What do audiences want?  They want a speaker to succeed, because that means their time has been well spent.  When you ask audiences what makes a successful speaker, they tell you that they want to be able to trust the speaker first and to find her credible second.  Given that developing real trust is a long-term process, we’re talking about some lesser form that basically boils down to a sense that the speaker is sincere (as well as credible).  It’s the moral equivalent of the doctor’s good bedside manner.

An all-too-often neglected part of establishing trust (the good bedside manner kind) as well as credibility for speakers is their voice.  Speakers, like most people except for singers and yodelers, take their voices for granted until they can’t.  I had an anguished call from a highly successful speaker in his mid-50s a couple of years ago saying, “Nick, my voice is giving out.  It doesn’t last the whole day.  I start the day with my podcast recording, I’m on the phone to my people all afternoon, and by the time late afternoon rolls around, my voice is shot.  If I have to give a speech, I’m screwed. What do I do?”

This smart, accomplished CEO had never given his voice a moment’s thought in the previous 50 plus years.  Now he had to repair it as fast as possible.  For all knowledge workers, and certainly for speakers, life without a voice is daunting in the extreme.

OK, no voice, no speaker bedside manner. Assuming you promise to start taking care of your voice today (hydration, breathing, and essential care), what are the important characteristics, besides actually working, of a good voice for trust and credibility?

I’m going to focus on two characteristics for building trust and credibility in this post and continue the discussion in subsequent posts from time to time.  First, confidence, and second authenticity.

One of the crueler ways that nerves – adrenaline – can betray speakers is with a weak voice.  Flight or fight sets in, the heart rate increases, and the voice gets breathy or hesitant, because the speaker is breathing like he or she is running a marathon.  The voice also can rise in pitch.  Audiences experience those vocal changes, unconsciously for the most part, as a lack of confidence.  Remembering that audiences want speakers to succeed, you’ll quickly see that an unsupported, stressed voice plays havoc with the speaker’s ability to sound confident – and thus appear successful.

So channel your inner James Earl Jones, or Oprah, and bring a big, strong, comfortably pitched voice to the stage and you will have a good chance to show up as confident.  The good news is that the same techniques for vocal care will help you in both the short and long runs.

But it’s not enough just to be confident, challenging as that may be.  You also need to demonstrate authenticity.  How does authenticity show up in the voice?  It’s less obvious than with confidence or the lack thereof, but an authentic voice is a conversational, well-modulated voice.  It’s neither monotone nor shrill, two characteristics of voices that audiences dislike and won’t believe to be authentic.

We have to like a voice well enough to be able to hear it as authentic.  And that means that it needs some warmth, not too much, and some presence, or the ability to carry, but again not too much.

All of this is quite a lot of baggage to load into a voice, but an audience’s response to a speaker’s voice is quite emotional and unconscious and thus laden with lightning-fast, largely unreflective judgments about how a voice stacks up or doesn’t.  What you can do as a speaker is practice the basics of good vocal care, get a coach to give you feedback, and record yourself and ask, is the voice I’m hearing liable to promote trust and credibility?  Is it confident?  And does it seem authentic?  If you can answer yes to those questions, you are well on the way to success and exactly where your audiences want you to be.