65. How to silence a room with your voice

You know those people who speak up in a meeting and everyone listens? It's a voice that not only commands attention, it demands attention! You can unlock a voice like this too - and this episode shows you how. Hint: Resonance helps you resonate.

Transcript

Hello, Welcome to That Voice Podcast.

I’m Sally Prosser

Former TV reporter, former PR pro and currently on a mission to help you find your voice and speak with confidence.

No matter who you are or what you do your voice matters!

So unless you’ve sworn a lifetime vow of silence.

This is the podcast for you.

Welcome to episode 65 of That Voice Podcast.

How to silence a room with your voice.

This is all about how you command attention.

How do you speak so people can’t help but be drawn to you.

They want to be quiet and lean in.

Because your voice and your words are so compelling, it slices through the noise like my new fancy cheese knife.

So if this sounds good to you.

I’d urge you to get your name on the invite list for My Six Week Voice Makeover.

The whole course is designed to give you all the practical skills to make an impact every time you speak – in any room you speak – virtual or otherwise.

So if you feel your voice isn’t making people sit up and listen.

If you feel like your voice is uninspiring,

If you feel like it just gets sore when you speak a lot.

Then come and join me in My Six Week Voice Makeover.

Hit the link in the shownotes and get on the invite list, because it is coming very soon.

And one of the reasons people have joined the course in the past, and a story I hear all too often from my private clients – the female ones anyway.

Is that they’ve had an experience, where they’ve spoken up in a meeting – and this goes for in person and online, they’ve spoken up to share an opinion or voice an idea and it’s like they were on mute. No one seems to have even heard them. Then someone else in the room mentions exactly the same thing and it’s oh what a great idea, what an interesting way to look at and you’re sitting there  being like, what am I chopped liver?

It’s such a common story from women at all levels – I was at a breakfast where Australia’s former foreign minister Julie Bishop was speaking and SHE shared a similar experience.

So it’s that story that gave me the idea for this episode.

How do we silence the room. And this applies for both men and women.

How do we have vocal presence.

How do we command attention when we speak.

Not just hope people are polite and listen in, but demand they listen in through the way we speak.

And in this episode I’m focusing on your TONE.

Your vocal tone sets the tone.

You need to have kick ass resonance to resonate.

I believe one of the main reasons voices don’t have cut through or influence is because the pitch is too high, the voice is too small, the tone is nasal and annoying or the overall vibe of the voice is weak.

Alternatively, if we can produce a warm, strong, full, attractive, resonant voice of honey – people are going to pay attention to you.

I’m going to get a little technical here – if it’s too quick, remember this is the stuff we go through in detail in My Six Week Voice Makeover – in week four – BUZZ.

Because the buzz of those vocal cords is where is starts.

When you’re speaking the air is travelling up from the lungs, up the windpipe, it slides through the vocal cords making those bad boys vibrate.

Put your hand on your throat and start talking – you’ll feel the buzz.

But that’s not the end of the story.

When the vocal cords vibrate this sets up a chain reaction of vibrations throughout your body. In spaces called the resonators, I like to call them the caves of the body.

And depending which cave those vibrations sit and how strong they are, determines the quality of our voice – and is one of the reasons we all sound different, because we all have different shaped bodies.

So starting from the top. We can get vibrations in the hollows of the cheeks and head. You know, up here.

And that’s fine from time to time, you don’t want to get stuck up there.

If we get stuck up in the stratosphere, it’s often a result of having too much tension and not enough breath flow – and it’s not a voice that will silence a room. And I would not recommend entering an important conversation where you want to have influence in the stratosphere.

So coming down we have our nasal cavity – a great space for the voice to vibrate-helps to give it that full sound. Of course if we have too much nasal resonance, we’re not going to produce the most attractive voice.

Same if we push all those vibrations to the back of our throat. Yes we sound deep but we sound fake, we sound try hard, a voice like that flies in the face of what we’re trying to achieve which is an honest trustworthy voice, right.

So look we want to use the nasal cavity and the throat, if we just use another cave – the mouth, our voice can be very weak, very small, and we’re just not going to have the chutzpah to silence a room.

So Sal, where on earth do we put these vibrations – that I only just learned we have.

Yes I am getting into technical town here, but this is what will transform your voice.

So the last resonator, for me, and for you silencing your room is the most important.

It’s the walls of the chest.

It’s literally speaking from the heart.

Put your palm on your chest, take a deep breath down in your belly and say haaa.

And as you do that you want to feel vibrations on your palm.

You want to focus your vibrations forward.

This is that room silencing tone.

If this is the stratosphere, this is earth. This is speaking from the heart.

So as you enter the conversation, you’re going to pair this will an intentional statement, so no filler words in sight, you’re going to have eye contact with the camera lens or the people in the room, and now we’re getting into room silencing territory.

And if the content demands it – smile!

SO when I introduce this podcast.

I avoid that high register, a weak tone and I instead smile and feel the vibrations emanating from my heart.

And that’s why instead of

“No matter who you are or what you do, your voice matters.”

You get.

“No matter who you are or what you do your voice matters.”

So I’d invite you to play around.

Can you direct your vibrations into different areas – the head, the nose, the back of the throat and of course down to the chest? Just like that scene with Matthew McConaughy in the Wolf of Wall Street movie.

You may be surprised to learn you can even change the tone of your voice in this way.

But as a voice coach I’m saying YES of course you can.

And accessing that beautiful heart space for your voice and being able to control your resonance, means undoubtedly you will be able to make people’s ears prick up and listen, you’ll get your message across the first time, you’ll have the influence, you’ll silence that room.

And if you want to really make it happen, then join My Six Week Voice Makeover.

Get on that invite list, link in the show notes or just head to my website sally prosser.com.au