Lisa’s vocal gateway to strengthening her leadership
How vocal dynamics can strengthen your communication and leadership
Some months ago, I was contacted by a woman in her forties working in a global tech company, who already had an impressive career as general manager in different important markets. We can call her Lisa here. Lisa called me, as she was now about to enter the executive management group in her company. During her corporate career she had completed all kinds of leadership development and communication training, but there was one thing that continued to be an obstacle as she embarked on the next step in her career: her ability to use her voice to its fullest potential.
Lisa had been told that she could be hard to hear at meetings and this made her lack both executive and vocal presence. Her tonal range was limited when giving presentations at large company meetings where she needed to empower and engage people, and her voice did not put across the impression she was in charge of the room. Worst of all, these aspects combined made it seem more as if she was sharing information rather than bringing her message to life and infusing enthusiasm amongst her receivers, and this eroded her influential power and her ability to make people follow her.
Lisa and I agreed to cooperate in an intensive training of her executive presence focusing on how she could use her voice so it became more expressive and lively. We took a deep dive into the toolbox of oral rhetoric and the oral performance techniques used by actors. We worked online using Zoom and made sure that she was in a room with enough space and privacy to freely explore her voice.
The ingredients in Lisa’s vocal transformation
After a two-month period of bi-weekly sessions combined with Lisa’s determined exercises at home, her vocal expression has improved immensely. As humans, our voice is connected to our self-image and to our emotional life, so when you start to develop your voice you enter a more potent process. As a consequence of Lisa’s dedicated work with her voice, she now stands out as a more charismatic, direct and forthright communicator. So what has changed? I will try to summarize the key points in her transformation here:
An embodied voice
Lisa has switched from a sound that originates from her cranium and her throat into developing a much more vibrant and round vocal sound where she involves her physicality as she speaks. This is based on a deeper breathing pattern that allows her to use a resonated, embodied sound where she activates the richer sub-tones in the chest region rather than the higher and sometimes peaky sounds produced when her voice is vibrating primarily in the head and throat region.
We know from research that when we activate our entire body as we speak and not just our throat, we come across as more persuasive, powerful and charismatic and listeners seem to sense more of the person behind the words. Whole body speaking or “using your body as a speaker” is also a more sustainable way to speak forcefully for a longer time. A vibrant and embodied voice gets people’s attention – and keeps it.
In one study, people had to collaborate on a task. When they completed it, they were asked to rank their team members in pecking order. The results showed that people with embodied voices in the lower registers were ranked as having more authority. Low speaking voices are associated with willpower and the ability to persuade others.
The idea is not to lower your voice, but rather to involve your body as you speak so that your message and personality thrives. Your first step towards exploring how to speak with a full-bodied voice is to get your breathing pattern right.
Diaphragmatic breathing or belly breathing is the basis of Lisa’s improved voice work and what allows her to use all the tools in the vocal dynamics toolbox.
Most speakers breathe very shallowly and only use their “spare tank”, the upper chest, when they breathe. This can transmit a hectic sensation, as if the speaker is an endangered species in a kind of survival state, not daring to breathe.
What Navy seals, Japanese Zen bow archers and actors all have in common is that they use a short sequenced diaphragmatic or deep breathing as an instant way to body-set themselves, where they create a body-mind connection that allows the body to help the mind to reset and activate the higher cognitive capacities. They also use the deep breathing to enter the present moment, get in “the zone” where they are centred and connected and to neither relax nor tense up. Deep breathing actually opens up a whole reservoir of benefits. It also activates our parasympathetic nervous system, the more relaxed part of our nervous system, and it allows involvement of the whole body when you speak – no more questions like “Where should I put my arms”, as they will start to move naturally when they are connected to the rest of the body through an extended breathing circuit.
The final elements that have made Lisa a much better speaker is that she is now using several oral rhetoric techniques, vocal coloration and the most powerful tool of them all – pauses. To summarize, what makes such a difference is:
A wider tonal range, which makes her speaking more dynamic, lively and engaging to listen to – it’s used to highlight key words and numbers, adding colour to the rhetoric she uses: e.g. stressing opposites such as now/ then, rhetorical questions and working with trios; three words, sentences or examples in a row.
Articulation that makes her sound more committed to her own message and also makes her language much more appetizing to listen to – round, rich vowels and springy consonants.
Intonation: an upwards or downwards tonality emphasizes the beginnings and the clear endings of her sentences and helps her to express her intention. For example: “This is what I have decided”; here, a downwards tonality will really support her statement.
Pauses: Lisa is now much more confident and conscious about her use of time and dares to take longer pauses. Silence has the power of expanding the importance of what she has just said and allows her listeners to “download” and process the message before she continues. It also gives her time to breathe deeply and body-set herself.
The domino effect of a leader’s vocal work
Although my two months with Lisa started out with focus on her voice, it has become a transformational key to how she works with herself physically in her leadership in a much broader sense. Lisa has explained to me how this new way of being present when she communicates orally gives her a much better overview of her message, it helps her to take pauses where she actually gets time to listen to herself, and be more connected to her team or her audience. She is no longer sprinting ahead or trying to recall her next sentence, and her audience gets time to process what she just shared. This more relaxed pace also allows her brain to stay calm and work at its best, so that she delivers a clear precise message and doesn’t overwhelm her audience with too much, and too rapid, communication.
So why was Lisa not trained in this before now? As a professionally trained actress, using my voice dynamically is a core skill. On stage or in film, we give life to characters and add variation – and more importantly, meaning – to a word or phrase through our vocal expression and in doing so, we convey our underlying intention, our goal in the situation and our emotional state. For years I took this wise knowledge for granted and forgot that it is not something that everyone is given the chance to train.
It a question of training
Training in how to influence and engage people with your voice is not a subject in schools or at our academic educations; nor is it a focus of many of the world’s costly leader training programs, so most people are left with what they have picked up through life experience and their everyday speaking habits, even though they have a job that demands they use their voice with the skill of a performer.
There is a huge difference between how you speak while chatting by the coffee machine and using your voice as a powerful communication tool to influence people and make them passionate about your message. To develop presence and persuasive potential you can take a shortcut by tapping into the actor’s toolbox of vocal dynamics and intelligently merge that with the most powerful tools from classic oral rhetoric, This, I can assure you, will immediately have a strong and positive effect. You don’t have to aim to be an Oscar-nominated actor or the next Obama or Margrethe Vestager, but you can definitely reach the next level of vocal skills and impact.
You are very welcome to join my free live seminar on 18th June 3.30pm CEST
“Your vocal power is one of your most important communication tools”
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Visit the Wiser Communication for more information on the body-setting and vocal dynamics training program.
