Use Your Inside Voice

Once upon a time I coached my son in youth football and basketball. The football field was outside and 100 yards long. The basketball court is, of course, inside and 30 yards long. On a Friday night, I was coaching from the sidelines in the Chesterfield Quarterback League Championship, yelling at the top of my lungs. On the following Saturday morning, less than 10 hours later, I was coaching the first B-Ball game of the season. I was still yelling.

Ten minutes into the game, my assistant coach whispered “Coach Saunders. Maybe you should use your inside voice.”

Oh snap. I suddenly realized that I was using my outside voice inside a small school gym. I was shocking everyone: the kids, the parents and even the refs thought I was bonkers. Knowing what voice to use — what to say, how to say it, and how loudly you exclaim it — requires a bit of situational awareness. For example, we don’t whisper at an outdoor concert and we don’t yell in a conference room. 

We all know someone who uses their outside voice in emails. Sometimes the message comes in ALL CAPS — and we ask, “Why are they yelling?” Other times, people send short, curt email responses and the reader thinks they’re being dismissed or disrespected. After sending a courtesy email notifying a customer that their invoice was 90 days overdue, we got a curt reply “Got your email. Please advise.” It took every ounce of strength not to write back “PAY YOUR BILLS.”

Reminder: email is not text, and vice versa.

Having situational awareness means you don’t send an email without capitalization and punctuation to a client or customer. In other words, you shouldn’t use your texting voice in an email. In response to a vendor request recently, I received the following reply via email. “yeah i got you” followed by a winking face emoji. (The response looked like something I’d get from my son via text, not a fellow businessperson).

A few years back I learned about the 7 C’s of communications and I suggest it be part of your team’s training on effective business communications:

Clear.

Concise.

Concrete.

Correct.

Coherent.

Complete.

Courteous.

It’s a good thing to learn for younger team members and a great refresher for the veterans. Admittedly, I still struggle occasionally with 1, 5 and 7.