Increase the Perception of Credibility, Confidence and Competency Through Your Voice
The Problem
Mary was a young emerging leader full of promise at the large company where she worked. Her skill set was exceptional… She was extremely bright and very creative. She exceeded expectations in most all of her work responsibilities and she was identified as a high potential. One area of concern, however, was around her communication style. I was asked to do an assessment. When she and I got together, she told me that she wanted to be perceived as self-confident, competent and credible. Mary looked the part…she dressed nicely, she stood tall and she made eye-contact when she spoke. Her voice however, did not align with the visual image or the way in which she wanted to be perceived.
She had a couple of distractions in her speech which made her appear less polished than her outward appearance. For one thing, she spoke with an upward inflection at the ends of sentences. This made her sound doubtful and uncertain–quite the opposite of confident. Secondly, her voice was not clear and natural. It sounded like gravel grinding against the sidewalk on certain words and at the ends of sentences. She had a classic case of glottal fry–a voice habit that is distracting to the listener. Distractions of any kind will take your listener away from your message because the listener will be focusing on the distraction instead of you. For Mary, this meant that her credibility and competence did not shine through.
The Solution
As with any new skill, Mary needed to learn the substitute behaviors. She first learned to be aware of her habits and after learning the new behaviors in very structured settings and conversations, she began to intentionally incorporate the new behaviors systematically into low stakes conversations before she even tried higher stakes conversations.
The Results
Within a couple of months and a lot of daily, intentional effort, Mary succeeded. She no longer spoke with either uptalk or glottal fry. She sounded more confident and polished. Her executive presence soared. Here’s what she had to say about the effects of her newly learned skills:
“When I first started, I had no idea that I was doing this. At the last staff meeting, I presented a short presentation and was able to keep my focus on my voice. I nailed it… I didn’t uptalk or use glottal fry once. My boss even told me that he noticed a big difference, too and said that he liked what he heard!”
These two voice behaviors are very typical of young women more than men (although both men and women of any age can speak with uptalk or glottal fry). The vocal behaviors are possibly a response to media (TV/radio) were you hear these types of voices quite frequently. We often adapt to what we hear in our environments. In this blog, The Top 8 Speaking Distractions and How To Fix Them, I discuss other ways in which our speech, language and voice can detract from the message.