Voice is one important component of speaking with power.
Pitch, frame control, pauses, and projection all combine to deliver your message and influence. But all together, including voice quality, also signal about yourself and help you gain status, respect, and attraction.
So in this article, we review Speaking Por by vocal coach Roger Love.
TPM’s reviews™
Overview
About the Author:
Roger Love is an American voice coach with decades of experience. He has coached many celebrities and famous singers, including Selena Gomez, Gwen Stephani, and self-help guru Anthony Robbins.
Breathing Is The #1 Fundamental of Voice
Breathing and speaking with air support are two fundamentals of voice because air fuels your voice.
I was familiar with the concept that it’s best to use diaphragmatic breathing, sometimes referred to as belly-breathing, and Love adds two concepts:
- Breathe in normally: Don’t fill your belly like it’s going to explode
- Speak as your stomach is coming in: that’s how you will support your voice with enough air
Exercise: Count to two as you breathe in, then count to 8 with your hand on your belly making sure that it’s coming in
The 5 Building Blocks of Voice
These are the “levers” that you will work on depending on how you want to come across and what you want to communicate.
For example:
- High power leader voice: lower pitch, lower melody, and higher tone (ie.: less air).
- Lower power subordinate voice: lower volume (you don’t want to overpower him), higher pitch (you don’t want to sound more alpha than he is), and faster pace (you don’t want to take more time than the leader).
To learn high power speaking, check out:
As well as the crucial:
1. PITCH: How high or low your voice sounds
- Speaking within your best pitch range will ensure that your voice sounds genuine
- Your voice pitch can provide an instant connection or disconnect with your listeners.
2. PACE: How fast or slow you speak
- A slow pace can communicate that you’re lethargic
- Too fast of a pace may sound restless.
- Controlling the pace of voice can help you appear intelligent, creative, spontaneous and surprising.
3. TONE: How airy or edgy you speak
- An edgier tone can make you appear more forceful or strong
- A more airy tone can appear gentle or submissive
- A certain amount of airiness can be useful for suggesting that you’re friendly and accessible but it can easily undermine your credibility.
4. MELODY: The string of notes
- Use melody to connect with listeners and showcase your amazing content
- Melody can bring words to life, entertain, and engage audiences
- You’ll get the best results if you spend time consciously varying the types of melody you use
Monotone: a form of melody using only one note is not advised
5. VOLUME: How loud or soft you speak
- Volume enables you to control how others perceive your confidence and the importance of what you are saying
Middle Voice For Best of Both Worlds (Masculine & Feminine)
The middle sits in between “head voice”, higher and more associated with femininity, and “chest voice”, lower, and more associated with masculinity.
When you can draw from both chest and head voice, you get two big benefits:
- Your voice is “fuller”, and freer to move up and down
- You connect with both genders, more easily
This approach aligns with the law of balance and allows you to calibrate to the situation, a core concept of The Power Moves to be effective in life and achieve goals.
This also helps people avoid extremes. See for example Elizabeth Holmes, trying too hard to talk like a man.
Speaking With Charisma: Bringing Your Speech to Life
Charismatic speakers add “flavor” to their speech by changing rhythm, melody, or volume of certain key sentences or words.
Roger Love says there are three ways to emphasize anything in a sentence:
- Pace: faster or slower, also stretching out specific words or shortening them
- Melody: ascending, descending, or flat
- Volume: softer or louder
Also see:
Mastering Audience Participation
Those among you who attended Toastmasters will know this, but for most of the rest, here are some good tips:
- Stand for a second before starting to speak, especially if the audience is still applauding; give it time to finish
- Soak in the applause, smile, thank them, and walk off when it starts to fade. The applause is a gift to you and standing in it is you gracefully accepting it
- Accompany people on stage. If you’re inviting people on stage, don’t wait for them to come to you, walk towards them: the stage is your house, and you want to meet them at the door
- Help them settle in: If they are too scared, keep holding onto their hand and maybe put a hand on their back to provide a human connection
How to Interview Well
Here are some takeaways to interview in studios.
- Don’t fidget during introductions or draw attention to yourself when the interviewer introduces you. That’s when he’s touting your horn, help viewers keep the focus on them, as they shine a spotlight on you
- Look at the camera when your interviewer looks at the camera
- Look at the interviewer initially, then switch to the camera: When they ask you a question, begin answering the question while looking at the interviewer. Then, move your glance to the cameras. Continue to rotate your glance between looking at the interviewer and at the cameras based on the way your answer naturally segments itself
- Point your body at the camera and only rotate your head, shoulders, and upper torso towards your interviewer.
- Use melody to signal to the interviewer that you’re finished answering a question. For instance:
- Going down in melody signals that you’re done speaking
- Going up or staying on the same note communicates that you have more to say or are not yet finished with your response
How to Master Business Meetings
Roger Love is a politically savvy teacher, and we agree with him on cautioning against the common advice ‘focusing on the person with the most power’.
Instead, it’s best to never assume that anyone in the room doesn’t have influence.
Furthermore, if you overdo it and ignore people too much, you risk coming across as an asshole.
Here are some tips if you are presenting your ideas in a business meeting:
- Change your pattern of gaze: if you repeat the patterns you become predictable and you dull your speech. If people know you’re not gonna look at them, they might get distracted
- Speak loud, at around a 7 on a scale from 1 to 10. But add melody, so it doesn’t seem like you’re angry
- Be on the happier side of the spectrum, which shows you’re not needy. You have what you need in your life, no matter what they decide. And you’re there to add value to their lives.
If you’re not the leader of the meeting
Roger Love is a power-aware man, he understands power dynamics quite well.
And if you’re not the boss, it’s a good career strategy to take precautions not to make the leader feel threatened. We call this ‘power protecting‘ on The Power Moves.
So, when your boss is in the room, Love recommends:
- Look a bit more often and longer at the leader
- Lean forward towards the leader, avoid sitting back
- Speak with a lower volume than the leader
- When it comes to pace, speak faster than the leader; let him be the slow alpha male of the room
- Make your gestures smaller than the big boss; allow him to take center stage
Also read:
Review
Speaking Pro is a valuable program to work on one’s voice as well as improving public speaking and presentation skills.
Roger Love’s material is power-informed, starting from voice exercises, but going well beyond. Love also broaches how to combine voice with body language as tools to signal power and authority, as well as calibrated strategies to let others feel empowered when you’re not the leader.
This is crucial for us because although voice is an important lever of personal power, it’s only one tool to achieve goals and succeed.
And personal success is less about having a good-sounding voice and more about using it to signal value, gain status, and achieve goals.
Finally, we found some of Love’s exercises helpful enough to even include them in a deep-dive optional lesson on voice power for Power University. And since we only allow the best of the best in PU, that’s the biggest compliment we can pay to anyone.
When you’re ready to address your personal self-development with a holistic approach to gain status, respect, and attraction, check it out here:
