Welcome
This book is not just about voice.
It’s about life.
It poses some big questions:
Are you willing to be alive?
How alive?
And in service to what?
The words “voice,” “vocation,” and “avocation” all share the common Latin root. Vocare literally means “to call, invoke, or name.” The people who first made these etymological links recognized the deep connection between voice and calling.
Here’s what they knew. The voice emerges from the mysterious intersection of your body, mind, emotions, and spirit. For anything to get created, it must make the treacherous journey from the world of imagination to the physical world.
Your voice is the primary vehicle for making that journey.
If your vehicle breaks down on the way from the inside out, your gifts will remain locked inside you. If what you are saying is at odds with how you are saying it, your listeners may miss your message altogether. And without a connection with other human beings, your work can’t come alive in the world.
Your voice says a lot about you. Did you know that just by hearing you speak, a listener is able to determine your physical stature, sex, and age? That the sound of your voice reveals detailed information about your health, mood, fatigue level, social class, race, and education level? Long before they process the meaning of your words, your listeners are busy making up their minds about you based on the clues your voice reveals. And you’re doing the same thing whenever you listen to someone else, whether you realize it or not.
Identical words spoken in different tones can express a diversity of meanings. The answer to the ubiquitous question, How are you? can be answered with the word “fine” in a way that indicates joy, boredom, rage, uncertainty, lust, or impatience. How many exasperated parents have told their rebellious adolescents, “Don’t use that tone with me!” Tone is so powerful that it often trumps the meanings of the words themselves. If there’s a jarring disparity between your words and the sound of your voice, you can be certain that your listeners will give more credence to the sound than the actual content of your speech.
Given the pivotal role of the voice in our lives, work, and relationships, it’s astounding that we devote so little time and attention to it. We don’t get training in how to use it well and lack a shared language for talking about it. We walk around unconscious about the messages our voices are spilling into the world. At the same time, we hold strong opinions about the voices we like and dislike.
Voice is at the heart of your personal relationships as well. It is a kind of miracle that your voice has the power to connect your inner world to that of another person. And it can shut someone out just as easily. Our voices create a soundtrack for the lives of those closest to us. The beautiful baritone singing voice of my grandpa Fred is still vivid in my mind’s ear, even though it fell silent in 1996. I hear my mother’s voice in my mind every day, sometimes imparting words of love and wisdom, sometimes saying things that irritate me to no end. I recall in detail the sound of the blessing I received from a wise therapist in 1985, the scathing sarcasm of my dad at his worst, and the warm, resonant tone of the teacher who helped me find my voice. Whose voices are ringing in your memory right now? How do you think the people around you will hear your voice in their memories?
The voice you have right now is not your fate. It’s not fixed and permanent. Voices change all the time. You’ve changed yours over and over during your lifetime—sometimes on purpose, sometimes unconsciously.
Some aspects of how you sound are determined by physiology, gender, culture, language, and history. Those vocal qualities aren’t open to significant change.
Other aspects of your voice, though, were cobbled together by a series of unconscious decisions you made along the way. (Picture something made of duct tape, pipe cleaners, and Popsicle sticks.)
Some of those decisions served you well; still others suppressed parts of your voice that could be useful to you. Aspects of your voice that were shut down can be reawakened and integrated back into your full voice. They aren’t gone. They’re just rusty.
Here’s another truth that’s woven through these pages: you don’t have one voice; you have many. You vary the sound of your voice many times a day, whether you realize it or not.
Do you use the same voice at an intimate dinner and a sporting event?
With a prospective client and a smiling baby?
Do you talk to your boss the same way you talk to your pets?
You’ve got all the voice you’ll ever need in there—a veritable wealth of sound just waiting to be set free.
Every color in your voice is worth reclaiming.
Each one carries a piece of your humanness.
Reclaiming your full voice makes for a fuller life.
For what did we trade our raw, messy, human voices?
When did we start to believe that becoming less of ourselves would keep us safe?
What is the long-term cost of suppressing the wisdom of our instincts and emotions?
What is so frightening about the possibility of authentic expression?
This book asks you to consider what might be more interesting and important than your fear. To shake off the lies that keep you tight, silent, “nice,” or scared. To take off that muzzle and speak. To drop your chains and dance.
Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “Most of us go to our graves with our music still inside us.” The thought of all those wasted gifts is what calls me to this work. Your gifts are not yours alone; they are your part of our shared destiny. I hope you will use your voice in service to your vision. I hope your loved ones will recognize your love for them by the sound of your voice. I hope your “music” will find its way out where it belongs and that your “song” will inspire other songs. I hope your resonant and wise listening will invite the silenced ones to speak out.
May you experience the pleasure of your voice rising up from your deepest center, opening through your heart, flying unimpeded from your mouth, lighting up your eyes. I haven’t found a feeling more wonderful than that. It’s sheer joy even when it’s terrifying. It’s what kept me going through the swamps of fear and self-doubt.
It’s the sound of a body fully alive.
It’s the shortest distance between your gifts and the world that is so hungry for them.
It’s your part in the great song that all of life is singing.
Full voice.
Full life.
Come, let’s begin.
What Is Vocal Presence?
Vocal presence is the state where your words, facial expressions, body language, tone of voice, emotions, imagination, and spirit are all fully engaged and congruent in conveying your message. It’s vocal hokey-pokey: you put your whole self in. What you are saying is fully aligned with how you are saying it.
Vocal presence does more than change the way you speak. It also changes the way you listen. As you become more aware of your own voice, you’re able to listen more accurately for what people are saying beneath and between their words. You become a student of voices—how they sound as well as what they’re saying. This kind of deep listening is a rare and precious skill, one that transforms both speaker and listener.
Most important of all, vocal presence changes the way you live. You access all of the power and wisdom available to you. Your body comes alive with energy. Your face is lit up with passion. Your words echo true. Speaking feels good, and people are inspired to listen.
I began my vocal presence coaching practice when I was an organizational development consultant. During those twelve years, my colleagues and I specialized in improving team performance, so communication was always a significant part of our work with clients. At the time, I was working on finding my own voice, so I couldn’t help noticing the ways my clients’ voices were negatively impacting their work and relationships:
• Leaders with unconscious vocal habits sent confusing messages to their employees and colleagues.
• Great ideas—poorly expressed—were never realized.
• Deadly monotones put group potential straight to sleep.
• Irritating voices limited the career options of brilliant, capable people.
• Conflicts arose and persisted between well-intentioned people who couldn’t “hear” each other accurately.
As I addressed issues like these with my first vocal presence clients, I witnessed real and lasting change in their voices. They were easier to listen to, spoke with more fluency, and knew how to shift their voices in specific situations. They also discovered that changing their voices sparked other positive changes in their lives. Their voices opened new doors for self-awareness, purpose, joy, and wisdom. Those clients began talking with their colleagues and friends about the changes they were noticing. The phone began ringing, and my voice coaching practice started growing.
If you’re looking for an ironclad, step-by-step guidebook for getting a perfect voice, you’ve got the wrong book. Cultivating your vocal presence involves far more than making minor cosmetic improvements to your presentations. It’s not just a list of handy tips for “talking good.” To make vocal changes go deeper, last longer, and produce great results requires awareness, practice, and experimentation over time. The Five Elements Framework, explained in part II of this book, is the primary tool we will use to unleash your full voice. The framework will show you how to access and practice the full range and color of your voice. You’ll learn how to expand your vocal choices to include a broader palette of sound: low to high, soft to loud, dark to bright. Then you’ll discover which sounds are best suited to specific situations—how to choose the right voice for the job. This framework is at the heart of vocal presence and has been tested by hundreds of diverse clients over twenty years of coaching.
I didn’t study voice at a conservatory. Though I have studied various types of voice work over the years, I am not steeped in one particular methodology. The human voice itself has been my teacher. I brought a beginner’s mind full of questions, a compassionate heart, and wide-open ears to each voice I encountered in my coaching practice. The approach outlined in this book was crafted in partnership with real people facing real vocal challenges. Their questions, courage, insights, vulnerability, and stories have created a strong and growing foundation for this work.
My own voice has taught me many lessons as well. I came to voice work from a wounded place. I didn’t have my voice for a long time and made a clear decision that I wasn’t willing to live without it. I’ll tell more of that story later in these pages. The more I learn about the voice, the more I respect its wisdom, generosity, beauty, and tenacity. Roy Hart, a pioneer in the exploration of the voice, said, “The voice is the muscle of the soul.” Every single voice I have heard in the past twenty years has confirmed that assertion.
When I began writing this book, I realized that words on a page could carry you only so far in your vocal explorations. Changing your voice requires using your voice. That’s why I’ve developed online practice videos to supplement this text. In these videos, I’ll show you how to access five distinct colors in your voice and demonstrate specific ways to strengthen each one. These practices are simple to do, but they will challenge you to step outside your comfort zone—and your dignity. Trust me, the payoff will be well worth the risk. You’ll be directed to these online resources as you read along.
When people decide to seek out voice training, they usually end up with teachers who are trained in classical singing or acting. The approaches used by these teachers can offer good ideas for improving breath control and understanding how voices work, but they usually don’t include ways to put these new skills to work in your day-to-day life. You can also get good training in public speaking. The approaches commonly focus on how to vary the pitch and pace of speaking, gesture naturally, and use PowerPoint—all perfectly good and useful tools. What this kind of training rarely does is help you access and practice the deeper gifts that reside in your voice. As you read this book, you may decide to seek out some additional training with a voice coach. I’ll give you some pointers on how to find one in chapter 11.
Everyone’s got a story about his or her voice. I’ve heard a million of them. Each one is fascinating, heroic, heartbreaking, and complicated. Voices get formed in a rich stew of personal history, culture, family dynamics, gender, physiology, region, character, and plain old habit. Opening up those stories for closer examination—and possible change—is a grand adventure. It requires stretching beyond what’s familiar and comfortable much like a physical exercise program does.
What do you do for exercise? Jogging? Weight lifting? Yoga? Pilates? Biking? Walking? In the context of a health club, running path, or yoga studio, these intense activities look perfectly natural. You’d never dream of jogging in place during a client meeting. Or doing sit-ups while leading a training session for coworkers. Or pumping iron at your place of worship.
The voice exercises described in this book and demonstrated on the Full Voice website are a lot like your physical workouts. They take your voice to more extreme states just like your exercise program engages your body. They stretch your range just like yoga stretches your muscles. They improve your capacity to access different sounds at will—your vocal coordination.
Your vocal workouts—like your physical ones—offer some other wonderful benefits:
• You feel more alive and energized.
• You have oxygen and endorphins zooming around your body.
• You bravely stretch into new territories, accessing resources and strength you never knew you had.
• You take a risk and live to tell the tale.
Who Benefits from Vocal Presence?
Our work in the world comes to life through our relationships with other people. So no matter what you do for a living, your voice plays a crucial role in your success. Powerful communication is at the heart of peak performance whether you work in leadership, sales, teaching, coaching, health care, air traffic control, information technology, customer service, social work, politics, law, journalism, ministry, or entrepreneurship. Learning to express your ideas clearly and powerfully in front of a group has become a necessity for many professions. The client stories I tell in this book will illustrate how vocal presence has been applied to a broad diversity of professions and situations.
The breakneck pace of life in these times requires deliberate and powerful communication. Getting—and keeping—people’s attention in the midst of the whirlwind is harder and harder. Countless situations call for skillful and eloquent conversation, both in person and through the filters of technology. Our increasingly complex, global work environment is demanding new levels of flexibility, sensitivity, and awareness in how we speak and listen to each other.
The work you do to open up your speaking voice often transfers to other areas of your life. My clients tell me about surprising side benefits to their vocal presence work, including
• Renewed creativity
• Increased ability to access and trust inner wisdom
• Enlivened physical vitality
• Stronger and clearer writing “voice”
• Emotional and spiritual healing
You have no way of knowing what will shift in your life when you access your full voice. That is a mystery that your voice holds in store for you. Let’s begin your vocal adventure with the Full Voice Assessment.
Full Voice Assessment
I always begin a coaching relationship with the following questions: What is your story about your voice? and What qualities do you appreciate about your voice? The answers come easily to the first question, but a surprising number of people can’t think of one thing they appreciate about their voices. (It’s a small wonder we are so critical of our voices. If someone tells you that you “love the sound of your own voice,” it’s not meant as a compliment!) My clients are eager to tell me what they don’t like. If you’re one of those people, I encourage you to investigate the things you appreciate about your voice for a day or two before completing this assessment.
You can also benefit from inviting people who know you well to tell you what they notice about your voice. I highly recommend this option for several reasons:
• It’s hard to hear your own voice accurately. What you hear in your own ears is not the same as what others hear.
• Conversations about voice offer rich territory for exploration. I assure you they will deepen your work immeasurably.
• You may enlist some allies to support or join you as you cultivate your vocal presence.
When you’re finished with the book, you can revisit the Full Voice assessment to see how your voice—and the way you think about it—has changed over time.
What is your story about your voice?
What qualities do you appreciate about your voice? (Check all that apply.)
Other qualities:
What qualities hinder your voice? (Check all that apply.)
Other qualities:
What have people told you about your voice at different times in your life? Have the comments changed over time?
What decisions did you make, if any, as a result of those comments?
Describe a time when you felt very connected to your full voice: What do you remember most about that experience—physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually?
What happened as a result?
Describe a time when you wanted to access your full voice and couldn’t do so. What do you remember most about that experience—physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually?
What happened as a result?
If you had access to your full voice, what would be different about your life? Your work? Your relationships? Your connection to yourself?
How to Use This Book
This book is divided into three parts. The first opens up a broader understanding of the human voice—its history, function, connection to identity, and possible pitfalls. The second introduces the Five Elements Framework as a method for making real and lasting changes in your voice. The third shows you how to integrate the new sounds in your voice into your everyday life through song, poetry, and other practices.
Now let’s take a look at the specific chapters.
Chapter 1 will open a broad context in which to consider voice, including its role in human evolution, the oral tradition, and the first weeks of your life on earth.
Chapter 2 will consider the relationship between your voice and your identity, how the two are intertwined with your personal history, hidden shadows, and shifting circumstances.
Chapter 3 is about fear. I tell the story of how I moved through my own paralyzing fear and offer six steps you can take to move through your own (if you’ve got any, that is).
In chapter 4 we review the basics of vocal production, including some useful exercises to increase breath support. It’s Voice 101. We also discuss common vocal problems and review how to take care of your vocal health.
Chapters 5 through 10 are devoted to the Five Elements Framework that is at the heart of vocal presence. I’ll describe each voice in detail, including where it is sourced in the body and how it can be used to strengthen your everyday communication. I’ll also introduce the gifts inherent in each sound and tell stories about how other people have put them to work in their lives. You’ll learn specific practices for opening each voice with support from online video examples. Each of these chapters closes with reflection questions to deepen your inquiry and a list of people whose voices exemplify each element.
Chapter 11 offers a plethora of ideas for how and where to practice vocal presence in your daily life and offers suggestions for how to choose a voice coach.
Chapter 12 shows you how to use singing and poetry to integrate your new vocal colors into your day-to-day communication. I’ll give you lots of ideas for how to revive singing as part of your ongoing practice and introduce the power of poetry to bring your speaking voice alive.
Chapter 13 tells some stories of voices lost and found—how specific people have discovered powerful aspects of their literal and metaphorical voices through calamity.
In chapter 14 you’ll have a chance to reflect on everything you’ve learned along the way. We’ll explore new questions to guide you on your continuing vocal adventure.
I’ll close the book with some resources for enriching and deepening your vocal explorations.
As a supplement to the material in this book, I have created a series of short online video exercises to help you open up your full voice. One video demonstrates the breathing exercises I describe in chapter 4. The other five guide you through simple (and playful) exercises for opening up each of the distinct vocal colors described in chapters 5 through 10. Practicing along with the videos will help you increase the range and flexibility of your voice over time.
You will find these video resources at the Full Voice website: http://www.fullvoice.net.