Does your public speaking voice give you authority and influence when you present? Here's how to keep your voice pleasant, energetic, and powerful. 

Your voice. You've heard about "finding your voice," and "speaking in your true voice." That's figurative language reminding us that our voices are at the core of who we are and how we present ourselves to the world.

Then there's your physical voice. It's easy to forget that the voice is produced through muscular and mechanical forces, and that effective vocal skills depend upon good breathing and use of the muscles in the larynx. Efficient use of that system of breathing and muscular action that produce the voice is as important as it is for, say, training for and running a marathon.

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The Importance of Your Voice in Business

Does all of this have anything to do with how you use your voice professionally? You can get a sense of that by trying the following exercise:

Listen to your voice the next time you're trying to convince someone you love about something that matters deeply to you. You'll understand how much of your ability to share the things you're passionate about, to speak from the heart and to influence others depends upon your voice. Of course, that goes for your career as well as your personal life.

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A Wall Street Journal article reflected on the connection between your personal voice and your professional success. The story, "Your Voice, Only Younger," discusses ways that physicians and researchers are finding ways to help people keep their voices healthy.¹ Once your voice is doing what it should, you need to leverage it for maximum influence. Learn how in my Free cheat sheet, "Leadership Skills: 5 Essential Speaking Techniques."

So here’s my own take on three ways you can keep your voice pleasant, energetic and friendly without losing power and authority. Call it an actor and speech coach’s advice on the ongoing need to use your full vocal toolbox to create positive responses in your listeners.

There are lots of ways to get an audience to hear what you say and act on it! Here is my Free Tips and Tricks Guide, 20 Ways to Connect with an Audience for Lasting Influence.

How to Increase Vocal Power for Public Speaking 

Let's start with vocal power. You don't have to be suffering from the loss of muscle mass in the vocal folds that comes with age (highlighted in that Wall Street Journal article) to benefit from developing a strong speaking voice. In fact, when it comes to gaining authority and credibility with audiences, you need to enlist your voice in the effort whatever your age.

It all begins with breathing. If you don't already know how to breathe diaphragmatically for more vocal power, you need to learn. Remember these two things to generate a more powerful voice without strain: (1) vocal power starts in the belly area with exhaled air, not in the throat, and (2) if you want to fill a room with the power of your voice, think in terms of energy not loudness.

Your vocal cords (they're actually folds of muscle) are activated by exhaled air; and the stronger the energy applied to those muscles, the more powerful the sound created will be. So get your diaphragm into the act, for that creates enough space for your lungs to expand fully. The full reservoir of air will create sufficient energy for strongly activated vocal folds, i.e., a more powerful sound. If you try instead to increase power and loudness in your throat, you'll put too much strain on the muscles in the larynx, and your voice will sound hard and unpleasant. So, how can you harness that increased breath capacity for vocal success? Keep reading!

Sustaining the Sound to Fully Express Your Ideas

What you want to do now is sustain the sound you're creating through all that good breathing to power the voice. That way, your voice will not only have excellent resonance, but you'll be able to easily project it throughout the space you're speaking in. (Again, it's a question of energy, not trying to produce greater volume.)

Is your voice helping or hurting your career? Here's my Free resource on a speaking style you may want to avoid: Do You Speak Like This? It Can Hurt Your Credibility

There's another important consideration: in English, the most important word or phrase usually comes at the end of a vocalized idea, not at the beginning or in the middle: "We're not only going to succeed with his product—this is going to make us the leaders in this industry!" 

Start with a deep breath (your belly should move outward to reflect the diaphragm's action), then vocalize a fairly loud hum: "Mmmmm." Now keeping the sound going, open your mouth wide, so it sounds like "Maaaaa." Keep the sound supported, i.e., don't let it deteriorate. When you feel you're running out of air, stop vocalizing—don't peter out. You're now producing well supported sound. Take it a step further by speaking out loud, making sure you maintain a strong voice to the end of the idea you're expressing. Record yourself; if you find that you trail off at the end of an idea, make this exercise in sustaining your sound part of your frequent vocal warm-up.

Make Your Voice Sound Younger and More Energetic

Now here's a simple exercise that can help your voice sound younger, brighter, and livelier. It involves using what I call the "upper regions" of your pitch. This isn't only important for in-person speaking, by the way. 

"Pitch" in vocal terms simply means the highness or lowness of your voice on the musical scale. Some of us have naturally lower or higher pitches than an artificial mean. What matters is that you inflect your pitch—hence the term "pitch inflection." We all know that an uninflected pitch means speaking in one tone, or a "monotone". And from that comes our word "monotonous."

Often, speaking that way means adopting a low pitch and refusing to budge from that starting place. But it's important to use the higher regions of your pitch not only to keep people from falling asleep—it also gives your voice a lighter quality which is often perceived as younger, more energized, and more intelligent. It can also sound friendlier than a voice that stays down in the cellar. That's not a bad exchange: trading a rusty vocal habit for one that may add considerably to your ability to be a livelier presence for audiences.  

Power, vitality, and energy. Work on these aspects of your physical voice, and your figurative "voice" will reap the benefits.

[1] Andrea Petersen, “Your Voice, Only Younger,” The Wall Street Journal, October 25, 2016, D1-D2.

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Gary Genard is an actor, author, and expert in public speaking training and overcoming speaking fear. His company, Boston-based The Genard Method offers live 1:1 Zoom executive coaching  and corporate group training worldwide. In 2022 for the ninth consecutive year, Gary has been ranked by Global Gurus as One of the World’s Top 30 Communication Professionals. He is the author of the Amazon Best-Seller How to Give a Speech. His second book, Fearless Speaking, was named in 2019 as "One of the 100 Best Confidence Books of All Time." His handbook for presenting in videoconferences, Speaking Virtually offers strategies and tools for developing virtual presence in online meetings. His latest book is Speak for Leadership: An Executive Speech Coach's Secrets for Developing Leadership Presence. Contact Gary here.

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