17 Steps to Speak Confidently and Improve Your Tone (Part II)

15 أبريل 2025

In the first part of this article, we discussed the importance of voice in both personal and professional aspects, and we presented ten steps you should apply to improve your voice tone and boost your self-confidence.

We will now continue with the remaining steps in this second and final part, so stay with us.

What Is the Importance of Your Voice?

11. Vocal Warm-up

Vocal warm-up is considered an essential practice for speaking with confidence. Vocal warm-up exercises may seem a bit silly at times. However, if you've ever had a phone call early in the day and noticed yourself stumbling over your words, then a vocal warm-up will benefit you in such a case.

Think of it this way: just as your muscles need warming up before running, your voice also needs preparation before delivering a speech, giving a presentation, or making a phone call.

Performing a simple 3-minute vocal warm-up before calls, meetings, or presentations is a great way to prepare your voice.

Here's a simple and enjoyable vocal warm-up exercise called "Goog.” The exercise goes like this: "Goog goog goog goog goog goog."

Begin by pronouncing the first "goog" in a comfortable or low tone.
Say "Goog," and with each repetition, increase the volume until you reach the fourth "Goog."
When you reach the fifth "Goog," lower the volume until you reach the seventh "Goog." You should end up back at the starting point.
Repeat this exercise for a few minutes, or until your voice feels prepared.

The "Goog" exercise is designed to warm up both the low and high tones in your voice, making it sound confident and clear, allowing your voice to flow smoothly.

Practical Step: Before your meetings, communicating with anyone, or giving a speech or presentation, take a few minutes to warm up your voice.

12. Smiling

Search for something that makes you smile, as genuine happiness is better than a forced smile any day. A recent study conducted by researchers at the University of Santa Barbara found that we listen to our voices to understand our feelings. Here's what the researchers did:

They asked the participants to speak into a microphone that recorded their voices.
Behind the scenes, researchers manipulated the participants' voices in real-time to make them sound either happier, sadder, or unchanged.
They sent the audio recordings back to the participants through headphones (without the participants being aware of the changes in their voices).

Here, the astonishing result was that participants' emotions were triggered when they listened to their modified voices, whether they sounded happy or sad. These findings suggest that our vocal tone, pitch, and other vocal characteristics help us understand and process our emotions.

This study truly astonished researchers, and it has provided the first official evidence of a direct connection between the nature of our voices and what we feel. So, the next time you feel anxious or angry, try speaking with enthusiasm, using a happy tone and smiling in the meantime. You'll be amazed at how quickly you can improve your mood and change your emotional state with this simple trick.

Here are some tips for finding something that makes you smile:

Avoid checking your email immediately before making a call or while waiting on the phone. This is because you might read something upsetting that could lead to an angry response.
Watch some funny videos on YouTube.
Look at the profile picture of the person you're talking to on LinkedIn. Sometimes, we face communication challenges over the phone, but if you engage your presence and emotions face-to-face with that person, you're likely to smile more and use more hand gestures, which can improve your vocal performance.
Never answer the phone when you're in a bad mood; remember that your emotions are contagious.

13. Stand up While Speaking

Your breath and vocal cords aren't the only factors that contribute to improving your voice. For this reason, when speaking in front of an audience, it's crucial to stand or sit with good posture. This makes your voice stronger and clearer, not just because it allows for deeper breathing but also because it makes you appear more confident.

This provides more space in your chest, vocal cords, and mouth. The more space you create in your body, the easier it is to breathe and increase the pitch and power of your voice.

Here's the best way to achieve an ideal standing posture for a confident voice:

Lift the top of your head towards the ceiling.
Tuck your chin in.
Bring your shoulder blades down and back.
Relax your stomach.
Avoid bending your knees.

Practical Step: If possible, stand while talking on the phone, and if you must sit during a meeting, use the arms of the chair to give your body as much width as possible.

14. Engage in Friendly Conversation

To communicate with your audience effectively, it's essential to speak as if you're having a conversation with specific individuals, particularly as if you're talking to a friend. This approach works because the friendlier and more relaxed your voice sounds, the more receptive your audience will be. You'll also appear more genuine if you approach your presentations with the mindset of trying to promote something to your audience, as salespeople do, or attempting to win them over.

Remember, you don't have to present to your friends, so don't present to your audience either.

You can also practice in front of a friend to reinforce this strategy. While this approach may not be suitable in some professional settings, it can be a fantastic way to connect with most audiences.

15. Genuine Laughing

There's nothing better than sharing laughter with a friend. You know the kind of laughter that makes your eyes tear up, and you struggle to catch your breath, but you keep bursting into laughter again. But have you ever noticed how your laughter changes depending on the person you're laughing with?

A study presented participants with laughter clips and asked them to distinguish between laughter shared among friends and laughter between strangers. The participants were remarkably accurate in their discernment, reaching an impressive 61% success rate. This is because laughter among friends has distinct characteristics that set it apart from laughter between strangers.

In laughter among friends, the duration between bursts of laughter is shorter.
Laughter tends to be irregular in terms of volume and intensity.

Humans have two different types of laughter: genuine and polite.

Genuine laughter, which we share with friends, is characterized by the following:

Spontaneous.
Voluntary.
Longer-lasting.
Louder.
Sincere.

This is the type of laughter that makes your ribs contract and sometimes produces a wheezing sound. However, that doesn't mean polite laughter is "fake" in any way; it's not. Polite laughter is:

Polite (as the name suggests).
Considerate of others.
Expressive of generosity.
Used in social etiquette.

Polite laughter is used among strangers and serves as a necessary and important social cue. For example, polite laughter is used in these situations:

When you hear your coworkers at work laughing, you join in to feel a sense of belonging.
When a comedian tells an unfunny joke, the audience politely laughs as a form of courtesy.

Most people are skilled at distinguishing between the two types of laughter. So, if you genuinely want to appear confident and connect with your audience, it's best to use genuine laughter.

Practical Step: Try adding a touch of humor the next time you give a presentation, and don't forget to encourage shared laughter.

16. Adopt a Giving Mindset

A giving mindset involves providing value to others rather than seeking it from them. So, if you want to deliver an effective presentation, you should:

Think of yourself as a teacher.
Attend meetings to offer something to the attendees, not just take from them.
Provide genuine and sincere assistance.

When meeting with your boss at work or an important individual, it's a mistake to assume they have the information you need, or even worse, to approach the meeting with a mindset of taking without giving anything in return. However, you should also refrain from offering advice when you do not know the subject. Therefore, it's important to strike a balance: know what you're good at, and don't offer meaningless input just for the sake of appearing helpful.

To adopt a giving mindset, change your perspective by following these tips:

Offer assistance.
Be open and listen to others' suggestions.
Use your ideas and actions to help solve someone's problem.

When you meet an important person, a mentor, a client, or a public figure, the best thing you can do is think about what you can do for them. If you have something to teach or genuine expertise that can help others, that's what will attract people to you.

Practical Step: The next time you talk to an important person, offer something valuable. You'll naturally speak confidently when you have something to give rather than just take.

17. Use Vocal Reflection

Take a moment to think about the people in your life. Is there someone who has had a significant impact on the way you speak? It could be:
A teacher.
Your parents.
An older sibling.
Your best friend.
A mentor or coach.

Imagine if a stranger greeted you in an unusual manner, and you responded with the same greeting. This is what's known as vocal mirroring, a technique used to establish communication and understanding with unfamiliar individuals.

If you're dissatisfied with your tone, take action immediately. Record your voice on your phone while speaking about any topic or reading something. Simply record a few sentences using your device.

Practical Step: Record your voice while answering the question, "What do you do?" After recording, listen again, and pay attention to the following:

First, does your voice sound like it's coming from your nose?
Second, when you speak, does your voice rise and fall like you're singing, or does it maintain a constant tone? If it maintains a constant tone, this is called monotony.
Finally, does your voice sound like you're whispering or sighing? You don't have to be a songwriter or a voice coach to listen and discover your immediate emotions in your voice. Let's assume you listened to your response to "What do you do?" and noticed that you spoke with a single tone throughout.

Imagine your voice like a piano; the piano has 88 keys, but most people only use two layers. For this, you should make the most of your multiple vocal layers.

Two Additional Steps

1. Check Your Tone

If you want to monitor your voice tone during meetings, there's no need to worry anymore. You can develop self-awareness by tracking when you sound positive, negative, frustrated, or happy in your meetings.

Poised: Speaking Tones and Auto-Record is an app that allows you to do exactly that. You can think of it as an "auto-correction" for your voice. Whenever it senses that your voice tone has become angry or frustrated, or even if it detects that you're rambling, it will send you a timely alert. This is extremely helpful during meetings.

2. Change Your Voice

People often wonder if they can change their voice to sound more confident. In reality, we can alter the voice we are born with. As infants, we listen to the voices around us, and a baby mimics their mother's voice as they grow. They imitate the voices of others in their environment to communicate with and understand them better. As we age, we may believe that this is our true voice, but the truth is that we can decide how our voice sounds at any stage of our lives. However, it's not as simple as flipping a switch; it requires time and effort.

In Conclusion

Your voice has a significant impact on both your personal and professional lives. It has the power to boost your self-confidence and grant you the authority that leaders possess. Fortunately, you can apply the steps mentioned earlier to achieve this purpose.

Know that your voice is more powerful than you might think, and when you master your voice, you master your life.