I cannot recollect ever being on a zoom call, and we rarely use Google Meet at work. Most of the verbal communication is via Slack and it isn’t recorded, and so, I have no idea what my voice sounds like.

Being honest, I don’t speak to too many people in the periods I work from home, so quite a lot of silence over the last two years. I have noticed, that when I do speak it is like a release valve, and I find I have a lot to say, certainly too much. Reflecting, I think it could be a bit like a confessional, or my old history lessons, dialogue all in one direction. 

The impressions you have of yourself can be very different from how other people perceive you. When I think of my verbal skills, I have a lot of doubts. But at IBM and Capgemini I have been on a couple of courses, the last one was called Executive Presence, and in both cases, the perception I had of myself ranks much lower than how others perceive me. In my podcasting journey, gaining self-confidence in speaking will be one of my biggest challenges, it is why I feel that a solo podcast will be much safer ground.

After a few failed attempts getting my Blue Yeti mic to be recognised by Zoom, this is my natural phobia of gadgets and new software masking the obvious, this week I managed to record a daily Zoom call with Tadas, an engineering intern from Latvia that has joined our Dutch organisation for a few months.

I am showing Tadas parts of the software that I have been using for 25 years, it’s called Maximo. Zoom is recording screen as well as sound and at the end I get two files downloaded and the alarming sound of my MacBook fans doing their impression of a helicopter taking off. The file I am interested in is .m4a, being sound only, and I am now, probably for the first time, listening to myself.

I have made no preparation for these Zoom calls, deliberately so, this will record my natural state and will form a baseline, from which I can…, well I don’t exactly know, but it will be useful surely to analyse and understand my natural state. I’m now wondering, if you try to improve how you speak, do you alter yourself as a speaker, do you become less natural, perhaps a little false. I guess, time will tell.

My first impression was that I sounded casual, I actually laughed in the first 5 seconds, which was a big surprise listening back. I gave Tadas time to talk, any interruption was mainly background yeah, yep, or OK. It sounded as if I was listening, perhaps that is a bit of a surprise as well. There is a slight sound differential, my voice comes over slightly louder than that of Tadas, he has headphone with mic, perhaps I need to adjust down the volume on the Blue Yeti.

There was one section where I said I would give Tadas the one-minute explanation on something; this lasted 12 minutes, and I laughed again at the end. When I started out in this section, I quickly went on a related tangent, and then the umms and errs came flooding in. The analysis of this is that I can almost hear myself thinking how to steer this tangential course back into line, and as soon as it was back in line with the original direction the umms and errs ceased, fascinating. My wife tells me I do this all the time, and it is very annoying, it might be why sometimes she can’t remember what I said, she must be thinking of something else.

With no preparation for what I was going to say or how much ground I was going to cover, anecdotes from my 25 years of experience were plentiful. Some examples might not be publishable. I had provided company names, one company I described as being the nicest people I had worked with, the other quite the opposite, and because it sounded natural and unscripted, an audience I think would consider this as being truthful. It is true, of course, as was saying that losing my position was a lucky escape from the stress, “I was lucky it didn’t kill me”, and that is what I believe still today.

Although I was screen recording, I was pleased that you could listen to the recording without needing to visualise anything. That was a surprise, I thought I would be saying, up in the left corner, below this field or that field, etc. Tadas was just following the cursor, so there was no need to explain where in the screen I was. 

We didn’t cover much ground in 70 minutes, it could have been a lot more concise. I am wondering whether 15 minutes preparation, objective, bullets, conclusion, would make a better recording, or destroy any natural feeling in the recording, I’ll try this and see.

Preparation would have definitely helped, and in an application software world this also requires knowing the data that you are going to use. There is no point scratching around for data to show, and then end up inserting data, you lose time, it takes longer, and it leads to more things that need explaining. The required preparations may be like a video training class, and perhaps this preparation time could be reused in future training materials. 

It would be worth a trial run, of what you aim to speak about and the data you aim to use. The smoother the recording, this should surely result in less editing. But it should not sound canned, it still needs to feel like a live and natural recording. You couldn’t do a trail run with the intended audience, because second time around their participation would sound less natural. 

It goes without saying that I need to be on a system with reliable speed, which was not the case for the first part of the recording. I detected some background keystrokes, and faint thumps, low pitch, possible vibration through the wooden antique bureau I use as a desk. Occasionally there were some louder base thumping noises, but I am not sure what caused this, my voice perhaps. 

Two thirds through the recording I did become less coherent for about 10 minutes, with a lot more umms and errs and pauses, but it picked-up afterwards and maintained a reasonably steady beat similar to the beginning of the recording. Funny enough at the start the following day I said that I had received the Zoom downloads, had no chance of listening to them yet, but I actually said, “I expect that I will sound a bit fatigued towards the end of yesterday’s recording”.

The subsequent recordings during the week were very similar; the occasional base thumping which might be me touching the desk, occasional squeaking back of chair as I leant backwards, some sharper in-takes of breath and an odd sniff, far more pauses than the first recording, all of these would need to be edited out. 

The business examples I give are great, they add colour and interest, and would result in a richer recording, however I need to decide on the examples beforehand, rather than making them up real time.

The conclusions I have drawn from listening to these first Zoom calls was that my voice has a tenor quality, with some range, and not the monotone that I expected. On first listening I think I like it. It could be a bit more upbeat and expressive, perhaps the energy drinks could help. But not at all discouraging. 

Perhaps the biggest surprise was that it wasn’t a one-sided conversation, Tadas had plenty of airtime. Again, the perception that I have of myself, is shaped over the years, the odd comment someone might have said twenty or thirty years ago is still lurking in the background, but this is highly likely not to reflect how you are today. So, listening to yourself is a good thing and it has been a worthwhile exercise.

I need to prepare before recording next time, perhaps restrict preparation to 15 minutes, and see what difference this makes.