The Voice

“Your voice can change the world” Barack Obama

Your voice is unique. Like a signature. It is one of your most important differentiators. It's what makes you, you but it's also one of your most powerful tools of communication.

A great voice makes you a better leader.

Some people are born with magnificent voices, some of us work a lifetime to own one. Either way, if your voice is holding you back and you feel you need to work on it, this article can point you in the right direction. I strongly recommend anyone reading this to take a voice training course too.

The problems we encounter with the voice

There are many reasons why peoples voices hold them back and its a huge topic. Voices that fail to get peoples attention can range from voices that are too quiet, too monotonous and just poorly articulated. Poor posture and poor breathing habits will likely lead to a voice that is underpowered, with poor breath control/awareness and sometimes incorrectly placed (too high or low). Poor articulation is another issue, usually provoked by shyness that leaves people not putting in the muscular effort to get the consonants out. Others may have damaged voices from improper usage which sound raspy or gravell which is usually provoked by too much pushing and shouting. People who simply talk use their voice a lot but haven't had voice training will get this result. Heavy smoking will have this effect on the voice too. There are many reasons why a voice is held back.

A voice that is incorrectly placed

It sounds odd but there are many people who communicate on a register that really doesn't suit them. Either aiming too high or too low in their intonation. An example regarding a vocal register that is not naturally placed was the 2014 TED talk given by disgraced entrepreneur Elisabeth Holmes. Watching her talk back then, I couldn’t help noticing that something was not right with the way she was using her voice. Her breathing is virtually non-existent, and her register is unusually low for a woman. It has since been revealed that she was deliberately hiding her real voice and using a baritone voice to sound more authoritative.

This video makes the contrast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfU02i9eiRg

We now know since the various scandals, that there was something profoundly wrong with the deal she had struck with her investors. Now I'm not saying that everyone who alterates thier voice register is a crook but its not sharing your authentic self if you do.

The battle with sounding nervous

For many speakers coping with deep emotional headwinds, the voice, like the posture, is often a clear indicator of where the speaker may be emotionally.

We’ve all seen the incredibly nervous speaker struggle though a presentation with that tremolo voice and dry mouth. I’ve seen it happen countless times at events I’ve attended. I once was assigned to coach a group of entrepreneurs in Paris at an event on the topic of failure as an entrepreneur. The story arc being about failure and the overcoming of it. In preparation for the event, not one of the entrepreneurs opted for coaching unfortunately. The talks were rushed, disorganized and completely forgettable. One speaker was so nervous after arriving one minute before taking the stage she had to take a chair in the middle of her talk to sit down and recompose herself to get her breath. This did not really resonate with or inspire the audience nor the organizers who finished the event with a very short and muted conclusion. What the audience got was a failed event about the benefits of growth through failure. The messsage here is we all need to create the best conditions for the voice to shine. So take the time and space you need to be able to deliver.

Monotony in the voice

Monotony is a regular complaint when I speak to training participants about pet hates. It’s that association with boring presentations and dull delivery that I often hear training participant’s lament. This can often be because of two things in my experience: One is poor motivation or poor connection to the presentation content and two is poor internal ear.

With problem one, if you have put together a bunch of slides from various presentations without any real logical structure (a data dump for example), it's very difficult to present that with any kind of attractive energy. At Vortolo, we have tools available to help people create meaningful and engaging content that helps the speaker create content that makes sense to them and thus makes sense and inspires their audience.

With problem two, poor internal ear, this is more difficult to remedy and the only way you can really change it is by experimenting with different intonations and tempos. At Vortolo, we have the 4 Tempos which is a hands-on approach to experiment with in order to variate your phrasing when you present to keep the audience more interested and highlight your key ideas to make them stand out from the rest.

Strange intonations

There is another element to intonations that can rub audiences up the wrong way. These can be intonations that sound forced or when someone is trying too hard trying to be too positive or motivational for example. Some intonations that can also sound odd or repetitive. Particularly if a speaker has learned the talk word for word from a written speech. These issues require feedback from a coach as some of these things can be stubborn habits linked to defense mechanisms and are difficult to diagnose by oneself.

Socio-cultural intonations

There's another thing which can be off-putting for audiences, and these are adopted cultural behavioral patterns which are affecting people's intonations. Trends such as Vocal fry and Val-talk in the US and Uptalk often in UK and Australia can be a real authority robber. The first 2 of these phenomena are vocal masques, that are employed when people are perhaps struggling with self-esteem and subconsciously wish to hide their real selves and their real voice to the listener.

Uptalk however is when People are finishing their sentences with an upward inflection. The problem with continuing to finish with an upward inflection at the end of your phrases means that, for the ears of the audience, you will never get to the end of your idea.

I know working on voice in a business environment is not easy. Many people are skeptical and do not have the time to deep dive into voice work. There may be also resistance due the culture of the organisation, or individuals within it. But the investment is worth it as a better voice leads to a stronger and more convincing leadership style.

Exercises to work on improving the voice

-Adopt the GI stance (grounded and interested) again and run your hand down your chest to your solar plexus. This is what I call the spark of your breath.

-Breathe out and blow an S sound like before out in front of you at a specific point and then repeat this time on a Z. You will notice that you do not need to change anything with the placement of the consonant S (tongue up on soft palette) but what you’re merely doing is employing the voice. Repeat this but this time on a hum.

Now humming is something that actors know very well for voice work. It warms up the voice safely and builds resonance. Overtime, it will help the speaker to understand resonance.

Continue to work on this. In the GI Stance, breathe down into the solar plexus and on the outbreath make a hum and aim your breath towards a focus point. Do this a few times then from the beginning of the hum open the mouth on to an open vowel sound such as an ahhh still focusing on the focus point in front of you.

So, to recap: you take the GI stance (grounded and interested) breathe down to the solar plexus and then breathe out a sustained breath starting with a hum and then open the mouth on to a vowel sound such as an ahhh or an eeee. Aim the breath towards the focus point ahead and put your hand up as if you’re reaching out in that direction. What we should start to envisage is rather like a windmill. A solid base with a cycle of in and out breaths, the out breath always aiming at a focus point.

Practice using the vowel figure of 8: ahh, ayy, eee, ayy, ahhh, orr, ooh to discover the exercise further.

So, to recap:

-GI-Stance

-Breathe out from the solar plexus in lines of air towards a fixed target

-Bring the airflow out to a voiced vowel sound such aa vowel still aiming for the fixed target: ah, ay, eee and count to 10 in your head. Then do the same thing but count to 12, 14 then 16. Keep going to build capacity.