What your voice says about you
LA BONNE VOIX
"Deciphering the other person to know how to respond. Taking the position of the one who listens rather than the one who merely endures the conversation."
TELL ME HOW YOU SPEAK, I'LL TELL YOU WHO YOU ARE
Before speaking, observe
In the first chapter of La Bonne Voix, Adeline Toniutti establishes the principle that governs everything else: before responding, you observe. The other person's voice, their entrance, their gaze, their hands already tell you what words do not say.
"Hearing the other and actively observing them allows you to immediately gain distance and escape their oratorical grip. After all, if I observe, I am not entirely at their mercy."
Adeline Toniutti, La Bonne Voix (Leduc, 2025)
We do not suffer everything in an interaction. The word interlocutor comes from medieval Latin interlocutores, "partners in dialogue." Even if you feel dominated throughout the exchange, the mere fact of having actively observed means you are not utterly defeated: next time will be better.
THE DETECTIVE'S CHECKLIST
The preliminary inquiry
As a voice expert, Adeline offers a kind of detective's checklist for investigating your interlocutor.
"No need to transform yourself into a professional Sherlock Holmes or figure out who committed the crime in an Agatha Christie novel: it is enough to open your eyes and ears wide."
Like a doctor who records vital signs and gives a prognosis, you must analyse them. In a fraction of a second, sense the other person. Here are the diagnostic questions:
- How would you describe their entrance to the meeting? Theatrical, grandiose, warm, calm, cold, uncomfortable?
- How is their step? How do they close the door? How do they say hello, and above all, are there any changes?
- How is their gaze? How do their hands speak? How is their breathing?
- Is their diction clear? Is there a slip of the tongue? A word inversion? A change in vocabulary? A frozen smile or a shifty gaze?
- How is their tone? How does it vary? Is it different from usual?
- Is the person rested, well-groomed, over-groomed? More formal than usual? Ready to argue? Hurried to get it over with?
KEY POINT
The golden rule of observation
"The golden rule is: everything that differs from usual, everything that signals a change of state, will give you a clue to orient your responses. A person is a bit like the weather: a storm arrives quickly and clears just as fast."
NON-VERBAL LANGUAGE
What are the signs that speak to me?
To create an exchange, you must immediately observe the other and sense them. You do not need to be clairvoyant: you train yourself to sense others in advance, in everyday life. What interests Adeline is not some alleged universal language of deception, but "noticing a change in behaviour, either during the conversation or compared to a previously known state."
A few elements that paint a general picture of the conversation's atmosphere: the movement of the eyebrows, the tone of the voice, the pace, variations in tempo and tone, the movement of the lips, movements of the head, hands, ribcage, legs, and variations in overall posture.
"A tongue that stumbles on a syllable, a word that replaces another, a tremor in the voice: these details that surface when one clings to meaning, desperately."
Adeline Toniutti, La Bonne Voix (Leduc, 2025)
Therapists, police officers, and voice professionals are on the lookout for a revealing slip of the tongue that would betray someone who, gripped by an inner conflict, is trying to mask the truth within. And the unconscious always ends up manifesting, through a physical detail or in the voice.
HEARING
How to listen?
"The hearing phase is the phase that precedes the response. This moment is crucial: you observe everything happening around you in order to adapt your response in the right tone and increase your chances of success." If listening becomes too passive, you lower your guard and expose yourself to potential non-verbal communication errors. Here are the listening attitudes Adeline details in the book:
Adopt the smile in all circumstances. "The smile relaxes the most stubborn of people." It radiates your charisma, and in terms of advanced vocal technique, it is "an emergency parachute for the tongue," capable of reducing the sensation of the lump rising in your throat.
I breathe even when I listen. Do not hold your breath. If what you are hearing is unpleasant, cutting off your breath will not improve the situation: your heart rate will accelerate and your thoughts will blur, even paralyse you.
"The key, and I will repeat it until my dying day, is to keep inhaling and exhaling."
Your gaze is always in motion, even when you are not speaking. Never freeze it when listening: it signals boredom or a grievance. "I recommend looking without staring, sweeping the other with your gaze tenderly."
Turn your better ear towards them. If you are right-handed, it is better to turn your right ear to respond in a fairly controlled manner. The other ear tends to give access to our emotions, which can make us more vulnerable, especially in professional discussions.
Watch out: your hands say what you dare not say. Be careful about hand movements that sometimes respond on your behalf. These are the small verbal tics that comedians observe to caricature public figures.
Give the other person space because they need it. If the relationship is not yet established, hesitant, turbulent, or toxic, you must leave the other person the space to tell their story. "People need too much to be heard."
LISTENING POSTURES
The listening attitude: a prelude to the response
"The posture adopted during listening is a kind of prelude to one's response. A prelude in music puts the audience in a certain mood and introduces what follows in the dramaturgy." A few postures to know:
- To be convincing when speaking: stand fairly upright, head slightly tilted; tilt the chin slightly to suspend the larynx well.
- To show you are attentive and empathetic: you can lean the torso forward and slightly turn your head while gently tilting the ear.
- To conceal having heard something revolting: it is better to remain upright, or to search for something in your bag, or to go limp. The more flexible you are, the less the other person will have the resources to attack.
- To conceal a fear or discomfort: be careful not to rub your hands nervously or pin them between your legs. Breathe slowly and relax your hands.
"The more you observe yourself, the more you will be able to maintain the necessary distance to decipher the other person in their speech and above all in their truth."
Adeline Toniutti, La Bonne Voix (Leduc, 2025)
THE INNER INVENTORY
Know yourself and you will know your enemies
"Liberation begins with awareness, then comes the rest..."
"The liberation of any person passes through awareness, through a kind of inventory of what one has endured and above all the reactions it provokes." Before "embracing" your audience, whether intimate or large, you must seek to know your psychological vulnerabilities and conduct your own personal inquiry. Adeline encourages everyone to:
- know how to identify which personalities put you in a conflict scenario or a control scenario;
- know the architecture of your conflict scenario or your control scenario: its perimeter, its vibration, its reactivity;
- know your traumas, even still unresolved, so as to turn them into a strength; for denying them is to make them a weakness;
- ask yourself: what are the patterns that recur in your life and are factors of negative situations for you?
KEY POINT
The war of words or the war of wounds
"Tone is the sum of frequency variations in a voice, regardless of the words used. If the words do not say what the person means, the tone will say it."
RECOGNISING THE PATTERNS
Conflict and control scenarios
"The control scenario lulls and manipulates, whereas the conflict scenario provokes anger." In the conflict scenario, the person speaks loudly with a shrill, threatening, authoritarian, or curt tone; you feel irritated, frustrated, and respond quickly without thinking. In the control scenario, the person speaks with a soft and reassuring tone, seems to know well what is best for you; you feel almost at ease, you say yes to everything.
These scenarios often, indeed almost always, engage a vulnerable part of us. "Often, to leave the living room (the control scenario), you have to go through the entrance, and the entrance can be the conflict scenario. Do not be afraid of it."
"In healing, there is a battle: a battle to be healed."
Adeline Toniutti, La Bonne Voix (Leduc, 2025)
Face to face with childhood
"Childhood is the first environment in which you develop. It is also the period where you cement the first sorrows, the first traumas." Sometimes, as a child, you are forced to suppress your emotions; later, when someone shouts, it paralyses you. Adeline works with many people who suffer from this block and who use singing lessons to reopen the door of their emotions to the world.
"When you fear certain intonations, it is because you are not able to produce them yourself."
Who are the people who frighten me? Who are those who easily "lull" or "anaesthetise" me? Who are those who push me over the edge? Taking your inner inventory means reclaiming control over your existence.
GO FURTHER
Learning to listen before speaking
This content is drawn from the chapter "Tell me how you speak, I'll tell you who you are" of La Bonne Voix by Adeline Toniutti (Leduc, 2025), the reference book on the spoken voice.
To work on your listening, your voice and your public speaking with Adeline Toniutti and the CALYP team, contact us.
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