Mastering Your Voice - Clarity, Presence, & the Power of Words

So that means when you say the word, hi, you're going to drop the jaw and instantly your voice will come forward Look in the mirror and focus on, are you dropping the jaw when you speak? It's going to help with accent, it's going to help with mumblers and it's going to help with overall clarity.

I've always had a passion for empowering others to find and develop their voices, and I've worked with singers and speakers across the globe to uncover the potential of their voices to make a lasting impact. Now, more recently, my sole focus has been on developing strong and charismatic, confident speakers.

Throughout my career, I've witnessed the transformational power of effective communication and how it can propel us towards our goals. I believe everyone has a voice and everyone can train their voice to be more powerful, passionate, persuasive, and poised. The purpose of our brand new Podcast “Impact Through Voice” is simple, yet I believe it's profound.

It's to empower entrepreneurs, executives, professional voice users, leaders, and speakers, just like yourselves to elevate your impact through strategic communication mastery. We're going to dive into the art. of using our voices to create change, to inspire action and connect with our audiences authentically.

Now you might be wondering, why focus on our voices, Lisa? Well, our voices are more than just a means of communicating. They're our instruments of influence. Whether you're addressing a boardroom, if you're delivering a keynote, or you're having a one to one conversation, your voice plays a pivotal role in how your message is going to be received.

And think about it. Your voice is the vessel that carries your message to the world. It's not just about the words that you say. But it's how you say them, the tone, the pace, the emotion behind your words. It can profoundly impact how others perceive you and your ideas. So in this episode, I'm going to give you a brief overview of some of the initial steps that you can take to achieve effective communication through your voice.

Vocal Clarity

We're going to start with vocal clarity, the importance of being clear when we speak. To make sure that words are easily understood is a pretty fundamental aspect of effective communication. So I want to talk about some techniques that you can use to improve your enunciation, your projection, your clarity in your speech.

Dropping The Jaw

The first tip I'm going to give you is, to drop your jaw when you speak. Now it might sound a bit weird, but many people that I work with, are struggling with mumbling, not opening their mouth clearly when they're speaking or a particular strong accent that sits back in the throat.

If you speak with your mouth very wide as if you are smiling a cheesy grin, the voice suddenly sounds blocked. You won’t be able to open your mouth as much because and your sound will become mumbled and muffled.

When you drop the jaw, your voice will instantly move forward make a sound more open, resonant and clear. Focus primarily on the AH, Ay, Oh and I vowels.

Look in the mirror and observe, are you dropping your jaw when you speak? I guarantee this will help with accent, mumbling, and overall clarity.

Imagining The Audience Is Deaf

My next tip, which I give to many of my speaking clients who struggle with clarity in their voice, is to imagine that your audience is deaf and they need to be able to read your lips to understand what you're saying.

When you suddenly start to think of that, then you will over-enunciate your words and you will slow down. And that's a perfect and very quick and easy way to get more clarity in your speech. Now you might think. Oh, I feel very strange when I do that. And that's because when you speak, you tend to do the opposite.

You're closing your mouth and you're speaking through a closed jaw. So when you imagine your audience is deaf and over-enunciate, imagining that people have to read your lips, you think you're being extreme. But I guarantee you, if you look in the mirror, what you consider to be extreme is probably not even on the edge of a normal well-spoken person yet. So give that tip a try.

Vocal Variety

My next point for improving the sound of your voice and becoming a more masterful speaker is to work on your vocal variety. What do I mean by that? I mean, your pitch, your tone, your volume. These are all dynamics. And for anybody who has an understanding of music, melody.

Melody

Music has highs. It has lows. It can invoke a certain emotion. It can sound sad, it can sound happy. Your voice can evoke these emotions. Your voice when you’re speaking and your voice, when you're singing, use the same instrument. That means, what you do with your singing voice, you can do with your speaking voice. We speak on melodies. We speak on frequencies.

We can go high and we can go low. So if you would say, I'm really happy, but your voice is going down, you don't sound happy. But if you say I'm happy and your voice goes up, then you're invoking that connection to the emotion. So you need to be wary of what you do with the melodies in your voice if you want to be in control of how you're being perceived.

Dynamics

Dynamic changes. That's how loud do you speak or how soft do you speak? Being able to change the dynamics when you're speaking is what's going to grab the attention of your listener.

Tonality

We've also got things like tonality. Think of musical instruments again. A musician will go out and source an instrument specifically because of the tone that that instrument has. It might be warm and rich, or it might be bright and a little bit sharper, or it might be soft and mellow. The characteristics will depend on the preferences of player.

Now your voice has different characteristics as well. Some are going to be really positive, but others might be negative, and will disengage your audience. Things like a crackly voice could annoy or distract your audience.

You might not realize that you have certain characteristics in your voice until you record yourself or ask for feedback from someone else. Another possibility is nasality. If you've got a nasal voice, that's going to become a bit annoying if we're hearing this all the time. Or there could be a heavy sound in your voice like you've got a cold all the time.

Pitch

Then there’s the high-pitched voice. If you're always high-pitched, then that's going to become annoying too. So you see different characteristics, and different tonalities in the voice, could go for or against you. You need to identify the characteristics in YOUR voice and be able to change them accordingly.

Analysing Your Voice

Do you speak only monotone or do you have a lot of melody? Do you have a very soft spoken voice or are you only loud? These are things that you need to identify and then you can start to work on improving your how you sound.

Presence

Lastly, I want to talk about the concept of presence. Presence covers your voice, your body language, and your appearance.

Body Language

How do you hold yourself? How do you stand? Are you balanced over your toes and your hips or do you lean to one side? Do you sway when you speak? Do you wobble? Do you come across with hunched shoulders, giving you the appearance of weakness and a lack of confidence? Again, you need to look in the mirror and observe your appearance, and ascertain, do you come across as being strong or weak in the way that you hold yourself?

Appearance

How do you dress? If you dress in a way that you feel confident and comfortable in your outfit, that's automatically going to make you more confident and comfortable in front of an audience.

Appearance

How do you dress? If you dress in a way that you feel confident and comfortable in your outfit, that's automatically going to make you more confident and comfortable in front of an audience.

Dress in a way that is going to connect with your image, your role, and your profession. If you're selling kids toys, then you're not going to dress the same as you would if you're a banker. So bear these things in mind, and that's going to help to establish your credibility with your audience.

Go listen to our very first podcast episodes. We’ve got many more in coming soon. Subscribe so you don't miss any of our upcoming episodes. We've got some amazing guests coming up in the coming weeks. And remember your voice matters together, we can make it count.

Keep speaking up with purpose and passion.