One of the most overlooked aspects of your personal presentation to the world is your voice. Whether you are preparing for an interview, a presentation, or just want to look good in day-to-day meetings, your vocal quality and tone are critical to how others perceive you. The quality of your voice can impact what people think of you and how confident, intelligent, etc. they perceive (in both professional or social settings!). Read on to discover common vocal issues and how to resolve them, and learn tips to improve the quality of your voice and overall presentation.

Your Voice Needs Exercise

It’s easy to forget that your voice is a part of your body that needs care and exercise much like any other muscle group. Believe it or not, humming is one of the best vocal exercises there is. It helps relax your facial muscles, stretch your cords, and improve tone quality. When you hum, relax your jaw and keep your lips together - but not pressed firmly. You should be able to feel your lips buzz slightly as you hum.

Speaking with good breath support from your diaphragm helps not only to strengthen your voice in pitch and resonance, but also to assist with projection and volume. If your throat hurts or feels strained when speaking, your breathing is the likely culprit! When your speech is well supported, it should feel like your belly is tight. Envision breathing from your belly button, rather than your lungs. Place one hand on your chest, and the other over your belly button. Take a breath in through your nose and really focus on breathing down into your belly - your hand on your belly should rise before your hand on your chest. Now as you begin to speak, tighten those belly muscles and notice how you have a strong supported tone. Need visual instruction? Check out this video for a clear demonstration of proper belly breathing:Public Speaking Tip: Learn to breath properly when speaking

Your Voice Needs Hygiene

Taking care of your voice, or vocal hygiene as it is referred to, consists of many aspects, some which might surprise you. Good vocal hygiene involves consistent hydration with water - coffee or caffeinated beverages don’t count! Caffeine and alcohol can dry out the cords, causing hoarseness.

While it is commonly understood that screaming or yelling is an easy way to damage your voice, less widely known is that whispering can be just as damaging! While some types of whispering are okay, when most people whisper they still want to be heard and so strain to produce sound. This places a strain on your vocal chords and can have a drying effect that causes hoarseness or voice loss. Your vocal cords are two strips of muscles in your larynx (voice box) which are covered by a mucosal lining. These muscles vibrate as air passes through them, producing sound. As you whisper, you squeeze your vocal cords more tightly together, stopping the vibration, and causing more trauma to the cords themselves. If your vocal muscles are fatigued (such as when you experience hoarseness after a long day of speaking), whispering will not allow them to rest.

Common Vocal Issues

Vocal fry, (creaky or croaky lower pitch sounds - think early morning voice, or a valley girl affectation) is the result of slow and uneven vibration of the vocal cords. It happens more often with anxiety or stress, and is more common in women - possibly because they are unconsciously trying to increase their implied empowerment through a lower pitched voice. Vocal fry often occurs at the ends of phrases or syllables as we drop our pitch naturally downwards. To avoid vocal fry we turn once again to supporting your voice by breathing from your diaphragm. If your stomach is stationary and not filled/tightened, you will notice increased vocal fry. Avoiding vocal fry is not only beneficial to your voice overall, but also to how you are perceived by others. When affecting vocal fry, others may perceive you as less competent, less educated, less trustworthy, or less professional.

Women’s Issues

In professional settings, women can struggle with presenting an image of authority or credibility if their voices sound younger, or higher. Societally we tend to equate age with wisdom, and lower pitch voices with strength and power (think Brutus vs. Betty Boop). Additionally, women tend to be more soft-spoken - and while it is not necessarily a bad thing to have a softer voice, it can be perceived as a lack of strength.

That said, women need not fundamentally change their voices in order to gain more authority. Instead, be aware of these possible stumbling blocks, and use accommodations to navigate them. Use microphones when you are able, and be sure to wear clothing that allows for you to take full supported breaths. Be clear in your speech and be sure to enunciate. Consider your word choices. Are you using too much slang, or too many colloquialisms? Own your power and authority, and speak from it. Make eye contact as you speak. When speaking, avoid looking down, or off to the side for extended periods of time, as this can convey indecision, nervousness, and lack of confidence. When your outward presence projects authority and confidence, your voice will follow.

Additionally, women have an increased tendency to “up speak” meaning their tones rise at the end of a sentence, rather than lower. As speakers, women tend to approach with less of an authoritative voice, and attend more to their listener’s engagement and interests. This can result in up-speak as women use the tone to “check in” with their listeners, ending phrases in a questioning tone to see if they are engaged or have comments to add. Unfortunately, the resulting affection decreases perceived credibility and authority, and can come across as asking permission to continue.

Mumbling

When speaking it is always critical that your listeners can understand what you are saying. Enunciation can easily be affected by anxiety, nervousness, or personal discomfort around the topic of conversation. Mumbling your words makes your audience uncomfortable, leading them to question whether they heard you correctly, and leaving room for them to do their own guessing and interpretation of what they think you may or may not have said. Don’t allow your mumbling to skew your credibility and content! If you present a confident front, your audience will have confidence in you. Speak clearly, and be aware of your pitch. While it is natural to slightly lower your pitch at the end of a phrase, lowering your volume is not necessary, and can lead to “swallowing” of phrases. Try to look out towards your listener as you speak, not down at your chest or cue cards.

Monotone

You need not be an actor to emote appropriately during conversation, interviews, or presentations. A frequent tip for calming anxiety is to “pretend your audience isn’t there”, or “look over everyone’s heads to the wall”. While these tactics might assuage your nerves, they also might lead you to intonation that becomes monotonous and dull - because you are quite literally - speaking to a wall. A monotonous intonation can lead your audience to boredom - and quickly. The people you are conversing with or presenting to are just that - people! Emotions need not swing wildly or become comically large, but they do have a place in speech and presentation. Moderating your pitch and intonation will allow your audience to relax and stay attuned to the content of your speech, and ensure that your voice does not become droning.

Talking Too Fast/Slow

The nervous system is a marvelous protector of humankind, saving us from dangerous situations and kicking our adrenal system into gear when we need it the most. It can also be over-reactive when faced with situations where we are anxious, though not in danger. Don’t let your adrenaline run away with your words! Speak slowly and clearly - remember, your audience has to first hear your words, then process their meanings. Oftentimes your audience is “hearing” your last sentence while you are beginning your next one. Give them time to process. On the other end of the spectrum, adrenaline can also create a “frozen in the spotlight” moment - making it difficult for us to move forward or speak normally. Take a deep breath, let it out, and reset yourself mentally. Envision yourself literally walking one foot after another through the presentation that you are giving. You can do this!

What to do?

To combat these common problems, record your own voice and listen back to it. Notice your pitch patterns particularly at the end of sentences. Notice your volume and diction. Do you pitch up at the end of sentences? What word choices are you using? Consider more assertive phrases - for example, rather than saying, “can you give me a minute?” you might say, “one moment please”.

By listening to a recording of yourself, you can identify up-speak, loss of final syllables or consonants, sarcastic tone, mumbling, or lack of emotion. When listening, notice if at the end of your sentences you can still clearly hear your final words. While pitching downwards is appropriate at times, it becomes an issue if you also are swallowing final consonants of sentences, or mumbling as you end the phrase. Take note as you listen to yourself of your pitch variance and speed variations. Are you being emotive enough? While you don’t want to punch words initially or in final sound, you do want to have some pitch variation as you speak.

Varying your speed is another great way to add emotion to your presentation. Change your rate of speech meaningfully, using intentional pauses. These pauses not only assist in the character of your speech, but allow for you to gather yourself, reset, steady your breath, and enter your next thought purposefully. The average American speaks around 150 words per minute in a conversational setting. Play one minute of your recording and count the words. What is your rate of speech? Are your words clear and understandable? If your rate of speech is too far off in one direction or another, practice slowing down or speeding up (whichever direction you need to move the needle towards) and record yourself again. Remember, clarity is key - you don’t want to lose the meaning of your words for the sake of speed.

Smile as you speak! This simple trick not only provides a more welcoming experience for your audience, but will also help you to feel calmer and more confident as you speak.

Finally, what to do if you have an accent? Celebrate it! Do not be afraid of it or concerned that you need to hide it - absolutely not! However, you do want to be understood, so take a moment and consider a few questions. Ensure that you are using the same dialect as your audience. Be aware of words or phrases that might be common to your culture or native country, but are not common to your audience (i.e. in the U.K. - boot vs. trunk; chips vs. fries; cheers vs. thanks). Avoid euphemisms unless you are absolutely certain of their meanings and connotations. Familiarize yourself with the natural tonal shifts in your native tongue vs. in English. Do most sentences in your language drift up towards the end? Or down? Is your language more percussive than English? These are areas to make yourself aware of and adjust as needed for your English presentation. Again, erasing your accent is never the goal - you simply want to be aware of ways in which it could impede understanding on the part of your audience, and do what you can to ameliorate the issues by using shared language, phrases, and intonations. For example, my friend from Peru’s name is Adriano. He knows that Americans are familiar with the name Adrian, so he introduces himself as “Adriano—like Adrian with an “o” at the end”. There is no need to Americanize your name to make it easier for Americans. You deserve to be called by your given name! However, you may need to repeat it a few times so that people can understand and practice how to say it.

2021 Niki Yarnot, MSW

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