Preface to the
Second Edition

There are many people who simply cannot stand the sound of their own voice and are ashamed of the way they talk. They avoid opportunities for social conversation and presentations that would advance their careers because of their personal discomfort in just speaking to others.

Perhaps you are one of these people. If so, here is something you should know: many of the fluent, comfortable, “natural born” speakers that you hear conversing or presenting were actually terrified people who have found their way to success through appropriate training and practice.

Perhaps you can be one of those people.

In the first edition of It’s the Way You Say It, I told the stories of my clients who were trying to deal with their personal communication issues. My readers have let me know that these stories were very important in helping them identify their own concerns and in seeing that there are actually ways of developing into more confident communicators. More stories are pouring in from around the world by phone and e-mail (a daunting example: “Dr. Fleming, I love my wife dearly, but I cannot stand the sound of her voice!”). So I am grateful indeed for this opportunity to include some of these stories in this revised edition of my book.

I am finding that the possibility of a new hope is the constant element in my clients and readers alike. They simply did not realize that there were things to know and do that would help them change and make a tremendous difference in their lives.

Many self-help authors have told me that they write their books in order to “drive people to their website,” “to book more speaking engagements,” “to increase their client base.” Not me. I just want to give you hope—that your misgivings can be addressed, that there are solutions, and that you can change. That’s all.

Maybe if I tell you how I got here, you’ll see where all this hope is coming from.

I met a child who could not walk. He could not sit up or hold up his head. He could not talk. His mother had brought him into my parents’ shoe store for special corrective shoes. But to see his skin-on-bone arms and legs, you knew this child would never wear out these shoes; would not even outgrow them.

My usual customers were lively boys and girls who participated in the purchase: the parent would explain why a particular shoe was just perfect, the child would complain, the parent would urge, the child would insist, the parent would argue, “The white sandals would look pretty with the anklets grandma bought you, but the patent leather is better for your Sunday dress.” The child would point and scowl … but not the child in front of me. The mother had propped him up on the chair, handed me the prescription for the “surgical boots,” then crossed her leg over to face away during the whole of the fitting. Not another word was spoken.

I was shaken by this encounter, but I learned something of ultimate importance to me: no matter what hand you are dealt by fate, if you cannot communicate, if you cannot speak, you are truly forever on the outside of life. I wanted my life to matter, and helping people to learn to communicate … now that was worth life’s labor. I went to college and ended in the graduate program in speech-language pathology at Northwestern University in Illinois. It was there that I learned that the child I just described was made flaccid by hypotonic cerebral palsy.

During my clinical practice as a speech pathologist, I found myself working with another young person with cerebral palsy at the hospital speech clinic. She was a teenage girl, somewhat developmentally delayed and severely spastic. She had difficulty keeping her mouth closed—something important in making certain speech sounds and in eating and looking OK. We had worked together for a number of weeks and had found how to position her wildly spastic body for the greatest degree of calm and control, how to get her jaw into alignment, and with tactile stimulation to the lips, how to help her to close her lips for as long as possible. This posture was like stacking a house of cards: you held your breath as she struggled to maintain the posture and control, feel her lips together, and breathe through her nose. This was the therapy goal.

And then some doctor would stride by, stopping to muss her hair and say in a jolly, jolly voice, “Christine, are you still my favorite girlfriend?” And Christine would lose all control and practically jerk out of her wheelchair with great flailing of all her limbs. The doctor would march away, clearly so pleased with himself.

And I was left enraged, furious with the doctor for his condescension, arrogance, and insensitivity. I was also furious with Christine’s parents who dressed her as a little girl and gave her none of the grooming niceties of other teenage girls. How about a nice hairdo, folks? How about a dab of lipstick? Would it kill you to dress her like a young lady instead of a handicapped child? Oh, I was full of frustration, but my role as a speech pathologist would not allow me to do anything about this. My therapy goal was to help her close her mouth, so I had to close mine. I wanted to do so much more.

I had to wait for several years until I opened a private practice as a speech pathologist in a medical building associated with a hospital in San Francisco. Here I had a surprise. For every person with a stroke or a stutter who walked through my door, there was a doctor or a hospital staff member who had some kind of communication issue! (My being a “doctor” made it possible for the medical staff to take instruction from me!)

The hospital personnel opened my eyes to all the ways that people experience “communication problems.” There would be a nurse who was intimidated to silence by physicians and physicians who were frozen with terror by professional presentations at national conferences; young doctors scared of old doctors; foreign born-personnel who could not make themselves understood. The communication of maturity and power, as displayed by the voice and by nonverbal means, was a frequent issue.

One young doctor in training stands out in my memory: he had all of these issues. Kim came from a culture that did not support assertiveness in young people, and he never had the advantage of any speech help in learning English—for him, it was catch-as-catch can. He had no friends or support community. He was doing his interning under the eagle eye of a stern taskmaster (referred to as a sadistic something else behind his back).

Kim was terrified, and since his family and church had invested everything they had in his education, failure was not an option.

I turned on the recorder and asked Kim what he thought of his speech, voice, language, and general communication concerns. I learned the baggage that he brought into the room with him, right or wrong, and formed a pretty good idea of personal insight and motivation. What he knew were the critical comments he had heard, and what he felt was despair. He was currently being defeated by the articulation demands of the word “irregularity.”

I played the recording of our interview and asked him to reevaluate the speech-voice-language as he heard it on the tape and to compare that with his initial evaluation. From this I would know how accurately he could hear and describe what he heard, which is valuable in understanding his skill and in making a prognosis. Kim was not able to make a judgment about his speech adequacy, but he watched my face to see what judgments I might be making.

Then I asked him how he wanted his speech-voice-language to be described by others. We would establish our goals and priorities by the way he answered this question: but all Kim wanted was to be a good doctor and to talk like one.

Because Kim was so weighted down with his self-criticism and failings, I figured he did not need further detailing of his communication deficiencies. All our work together was always presented in the form of pursuing his goal of communicating as an effective doctor, not solving his many “problems.”

We started with vocabulary lists of frequently used medical terms that needed to be understood clearly and set a goal of ten words a day. I recorded our list for his take-home practice and he would phone (or stop by) every day to practice. This approach helped Kim take a positive attitude: every speech practice was an opportunity to make himself a better doctor. For him, that was enough to ensure solid progress on the speech clarity goals.

My work with Kim established the evaluative format and approach I would use for the rest of my career.

These early cases showed me that in a private practice, I could now offer the kind of intervention and holistic treatment I could not offer in a clinical setting because we had a direct fee-for-service arrangement and medical insurance was not involved. I learned that these people from the general and “normal” public were handicapped in their career development and that they had nowhere else to go for help. This was memorably illustrated by a woman in the hospital typing pool who grabbed my sleeve one day and said, “Dr. Fleming, I once worked in an office and there was an opening for a manager; I tried for it, but the boss said my voice was too airy-fairy for the promotion .… We didn’t have people like you back then.” I knew I was in the right place doing the right thing.

This work has led to unimagined personal rewards from people who taught me a thing or two about character and talent and determination. You will meet some of them in this book, but first let me tell you about Elaine, who will humble us all with her courage.

I learned from her phone call that Elaine wanted to pursue another job in human resources in Silicon Valley. She had previously headed HR in a major San Francisco company for twenty years, but the department was to be closed. Elaine had an appropriate PhD and was highly thought of at her present company, but she told me that the headhunter she was working with had let her know that her voice was probably “too soft” for this new young company she was considering. She asked for an appointment to work on her “soft voice.” Between you and me, I was already suspicious about this voice complaint just by the way she spoke on the phone. But OK, an appointment was made.

The time came, and Elaine walked in the door. She was what? 4’10”? On the chubby side, clearly late middle-aged. She made no effort toward coiffure or makeup or accessories. Her long, flowing pant legs were an attempt to cover a bone-thin leg and the 6-inch platform of her big, black orthopedic shoe; she had had polio as a child. I immediately understood what “your voice is too soft” actually meant. A loose translation would probably be “this new company has young, smart, and with-it techies; they are the cutting-edge future and you … aren’t. You are dumpy, plain, old, chubby … crippled.” The headhunter solved her dilemma by saying Elaine’s voice was “too soft.”

She was off the hook, but I was on it. I admit I took a deep breath on this one, but, sensing her maturity, I leveled with Elaine about my suspicions, and she handled it like the pro she was. “Do you want to deal with this situation?” I asked, and she said, “If you think I can do it.” I did.

Now I could do the makeover I couldn’t do for Christine. A new hairdo, makeup consultation, amber jewelry to make her big brown eyes light up her face, a more fitted seafoam green outfit, and our secret plan. She told the recruiter that she had worked with a voice consultant and was now ready to try out for the job.

Applicants for the human resources leadership position were to present a twenty-minute talk on some aspect of that field. Elaine chose “diversity,” and we went to work on her presentation. She knew her professional stuff, of course, but I offered an opening that I thought would command the kind of fresh respect she needed and switch their attention from her crippled leg to her strength of character. She was astonished at my plan but agreed to do whatever it would take. Here is the opening of her talk:

(Standing in front of the group, take your time and make eye contact til they’ve settled down.)

“How old were you when you first found that you were different from other children?”

(Long pause, let them think.)

“Well, I was 5 years old when I saw that they didn’t look like this.”

(Hike your pant leg up to your thigh and just stand there, making them look at your leg and shoe. Don’t rush, make eye contact. Now, go on to your presentation.)

Elaine turned down this job offer to take a better one. She had learned that she didn’t need to cover her leg in shame, something she had done all her life. She could truly put all her professional weight on that leg and march into her career with her head up.

And I learned I could not only help people speak better, I could help them be better.

They could present a more confident face to the world and have more trust in their own abilities; speak out about the concerns of others—and their own—more forcefully; be perceived as leaders in their companies and communities; participate in social gatherings with more comfort and fluency; feel that they are fulfilling their potential; speak their mind more effectively; and earn the respect of others.

It is my hope that this book will help you be better, too.

Carol Fleming
August 2, 2012
San Francisco