As I’m waiting for a flight here in San Diego, CNN is playing in the background. Much of the news is saturated with presidential candidates. I wasn’t really watching or listening until a clip of Hillary Clinton started playing. It was lengthy and, so help me, she yelled every sentence. It is very off-putting for any candidate–or leader for that matter–who becomes so captured by the emotion of the moment that he or she yells ideas. Even Obama, normally a skilled orator, has lately gotten caught up in yelling many of his lines.

Good communicators use a full range of vocal variety. Raising your voice or yelling should be considered an exclamation point. It gets tedious! It isn’t effective! It makes it hard to find what is really important! Selling is hard when you’re yelling!

And it doesn’t matter if you’re running for office or addressing your departmental staff meeting.

The reverse is also true. A total lack of emotion has many of the same consequences. John McCain doesn’t yell much, be he drones a fair bit. Monotone delivery makes it hard to know what is signifcant and what is not it is confusing much as a run on sentence is confusing it bores people to death making it easy to drift and not pay attention.

Telling isn’t selling either.

Take advantage of the myriad methods for communicating your message in such a way that your words will influence rather than simply inform.