Winning Strategies for Power Presentations: Jerry Weissman Delivers Lessons from the World’s Best Presenters

67. How to Develop a Richer Voice

Be Your Own Echo Chamber

Ever since Adam and Eve, the difference between men and women has been discussed and debated ad infinitum. In voice, however, the difference is indisputably clear: The larynx, or vocal cords, the principal component of the human voice, is smaller in females than in males; and so, just as a guitar’s shorter and thinner strings produce a higher-pitched musical tone, a woman’s shorter and thinner vocal cords—as well as those of a small man—produce a lighter, higher-pitched sound.

And so do the vocal cords of a teenager. There’s the rub: The squeaky quality of an adolescent’s voice is a mark of their immaturity, and so women and small men with thin, high-pitched voices are unfairly saddled ...