How should women alter their voice when giving a speech? There is what purports to be a body of knowledge and evidence out there suggesting that the lower your voices, the more authoritative you are, and somehow women aren't taken seriously with a high voice. I differ with that I simply in my own dealings with training female executives, male executives, more than 10,000 over the last 30 years from six continents do not find this to be believable, realistic, or an actual issue. Here's the real problem for women and for men, it's actually having something interesting to say. That's the bigger issue. The thing with voice is different voices are higher and lower than others.

I have found that what audiences respond to is variation in voice. So if you're have a low voice like this, but you're talking like this the whole time, it's monotone and everyone will fall asleep. If you have a relatively high voice, but you're using a conversational tone and the full range of voice, people will like what you have to say, and they will like you too. So I frankly think it's a complete utter waste of time for female executives, to try to lower their voice because it's gonna sound like you're acting. It's gonna sound phony, it's gonna sound contrived, and there's a good chance you end up sounding monotone and boring. Of course, there are exceptions.

I do have personal friends who went on to become major network newscasters who did get advice earlier in their career. And he did go to voice coaching and consulting and really tried to lower it and still sound natural. So yeah, it can happen if you want to be a full time professional broadcaster. Maybe it would help you. But unless you've got an extra thousand hours to kill, I would focus on what's more important that is, make sure you have something interesting to say in your speech. Make sure you use the full range of your voice.

Make sure you sound conversational. That's so much more interesting and important than talking like some news broadcaster from the 1970s