My Voice Has Got to Go

By PETER JARET
Published: July 21, 2005

WHEN the telecom bubble burst a few years back and David LaBerge, 45, found himself looking for work as an independent marketing consultant, he decided it was time to spiff up his act. New clothes. New haircut. Skip to next paragraph.

Viktor Koen. New voice. "I was just not happy with the way I presented myself," said Mr. LaBerge, who works in San Jose, Calif. "I'd hear myself on tapes of meetings or on my office answering machine and I had this monotonous delivery. The tone didn't go up or down. Even when I was very enthusiastic I sounded dull. I would end statements with a rising pitch, which made it sound like a question, or like even I wasn't convinced by what I was saying." The problem spilled over into his personal life. "You go to a party, and there's always someone who can tell a story in this really engaging way. I'd tell a story and it always seemed to fall flat, even though I think I know some pretty good stories."

Sounding dull wasn't Cynthia Sam's problem. "My voice is kind of unique," said Ms. Sam, a respiratory therapist in New York, whose high-pitched little-girl's voice sounds like a cartoon character's. "When you talk like this, it's sometimes hard to be taken seriously. People can be very cruel."

Emily Schreiber, 25, a second-grade teacher in Manhattan who has to raise her voice above a roomful of 7-year-olds, suffered repeated bouts of laryngitis. "I was perfectly healthy but I couldn't speak above a whisper," Ms. Schreiber said.

A beautiful and commanding voice has always been important to actors and singers. But now many others want one. And why not? If gorgeous hair, sculptured torsos, flawless skin and sparkling white teeth are worthy of pursuit, why shouldn't a richer, more sonorous voice be one more item on the checklist of perfection?

About a third of the members of the Voice and Speech Trainers Association, an organization of professionals who originally focused on actors, now work with the public at large, said the association's president, Lisa Wilson, a professor of theater at the University of Tulsa.

Speech pathologists, trained to treat speaking disorders, are also getting some of the business. "Fifteen years ago I rarely had people come to me because they simply didn't like the sound of their voice," said Thomas Murry, a speech pathologist at the Voice and Swallowing Center of Columbia University.

His clients were people with medical conditions like polyps on their vocal cords. "Now about a third of the people simply want to sound better," he said. Dr. Murry estimated that of the 90,000 members of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, as many as 1,000 devote their practices to what he calls "voice styling," helping people improve the sound of otherwise healthy voices.

With so much of our lives these days conducted on the phone, vocal quality is gaining attention as a factor in making friends and influencing people. "More and more of my work is done in conference calls," said Grace Vandecruze, 37, an investment banker in New York who has worked with Lucille S. Rubin, a veteran voice coach. "The depth of your knowledge and the impact of your voice - the two are equally important."

Voice quality matters in face-to-face meetings, too. "Studies show that in hiring situations, two things play a big role in who gets hired: what someone looks like and the sound of their voice," Dr. Murry said.

Sometimes people don't know that their voice gets in their way. Susan Berkley, a voice coach in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., and the author of "Speak to Influence," told the story of a friend who met a woman on an Internet dating site. "Her photo was drop-dead gorgeous. They finally set a time to talk on the phone. He's convinced she's going to bear his children, right? So he calls and she answers." Here she produced a high-pitched nasal "Hello" that called to mind Lily Tomlin's telephone operator. "It was over in five seconds. He couldn't bear the thought of spending the rest of his life with that voice."

To evaluate voices, speech therapists listen and look. Hoarseness can be assessed with a strobovideolaryngoscopy, which creates a moving image of vibrating vocal cords. Roughness, breathiness, weakness and strain are judged more subjectively using a 0 to 4 rating system.