Speaking Up With Confidence

Many women speak softly. Yet they often do not realize the power of their voices. We've learned over time that our visual image is powerful. Unfortunately, our voice often gets overlooked.

Let's look at this phenomenon with an example loosely adapted from a real situation experienced by one of my coaching clients.

Sara Lynn Smith is the assistant director for crime prevention in Mid-Town USA. She's been asked by the local Rotary Club to speak about Crime in Our City. This is a topic she feels passionate about. She prepares her talk by writing it out and developing her speech, going over it and over it in her mind. She types it on note cards, triple-spaced in a large font. Then she studies her Dress for Success books. She selects a conservative navy pants-suit and a crisp white shirt. She wears comfortable well-polished pumps. She puts on a soft shade of red lipstick-not too brassy, and a small amount of blush on her cheeks. She takes her long hair and braids it in a French knot. Looking at herself in the mirror, she smiles. She looks professional and smart.

Walking out the door, she grabs her computer case and her notes and departs for the meeting. After the introductions, she walks up to the podium, she perches her reading glasses on her nose, and looks directly at the audience.

"I'm, uh, so, glad to be here today. Thank you, for, um, inviting me to, um, speak to you. I think this is a topic of great importance to our community. (clears throat). Excuse me. . .but we can do a lot in our community that, err, well, we just haven't done. I've worked for 18 years as the assistant director in the office of crime prevention and, um, well, you see I've seen a lot of things. Without the community, I don't think we will ever, err, at least, I doubt we can ever (laughs) make crime go away."

Sara Lynn Smith took care of all the preliminaries. She carefully wrote out her speech and put it in a format which would make it easy to refer to. She selected her clothes with a lot of thought, wanting to give the impression of a smart, professional woman. On the surface she did everything right. But if you were in the audience at the Rotary Club, what would you think of Sara Lynn? Would you think she was a confident woman? Do you see a smart, professional woman before you? Are you still listening to her speech?

In all likelihood, you've stopped listening to Sara Lynn. Your mind is probably wandering. You will not remember her or her speech. She's made little impact on you. Why? She forgot to add power to her voice. She left out that one very important component of communication.

The Major Components of Communication

According to research done by Albert Mehrabian at UCLA in the 1960's, http://www.kaaj.com/psych/ there are three major components of communication: Visual, Vocal, Verbal. He found these three components have weighted percentages. In other words, visual communication gives the message more power than vocal, and vocal gives the message more power than verbal. If you skip or ignore or shortchange one of these components, your message suffers.

By visual communication we mean all the messages you send through the eyes: gestures, facial expressions, eye contact, personal appearance. Dr. Mehrabian found that the power of the visual message is 55%.

By vocal communication we mean all the sounds we make (including silence): um's, sighs, laughs, chuckles, grunts, groans. Vocal also includes articulation, modulation, pacing. Dr. Mehrabian found that the power of the vocal message is 38%.

By verbal communication we mean the words. The power of the verbal message is a mere 7%.

Think about your last speech. How much time did you spend on the visual? On the vocal? On the verbal? If you are anything like Sara Lynn, you probably spent the majority of your time on the words writing your speech're-writing it, adding and subtracting content. You may have given a little thought to your appearance and how that might be interpreted. But, like Sara Lynn, you probably ignored your vocal message. You probably left one-third of your message to chance. Most people are like Sara Lynn. Most people forget the power of the vocal message. Adding power to your voice is as important as adding power to your visual and vocal message.

Ten Tips for Adding Credibility to Your Voice

- Avoid nervous laughter. This is typical of women. Listen to your own voice and eliminate unnecessary laughter.

- Don't end your statements with upward intonation or a question mark. This suggests a lack of confidence in what you are saying. End statements with a period! (Unless, of course, you are tentative about what you are saying).

- Don't apologize for saying what you think. Say what you want to say and add emphasis to the words that give your statement power. For example: "This idea will fail without a preliminary pilot." Instead of, "Excuse me, but. . . I believe if we don't do a preliminary pilot, this idea might fail?"

- When pitching your ideas to the top brass, make every word count. Summarize your core idea and support it succinctly with powerful proof or evidence. The higher the level of the people you are speaking to, the more precious their time. They'll get bored if you volunteer too many details or start giving a chronology of how you arrived at a point.

- Answer questions without preamble. In other words, when someone asks you a question, make sure the first sentence out of your mouth answers it. Listeners may tune out if you don't directly address the subject that they raised. And they may doubt your trustworthiness if you evade the issue at hand.

- Say what you want to say, even if you have to interrupt. Women often fear interrupting and therefore never say anything or apologize so much that others have lost interest in what they are about to say. - Avoid qualifiers: "I think or I believe or maybe" messages. When you preface your statements with "I think" when you don't think but you know, it sounds tentative. If you are unsure, then say you are unsure. Otherwise communicate with confidence.

- Avoid fillers. What are fillers? "ums, ahs, you know."

- Watch out for sounds that may take away from your message, throat clearing, breathless voice, shaky voice.

- Move your mouth as you speak. If your mouth is not moving, you are either mumbling, talking too fast or speaking too quietly.

Speaking up with confidence takes time, dedication and practice. Most of the tips above are unconscious habits. You do them and do not realize it. To erase these unconscious habits takes dedication. With that kind of dedicated effort, however, you'll soon notice people listening to you and responding to you with a new-found respect.