Archive for January, 2016

Challenging Business Conversations: Increase Harmony by Monitoring Your Tone

Monday, January 25th, 2016

Would you like to increase harmony during challenging business conversations?  You can do it by monitoring your speech!

We all know that business discussions can be challenging whenever one of the participants is stressed or behaving inappropriately in any way.  Monitoring the way you speak is a powerful opportunity to influence conversations and business relationships for the better.

Monitoring your tone may be the most obvious and most important approach you can use.  Your tone of voice is a strong indication of the opinions you hold about your conversation partners.  It reveals the truth of your feelings.  Those feelings can easily leak out and, if they’re negative, obviously they can jeopardize business relationships. 

People respond to tone of voice.  When your tone of voice contradicts your words, your tone of voice is what people respond to the most.  Whenever you hear yourself sending a mixed message (when your tone and your words don’t match), acknowledge it verbally in the moment, and explain it to your listeners, using a different tone.  For example, you might say something like, “I’m sorry if I sound a bit rushed.”  Or  “I know that I sound angry; that’s because this issue is very important to me.”   

Monitoring and modifying your tone of voice in the moment will have a very positive impact.  It’s an important step in increasing harmony during challenging business conversations.