Kate's Voice

Does the size of your voice reflect the size of your personality?

The size and sound of your voice give others an impression of who you are. According to a study last year of 120 executives’ speeches by Quantified Impressions, an Austin, Texas, communications analytics company, the sound of a speaker’s voice matters twice as much as the content of the message.

In another study, Professors from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and University of California, San Diego’s Rady School of Management studied the vocal pitches of 792 male chief executives at publicly traded companies and discovered that CEO’s with lower voices made more money than their counterparts with higher voices.  In a smaller study of 14 female CEO’s, they discovered that we do NOT value low voices in women leaders.  Instead, women CEO’s get kudos for variety of inflection.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t be successful with the voice you have. It means that there are some cultural biases when it comes to voices and that it is a good idea to become aware of them.   Although you can’t change some features of your voice, such as basic type (soprano, alto, tenor, bass,) some things can be changed.  At the very least, become more aware of how you are perceived by the sound of your voice.  Awareness can lead to learning how to create the impression you want.

For more on this topic, please read my post, Investing in your vocal image, a tale of two strategies.

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