18: The Secret to Being a Great Speaker

Hey there. Welcome back, everyone. This is Molly McPherson and I am the host of the Confident Communications podcast. Right off the bat, I'm going to start with an admission. I am not reading this introduction from a script. I am speaking from the heart because I just learned how to become a better speaker. I've already conducted the interview with this week's guest. Gina Raison has taught voice and speech for over 16 years to individuals, organizations. She teaches in an academic setting, but she also teaches speakers in TED talks and TEDx talks. She is a very much sought after teacher of voice and speech, singing and public presentation. She spoke with me for an hour, almost an hour, about how to effectively use the voice. And I encourage you to to listen to this entire podcast because honestly, she offered truly game changing advice for me as someone who works as a speaker and someone who gives workshops. The tidbits that she gave me immediately changed how I present. And I know that this episode will do the same for you. Again, I just did this entire introduction with no script whatsoever because I learned something much from Gina. So have a listen. Hello, Gina.

Hi, Molly. How are you today?

I am well, I'm wonderful because I get to speak with you. I am looking forward to all of the information that you're going to share today, but I have to admit, I'm a little bit nervous too.

Okay.

Because when speaking with you, you are a vocal coach. So of course, every time I open my mouth, I'm going to be thinking, how do I sound? Am I breathing properly? So I'm very mindful of how I sound today, but I'm really looking forward to finding out any type of information or nuggets that you can share onto me and the listeners.

Wonderful. And you know, your trepidation is not uncommon. I think often when people find out what I do, their immediate response is to start really overthinking how they speak.

Oh, does that happen a lot? Like if you tell. So everyone speaks to you normally, and then as soon as they ask, oh, Gina, what do you do? And you tell them, do you see the freeze in their face?

Oh, it's sometimes just like this obvious shift in the tone of their voice. You know, they're perfectly normal, normal people. And then suddenly they become these odd people.

So the pacing is off, the breathing is off, the nerves come up. Well, exactly. So I am the podcast version of that person that you meet just by way of a secondary introduction. So I did introduce you and your background to my listeners. But tell us a little right now. If you were to explain, you know, what is it that you do day to day?

So day to day, in terms of schedule or just in terms of what my practice is?

What your practice is, because it's quite unique what you do. I'm sure there's plenty of people like you, but I think you have cobbled together a very unique skill set that you bring to your customers. So share that with us.

Absolutely. So I come from. I was an opera singer for almost two decades, so I come from a very voice centric sense, singing kind of place. And so all of my training initially was voice pedagogy. How to actually produce different sounds, amplify the voice, all of those things. I then started speaking and training speakers. And so I had to adapt a little bit to what are the needs of that market, kind of long story short, over the past almost 17 years, I have learned a lot about physiology and about body alignment and about presentation and neurology as it comes around with the voice. So it's turned into kind of a complicated but not so complicated little package.

Well, I hear, I hear less complicated, but more necessary. So tell me about the transition. You were an opera singer and then you transitioned into training, but then you're kind of now in that corporate level a little. In terms of presentation. Tell me what precipitated that? How did you go from the artistic side to more of that corporate side?

In some sense, it was completely organic. So as you start looking at what makes the voice tick, and for me, the questions were always, when the voice fails, why did it fail? So asking those questions opens doors and those doors open other doors. And before you know it, you're in this rabbit hole and you start thinking, well, why, you know, why should I have this knowledge that nobody else has? You know, voice isn't mystical and it shouldn't. And I don't believe that talent is really the mindset that we should be in. I believe that this is a craft, it takes time, and everybody has a voice. So why shouldn't everybody be able to fully express themselves with it?

The point you made about the physiological sense of the voice, I'm going to do that for part two, but part one, I do want to ask you this. In the voice itself, most people, I don't know if you would agree with me on this, they hate the sound of their own voice. And now with iPhone, social media and video and audio chats, people are constantly using their voice and hearing their voice. But I mean, always, it goes without fail. If someone sees a video of themselves, the first thing they say is, oh, My gosh, you look horrible. Oh, my gosh. I cannot stand the sound of my voice. Why do people struggle with the sound of their own voice?

I think there are two things at play. One, most people don't actually think about what they're trying to say and how they're delivering with their voice. So then what's coming out doesn't have their intention behind it. It has whatever random intention, the brain super, you know, superimposed over that process. So that's one thing. That realization of here is my expression, and I maybe just put it on autopilot. The second thing is that we can't actually hear ourselves. What we hear when we speak is this fabricated neurological concoction that the brain gives us. Otherwise, we hear ourselves in echo form all the time, so we don't recognize ourselves. When we hear our voices in recording, it sounds foreign to us, and we recoil from it because what our sense memory says is us, and what we're hearing is so disparate. But even if it's a good sound, we don't want to acknowledge it. As usual.

Yes. And I can say as a podcaster, the first time you hear your voice, it's that cringe moment. But then you just become used to it if you have to hear it. So over time, you get a sense of what you sound like to others. And hopefully some people end up enjoying their own voice or they don't mind it as much. I do want to touch on this idea now of the mind body connection and the voice and how what you think or what you're not thinking or maybe what you're not prepared about, what will show in its voice. So there's a tell there in the voice in terms of what the person is thinking. Could you tell us about that?

Absolutely. I like to say that the voice is a tattletale. It's just a terrible, terrible, terrible liar. So if you're not confident in what you're saying, you can take all of the gestures and public speaking tricks you have up your sleeve into a space, but the voice is gonna shake. It's not gonna have good tone. It's not gonna connect. People will smell something, and what will. What it ends up reading as isn't necessarily, oh, they're nervous. Sometimes it reads that they lack authority. Oh, that's interesting, because the audience isn't psychic. They can tell that something's wrong, but they'll define that in however way they find appropriate.

Tell me a tell for someone that isn't prepared compared to someone that is. They may feel that they are an imposter. Or maybe they really are an imposter and they don't deserve to be there. So you must sit in these talks and overanalyze everyone. I know I do. I've been in so many of them. But give me some of the tells that you've noticed with your experience watching other people speak.

I'll tell you that I don't spend a lot of time analyzing most people. I give people such a wide benefit of the doubt when I listen because I know what my tendencies are. I try to be very generous as a listener.

Yes.

But what I see is if someone is shuffling about in their notes or reading from their slides or handling things and moving them around, even if it's not actually content, that's an indication to me that they don't know what comes next.

Oh, so they perhaps haven't even done a run through, perhaps of the presentation. They may know the material, but they don't know the pacing or the run through.

Yeah. Or they have memorized it a certain way and now they've missed a line and they don't know how to recover.

Oh, interesting, interesting. So then let's do the other side of the coin here. How do you know someone's nailed it? That they feel they're prepared, they're confident. What does their voice, their gestures, their mannerisms, what are they doing?

So, interestingly, the first thing they're doing is that they are breathing with the room. At our base level, we are animals. We are an organism, and we love to share nonverbal communication.

We share it. Explain that.

Oh, yeah. So when you're in a room communicating, one of the best ways to command a room is to look out into that space, make some eye contact, and take a deep breath. What you will see happening is the people that are very connected to what you're about to say will. Will breathe with you in that moment.

Do you mean like you look and see if they're taking a deep breath along with your deep breath?

Yes, absolutely. So as I breathe and take a good deep breath and look at you, you start thinking a deep breath is a good idea. Because if the oxygen's good, the oxygen's good. I mean, at a very base level, we're all just trying to survive here.

Right? Okay, so let's talk about the breath again for a moment. Now, I give a lot of talks, a lot of workshops, a lot of training sessions. And I always. I mean, one of my tricks is I never say in terms of the verbal tricks, hey, I'm really happy to be here. Thank you everyone. Like I immediately eliminate that. I always, I always start with a bang up sentence, you know, just to get everyone's attention. Never ever occurred to me to think about the breath. Now you believe in kind of this art of breathing. So tell me more the importance of why that breath, or in this case that initial breath is so important.

Well, there is no sound without air. When we really come down to brass tacks, every single time you utter a sound, you are just exhaling. So if you didn't set up an inhalation for that exhalation, the quality of your exhalation is already compromised. So it's, you know, if you have garbage in, you'll get garbage out. If you have quality in, you'll get quality out. So good breaths on the inhale turn into good tone on the exhale. That's just basic mechanics, okay? Beyond that, everything in this body runs on oxygen. Every last thing. We think clearer on oxygen, we feel better on oxygen. Our color is better when we're oxygenated. And people trust us more and they trust the space we're in if we're all getting enough air.

Okay? So not to focus on this one area, but I am curious because I'm now going to use this. I'm absolutely going to take this and use this. When I'm starting. Is my first breath an exaggerated one where people know what I'm doing, like, okay, and I'm starting, Or is it a little more subtle?

I think it's subtle. I think it has to have intention. So I talk a lot about intention because the brain works on impulses. It's just a bunch of electrical currents up there sending signals around about what to do. But those impulses are directed by what we intend to to do. If I intend to take a breath so that I have enough air for myself and so that this room knows that I am dedicated to being here, so that this room knows that I am present with them so that they can become present with me because we're all sharing the same air.

Oh, that's interesting. Now, have any of your students given you feedback once they've tried this and they've noticed a change in that presentation?

Yeah, that's pretty much something across the board that as people start to use it and almost, I would say almost every student that I work with, this is the part where they're like, this is so not gonna work. This is the woo woo kind of like, you know, this can't be a real thing. But it's just Physiology. You know, it sounds bizarre because we are trained to hold still and not breathe enough rather than the most natural thing, which is to take breaths with regard to what we're about to do.

You had mentioned earlier about that mind body connection and how your voice can fail. Now, would you say a failure of the voice is dependent on something that's happening in your mind? So it's not mechanical, it's not anything that you're doing with your body that's causing it to fail. But what is that mind body connection when you're speaking and you're noticing that your voice is failing or you can't catch your breath? Is that nerves?

It can be nerves, but nerfs are again, a very complicated thing. Are you nervous? Because this is a high stakes situation and this really does mean something to you. Landing this presentation turns into more opportunities at work or turns perhaps into work. That's not fake. That's a real high stakes situation. But those feelings of adrenaline and all of those things don't necessarily make the voice fail. What can make the voice fail is what we tell ourselves about those sensations. So not necessarily the nerves or not necessarily the fact that it is high stakes. But if you're in your brain going, oh, I can't fail. This has to go well. And this like negative diatribe of, you know, language in our head, what you're not doing is taking a breath and staying in your content.

Okay, that's excellent advice. I'm going to give you one more on this before I move on to the next section because I'm very curious about this. What if there is a person in the room? So you're prepared, you're not nervous, you have your material, it's solid. But then a person walks into the room or they walk into the auditorium and they change the mood. They can even be the person that sucks the air out of the room. Like it's the person that's going to change your mindset. Is there any trick where you can almost reset your brain or try to reset to get the calm you back? Like if you're thrown by something, something, how can you get back on track?

Okay, so I'm going to quote a fabulous voice teacher who's no longer with us, Dr. Christopher Rosely, who said, salvation has brought a breath away.

Oh, I love that. I can see why you like that quote.

Yeah, it doesn't matter what happened. You can be interrupted by something. I mean, the podium could fall over, I mean, God forbid. But something. Things are always going to happen unexpectedly. You Know you could be prepared, look like a million dollars. Like, just know your content inside and out. But if the guy who broke your heart 10 years ago walks in, you're gonna take a breath.

And someone would say, why? Why did you.

Exactly. Whatever. You might just, you know, be suddenly possessed with the desire to throw a clipboard. But whatever it is, things can derail you at any moment. You have to acknowledge your humanity and just take a breath, collect yourself and move on.

Oh, that's such valuable, valuable information. And Gina, I am using that. Like, the next time I might even make a little post it note that says just breathe. I really enjoy that. Now you know what you are talking about because you are a former TEDX speaker in Cambridge, Mass. And you also train TEDx speakers in Cambridge, correct?

Yes, I was one of the voice coaches on the team for TedX Cambridge for just about three years and had last.

Well, could you share with me some of what kind of services do you offer future TEDx speakers that you worked with? What would you do for them?

So I would actually come in and deal with the functional voice. How the voices coming out of the body, how the breath is responding in the body, lining up the body. Because we hold a lot of body tension and nothing in the voice is isolated to the voice. We're not vocal cords and a set of lungs attached. There's a whole respiratory system that reacts to different musculatures that are connected pretty much throughout the body. So there is a through line of facial tissue. Facial tissue from the big toe on your foot comes all the way up the leg through your hip bone and connects to your diaphragm, which must move for you to breathe.

Oh, so do you want people to vision that? Like they have to think down to your toe and kind of open up.

The airway beyond thinking about it, we just loosen it. So there were physical stretches and exercises and just trying to make people aware what their body feels like when it is in its most dynamic place. I mean, a lot of us are also dealing with injuries and different limitations. Physically, you have to know what your body's bottom line is to see how much air you can get.

Now, as soon as you had mentioned the toe when I worked for fema, my career came to a screeching halt because my leg was crushed by a car. And so as soon as you said my toe was under a tire and I thought, oh, no, I'm never gonna be like an excellent speaker because I can't feel my toe.

No, I mean, your body has healed and it's adapted. So maybe it doesn't have that optimal textbook connection to what that tendon used to do, but it's modified your movements so that you can do what you need to do. The body will protect the respiratory system. It will do that without fail, if it can.

Oh, my gosh, couldn't that be a whole other episode? That the last thing to go is like, the breath? Okay, but again, you're talking about the importance of the breath. And when I speak, I feel the. I shift the importance to the material and the preparation, and I don't give any thought to the breath. And I think a lot of people share that, and this is valuable. It all comes down to how you breathe.

Absolutely. And your content will be energized by that. So if I'm going to tell you my name is Gina Rason, you know, that's, you know, that's fine. But if I take a breath and I said my name is Gina Razon, now, suddenly that has a little bit more loft, Right?

Okay, now could you tell me, you said that with the speakers that you work with, that you will do some exercises, like body exercise, vocal exercises, what else? If you can get into that, the TEDx secret trade craft, what do you share that if someone were to be listening to this, like in their car, you know, or at their desk, is there anything they could be, like a TEDx speaker, anything that you could share any type of wisdom for how they can prepare?

I think the best way to Prepare for a TEDx talk is to really be an expert in your subject matter, understand it, understand your place in it, and have that intention of, why, if I'm an expert in this, why do I want to give the TEDx Talk? If you want to give the TEDx Talk to sell more books, you might get a TEDx, but it's not going to necessarily have the impact. Is that really an idea worth sharing? An idea worth sharing is something that, when you think about it, you take a breath and you just must exhale those words into space. You have to create that through line. So There are different TEDx and TED talks given all over this country and internationally, and the ones that are very impactful vary so much in subject matter and even in how those speeches were structured and coached.

So to pass the Gina sniff test in the TEDx world, I would assume that you could watch the first three minutes of any TED Talk and you can tell if someone is speaking and breathing their passion as opposed to someone that's just selling their wares.

Absolutely, Absolutely.

Oh, that Is valuable. Now, speaking of TEDx, you were a TEDx speaker? I was, yes. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, and I watched your talk. I loved your talk. I want to play just your opening line. I want to share it with everyone, and then I want to talk to you about it.

You are wired to sing.

And now you're going to.

Everybody stand up. Oh, I'm so not kidding.

All right.

If you have a lower voice, you know who you are. It's probably most of the guys. Lower voices. I'm going to sing a pitch, you're going to sing it back to me.

Ah. Ah.

Awesome. If you have a medium voice, not too high, not too low, you're going to go, ah. Ah. Excellent. If you have a higher voice, you're going to sing.

Ah.

Ah. Okay. Lower voices.

Ah.

Middle voices.

Ah.

Higher voices. Ah. Now we get really risky. Lower voices come in and stay in.

Ah.

Middle voices coming. Higher voices coming up. That was amazing. You can sit down. So now you have just sung in three part harmony with 1200 of your new best friends.

Okay, now the first question I'm going to ask you, because you're trained in this. Did you have your audience do something physical? Was that a deliberate act?

Yes.

Why?

Yeah. So tedx Cambridge, when I did my talk, I was coached by their executive producer, Tamsen Webster, who was actually an exceptional public speaking coach and has an incredible system. Find the red thread. You should look it up. So much content in the world.

Yes.

So she. No one thinks like Tamsen. She's a genius in her field. And so as we were fleshing out what the talk was, you know, it just became obvious to her that I needed to have some physical component to the talk. And so we came at. Let's just start there.

Okay. Now the physical component. Tell me why again, like, why did Tamson say you. You in particular need. Instead of talking with the voice, you need to do something to capture them right away. So I'm just curious, why was that?

Because nothing that I do happens in the throat. This is the system I teach. The way that I envision voice is not in an isolated sphere. You know, I. Sometimes I've been playing around with the fact that what I do is I do design thinking for communication. It's a holistic, complete approach that starts with empathy and awareness and understanding how the entire human body works so that we can make the vocal part of that human body work with synergy.

Now, that design thinking, who would you be helping with that idea, that concept?

Yeah. So it's something that I do one on One with clients that sometimes I do that with corporations doing cohort training. It varies. I go into university sometimes and teach the students how to kind of express what it is that they're trying to do in the world in this kind of holistic way. So because there is no just the voice, with me, it was clear that we needed to start with something physical right away.

Oh, that's so interesting. Would you then recommend not everyone, but are there certain types of people that are speakers that they should use that type of tactic right off the bat to get someone moving and standing or just doing something physical? Is there some credence to that of why you'd want to get someone moving or doing something right away?

I think we do that always in preparation for a speech, try to get the speaker moving. But if we're going to do a physical demonstration at the beginning of someone's speech, it's because they themselves can embody that physicality. So someone who's very physically tight is not going to feel comfortable having a physical gesture at the beginning of their speech. It's not going to be true to who they are.

To who they are. Of course, yes.

At the core of all of this is authenticity. You can't try to be another speaker.

Oh, isn't that the truth? Isn't that the truth? I can tell an authentic speaker right off the bat within a second. I see if they're nervous, if they're prepared, and if they're speaking from the heart as opposed to speaking from the brain or the wallet.

Yeah, absolutely. So what I haven't said in any of this time that we've been speaking is I haven't said that we're looking for a particular type of tone or a particular type of speaker. We haven't talked about gestures or trade craft because that's not the point. The point is to connect to who you are so that you can deliver that truly into the room.

Yes, you start with the core.

Exactly.

And all the other self will either fall in line or tell you that you need to be in another profession. And maybe you're not made out to be a speaker, because I do. I think the best speakers are the ones, as I said, speak from the heart. Now, you had mentioned that some of your training and your corporate training is in that cohort, you know, the framework of a cohort. Now, I would assume that they do not split the cohort by gender, like, oh, now you're going to meet with a group of women and tomorrow we'll do the men have men and women In a room together. Do you. Are you very deliberate in your training and how you train both genders? Do you note it at all? Like, just talk to me about the gender and how that comes into play with communications and using your voice?

Well, it's interesting because we have a lot of, I will call it flotsam around the female voice. There's a lot of limiting language around how the female voice is allowed to enter corporate spaces. What do I mean?

Yes, please tell me.

Yeah. So if one of your high potential employees is female and young and using a little vocal fry or up speak, that becomes a corporate problem?

Yes.

If you have a young man in your corporation who has that same potential, you might never notice it.

You wouldn't notice any type of vocal fry or upspeak. Now, I have to say, not to generalize here, I hate generalizing. But the only time I hear vocal fry, and we should say that's that kind of people that speak from the voice, the very Kardashian way of speaking. The only time I truly hear it a lot and upspeak is with young women. But I know that's not the case. Maybe what you're telling me. Yeah, it's not noticing it.

It's generational. It's not just the young women. People who are predisposed to use that type of inflection go across gender, but we only ding women for it in a general way.

Oh, that's fascinating. Now tell me, the vocal fry. The vocal fry fascinates me. Why do some people use it? Is it an affect or is it truly how they were brought up to speak?

So there are a couple of things going on culturally that fry is just, you know, what valley girl speak was to California in a certain time period, and what different kind of generational accents that come forward, that kind of groovy 70s talk. There's just every generation has an affect to language that everybody who is not in that generation finds absolutely horrible. Okay, so that is part of it. Some vocal fry isn't benign, though. Sometimes vocal fry is present because of the generational thing, but sometimes the fry is an indication that the person is not using enough air in the way they produce their phrases. And if you tell them to take a deep breath and actually energize to the end of the phrase, miraculously, the fry goes away. So that isn't something they've been trying to affect. That is a breath problem.

Oh. So would it be accurate to say if you are working with someone who's trying to reduce the fry, you would Tell them to breathe more.

I'd start there. There are other vocal exercises specific to training a way that particular affectation. But the first thing you have to do is diagnose why is it happening.

And then the answer would be, well, because you're a millennial, and all millennials fry, right? No, but I get what you're saying. And when you go into a situation like that, Cor, are you telling someone, all right, you got to lose the fry, or are you telling them, let's modify it a little. You know, I could see there's a line there. Like, you know, if you come in, you're telling. You're telling them a certain affect in their voice is either, you know, it belongs here or it doesn't.

And I actually never do that. There is nothing about someone's voice, if they are producing it in a healthy way, that is my business to change. What I can do is say there is a socialized, professional range of sounds that you have to learn how to produce. So I don't really care what you say or how you say it when you're home or when you're with your girlfriends or when you're hanging out, but your bosses seem to care what you do between 8 and 5. So let's talk about how to help you learn that particular way of communicating. It's almost like learning an accent.

Yeah. Now that. That's interesting, because I do the same and same thing in my business and in public relations, and I work a lot in public opinion, where people of a certain generation, again, will say, I'm not going to change because some millennial wants me to do this, just because this customer is telling me this, and they don't want to change. And like you, I counsel them. It. You don't need to change. No one's telling you to change. But I'm just sharing with you the risk if you don't. And what you know, there's expectations in your line of business, or whatever it is, your role as a CEO, that if you don't change, then they may change it for you. So that's interesting, Counsel. You're just opening their eyes to the risk of it. Now, tell me if we're going back to this cohort session, so we talked about, maybe the generations will have different vocal affects. What about the genders and how they use their voice? Again, let's continue on that. What are some differences and similarities there?

So one of the main differences I find is that very often men speak with more confidence. And this is generalization. This isn't across the board, clearly, because there are different personality types in both genders. But men tend to speak with more confidence when they have less knowledge, whereas women, if given the same amount of knowledge, men sometimes sound more confident.

See, you're so good. You're such a good consultant. So what you're saying is that men have a tendency to brag more or to.

Right.

To put themselves up.

Yeah. It's not even that they're bragging. I don't think there's an intention of thinking. I don't know what I'm saying, but I'm gonna say it with confidence. I think it's just that when we create spaces that are built for a certain flow, we have built society that's meant to make it a little easier for men to move through it.

Yes.

It's easy to feel confident when the boundaries in front of you are fewer.

Yes. Oh, such an artful way of saying it. True. And then, so tell me the converse of that. Like what about women? What do women do?

So what women do, and interestingly, what they think is a weakness, that's a strength. Women listen more. Women read the room better. Yes. They notice who's in the room more. And that's a real power that I try to help my trainees tap into. You've observed all of this. And while it can fill you with fear because you notice everything, but you've just noticed all of these things that perhaps another speaker wouldn't have caught onto at all, you now know exactly who's here and exactly how many of them you have, whose attention you have and what the room is feeling like. Why not use that knowledge that you now have as a. As a powerful strength rather than something that you consider not important?

So again, you're going into either a cohort session or one on one training and telling them you don't necessarily have to change the way you think. Like you're not getting into their brain, but you're telling them, take what you have. And I'm going to show you how to harness what you have and then use it to help you present yourself either vocally, non verbally, with the use of gestures and mannerisms.

Absolutely. I rarely get into gesture and mannerism because I think that those come organically when you're connected to the rest of the body.

Yes.

So I have yet to coach someone into how to gesture once they're really connected.

The body doesn't lie. Correct.

The body doesn't lie. And so if you're a person who speaks with your hands and you're comfortable, you're going to gesture. If you're a person who never speaks with your hands and you just put your hands down but you're comfortable, that's going to look natural.

Is it possible to speak too much with your hands?

I suppose. I suppose it could be, if it's become something where you're speaking with your hands and you don't know why your hands are moving anymore, like they're on autopilot. You know, the kind of thing where someone's doing this and this is the way they speak. And now the habit of waving their hands around is just, you know, it's actually making my voice pace oddly to try to do that. But that's just a habit. You know, if you always, like, twirl your hair around a finger, you're always going to twirl her head around your finger. So gesture for its own sake. Like, I'm just going to do this gesture because I do this gesture. Yeah, that can get annoying really easily, actually.

Yeah. I asked because just this morning, I had to approve a number of photographs, and I noticed all the photographs, they were of me. Every photograph of me speaking is usually my hand is up somewhere. Like, I never. I am never speaking with my hands down at my side. But then I always. Then I kind of connected to the feedback that I get. And most people will say to me, oh, my goodness, you are so passionate. It's obvious that you care so much about what you talk about. So what I'm tricking myself to believe is that I'm using my hands, not reflexive and as a habit, but that it's just. It identifies how. How much passion I do have when I speak about what I love to do.

And that's very likely. I'll tell you what, though, the brain is a very interesting place. So now that we've had this conversation, next time you gesture, you're gonna ask yourself why. Yeah. And either the gesture will hold because it's right, or you'll question it.

Oh, my gosh, Gina, you're going to be in my head now in every single talk I give. Now, before we move on, I do want to ask one more thing. So earlier in my podcast, on episode three, I had interviewed a neighbor of yours in Cambridge, Ellen Mahoney. She's the head of human resources at Harvard Business School. And I had talked to her about when she is interviewing on the other side of the desk. So I wanted her to share the differences that she sees between a male candidate and a female candidate and her insight Which I found fascinating is she said, you know, which reinforces what you said, is that men are more comfortable speaking directly about themselves. Where a female candidate will use pronouns like we, you won't hear I's, you'll hear, you know, we did this, we did this, we worked on that. We'll. Or when speaking about themselves, they won't say, I think I'm good at this. They will instead say, I'm told I'm good at organizing. I'm told I'm good at Excel, you know, whatever it is. Do you touch on that in your training at all?

I do, I do, But I come at it a little differently. Rather than point out where there are deficiencies in the way their confidence may be coming into the room, I asked them, what are they passionate about? What are they good at? What makes them excited? Okay, well, it's interesting when you get people talking and you kind of flesh out what their heart gets a little excited about. Physiology doesn't lie if you're breathing deeper and your heart's beating faster. Because now we're talking about the things that you are really connected to. You're going to show me your true language, how you speak about yourself, and then we just have to train you to keep doing that when it matters in the interview and the presentation out in the world.

Okay. So the dummy's guide for your training would be this is that any obstacle that you come up against, whether you're in a job interview or you're presenting or you're on stage, always default to your passion and your breadth, of course, and then that will kind of lead you. That will be the breadcrumbs that you need to have a successful, you know, communication interaction or successful presentation. It's just. It's going back to your core.

Absolutely. The thing that I've noticed as a through line, through many years now, as coach and even as a performer, is that when it comes to brass tacks, at our core, we want to be heard, we want to communicate, to connect to other people. So if you listen to that, if you let that be your true north, that part of you that doesn't want to go live in a cave, that part of you will show you how to be strong in the moment.

Now, listening, you moved on to another area that is so important in communication. And I did an episode on listening.

And.

And one of the tricks of listening that I've learned now as a parent of a teen, I've just fully incorporated this into my parenting is instead of telling, I listen. I'm Trying to become a more active listener. Whereas where parenting gets difficult, I find that I'm a passive listener. But it's that active listening, which to me means you just stop talking and you truly focus in on what they're saying. What could you share with someone about, like a trick again, how can you. I don't want to say trick yourself, but how can you be mindful about listening?

So it's interesting. It's not a trick, but I think about when I'm listening to someone speak, even if I don't think this person has anything salient to say, or if I'm not interested, or perhaps for reasons that are real, this person doesn't speak to me. I make myself listen because I owe myself the space to hear what's coming at me and make choices based on data. So you're going to make a lot of choices in your life based on a gut check, and that's great, but your gut check should match the stuff that's actually happening in the room. So if somebody tells you. If somebody comes at you, and let's say, for example, it's somebody you don't like at work or who. Who belittled you in a meeting, or somebody, you just, you know, you can't connect with them, but they come and they're telling you about something that's happening where you need to take part, and this is important. You don't want to listen to them. You really don't want to listen to them because they're that. That person, you know? So you owe yourself in every moment to decide whether the reason you're not listening actively is because of what's actually happened or because of the story you're telling yourself.

Explain that. The story that you're telling yourself about the other person.

Yeah. So if the. If let's, you know, let's say Joe at the office just, you know, he cut me off in the parking space, and then he was mean in the meeting, and now he's coming this afternoon to talk to me at my desk. I'm already predisposed to kind of like slam Joe's finger in a file jar. Right. So. So when Joe starts walking towards me, when I notice Joe, I'm already not Joe.

Yeah.

So when Joe starts telling me about this thing, I really do need to know or I need to take part in, or he might not even think is important, but could be very important. If I listen carefully enough, I could be the person who could make that project, that presentation, that whatever that Joe thinks is not important actually Good. You know, there are all sorts of ways that this comes into space. If I follow my gut check and just check out on Joe, I won't know what he's trying to say. But if I give myself the space to listen, is it always going to be something valuable salient? No. But I should give myself the opportunity to know fully what is happening in that moment rather than deciding based on the story I told myself, which is, Joe is coming over here to bother me again, Joe is coming over here to inconvenience me again, or oh my goodness, why do I have to deal with Joe?

So for anyone that has. So if I'm listening to you correctly and what I hear is if you have that oh no, it's Joe moment, when Joe starts speaking to you, that's not a time for you to kind of roll your eyes and not listen. Or if he gives a launching point in the conversation where then you can say, oh, well, that happened to me once, because that's really not listening. It's letting them speak, letting Joe speak, and then finding that one piece that you really can connect on. So you can either continue the conversation or learn something from it.

Absolutely. I mean, true connection is not. Is rarely verbal. It's interesting because we're so verbal. We are so verbal. But a lot of the deep connection that happens in our lives and we know this inherently isn't verbal at all.

Right.

You know, we go back to kids. When somebody hands you your baby, you don't like bond with your baby because you start gushing about how cute the baby is. Sometimes there are absolutely no words in that moment for what's happening.

Oh, absolutely. I know there's a study that goes way back. It's like 60s or 70s, and it's been debunked, you know, since then. But roughly they're saying that only 6% of our communication that is understood is based on words. And the rest is. Is nonverbal. And a big part of that too is in the face. Like people are just watching other people's facial reactions and what they're doing. Non verbally.

Yeah, we have. I mean, it's not really 6%, but we have so much communication happening. We can tell how good the air in here is. Is it stale? Is there a lot of oxygen? Is it warm in here? Is it cold in here? Is that person comfort comfortable here? Just from how a person is walking through a room, breathing without even looking at them? But, you know, we do have so many streams of communication and it behooves us to Avail ourselves of all of them. Sometimes we think our only way to make a connection with someone or our only way to seem valuable in a conversation is to interact verbally. Like make sure everybody knows I'm in the room by chiming in. Oh, yeah, I agree. Or, or aha. Or whatever it is we feel like, oh, I'm in this meeting, I have to show I'm in this meeting. But how much more powerful is it if you listen carefully and then go, wait a second, this thing that came after this thing. Those things don't connect. So can you clarify point X or what I heard you saying so and so doesn't track with what I heard. So and so saying, you know, things that no one catches.

Right, right.

I mean, it's kind of obvious to us. You know, you go into a meeting sometimes and everybody's talking and then after the meeting there are hundreds of emails to try to figure out what happened in the meeting.

Yes, that is so true. That's so true. Now, I mean, I work as a consultant and so I have a home office and another office, but thankfully I don't have to sit in meetings all day. Like that's been eliminated, that kind of corporate aspect of my life. Thankfully. But earlier this week I was in a meeting, I was in Washington D.C. i was in meetings all day and I was doing these self checks throughout the day. Am I learning anything? Am I like, I was so grateful for my, for my role because that's a lot of active listening where you have to take all that information in and it's exhausting. So that's why I think meetings are so unproductive, because it's a group of people not listening or half listening.

Yeah, it's true.

Now I want to go back to the voice again. Now you are trained in singing. I mean, that's clearly your passion. And you sing in your TEDx talk too. I know. I love another exercise where you ask the audience to sing. And for me, I thought immediately, like, I'm one of those non participatory people where someone asks a thing saying like, oh boy, you know, But I thought, wow, she's doing it. She's getting everyone in and excited about it. It's such a great vocal exercise. Is there a value to singing, not just using your voice, but what about singing for the, for not like the non classically trained, like, you know, but talk to me about singing.

Okay, so singing is pretty much the birthright of every person who breathes air.

Such a powerful statement. Now, is there a caveat? Do you have to be a good singer. Or just sing.

Nope, just sing. So, interestingly, there's a lot of research happening around this, but there's really good data to suggest that we sang before we spoke.

Oh, you mean like the coos? That's melodic speaking.

As in the human organism, the vocal cords have a grunt function, and that grunt function became singing and then speech. Now, we don't know that for sure, but that's one of the prevalent theories right now. Language was acquired.

Okay, is this an in utero thing, or is this once we're born?

No, we're talking about early humans. When humans went.

Oh, early humans.

Yeah. So when I went from. When, you know, Jane, you know, Neanderthal went from grunt to something more than grunt, it was probably from grunt to singing. Now, again, the caveat is we don't know that for sure. It's just there are indications that that is how that happened.

Wow. Isn't that interesting, if you were to look back at everything that you've learned about the grunting caveman, that they could actually be singing?

They might have been singing, and at some point, they probably were singing. What happens in singing, and this we do have great data on, is that singing improves the physiology. It makes you oxygenate more efficiently. It helps your vagus nerve, which is the nervous connective tissue between your brain, your respiratory system, your heart, and your digestive system. It helps it work more. I want to say, in concert. There's a lot of innervation that comes from the vagus nerve. It's a very complicated system. It works better in people who sing on a regular basis.

Oh, now, I'm making a bit of a leap here. But would singing be akin to meditation?

It has a lot in common with meditation.

Probably more effective than meditation.

Well, whereas meditation takes the brain into kind of a more dominant alpha wave pattern, that kind of big wave relaxation space, which we want to kind of use a little bit of that during our singing and speaking. That's another talk in and of itself. But singing does tap into that. But singing also uses the organs of respiration in such a deep way. And we can't forget that this organism thrives on oxygen and how we process it. Every tissue in your body is hungry for oxygen.

So if we're sitting in our car alone, would it be safe to say, if you are going to a meeting or a presentation or something that you're stressed about, that you should turn up the car radio and sing? That would calm you down?

Yes, yes, yes, yes. Every day. Yes. There are so many People that don't sing sing because they say my voice isn't beautiful or my voice isn't. It doesn't sound good or I can't maintain pitch. And those are all trainable things. So you can help your voice by crafting yourself a better voice. That has always been true. Let's say you're not going to do that. You're not going to go train yourself into a better voice user. Do it anyway. Just do it anyway. Because. Because you deserve it. Because your body wants to. There's a reason you find yourself humming and you find yourself singing in odd places. And why people sing in the shower and why they sing along with the radio. It's not because they hate themselves. It's because their body wants it.

Oh, they can't help themselves.

They cannot help themselves.

My daughter, my 14 year old daughter is going to be so thrilled when I tell her because she's been singing Bohemian Rhapsody and panic at the disco throughout the entire house and the scene. Siblings just yell at her. It makes her crazy. But when I play this podcast and say, quinn, listen to what, what they're saying, the siblings now will have to put up with it. And it's true. I mean, she's like the happiest kid out of the four. I have to say. Maybe the singing has something to do with it.

I mean, there's. The science we have on this right now is so deep. I mean, immune responses improve. So many things are greatly affected by just singing avocationally for yourself.

Oh, my gosh. Well, I know Quinn thanks you, my daughter Quinn. Now, I just want. I just want you to. We're gonna wrap up here, but I don't want to go before you mention your business and such an incredibly unique business. And I think if there's ever a definition of the word niche, it would be what you do.

And.

Okay, so something that I'm just connecting right now. You have a program. It's Grow Voice. That's the identity there. But am I noticing is the GR stand for Gina Raison? Is that where we get. Is it?

Yes. So my first company was Gina Raison Opera Works, which was my opera company I had as a fledgling opera singer years and years ago. So grow happens to be the acronym for that old company, so it's a nod to where I came from. Plus, it's such a great word.

Oh. I mean, any branding expert would say this is fascinating. It works perfectly. It aligns with everything that you do. Tell us about what you do right now.

So GrowVoice is a functional Voice Studio. So we are dealing with all sorts of people in different walks of life, from someone who's just trying to get ahead at work to someone who's actually trying to break out as a speaker. There are several clients in the studio who are running for political office and talking all of the time. Really.

So do you get names? Do you get names in your office?

We get some names, but, you know, we don't reveal them, of course.

But now you. I just. It. Just answer this for me, because we border New Hampshire. Are you getting any candidates that come in on their way, like presidential candidates that are coming on their way up to New Hampshire? Anything like that?

I don't have any president, and I haven't had any presidential candidates into the studio. But any of you who are out there, give me a call. Oh, I'd be totally open to that, but I haven't had that. A national campaign. I should say a presidential campaign yet.

Yes. Now, you're located in Cambridge, and politically, you know, Massachusetts politics, I mean, it's so rich with its history. I would assume that a lot of those candidates are not trying to lose their Boston accents, that they might want to hone it. Or am I wrong? Are they trying. Is anyone trying to lose it?

People are trying to be heard and understood. So no one wants to lose the accent of where they came, especially not here, where there's so much pride of place. But sometimes little alterations have to be made for vocal health or because some words just don't. You can't understand what is being said. So there are slight alterations you can make without deviating somebody's natural native accent.

Okay. So would you get someone off the street? Hey, I'm Joe. I'm from Saugus, and I'm trying to lose some of my Boston accent. You know, people tell me I'm wicked annoying. Would you help someone like that?

Yes. I have had people in the studio who have those sorts of edges, and we can smooth them out. I mean, accent's an interesting area because we have accents that are from Native American English speakers, and then we have accents from people for people who come from other languages of origin. And in all cases, all we're trying to do is get people to communicate better. I don't really believe in scrubbing the accent out of your life, because that's who you are. I mean, there are people who do that, and there are people who will take someone through a process to make them all sound like they came from the same place. Go to those people. I don't do that. I want people to communicate well, but I want them to be themselves while they do it.

Oh, Gina, this was such a valuable episode. I mean, for me. So I know so many of my listeners are going to appreciate. I felt like we got a little of that one on one consultation with you, and you offered such valuable insight.

Wonderful. I'm really glad I could help. And if people take nothing else away from the session, I hope they understand that their voice is theirs and that they can improve it and that they should, should. And that they should sing.

And they should sing. And also you shouldn't walk away from the accent that you have, that it's okay to smooth an edge here and there, but it's really about your core, embracing who you are. And if you ever go off course or get nervous, just bring that breath into it. And then sing Queen and Freddie Mercury at any chance that you get in your car.

Correct? Absolutely. I mean, everything you need is within you. You might not know how to unlock it, but it's all there.

Okay. Well, Gina, thank you so much. This was so valuable. And I know I'm traveling next week to speak. I'm doing workshops, and I'm also giving. I'm speaking as a keynote speaker. I am absolutely walking out on that stage with you. You have now officially rented space in my head, and I know it's going to be tremendously helpful to my work in the future and I'm sure many, many other people that are listening today. Thank you so much.

Wonderful. You're very welcome. Thanks for having me, Molly. I appreciate it.

I want to thank Gina for sharing such valuable advice. It was like an hour's worth of one on one training. And I know her advice works because I used it myself. The week after we recorded this interview, I used that breathing technique in front of a large room of people. I was giving a talk on crisis communication, and I wasn't that nervous, but I really wanted to make a determined effort to use the breathing technique. So in the minute before I was scheduled to speak, I stopped and I took a few deep breaths, which I will post to my Instagram feed so you can see what I did. But as I started my talk, I started with that one visible breath and waited to see if anyone would follow. And you know what? They did. A calm came over me, and I can tell that it set the tone for the talk. It works. So I implore you, try it. If you're ever in front of a room of people, whether it's large or small, give it a try. I guarantee it will work. If you want to learn even more about how to become a powerful speaker, you can download my free cheat sheet, Power Speak. Weak Speak. It's about how powerful is your speaking? How powerful is your message? Your because what you say and how you say it speaks volumes about who you are, and it determines whether other people will listen. So grab your Power Speak, downloadable today. You can find it at mollymcpherson.com PowerSpeak it will help you communicate more effectively. Thanks so much for listening to this week's episode of the Confident Communications Podcast. I would love it if you would share this episode with a friend and and subscribe to the podcast. And if the information resonated with you, be sure to give it a review so I can continue to bring you valuable information about communicating in the 21st century and beyond. We'll talk to you again next week.