a call center coaching customer service representatives. We see Evelyn conducting a training program where she tells the group how hurt she was by her unfortunate call a few months earlier. She explains to them how important it is to show humanity when speaking to customers.
It continues to amaze me how disingenuous the customer service representatives are at one of this country's largest cable/Internet service providers. When I speak with them, it's like they're trying to not be human. When people call a company, they want to talk to real people—not to highly scripted robots devoid of personality or compassion. The call center employees were pleased with Evelyn's remarks. We learned that they are good people, just focused on their tasks. They never thought about taking the time to be human. Whether you're working as a customer service representative or developing content, remember that humans like to be treated like humans.