When we talk about charisma anecdotally, it’s often to say something like, “I couldn’t take my eyes off him/her.” Charisma comes up first for us as a visual experience.  Something is compelling about an actor, or a politician, or a CEO, that draws our eyes to the person.

But charisma is also an auditory phenomenon.  There are certain voices that we hear that immediately draw us in.  We are captivated and want to hear more.  And of course there are the opposite voices – like fingernails on a blackboard, as the old saying has it – that we cringe from and hope will stop quickly.

What’s the difference?  And how can you make your own voice charismatic rather than annoying?

It’s a complex subject, and there are many moving parts to the human voice – literally.  The entire body gets involved in producing a great voice, and a bad voice often emanates from one part of the body while another is frozen or seized up in some way.  But here are three ways to think about getting started on developing your own charismatic voice.  These are just initial steps, to be clear!

First, ground your voice in your emotion.  Never start to speak unless you are clear how you feel about what you are saying.  The voice should be prompted by the unconscious emotion or attitude.  If you see someone walking into traffic in front of you while walking down a city sidewalk, you would yell in alarm something like “watch out!” and that voice would carry all the urgency it needed to get attention because it would be grounded in alarm for the safety of the other person.  In the same way, when you stand up to speak to a group, be just as clear about how you feel about the words you are saying.

Second, ground your voice in your body.  For a voice to come out of your mouth unhampered, you have to line up your body from the feet up.  Your feet support your legs, your legs support your lower abdomen, which in turn support your diaphragmatic muscles, which support your lungs, which support your throat and vocal apparatus, which support the mouth.  And that’s an oversimplification!  It all matters.  Get a good vocal coach to ensure you are supporting your voice properly if you want to be a successful speaker in the long run.  Modern life throws up so many obstacles to good vocal production that it is something you don’t want to leave to chance.

Third, ground your voice in your breath.  Breath is usually where discussions of voice begin.  I’ve put it third here to emphasize the importance of the emotion and the whole body.  But of course breath means life and voice is ultimately an expression of that life.  Strong voices are supported with good breathing, and most of the vocal problems I run across in my coaching are caused by lack of breathing, or faulty breathing, or breathing from the wrong place.  The neuroscience of voices tells us that no one can stand to listen to a highly nasal voice for more than a few minutes.  Holding your breath can cause you to feel more panicked than you otherwise would, and lead to a weak voice, or a voice that’s pitched too high, sounding like it’s nervous or highly stressed.  These are the sorts of problems that lack of attention to emotion, body, and breath can create for speakers.  We owe it to ourselves and to our audiences to take care of our voices and develop our charisma accordingly.

Then — maybe — we can all have voices like Oprah or James Earl Jones.