How To Confidently Own Your Voice (Part 2 of 3)

In the first of this three part blog post series about owning your voice, we covered why women struggle with speaking up and how to find the courage to begin practicing owning our voices.

In today’s and next week’s blog post we will look at specific actions you can take to start using your voice powerfully now. Just remember that whenever we are learning a new skill we will not do it perfectly at first. In order to become a communication master along with anything else we are learning, we must be willing to do it imperfectly, and messily before we get to mastery. We utilize courage when we are learning as we are pushing ourselves outside of our comfort zone to try new things, then as we get better with practice we develop competence until eventually we build expertise in the area through consistent practice. This consistent practice is what will lead us to owning our voice with confidence. So I ask you to be willing to take action with courage, and consistently, then you will eventually get to mastery. Let’s go on to the steps!

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Remove Doubt Language and Speak with conviction

I am not sure when inserting doubt into communication became cool. Maybe with all the talk of authenticity and creating a safe environment many think they don’t want to take a hard stance on anything so as not to intimidate or be seen as overly aggressive. However, the impact of inserting doubt into your communication is that it makes you come across as unsure and tentative, which takes away from your credibility and people’s trust in your ability. In the end it is not an accurate reflection of the work that you have done and of your competence. Words that instill doubt into the minds of the listener include saying “maybe, probably, perhaps, could be, kind of, I think, I believe, I feel, In my opinion.” If I went to the doctor and she said to me, I think you probably, maybe, could have diabetes, I would look at her as if she was crazy. I am sure you would too! Assuming tests were done to verify the condition I would expect to hear a level of certainty in her voice or I would find someone else who would be sure of the results they were reading. In the same way once you have done your research and have the data to back it up, speak with conviction to represent the homework you have done otherwise you will misrepresent yourself and negate your credibility. The first step in speaking with conviction is simply to make your statement without the use of doubt language, and to stretch yourself even more challenge yourself to insert words that display conviction or certainty when applicable by using these and similar phrases instead, “I am certain, undoubtedly, I expect, I am sure, absolutely.”

speak about what you are passionate about

Techniques to help you sound more confident and convincing in communication is nothing to be compared to speaking about a topic that you are very passionate about. Sometimes the issue with ineffective communicators isn’t so much that they are not confident but they have not found a topic that they are passionate about, perhaps connected to their core values. If you are not able to muster up enough energy, confidence and conviction in your language you may just have a passion problem instead of a problem of confidence. Either find a topic to speak about that truly interests you or find a reason why the topic you are speaking about is of importance to you so that you can communicate more powerfully as you connect to that important motive.

Ask for what you want (call to action)

As you begin to use your voice to speak up and present, I want to challenge you to take it further by asking for what you want. Don’t just give your opinion but ask for your listeners to commit by taking some sort of action. This requires you to plan before a meeting. Think about the outcome you want to have and plan the conversation in such a way that you present your data points, then ask for an action to be taken. It could be something as simple as wanting stakeholders to demonstrate sponsorship of your idea, or something as big as asking for a pay raise. In the past year in particular I have learnt that for the most part people are willing to say yes but the problem many times is that we miss an opportunity because we never ask. If you are not getting what you want, a big reason is probably because you are not asking. Those who ask will receive. You may not always get a yes when you ask but you certainly never will get people to take action for something you didn’t ask them to do. You will surprise yourself on how many doors will open when you just start asking! What do you need to ask for? I challenge you do develop a strategy, research the data points needed, then present your case and ask for what you want in the next week. Let me know here, what the result of this experimental action is. I am looking forward to hearing all the yeses and breakthroughs that will come as a result of your just asking.

STOP ASKING FOR PERMISSION

This point may seem contradictory to my last point but there is a difference between asking for what you want vs asking for permission to have the perspective that you have. You ask for people to take action on a viewpoint that you are presenting, not for permission to have the viewpoint. One of the biggest hindrances to growing our self-trust and self-confidence is being overly concerned with other people's opinion, and therefore waiting for their approval and agreement. If you are going to be a trailblazer and launch out into unchartered territory you cannot wait for people's approval. They may not resonate with the validity of your vision, but the vision is yours not theirs, so own it! This constant seeking of agreement from others will always limit your potential and will keep you stuck in the box of other people's expectations. The path to getting unstuck is to get aligned with what it is that you desire, and to move forward without waiting for others to celebrate your ideas. The truth is that “the right” people will eventually follow if you present enough evidence of success and confidence in what you are about. Self-trust is built by courageously stepping out and independently taking action, even if you don't have everyone's buy-in yet. Remember you don’t need everyone’s buy-in just the right buy-in and the first person’s buy-in you need is your own! You may need to stand alone for a while, but stand bold and stand strong because with persistence and the right strategy you will eventually win!

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