Does your sound determine your success?
In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Nick Carraway is impressed when Gatsby nails the mysterious quality in Daisy’s voice:
“She’s got an indiscreet voice,” I remarked. “It’s full of——” I hesitated.
“Her voice is full of money,” he said suddenly.
That was it. I’d never understood before. It was full of money—that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals’ song of it. . . . high in a white palace the king’s daughter, the golden girl. . . .
Maybe it’s true that the super-rich sound different, and now science is proving that powerful people sound different as well.
Power in your pitch?
The journal Psychological Science reports that people in authority hold a steady pitch, vary their volume, and their speech is less strained than the speech of low status individuals.
According to Adam Galinsky, a professor at the Columbia Business School and a co-author of the paper, “The easiest way to exert authority is by speaking more loudly. But that can come across as yelling, which can turn people off. It’s not the volume, but the ability to control it.”
The experiment
In the experiment, participants were divided into two groups.
First, all of the participants established a baseline of acoustics (pitch, loudness, and resonance) as they read aloud. You know what pitch and loudness are. The resonance of a voice varies depending on where the sound is principally vibrating–the chest, the head, or the nose.
Next, one group was asked to remember a time when they were powerful, and to think of themselves as high-ranking people in the workplace. Conversely, the other group was asked to remember a time when they lacked power, and to think of a time when they held little status.
The two groups then read a second passage, and a sophisticated software program measured changes in everyone’s voice patterns.
Your self-perception changes your speech
The people who thought of themselves as higher ranking had a steadier pitch and varied volume. The people who thought of themselves as having little status sounded strained and less stable.
When a third group of students listened to the recordings, they correctly identified the voices of “higher ranking people” and “people with little status.” So, listeners are definitely picking up on these auditory clues–clues we’re not even aware that we are sending.
Dr. Galinsky adds that he doesn’t know if it’s possible to “fake it till you make it.” In other words, if you work with a voice coach to sound more powerful, it’s not certain that you will, in fact, gain power. But he does think it’s possible.
Sound like a leader
To back up his belief, he describes research on Margaret Thatcher’s voice. Apparently, she had voice training at one point in her career–(see this clip from the movie The Iron Lady). Audio clips of her recorded voice before and after her speech training reveal the exact changes to her style that are evident in this study.
His suggestion? When you want or need to, it can’t hurt to psych yourself into a mindset of when you had power. The body–and your vocal performance–may just follow. You’ll sound like a leader.