Five Techniques to Build a More Powerful Speaking Voice

Summary:

Through conscious practice of breath coordination and vocal techniques, you can develop a more commanding, authentic, and engaging presence that will resonate deeply with your audience. The article outlines five simple, functional exercises to improve vocal presence.

As organizations become increasingly complex, fast paced, and interconnected, one of the key skills that will set leaders apart will be how they show up and communicate. But there’s one fundamental aspect of effective communication that is often overlooked—and that is your ability to control the steadiness and sound of your voice. The quality of your “vocal presence” can transform not just the delivery of your message, but its very impact.

As a professor, professional speaker, and consultant, I (Albrecht) think a lot about and work with my voice. I am often on stage, lecturing, presenting, and discussing on panels. Obviously, content matters, but it is also the quality of my voice that determines whether audiences stay engaged. For years, I struggled with my voice and my breath. During important presentations, I would get nervous, my breath would dry up my throat, and my voice would crack, making it difficult to speak. Even when I managed to control my nerves, I had a general sense of fatigue whenever I had to speak for an extended period of time. I tried different remedies, such as breathing deeply before getting up on stage and focusing attention on my lower abdomen when inhaling, but nothing worked effectively and reliably.

In 2012, I crossed paths with Robin De Haas, a vocal coach based in Lausanne, Switzerland. Paradoxically, Robin, who was born with a severe cleft palate, was never supposed to be able to speak normally. For the first 10 years of his life, the doctors treating him never tired of telling him and his parents so. However, this handicap instilled a deep desire in him to understand the human voice; initially, so he could help himself, and later so he could support others with their vocal struggles. During the journey to discover his own voice, Robin worked with many famous voice coaches from around the world, and he essentially discovered that they couldn’t help him.

Everything changed for Robin when he met Lynn Martin, a functional anatomy professor at New York University. Although she wasn’t a vocal specialist, she had studied under Carl Stough, a breathing coach who helped the 1968 U.S. track-and-field team win eight Olympic gold medals in the high-altitude conditions of Mexico City. By working with Lynn Martin, Robin developed an eye for movement perception, its distribution, and timing, which was nonexistent in traditional voice and breath training. In other words, Martin taught him to view the voice as the audible manifestation of the efficiency of the inner movements of the breathing mechanism.

5 Simple Exercises to Improve Your “Vocal Presence”

Through his close study of anatomical dynamics related to breathing, Robin identified five simple, functional exercises to improve vocal presence. The primary goal of these exercises is to distribute movement in your rib cage more evenly so you can learn how to better control your voice. You can perform these simple exercises in a sequence whenever you have to talk in public. I use them every day.

Exercise #1: Connect your breath to your body.

First, see how your breath is feeling today by performing a gentle hiss sound, holding it as long as is comfortable. See if you feel any contractions in any part of your body at the end of the hiss.

Then, slowly move each limb for 30 seconds, one at a time, in a circular manner: outlining a slow circle with your foot on the floor for the lower limbs and performing a slow shoulder circle for the upper limbs. Hiss again and see if it feels different. The goal is to retrain ourselves to exhale longer, since in nature this is what we do in the absence of danger. Whereas the fight-or-flight breathing response is a short, pulled inhale, exhaling signals to us the opposite: the absence of danger.

Exercise #2: Focus on the exhale.

Lee Evans, the gold medal–winning Olympic athlete, was advised by Carl Stough to stop “putting bad air on top of bad air” and to instead focus on the exhale first. While it makes sense to emphasize the importance of breathing, the actual physiology of breathing is often ignored. If you think of the breathing cycle as an inhale followed by an exhale, you end up adding superfluous air to the lungs. Instead, it’s much more useful to think of the breathing cycle as an exhale that is then followed naturally by an inhale, once the exhale is completed.

To practice this, place your hand in front of your mouth, open your mouth, and blow on the hand as if you wanted to silently steam a mirror. Feel a gentle heat on your hand and maintain that steady heat throughout your exhale, letting it seamlessly diminish toward the end (of this unforced) exhale. Then, receive the next inhale silently through your nose. The phrase “When in doubt, breathe out” nicely captures the importance of the exhale.

Exercise #3: Speak on the airflow.

Building on Exercise #2, you can learn to speak on the airflow when you exhale. The gentle heat on your hand has a beginning and an end. Feeling it begin signals that you have now started your exhale, through which you can talk. The timing of the voice onset should ideally be at the exact moment when the air is flowing out of you. Practice alternating the heat on the hand and starting a humming “v” sound at that exact same moment. Then, when speaking, keep the same sensation timing-wise. You will quickly notice that starting the sound exactly as the air flows is easier.

Exercise #4: Explore vocal variations.

Vocal variations are key in communicating a message. Using your voice well includes warming it up so it can have flexible qualities of loudness, colors (variations in tone and emotion), and timbre (the unique quality or texture of your voice).

Building on the previous exercise, sustain the “v” sound and vary your loudness and pitch. To vary your loudness, press your lower lip on your upper teeth for a louder sound. For pitch variation, start at a comfortable range and gradually glide up and down, without blowing more air. Then count from one to five and listen to the color of your voice. Then count again, but this time, play with different emotional mindsets while counting (stern, interested, amused, sad, neutral, stressed, happy) and use a recording device to see how your voice color changes with the different mindsets.

Exercise #5: Connect voice and mind.

The way you communicate is influenced by your thoughts, values, and beliefs. You can easily miss those mind connections unless you take the time to explore them and then connect them deliberately to your voice.

To practice this connection, start by writing a phrase that you might have to say in a public setting, such as “Good evening everyone, I wish you a warm welcome to tonight’s event.” Once you have your chosen phrase, record yourself saying it in a neutral way. Then start imagining the actual people you would be talking to, who they are, what they will think about your presentation, how they will feel, how it will feel to you that the big night is finally here, and what you wish to convey to them through your speech. Once you are ready, record yourself saying those same words again and see if it makes a difference.

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In an era where the human elements of leadership matter more than ever, mastering vocal leadership isn’t just an enhancement to executive capability—it’s an essential dimension of how we inspire, connect with, and mobilize others toward shared goals. Through conscious practice of breath coordination and vocal techniques, you can develop a more commanding, authentic, and engaging presence that will resonate deeply with your audience.

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