Making your voice heard

Making your voice heard is not easy for everyone. I recently ran a workshop for jobseekers on impact and how to use verbal and non-verbal cues to convey confidence. Here are a few quick wins from the session:

Pause for a few seconds between each sentence when you speak - taking up space conveys confidence, pausing helps avoid filler phrases (eerr, umm, like) that dilute your message, pausing like this sounds more natural than simply speaking slowly

Use eye contact - if direct, non stop eye contact feels a bit creepy try looking at the ‘eye region’ such as a cheekbone or bridge of nose instead

Being succinct - try distilling what you want to convey into one or two key messages and begin with this when speaking. Don’t bury the headline…

Further reading - I highly recommend ‘Making Your Voice Heard’ by Professor Connson Locke. It looks at the role of gender, background and race plays on our impact and how we can overcome barriers to having influence by working on our communication.