One of the most neglected areas of potential improvement for speakers and executives who want to up their game is the strategic use of the voice.  Perhaps because, as people so often report, no one likes the sound of their own voice, few of these leaders invest the time in working on improving their voices.  That’s too bad, because there’s lots of research that suggests that various aspects of the voice can strongly influence success or failure in both public speaking and in leadership around the conference room table.

The classic research on the effect of the voice on leadership focused on US presidential campaigns — because so much was at stake.  It turns out that the candidate with the lower voice has won ever since we have recordings of these spectacles.  That finding was enough, apparently, to push the team around George H. W. Bush to try to get him to lower his voice, since then-candidate Clinton’s voice was a pleasing baritone, whereas Vice-President Bush’s voice was more like a tenor.  The story goes that Mr. Bush tried to lower his voice to match or surpass Clinton’s but ended up making himself hoarse under the pressure of the campaign and the constant speaking required.

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher fared much better.  Her voice was initially deemed too highly pitched and too lower-middle class (the British really care about such things) to be elected.  She went to work on a more reasonable schedule than Mr. Bush’s and the rest is prime ministerial history.

This sort of work is difficult and should only be attempted under the watchful eye of an expert.  It turns out that it is not so much the absolute pitch of the voice, but where it is in your particular vocal range, that matters.  Your voice sends out different signals about your confidence and leadership abilities depending on where it is in your range.  Generally, the higher you go in your range, the more excited or stressed you sound.  That’s great if you are trying to warn someone of an oncoming bus, but less helpful if you are campaigning for high office, where presumably you need to be confident and in charge.  Or at least sound like it.

We use our voices to signal dominance and status, according to the experts, and where better to do that than in a presidential or prime ministerial campaign?

Recently I ran across a study from 2016 that looks at the early moments of an interaction.  If you lower your pitch, you will be perceived as more influential, more dominant, and higher status.  If you raise your pitch, you signal the opposite.  The good news here is that you can presumably carry that off for those few seconds without damaging your voice or otherwise breaking a sweat.

So Vice President Bush might have been able to win the presidency if only he had started each debate with a few low-pitched words, something like, “It’s great to be here in Texas. . . .” and then not worried about the rest of it.  We’ll never know.  But it seems like it wouldn’t hurt you, the next time you stand up to give a speech, or walk into the boardroom, to put your best James Earl Jones or Dua Lipa voice on and greet everyone with a nice low-pitched hello.  Who knows?  You might even start to like your own voice a bit better!