In this episode of the Impostor Syndrome Files, we talk about the power of our voices and the importance of projecting confidence. My guest this week, John Henny, is a vocal coach for singers and speakers. Here we explore the ways in which we may neglect our voice when preparing for important meetings, the assumptions we make about what our voices are capable of, and how we can strengthen our voices to become more confident speakers.
About My Guest
John Henny has decades of experience helping thousands of voice users around the world become more effective communicators. He is a featured lecturer at top voice conferences and institutions, including IVTOM, Osborne Head and Neck Institute, VIP Worldwide Voice Conference, The Paul McCartney Liverpool Institute and USC. John coaches professional voice users at Corporate Businesses, the US Military, Sports Announcers, and Voice Over Artists. His cutting-edge methods help eliminate strain and bring out your best-sounding, compelling voice. John is the author of three Amazon bestselling books, hosts the popular podcast The Intelligent Vocalist (with over 500,000 downloads) and has 130,000 subscribers with 14 million views on YouTube. He is also a seasoned online course creator with an extensive library of training courses for singers, speakers and voice teachers.
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Connect with John:
Websites: compellingspeaker.com and johnhenny.com
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Transcript
Kim Meninger
Welcome, John, it is such a pleasure to meet you. I'm really looking forward to our conversation. And I'd love to start by inviting you to introduce yourself.
John Henny
Yes, well, I am a vocal coach, I've been teaching voice for over 30 years, I also train voice teachers. So I've worked with hundreds of voice teachers around the world and worked with a number of singers, many professional singers, some famous, some on Broadway, all levels. And I've also been working with speakers because they found that what makes a great vocal performance in a really captivating and compelling performance, those devices can also be used by speakers to really captivate their audience.
Kim Meninger
It's so fascinating. And I'm curious what your thoughts are on the connection between voice and confidence more broadly, I know, obviously, on this show, we talk a lot about impostor syndrome. But how do you think about self-doubt? Let's call it in the context of the work that you do.
John Henny
You were the voice, it's really fascinating, because we understand that the voice is important, and we use it to communicate. But we often focus on external things will think, okay, I want to show more confidence. So I'm going to dress a certain way, or I'm going to practice my power stances, or try and develop this persona. But they've done research where they've had subjects speak to each other. And the objective was to try and determine what the other person was feeling. And when they removed the visual element, and you only got the voice, the ability to correctly perceive what the other person was feeling went up. And so if you don't have your voice working well, if your, if your voice is not projecting confidence, then it's hard to feel confident of the vibrations of the voice. It's pretty profound. That's why in so many world religions, no matter what people believe, they all utilize singing, humming, chanting, it's incredible what the voice will do for your mood and your confidence. And I often say to people, if you're feeling down, if you're not feeling confident, go find a safe place, and sing for a couple of minutes, no matter how good or bad you think you sing. And I promise you, when you, when you walk back out of that space, you're going to feel different. That's amazing.
Kim Meninger
That is one confidence strategy I've not heard before. And so that's one of the reasons why I'm so excited to have you here. Can you say more about it because I am thinking about what you're saying? And a lot of it makes sense to me. But to your point, I don't think we necessarily think about our voices in terms of how we prepare for a presentation or you know, some type of interaction where we want to show up with confidence. Sometimes we just take our voices for granted, right? We're thinking about the content of what we're going to say, like you said, we're thinking about how we're going to dress, how much flexibility do we have with our voice, I think we tend to think of it as fixed.
John Henny
We have an amazing amount of flexibility with our voice. And I think one of the things that has happened in our human history is long ago, we all sang it was, it was communal, it was how we communicated. In fact, they're not sure which came first language or singing and even our relationship to music, why we hear some chords is sad in some, some chords and intervals is happy. That actually comes from speech. It comes from the intervals we'll use when we're sad or, or excited speech. So it's incredibly important. And what happened is that especially with the advent of the recording industry, we really put forth a class of professional singers. These are people that sing and the rest of us went, well. I'm not one of those I don't sing. And Tiger Woods never stopped people from playing golf for fun, right? Billie Jean King, people still play tennis for fun, but singing for some reason. We've kind of lost our birthright. And I encourage people to begin to explore their voice, the music in their voice. If you rediscover the music in your voice, you are going to be more compelling and you're going to connect with the listener in a more profound way.
Kim Meninger
In, you talked a little bit about no matter how well you can sing, I wonder sometimes if our perception of our ability to sing will influence our confidence, as we're thinking about this, right? Like do you have to be able to be a good singer to use your voice in a powerful way?
John Henny
No. And as a matter of fact, I tell people, Look, just pretend you're in the world's worst musical. And take the subject that you have to talk about, or that you're worried about. And again, find a safe space where you can just let yourself go and be silly, and sing it, sing it badly, it doesn't matter. But allow that energy, let yourself feel the vibrations of your voice start discovering different tonal choices, and, and range and different dynamics and tempo and accents. All of these things. What they do is they reengage the listener's interest, we've all experienced, taking a song that we love, and we see someone sing it and it's like, okay, and then we see another person or we listen to someone else, sing it, and it's profound, it can move as to joy or to tears, because they know how to use these musical devices and great singers are constantly reawakening your attention. And by, by not always delivering on expectations, so if we start to fall into rote patterns, when we speak, for instance, people will just drift. And as we know, attention spans are getting shorter and shorter. But if you can find that energy, and start to have fun with your voice, and fun with what you're saying, you feel that energy come back from the people you are speaking with, and you can feel their attention. And that will infuse your confidence. It's, it's, it's a give and take. It shouldn't just be us talking and we hope people listen, we can engage people, and that will make us even better speakers.
Kim Meninger
What you're making me think about too is that often we get really nervous about our content, maybe we don't feel prepared for the topic, or we're worried someone's going to ask us a question we don't know the answer to. And so we may come across, using or speaking hesitantly in some way, right, or, or maybe in a more monotonous way. And so what I'm hearing you say is that we can actually grow actively use our voice as a confidence-building strategy because I think about that a lot too. As somebody who has struggled with self-doubt and anxiety throughout my life, I will intentionally show up in a way that makes me express confidence because that's telling my brain I am confident, I do belong here. And you kind of talk yourself into it. And I wonder I think a lot of people do the reverse, right? Where their nerves lead them into a vocal patterns that maybe are not demonstrating confidence, and it becomes almost a vicious cycle because they're picking up on the energy of the crowd around them.
John Henny
Yeah, it's really interesting. It's usually the most self-aware, conscientious and intelligent people that begin to exhibit confidence issues and start to struggle with impostor syndrome. And it, I think there is a small little kernel, of, of truth. And it's also something I think that can help us what we don't want is for it to begin to paralyze us. And there's, I think, number one, we start comparing ourselves to others, and then that becomes a problem. And then the other issue is when we need to go speak to people, we have this inner fear of being ostracized. Long ago, when we traveled in small groups, if we were ostracized from the group, we would likely perish. And now, even though societies are much larger, and that's no longer an issue, we still have these fears. And so this, this fear of judgment and rejection can be very, very strong. And, again, we all deal with impostor syndrome when I, when I go to release a course or I go to release a book or even a blog post, those nagging doubts come in, and what I do is I refocus my attention outside of myself. When I feel that I know that I'm turning inward, and it is my an ego that's trying to protect itself. And when I just say to myself, “You know what? I need to be here for the people who need to hear me and in the way that I say it.” And, yes, there are those who are much smarter than I, and they have more expertise in certain areas. I'm the only one that can explain things the way I do. And I'm the only one that can connect with people the way I do. And the other thing I always do is I just say to myself, before I have to go out and speak to people, I give you permission to not like me, because they have that right anyway. And then that you cannot like what I say, but I'm here for the person that needs to hear it. And so it is incumbent upon me to deliver to them, and I'm going to make it about them.
Kim Meninger
That is such a powerful point. And one that I think is really important for people who do turn inward in the way that you're describing, because it is a very egocentric, and I don't say that judgmentally that's who we are right way of viewing the world to assume that everybody's judging you. And everybody's paint hanging on your every word. And so, I really like the idea of thinking about what purpose Am I here to serve. Because I think that when we're coming from a place of service, if we think about it more like you're describing it is, I have a purpose for being here I am the best messenger of whatever it is, I'm going to say and, and you are by virtue of the fact that you're the expert in your own job, whatever that job is, nobody knows your job better than you do. So if you've been invited to a conversation where you're asked to provide information, even if you don't feel like you're, quote, unquote, as smart or as experienced as other people in the room, you are the expert in your work. And I think we, we lose sight of that when we are comparing ourselves to other people. And so to be able to say, I am here to serve, I am here for the people who need the material that I'm sharing.
John Henny
Absolutely. And all of us that doesn't, that doesn't cure impostor syndrome. Again, impostor syndrome, I think has, has a small, tiny bit where it's healthy, to make us really look at what we're doing, making sure that we're, we're striving to be our best. But we really need to keep it at bay because it can overwhelm us. And I myself, I will have to push through imposter syndrome sometimes where it's actually a little painful. And, and, again, when I go to release something, it's rarely accompanied with joy. It's almost this feeling of trepidation like, oh, here it goes, I know, it could be better. But I have to remember that this is going to help someone. And if I sit and obsess that it's not perfect. And maybe I'm not the best person, they're not going to get the help.
Kim Meninger
Yeah, I think that's such a great reframe. And I'm wondering, because I always like to think about things as before and after, for lack of a better way of describing it. So you're talking about this idea of singing, and really connecting with your voice in ways that many of us probably are horrified by at first glance servers. Because we don't think of ourselves as good singers. But I, I'm also wondering, once you get in the room, are there tips or tricks you would recommend for staying connected to your voice when you start to perhaps lose confidence or your maybe reading the room in deeper ways that's causing you to get distracted?
John Henny
I think there are ways to prepare and just working your voice, doing some simple exercises, the first thing I recommend people do is to find their optimal speaking pitch. And many of us what we do is we speak too low. And because we think that having this lower voice is going to give us more authority. And that is true to a point but then we dropped too low. And then we know we're not projecting enough or the voice isn't showing energy. And we end up like squeezing the voice to try and get more power out of it instead of using the acoustic power of the voice. And then we start getting vocally tired, and now we're wrestling with that. So I think preparing your voice before you go in can be incredibly important. And then the other thing that I, I do is when I walk into a space before I'm going to speak, I just look at every corner of the room. And I think about filling this space with my energy to, to every corner. And I suggest people do this, even when they're there on a Zoom call, a lot of times what people will do is this camera has just this thing over there. And so their energy is just pulled away from the camera. And maybe the eyes are unfocused. And if you just expand your energy, and you're incredibly present, if you are present, and in the moment that is really going to help guide you, in terms of how you're reacting to the audience, you can sense when you begin to lose them. So you pick up the pace a little bit, or you maybe go you know what, I think I need to be a little quicker with this topic and move on to the next, there are ways to reengage their attention. And yeah, we will all begin to lose the audience at certain points. You even see that in concert, sometimes, you know, the performers not doing one of their hit songs, and everyone's getting up to go use the restroom at the casino, but it's, it's there's an ebb and flow to it as well. And you don't allow yourself to panic or start to feel that judgment, you just know, you know what, I'm going to pick up the pace a little bit here, I'm going to maybe increase the volume, maybe speed up a little bit. Or if it's if people sometimes we're too overwhelming. And we need to slow down, especially if we're going to make a point that we want people to pay attention to. So it's, it's developing the language of great singers. And you don't have to be a great singer. We all sing. I'll say it again, it is your birthright and it I really, I really can't stand that people say they can't sing, you can sing you don't have to be great. But every time you're speaking, you're singing, it singing his speech and speech his singing, it's we're using his vibrating organ that scientists still don't know exactly how it works. The voice is quite fascinating. It's kind of this miracle. And these vibrations were able to communicate with and the more you celebrate these vibrations and allow people to experience the fullness of your voice, you're going to engage them.
Kim Meninger
Do you have thoughts? Because you talked about pitched your thoughts on vocal fry?
John Henny
Yeah, so vocal fry is quite interesting. And this, this comes up a lot in the vocal community. And there was a thought that, that vocal fry is damaging and vocal fry is going to hurt your voice, vocal fries not going to hurt your voice, what vocal fry is, is it's the voice is vibrating so many times a second. And then when we bring it down to a certain level where we're no longer making pitch, we kind of get this popping fried type of sound. And it is something that generationally younger people tend to use more fry, younger women tend to use more fry, where fry can become a problem is when you're in a situation, let's say it's, it's a restaurant with a lot of ambient noise or it's a larger room. vocal fry does not have a lot of acoustic energy, it doesn't carry very far. So what people who are kind of caught in excess fry will do is because people aren't really hearing me they start to squeeze and try and force more out of it. Now, that can start to create some vocal issues because basically your vocal folds are soft tissue that are opening and closing. And so if you start to use excess force, you can irritate that tissue. And then that can have its own resulting problems. And there are people look announcers will often use a little fry at the beginning of sentences, singers will use it, it certainly is a color in the voice. You just need to understand you have lots of colors in your voice.
Kim Meninger
I like that, I like that idea that we can use it in certain situations but not overuse it and I'm curious for people who may be use it a lot, right? Are there techniques to not use it because I'm imagining that some of it is habitual to right? Some of it is maybe we're not even aware that we're doing it. Some of it is this is just how I've been speaking for so long. I don't even think about it. So are there if somebody's listening and thinking, Oh, that's me, right? And I want to diversify my voice in some way. Are there exercises or things that people can do to move out of that place?
John Henny
Absolutely. The first step is just awareness. And then it's just starting to feel The vibrations of your voice, because again, you're starting to get used to a place where the voice is not vibrating at a, at a fundamental frequency or at pitch. And so there are exercises that start to develop and expand your range. But it's nowhere near the amount of work that a singer has to put in. But it's similar exercises. And then I think sometimes people will fall into fry, because they may be they, on some level don't like the sound of their voice. And the amazing thing about the voice is, most of what you hear is not being caused by your vocal cords. Most of what you hear is what's happening in your vocal tract, the tube that your, your throat and your mouth, and the way the sound waves interact in this tube. And if we learn to adjust this tube in the right way, we get these amazingly full spectrum boosts in our voice, your voice sounds Fuller, it sounds richer, it's more melodious. So the quick answer to your question is, yes, there are, there are exercises that you can do. And it's not an incredibly long, difficult process.
Kim Meninger
And on the opposite side, now, I'm thinking about people who have very high voice, high pitched voices and how, you know, I don't know the specific research, but I know I've heard anecdotally people say that it's harder to hear people who have higher pitched voices. And so sometimes if someone is speaking, the higher pitch, maybe their message isn't as well received or isn't processed in the same way. So if somebody repeats it and has a deeper voice, and that's sometimes an explanation for why men often get credit for women's ideas that don't get heard the first time around. And so I'm curious what your thoughts are on that end of the spectrum?
John Henny
Yeah, well, I think it's sometimes it's, it may be that they're speaking at too high of a pitch that is not as common a problem as speaking too low. But sometimes what it is, and there is a physical difference in the, the larynx, or the voice box of a cisgendered male versus a cisgendered female. And the male voice when it goes through puberty and is changed affected by testosterone, the Adam's apple protrudes, the vocal folds get longer, and the angle is more of a 90 degree. That's why you see this protrusion. Whereas in the female voice, through puberty, the voice does change. But what happens is this, this larynx actually becomes rounded, and it becomes wider. And the vocal cords have a longer distance to travel to get to center and to phone eight or make sound. So what often happens in the female voice is they will fall into breathiness, or a slightly weaker tone. And that will really affect the amount of information the sound wave has and how it's going to carry through the room to the listeners ears. So it's often not just that it's a higher pitch. But it's really not as strong an initial sound wave. And so that's also important to begin to work in vocal fold closure and vocal strength.
Kim Meninger
So do you recommend that we just thinking of Elizabeth Holmes, who changed her voice to sound more masculine thinking that that was going to, I don't know, give her more credibility or make her more heard? Do you recommend that people deepen their voice in some way? Or what, what can we do as women in particular?
John Henny
Yeah, I am not a fan of falsely imposed vote voice. And, yeah, she, of course, has a whole week podcast series on her and what's going on there. But every voice is going to have a place where it is working optimally. And all of us have an optimal speaking pitch. It's not that you speak on the same pitch, but it's kind of like your home, your home base or your general area, and then you'll speak above and below that. And so it's finding that it's developing that and then it's really just getting a sense of the resonance of the voice, which is where almost all the power is the majority of power is in the resonance. And if you get yourself speaking on the right pitch, and working resonance in the right way your voice is going to carry and it's going to be pleasant to Listen to and you don't have to put on any aspect into the voice.
Kim Meninger
I think voice is so personal that when we think about workplace leaders giving feedback to their teams, or team members, people are reluctant to give feedback on someone's voice because it feels like a personal attack in some way. Do you have thoughts on the best way for a leader who recognizes that there's opportunity on the part of someone on their team to work on some of these vocal techniques that we're talking about? To give that without feeling like you're crushing somebody? Or they you know, that you're being you're crossing a line in some way?
John Henny
That's a fantastic question. And I have seen working with, with voice users, especially singers, I've had people who haven't sung since they were maybe a child or in their teens. And they're coming back in, you know, coming into middle age. And when I asked them why they stopped singing, they'll start to talk about some criticism that they got from an insensitive choir director, or maybe a family member. And there's, there's a lot of emotion, and hurt wrapped up in that. So it's an incredibly delicate thing to touch on. Because to tell somebody, I don't like the sound of your voice, your voice sounds awful. It's really, it's, it's rough. So I think you, you can couch it in terms of communication skills. And just finding ways, you know, saying, Look, your ideas are very, very important, and I want you to be heard. And then there are there are programs that can help speakers work on their voice, and you can become a better speaker, in a very short period of time, it's not what you have to work on. To become a great singer, there are lots of technical demands, what you're going to do is you're going to take what singers do, and you're just going to adapt it for speaking. And you can be a better speaker in a matter of weeks.
Kim Meninger
Wow, I mean, that's really promising, I think, because I think we, many of us probably think our voice is our voice. And there's not a whole lot that we can do about that. So I think that is encouraging if you have been given feedback, or if you feel like you're not connecting with your audience in the way that you would like to, to know that there's, you know, some pretty quick, I don't want to call it fix right but quick.
John Henny
To right, there are some quick fixes, and there are some, some aspects that take a little longer and then certainly getting your voice working optimally, you can do that pretty quick, takes a little more practice to start bringing in the different devices and working trying to find the right pace and melody and how you're going to use accents and dynamics and these different things. But again, I just encourage everybody, the quick fix is to go somewhere and just start singing, start singing something you need to talk to someone about, if you have to give an employee review, sing that review, and, and, and make the song empathetic make that song that you're connecting, right? Don't, don't make it a death battle song. But you can use music is incredibly powerful. And the, you have music within you, you even if you haven't let it out in a very long time. Because when you were a child, you sang and you sang all the time. And you probably occasionally will steal a song when you think no one's listening in the shower in the car. And I encourage you to do more of that.
Kim Meninger
And this is just kind of a curiosity-based question a little off the track what we're talking about what can anyone learn to sing?
John Henny
The, the answer to that is mainly Yes. If there is some type of real physical damage or neurological issues where you're unable to control the voice for pitch, then, then singing is going to be problematic. There are those of us and they've done some studies and there's a genetic component to this to be able to hear pitch and match pitch. Now tone deafness is extremely rare, but there is a spectrum of people who can more easily match pitch than others. I was further down the spectrum it was it was quite difficult for me at first and I thought that I couldn't sing. And what it is, is this is not like the piano or the guitar where we can just press a key or put our finger on a fret and get the know We have to think this note and then muscles that we don't have conscious awareness of need to make these micro adjustments to give us that pitch. But there are exercises you can do to increase pitch awareness in your mind and to strengthen that connection from your brain to your voice. So it's a, it's a qualified yes.
Kim Meninger
That's really good to know, I think there are certain, I don't know, like skills that I think we think of as fixed, right? Either you have them or you don't, I think drawing are certain art types of art singing. And so it's nice to know that there is more opportunity there than we may recognize for those of us who love like to sing but don't particularly do it well.
John Henny
Well, well, you know, and I often I'll related to getting in shape, versus becoming some, you know, a body champion bodybuilder, a champion bodybuilder, is that very specific body type, that that has the genetic potential to be a world champion bodybuilder, however, all of us can get in better shape, at any age, and we can increase our health and we can increase our vocal strength and our vocal health. It really is. It's a, it's a series of, of muscles and tissues. And as we get older, those tissues are going to tend to stiffen, those muscles are going to tend to weaken. And so we really want to pay attention to our voice because it is the primary connector, emotionally and persuasion between you and another person. And as we know, most decisions are emotional, and then we rationalize them afterwards. And so I encourage everybody to learn about vocal health to start working on ways to keep their voice, strong and vital throughout their life.
Kim Meninger
What a powerful way for us to wrap up this conversation. John, I'm so grateful to you for your insights, where can people find you if they want to learn more?
John Henny
Yes, so my main website is JohnHenny.com, and for speakers, it's compellingspeaker.com
Kim Meninger
And we'll link to those in the show notes as well. Thanks again, John. This has been such a fascinating conversation. I really, I feel like I go way down the road with you.
John Henny
Thank you so much. I enjoyed it.