Finding your Voice

I recently posted about finding your voice. Well, actually I was speaking with pride about watching my daughter perform brilliantly in TV interviews.  I was exhorting women to find ways to get their points across. Women are seriously underrepresented on panels, expert interviews and every day work presentations. Often this is self-inflicted. They do not put themselves forward, talk of a lack of confidence, are not seen and are irritated as a result. On a recent Women in Leadership, course every woman I coached professed to a lack of confidence in speaking up. We will come back to that later.

I got a lot of reaction to my post, mainly positive but also the odd ‘what about men?’ comment. Absolutely right! Men are much more likely to be taking the available opportunities to speak up. The problem is they do not always stop, review, reflect and decide to develop into more inspirational speakers. Working with 150, mainly male, bankers recently I broadened their horizons, making them declaim across the stands at Twickenham or in the middle of Exchange Square. At first embarrassed, they were pretty poor but challenged to bring a tear to my eye by the end, they became more nuanced, emotionally engaged, eloquent and inspirational.

I realise I first learned my interest in public speaking when a child attending a Gospel service on Sunday nights through childhood with a different, invited preacher every week (all male of course in those days so not the origin of my interest in being a public speaker)

·     I learned early about contracting with your audience- woe betide a speaker who offered three points and cheated the nine year old me by slipping in a fourth.

·     I realised I could concentrate if I could detect the structure of the talk. If they rambled, I lost focus.

·     A story always painted pictures for me. A complex metaphor worked a treat. Clichés did not.

So, those same bankers invented a drinking game based on my absolute condemnation of ‘I’ve been on a journey’, beloved of anyone, ever, on any reality TV programme. Be original! Every participant had real life stories – the rugby game where they were losing badly but eventually triumphed, their Father dying ashamed at what banking now stood for, their child’s illness and their own dark nights of the soul. Once they discovered authentic, careful self-disclosure and engaged with emotions, their capacity to inspire became so much more effective than their usual exhortations to just ‘work harder’.

So even if you are pretty confident in getting up and speaking, it is worth a review and a spring clean. Clear out the jargon. Even if everyone understands your shared 3 letter acronyms, they attenuate from overhearing. Shock them with new vocabulary so they can hear and think afresh.

Women’s voices are different. Which is why it is appropriate to deal with them specifically. They have a different instrument, with a different range. (sometimes, it would appear, only audible to dogs) Naturally higher and lighter, this is intensified, if they become at all anxious. Sometimes breath is an issue making them peter out before the end of the sentence, robbing their message of its power. Through childhood, girls are more likely to be rewarded for using their ‘inside voices’ while little boys get away with booming. As a consequence, most men do not realise when they talk over women, as women just tend to stop and let them continue.

So when working with women, I often have to literally help them find their voice, extend range, pitch, projection and teaching how to breathe.

But the real work has to start with the mind. Beliefs about needing to be perfect, projections about what people will think of them, labelling excitement as anxiety - all have to go. A new realisation has to be installed that just working to the highest standards and doing a good job are not enough. You also need to be able to showcase your work and get your opinions across.

But back to that little girl sitting in the service surrounded by strong women and only hearing male voices. Why do we still see that pattern? There will be no diversity of thought until we hear all the different voices. So, men – we need you to lead the way with modern, emotionally literate communication but also to start noticing when women’s voices are silent. Be a good leader and ensure everyone has the chance to find their voice.