How to Project Vocal Confidence

- [Interviewer] What are some of the main differentiators between a voice that is highly impactful versus one that isn't? - [Guest] There are a lot of things that we do that reduce the power of our voice. It could be filler words like um, ah, you know, right, so, and just, which is my personal pet peeve when we buffer everything with just, so that's something that reduces the power of our words, and then we also might use vocal fry, and I'm demonstrating by making my voice croaky. Or uptalk, when our voice goes up at the end of a sentence. Now interestingly enough, vocal fry and uptalk and fillers, these are things that both men and women use, but what I've noticed is that when women use them, it disproportionately hurts us more. It holds us back more, so that's an interesting distinction that I've observed. The antidote to all of those is using breathing so that your voice can command the room, so that you speak with confidence as opposed to speaking in a questioning form, and that's more important when you're trying to convince someone to do something. Whether you want them to adopt a course of action in your company or save your school, the conviction in your voice has a huge impact on how you come across.