Welcome back to the look and sound of leadership. An ongoing series of executive coaching tips

designed to help you be perceived in the workplace the way you want to be perceived.

I'm Tom Henschel, your executive coach, and today we're talking about how to command

a room. Stephanie was concerned about commanding a room. In particular, she worried her voice

wasn't up to the task. I asked what specifically she worried about.

I'm monotone, she said. People tune me out when I talk. They do, I don't, I said.

Well, you're different, she said. How so? Cousin's your job to listen to me, she said

with a laugh? Well, maybe, but some people are hard to listen to, even for me, and Stephanie,

you aren't one of them. No, she asked, curious? No, you're not. Let's start with you being

monotone. You're not. A lot of people think they're monotone, but they aren't. A true monotone

would sound like a robot from a 1950 science fiction movie. Nobody really sounds like that.

Well, okay, she said, maybe not monotone, but like you said, hard to listen to, if that's not

monotone, what's that? I said, Stephanie, instead of focusing on what makes people hard to listen to,

can we flip it and think about what people do that makes them able to command a room? Yes,

she said with energy. That's what I want. Okay. If you want your voice to command a room,

you have to treat it like an instrument. If you're going to ask your voice to perform,

you need to groom it, exercise it. Take it out for a walk, she said, more like going to the gym,

I said. Stephanie, can I tell you three areas of exercise for your voice that you might work on?

Sure, she said, hit me. I said, okay, before I tell you the three areas, I want to plant one seed

that's going to strengthen all three of those areas. No matter what part of your voice you're working on,

this one seed needs to be part of it. Holy moly, okay, what is it? Variety, I said. If you want your

voice to command a room, your voice has to have variety, vocal variety. I continued saying,

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