Chapter 16
Cultivating Your Professional Voice
In This Chapter
Walking your talk as an inspiring leader
Influencing others through tone and tenacity
Optimising your voice for classrooms, courtrooms and consultations
Are you a lawyer, a teacher, a preacher, a youth leader or a sports coach? Do you work in sales or in a call centre or a fish market? Do you teach aerobics, swimming or dance? Are you a campaigner or an actor, an auctioneer, a hair stylist or a journalist? All very different jobs to be sure, but the one thing they have in common is talking; and some jobs require a lot of talk.
Apart from the sheer load you put on your voice if you have to talk a lot, ‘talking jobs’ call you to always want to be at your best. However you’re feeling, you make the effort to ‘come up to the mark’. As a result many people ‘crank up’ their voices artificially to an energetic pitch for each meeting, lesson or encounter. This practice may be okay if you’re feeling relaxed; but if you’re at all tense, this heightened state puts considerable strain on your voice. Unfortunately, few people in vocally demanding jobs have more than the most elementary voice training, so in this chapter I introduce ...
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