Talking Louder isn't More Convincing

Families are hard. I don't know about you, but all those things I never do to friends and acquaintances, all those rules of civility and patience and manners seem to fly out the window when I get home and I'm tired and people are getting on my nerves.

I find that people in my family shout a lot, for no reason, when if they were talking to anyone else, anywhere else, they would just talk in a normal tone of voice.

It's like being home is a battle; it's a warzone-- where everyone is the enemy and everything they say is passive aggressive and rude--when really, it isn't.

I live with 3 people in London and I find that I never yell... so when I come home for a month every summer, the sheer volume of the house surprises me. But after a few weeks, I find myself talking to people in the house in the same tone, with the same attitude, like I've reverted to my 16-year-old-self, or something.

Every morning my nephew has chores, so before my mom and I ran out to do some last minute shopping before my gmom's 80th, we thought we'd help him put stuff away. After asking him to put some socks upstairs he started screaming at me and I couldn't get him to stop because I wasn't screaming back.

By the time my mom and I both got him calmed down, I don't know if he wanted to laugh or burst into tears. He knew he'd done something wrong from my "Ethan, I'm not shouting at you, please don't shout at me," but I didn't sound angry, so perplexed, we hugged and left to go shopping.

As I taught public speaking for a few years, I, of course, know that tone is a lot of what people take to heart when communicating. 60% of communication is tone. So if we always sound angry, what are we communicating, even if we don't mean to?

I don't know too many people who like being shouted at, so it's probably not the best way to get people to follow instruction, listen to you, or hear what you're trying to say...

Talking louder, meaner, scarier, and more forcefully doesn't make your words more convincing.