How Low Can You Go?

With the NZ elections coming up, all political leaders have lots of airtime on radio, TV and online. Politicians have to be careful about every word they say – anything can be used against them. But they also have to be effective in how they say it. Nonverbal communication (body language and tone of voice) has major influence on how people will perceive you and your message. Us humans constantly scan the nonverbal messaging of others to search for clues that tell us if this person is trustworthy, genuine, an authority, can perform under pressure etc. 

This scanning for nonverbal clues is done on a subconscious level. Especially when it comes to the tone of voice, we make decisions about a persons intellect, credibility and personality without really consciously considering it. For instance the pitch of your voice has immense effect on how others perceive you. A high pitched voice is associated with nervousness and childishness, as a low pitched voice is often associated with credibility, maturity and authority.

Do you want proof? Well, in 2011 research has been done by Klofstad, Anderson and Peters on voting patterns of people when they listen to high and low pitched voices. They engineered non-recognizable voices (both male and female) saying “I urge you to vote for me this November” and then modified the sound so that they had versions in both a high and a low pitch. The researchers then asked students and adults (male and female) to vote to see if their voting preference for the fictitious candidates differed on voice pitch alone. Lower-pitched male and female voices each earned roughly 20 percent more votes than higher-pitched voices. Obviously, these voting patterns will be particularly applicable to the unknowledgeable voter.

No wonder politicians like former British prime-minister, Margaret Thatcher and former US president, George H. W. Bush, had voice coaching to lower their speaking voice.

If you want to lower the pitch of your voice and enhance credibility and authority, here are a few tips:

-       Breathe in calm and low before you speak; breathe towards your diaphragm.

-    Relax your forehead while you are speaking - seriously, your pitch rises automatically when you raise your eyebrows.

-    Relax your body and anchor yourself to the ground or your chair.

-       Say the following sentence and every time you repeat it, try and lower your pitch slightly, not losing the resonance in your voice. Make sure you keep your jaw nice and loose.

                       “mmmm-one-mmmm-two-mmmm-three-mmmmm-four”

-       Say your name and your job title a few times in a row, each time making sure you have lots of modulation throughout your sentence and checking if the lower pitched parts are still in your powerful vocal range.                                                             “My name is…. and I am a ….”

It may feel a bit weird at first to do these exercises, but if you do them every day for a month, your voice will go down in pitch and will become richer in tone.