Hillary Wicht - WILD Tribe Summit

Wild Tribe Online Summit, where women influencers, leaders, and dreamers are learning how to tap into their deeper purpose through business and entrepreneurship. My name is Val Nichols, and I am your host for Today, and we have an amazing guest. She started out as an actress and a voice performer, and she quickly realized the power of voice and how voice inflection and body language could quickly influence emotion, reactions, and how much power it really had. We have with us today, Hillary Wick. She is a voice expert and a presence coach, and she is here to share with us exactly how we tap into our deeper power through using our voice. Welcome, Hillary.

Thank you for having me, Val.

I would love for you to share with the audience exactly what it is you do and why it's so powerful.

I'm an executive voice and presence coach, and I look at the way that our verbal and nonverbal cues actually create perceptions about not only who we are, but what we're capable of and the value that we bring to the table. And why this is so important is because, as you are aware, we use our voice all the time.

Mm-hmm.

The voice is how we extend the essence of who we are, everything that's in here or in here, you know, what we value, our ideas. Everything comes through the vehicle of voice. And the interesting part about that is, is that regardless of the fact that we use the voice day in, day out, it is the primary way of connecting with other people, we really don't give it much thought. And it becomes a really unconscious undermining of our message, of the way we're ultimately being perceived, and perhaps of our ability to really stand and own our authority and confidence. So the power within having your voice in the world, you know, I was studying behavioral psychology in college, and then I actually, my first career out of college was as a session singer for major label artists and as a voiceover talent. And so I spent in that career over 15 years really understanding how sound simply from my voice impacts the psychology of a listener, where I would have to quickly and believably change the sound of my voice to deliver all kinds of scripted messages, whether it was about love in the club or a cheetah running through the woods or a brand new razor. And I would have to make that believable. And I would have to target specific audiences and motivate them to take action simply by the way that I was delivering a message. And we see this again in our everyday life all the time. And it's not just for the executive and it's not just for females, but females especially have had a hard time finding their voice in the corporate workplace. And a lot of that is because most of the corporate workplace has been created around confines that are very masculine in nature.

Mm-hmm.

And I have a background in looking at the differences between male and female communication styles. And there are different communication rituals that males adhere to than females. And when we don't understand those, or when we're locked into one spectrum or the other, it makes it very difficult for us to cross-influence and be really able to understand and interpret meaning correctly rather than taking offense or being able to come in and kind of match wherever those individuals are so that we can create that relatability and have our voice at the table not only heard but also valued and respected.

That is powerful. I had heard you say on a video that I watched, you talked about how so many women are using voice cantantations and behaviors that are keeping them unseen, that are keeping them unheard, and that are keeping them playing small.

Absolutely. I would say overall, and these are generalizations, but they're generalizations because they've been studied and there's enough data that supports it's out there. So in general, you know, women, even as young girls, we're taught to take care. Mm-hmm. And so that means you don't be bossy, right? Don't be too bold. You want to make other people feel comfortable. We get those types of social messages all the time, and we begin to start mirroring them. And for women, it's a minimization of self in order to maximize the betterment of everyone else around them. And we can probably talk and/or think about a myriad of ways in which we do that as females, whether it be with our friends, with our partners, our children, our coworkers. And so it's just a, again, a conditioned tendency in us, mainly derived from our societal cues as what it means to be a good girl or a good female in the world. And we minimize, and we do that in several different ways. We can start to speed up our speech. So when I talk really, really fast, it gives the impression that maybe I don't really want to be seen or heard, or I just don't want to take up too much of your time. And what that actually ends up creating a perception of is not just, oh, she's a fast talker, but she's either nervous or she doesn't really believe that what she says is of value or that she deserves to have my time. So some other power leaks when it comes to women and keeping them in this minimized spaces apologizing, right? Someone comes and bumps into you and you look at them and say, oh, sorry, when it was them who actually caused the interruption in your space. And talking about ritualistic communication, it's not as if perhaps a woman when she says I'm sorry actually means that she's sorry. But if you're dealing with Typically a male who doesn't understand that type of ritual communication. They come from a different place in communication. They can interpret that as literal. And so now all you're doing is constantly putting yourself in a one-down position. And you can imagine from a psychological standpoint, if I constantly hear myself apologizing, what message is that giving to me as my right to be in the room? Be heard, be in the conversation. It really becomes a negative feedback loop. The other thing that we do is uptalk, and uptalk happens at this upward inflection at the very end of a word, and we use it often for a myriad of unconscious reasons. Most of the time it's because we're trying to come across as unthreatening, another social construct that we have been mirrored for a long time as women. Don't be threatening because, because it's not safe. And so we will more likely suggest something with an upward inflection rather than making a statement. And that's okay if you are making a suggestion or if you are posing a question, but it has become such an epidemic that it's in almost everything that we say, even to the, the, like the the seconds in which we meet someone, and I might say, hi, I'm Hillary Wick. Well, that's really sweet, Hillary, and are you sure about that? It makes us sound very unconfident, very ungrounded, young, instead of saying, hi, I'm Hillary Wick. So the latter is still warm, it's still not threatening, but it's grounded. And that's the balance that I'm always looking to create for my clients, whether it's female or male. We have access to this whole spectrum of how we show up and communication. And depending on our social structures, we've been encouraged one way or the other to fall on one end of the spectrum strongly versus the other. And we need to figure out where that is for us so that we can build out that other structure of the— or other side of the spectrum. For instance, for women, it's very easy for us, a lot easier for us than men, to create connection, collaboration, trust, buy-in, believability, because we've been taught the importance of those skills and they've been really encouraged in us. Vice versa, men really have a difficult time with those things from a communication standpoint, but they're very good at taking command, authority, appearing confident, where women aren't as well skilled in those abilities of communication. And so, we really actually have a lot to learn from each other. And it's those individuals that are able to access that full range of spectrum, because, right, folks, we're talking about these things as male and female. I'm talking about them as energies. I'm not talking about it as the way we identify as a gender. All of us as whole individuals have both female and male energies within us. And it's a matter of the permission level that we give ourselves to access those so that we then have more tools to choose from how we want to show up strategically. Because there's never one way that's better than the other. It's not right or wrong. I could say, you know, we want you to always come across with confidence, and confidence means that you might even increase your volume a little bit. I want a downward inflection. I want you to hit every single word. Well, that's not necessarily going to work if you are dealing with a disgruntled client and they're extremely upset and you're saying, I completely understand what you're saying. This is— you know, it's, it's It probably would be a better choice to soften the communication style if that was a particular situation and say, I totally understand. Wow. Yeah. Okay. Keep telling me about that. Right. So leveraging some of that communication style. So again, it's not to say that one way is better, right or wrong. It is a matter of looking at where we fall on the spectrum. Where are our—

Uncomfortable.

Unconscious habits and our unconditioned tendencies, and— or I should say conditioned tendencies— unconscious habits and conditioned tendencies. And are they serving us? Is it in alignment with who we really are and what we're trying to express, or who we're trying to be out in the world right now? So when we talk about voice as being powerful at the beginning of The, the call. It's powerful because voice isn't just about— it's not just about the technical aspects of communication. It truly is about being able to have yourself seen, heard, and valued. And that has a huge emotional, psychological, spiritual, mental toll on our being here on this planet.

So many golden nuggets in that. You gave us a ton of useful information, and it reminds me of a quote I heard you say where you talked about the fact that if there's a couple of candidates that are up and you might be the most qualified, you might be the most educated, you might be the best candidate for the job. However, There are certain things you can do that will prevent you from getting that job.

Yeah, we— I mean, language is used to create message. When we communicate, commune, right? Like commune. That's when we use language to express meaning. And that's what I'm trying to get people to understand. Oftentimes people can inform. It's not a matter of information. We have access to information 24/7. And when we go in for an interview or when we're pitching an idea, there's probably likely some other similar ideas out there or several other candidates that are just as qualified. But what seals the deal is, am I able to inform while inspiring? Because this is just based on really fundamental human psychology, but we make decisions based on emotion. And so you want to speak to people that stimulates that emotion, that stimulates those neurological processes that actually take place in the brain that are responsible for retention, trust building, buy-in. You don't want to be unconsciously leveraging the technical aspects of communication that are actually shutting those parts of the brain down. And stimulating fight-or-flight. That's not what we want to do. So yes, you can come in and say, I'm confident, I'm the right person for this job. Or you can come in and say, I am confident, I am the right person for this job. Same language, a totally different feel, different perception. Sound shapes perception. And perception shapes what's available to us as our reality.

Wow. Yeah, that was such a difference when you said, I'm confident, I am the one for this job. Like, the way it was perceived was so different. That's incredible when you think about it. And the thing that I hear come up the most is, especially when you're talking about women who are either starting out in entrepreneurship, maybe they're business leaders, whatever it is, that a lot of times they lack the confidence and the boldness to even ask for what it is that they want. So what advice do you have for the woman out there who might be in that place?

It goes back to that social conditioning that we've all had, and I think any woman that I've ever spoken to that is concerned about coming across too cocky You know, very uncomfortable taking responsibility even when they were the leader of the initiative. They would be like, no, but it was a team thing. It was we. I said, but you're not selling your team. You're selling you. And so we just have a lot of resistance. And if we look at history and whatnot and even just look at our current corporate cultures, there might be a lot of things that tell us that it's probably best not to do that. But there's a way to speak There's a way to stand in your value without sounding cocky. They are 2 very different things. And so I help women to start unraveling that and unpacking that a bit by, again, looking at those internal narratives, seeing what messages have been given to them around standing in their value, around advocating for themselves. If we've been given the, cues that that is just really unattractive and you just don't do that. Well, I can give you as many tips and tricks till I'm blue in the face, but if that's really your internal belief, it's not going to do much good. So it's really finding, you know, oftentimes I'm working inside out. I'm helping people find their voice within. I'm helping them uncover whatever narratives are there that are actually burying the authenticity of who the person is, removing them so that they can then come out and have their voice in the world. Because if you, if you can't hear your voice inside, you can't have it be heard in the world. It just isn't going to work. So oftentimes I am, it's that I really hold a strong balance between The psychology of what it means to have voice and the technical aspects of verbal and nonverbal communication and how they create perceptions, because you cannot have one without the other. You want to bring the whole person to the table so that you have power to choose how you show up. It's very similar to, you know, our wardrobe. You go in my wardrobe, you will not see 7 orange mock turtlenecks like this. You're going to see an array of things that all are an authentic expression of who I am, but they're just different versions of an authentic expression of who I am. And I get to choose based on who I'm going to see, what impact I want to have, the influence I want to create, where it's at, what everyone else is going to be wearing, etc., etc., etc. What version of my authentic self I get to bring into the room. And we don't think about it that way with speaking. We think that, like, A, we often just don't think about it at all, or B, we think we can only show up in the orange blouse because, well, that's who I am. No, you are so much more than that.

I love that you talked about, you know, women stepping into their power. Because there are a lot of women out there— I'm thinking about the woman who's watching right now— who maybe she's afraid to fully step into her power or to use her voice boldly because she might come across as threatening, like you talked about, or she might be afraid that if she pushes or steps out in her power that she'll come across as being a B, or she'll come across as—

A bitch.

You know, upsetting things or, you know, whatever it is that holds us back and causes us to be small.

It's about this balance thing. We have very few examples of individuals being both powerful and coming from heart, right? Taking command but also being kind. And it goes back to that spectrum. I can lean in and say, that is absolutely Not tolerable. And what can I do to support you so it never happens again?

Mm-hmm.

You know, that's a spectrum. And that's someone who's dynamic. That's someone who is going— who has met themselves deeply and then is able to connect and meet someone else deeply as well. Those are effective leaders. Those are effective orators. Those are effective people in the world, whether in their corporations or in their communities. And so often, yes, I would say 99% of the time women think it's too much. 99% of the time it's not enough. And I don't want to say that as to say like you have to do more, but what I'm saying is that you actually need to do less and that you need to take that like kind of dampering off. And it's, again, a reframe. Own your knowledge and expertise. Own your value. You're not saying, I'm better than everyone else in the world. You are saying, this is me, this is what I've accomplished, and I'm damn proud of it. And how can I support you? That is the difference. And it does, yeah, it does take, again, some unraveling and looking at some inner beliefs. And I have individuals, I have my clients practice. These things, you know, if they're interviewing or if they're delivering a pitch, it's like, let's get your value propositions down so you have them, and I want you to start really owning them.

In talking about that inner dialogue, I can only imagine there are quite a few women out there who are watching this and they're recognizing some of those behaviors, some of that inner dialogue, some of those hang-ups. within themselves and they're wondering, you know, this is great, this sounds wonderful to just step into my power, to own the power that I have and to use my voice in such a strong, powerful way, but how? What would you say to the woman right now who's wondering, how do I do this?

To change any habit, We have to intentionally practice new ways of being. It's just, and it has to be intentional. It's not just going to come because you have certain conditioned tendencies now that are habits. And those are always like, whatever the strongest habit is, it's going to win out. So, you need to make a conscientious, intentional choice to strengthen another muscle, right? So, if your muscle of, oh, I don't want to be too much, is nice, healthy, and strong, We need to do something else to counterbalance that. And one of the ways in which I really like encouraging people to get in touch with their inner voice again is through journaling, writing. And I take this from the morning pages in The Artist's Way, which was a really informative book for me in my 20s. And it's a front, back, and a front, and it's just complete Of anything that's on your heart and mind. And it's almost like a diary, right? And I didn't have— I think I actually did have diaries when I was little, but I didn't— I was not a girly girl. And I didn't— I guess I assumed that that was girly girl. It's funny that that just kind of came out. But, um, I am— I certainly am by definition. If having a diary or writing in a journal is girly girl, I definitely am now because I do it all the time. And it's a way for me to connect with me. To clear out the clutter. And it's a way for me to build trust with myself. You know, confidence is not about having the right answer all the time. It's not. It's trusting in what you know to be true in the moment and taking action on that. But if you don't trust yourself, you cannot have confidence. And so again, oftentimes as women, we are so encouraged to break trust. With ourselves for the sake of everyone else around us. I'm gonna go do that workout. Oh no, I won't. I'm gonna do this, this, this. I'm going to go, you know, spend that time in nature. Oh no, I'm not. I'm gonna go do this, this, and this. If you and I were trying to have a relationship, Val, and I kept flaking on you, it'd be pretty quickly evident that you would be like, I'm not interested in having a friendship with Hillary because she's freaking flaky. And she's not dependable.

Mm-hmm.

And she doesn't even call when she's not gonna show, she just doesn't show. But we do that to ourselves all the time, and then we wonder why there is a disconnect. And so creating that space, intentionally creating that space, place, and time to connect with us just for the purpose of connecting with ourselves, so that we can not only start hearing our voice, but we can start expressing Our voice through paper, right? But also building that relationship or rebuilding that relationship so that trust can be there, so that voice becomes louder. And so then we have more positive energy, momentum, and affirmation. And that's another thing. Sometimes in journaling, I will have certain clients choose affirmations that, that makes sense to them about really standing in their value. And it might sound really, really silly, but it works. And yeah, I've had some pretty tough-nosed clients that would say, Hillary, this is ridiculous. You know, this experience was so long ago. Like, I'm however old now. I mean, it was like 30-plus years. And I said, yeah, that's not how the body works. You might think that that experience is, is done, but what's actually happened is parts of you have become buried underneath that experience, and you need to go back and retrieve those parts so that you can have your fullest self in the world.

It's great you touched on that piece of the inner dialogue and how when we create space for that, things start to show up. And I believe that whether if it's you're working on your presence, whether if it's you're working on your business, those are the times that when you create space that they're going to pop up. And it's interesting how even in different industries, you know, with me being a business coach, you being a voice expert and presence coach, it's the same underlying things that are coming up. I mean, it makes total sense. It's just an interesting observation.

So good.

Yeah. So Hillary, if someone is interested in connecting with you or working with you, where can they find you?

My website at Hillary at— no, that's why I was gonna give my email. HillaryWicht.com. So it's H-I-L-L-A-R-Y-W-I-C-H-T.com. Um, has a ton of resources on it. There's videos, there's articles, and then there's various ways to connect with me. One way is to get on my mailing list, which I would suggest everyone to do so that you are in the loop on upcoming programs. I'm actually creating an online program that I think would be great for a majority of your listeners so that you can start to explore some of these things in the comfort of your own home and really get some grounded professional assessment and guidance on something that's so prevalent in our day-to-day but really isn't spoken about very much. And Yeah, so getting on my mailing list is one. And when you sign up for my mailing list, you can also be given a 10— or excuse me, 10— 3 tips to increase your confidence in seconds, which is really, really good. And it actually includes other tips that we haven't spoken about in today's meeting. So that will be advantageous for the listeners. And then moving forward from there, I have a breakthrough session that I conduct with all of my clients that are interested in more extensive one-on-one coaching and certainly can have a conversation with whomever is interested in doing that. But in that breakthrough session, you do get a voice analysis. You do get a chance to uncover your unconscious habits. We kind of list them all out for you. You get a customized exercise plan of different things that you could be doing to make sure that you're changing the way your, your current communication style is landing and so that you're having more intentionality, that it's landing the way you want to the way you're wanting to intend. And yeah, from there, it's— I do keynotes. And so you can potentially sometimes catch me in public. Most of the time I'm doing things for corporate organizations. But again, getting on my mailing list and checking my website regularly, you'll see the various opportunities that I have coming up. I have a TED Talk coming up that I'm going to be speaking on the— no longer the battle of the sexes, but a balance of the sexes. As far as communication styles go, and speaking a little bit about, you know, some of the things that we touched on today. And so that's in November, and I don't know when filming will be complete, but that will be something else that we posted as resource also.

I am so glad that you were able to connect with us today and share your expertise and your wisdom. There was so much great content in this talk. And we were able to really expand our mind and expand our thinking about how our voice, how our presence really tells a story about who we are.

Oh, absolutely. I'm happy to be a resource and an advocate for everyone out there and just really want to encourage everyone to, to have more of their full selves out in the world. It's important.

That is so beautiful. Thank you so much, Hillary, for coming on. For lending your expertise and your wisdom and for being a part of the conversation here in the Wild Tribe Summit.

Thank you.

And thank you everyone for tuning in. We will see you next time on your next episode of the Wild Tribe Online Summit.

Bye.