How to Speak with Confidence and Sound Better

Have you had the experience of speaking with someone, and all of a sudden, your mouth fails you? Your words come out merged and jumbled, and your sentences are incomplete and fragmented.

You might even be great with the written word or speaking with close friends. So when you can’t speak confidently, it can feel like wearing a straight jacket on your confidence. 

If this sounds like you, you’re not alone, and there’s a way out of this conundrum. In this article, we’ll go over every tactic you’ll need to know to learn to speak with confidence.

What Are Speaking Skills?

Speaking skills encompass the ability to convey information, emotions, and ideas effectively and clearly through verbal communication. Here are some of the most valuable speaking skills in the world of interpersonal communication:

1. Clarity: The ability to express ideas clearly and understandably.
2. Articulation: The physical ability to pronounce words clearly.
3. Pacing: Controlling the speed of speech to match the context and purpose of the conversation.
4. Volume control: Adjusting how loud or quiet you speak to suit the environment, group size, and context.
5. Vocabulary: Employing a broad and appropriate range of words to express ideas precisely and engagingly.
6. Attunement to the listener: Noticing what the other person cues into and guiding your speaking to match their interest.
7. Emotional intelligence (EQ): Understanding and responding to both your own and the audience’s emotions.
8. Wit: Incorporating humor and quick thinking to make your interactions more engaging and memorable.
9. Persuasion: Skillfully presenting arguments and influencing the audience’s thoughts or actions.
10. Storytelling: Using narrative techniques to make your points more compelling and relatable.

Why Speaking Skills Are Crucial

To answer this question, Vanessa Van Edwards (founder of Science of People) talked with Roger Love, one of the world’s leading voice experts! Watch below:

He has worked with stars such as:

• Selena Gomez
• Tony Robbins
• Gwen Stefani
• John Mayer
• Keira Knightley
• Angelina Jolie
• Bradley Cooper
• Joaquin Phoenix 

And fine-tuned their voices, making them sound amazing! For the video series “The World’s Most Interesting People,” Roger told Vanessa the exact strategies he used with these stars to make their speaking voices sound better.

Here’s the BIG idea:

Your voice can change your life.

And the science proves it. In 2017, Yale did a study^{1https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/listeners-glean-emotions-better-from-voice-only-communications} that confirmed this fact. They found that what makes you believe someone, like someone, and trust someone is the sound of their voice.

Not to mention, improving your speaking confidence can:

• Create professional opportunities through job interviews, networking events, and workplace interactions.
• Give your voice more weight so people take you more seriously. 

• Improve your persuasiveness to help with negotiation, sales, or leadership amongst friends. 
• Empower you to voice your opinions and stand up for yourself.

So, in this article, I’ll cover everything you need to know about how to speak with confidence and sound better. Are you ready? Let’s go on a vocal journey!

Gather Data

First and foremost, it’s important to know how you sound. Let’s first watch a video on how to improve your voice:

Did you know we sound different depending on the situation we are in? For example, imagine how your voice sounds in these three different scenarios:

• alone on the couch, reading a book
• with a good friend or two, enjoying a fun conversation
• on center stage, giving a presentation to an audience of 1,000

You may find that your voice is low and slow when you’re speaking to yourself, but with your friends, it gets higher and faster because it increases your energy levels. And when you’re giving a presentation, your normally slow and steady vocal rate suddenly increases. 

Once you’re aware of how different situations and emotions affect your voice, you can get clear on where to practice.

Public speaker and self-development author Brian Tracy recommends recording yourself in a few different contexts and tracking how your voice changes. 

Action Step: Record a part of your conversations in the next few days when you:

• talk to a client
• talk to your parent or your child
• present in a meeting
• talk to yourself in the car
• chat with friends

Notice where you sound the most and least confident.

Read a Book to Your Cat (or dog or imaginary friend)

Part of improving your speech is just practicing speaking slowly, articulately, and deliberately. Getting your brain and your mouth used to speaking big and clear.

Action Step: If you have a pet, try reading a book to them. If you don’t have a pet, you can use a stuffed animal. Practice speaking deliberately and mindfully every night for just 5-10 minutes, and you’ll most likely see an improvement.

Call Customer Support to Practice

One unique and practical way to improve your speaking confidence is to call customer support lines. This might sound unconventional, but it’s an effective method to practice real-life conversations in a low-pressure environment.

Find a legitimate reason to call, like inquiring about a product, seeking help with an issue, or asking for information on a service. This gives you a real scenario to work with.

Action Step: Call customer support for a product you’re interested in, and practice any of the following:

• Speaking slowly
• Articulating clearly
• Annunciating
• Speaking with confidence

After the call, reflect on your speaking. Did you convey your points effectively? How was your pace? Did you use any filler words?

Don’t Turn Statements Into Questions

Have you heard of the term up talk? It’s when you raise your inflection at the end of a sentence, which can make a statement sound like a question. Here’s a quick video that shows what uptalk sounds like:

Speaking with up talk conveys uncertainty and a lack of confidence. It’s like placing a question mark where a period should be. This habit often roots itself in a desire to appear agreeable or non-confrontational, but it can undermine the authority of your words and make it sound like you’re seeking approval. 

One way to dial in your confidence is to send your uptalk packing.

Action Step: Just like in the video above, record yourself reading a few sentences. First, record yourself doing it in up talk. Then, record yourself doing it in the down talk.

Watch both recordings and notice how each makes you feel as a listener.

If you want a quote to read, here’s a fun one from Terrence McKenna:

Nature loves courage. You make the commitment, and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream, and the world will not grind you under; it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it’s a feather bed.

Slow Way Down

Do you struggle with the urge to rush through speaking? Where do you feel pressured to spit your words out quickly, which leads to jumbling up what you meant to say and making your speechless, coherent, and impactful?

 This often stems from a belief that you need to prove your worth quickly or a fear that others aren’t genuinely interested in what you have to say. 

If you can slow down your speech, it can help you collect yourself and say things with more composure and confidence. The average speech rate is around 135 words per minute^{2https://virtualspeech.com/blog/average-speaking-rate-words-per-minute}.

Here’s a video that’ll help you slow down:

Action Step: The next time you’re at a store, try asking an employee questions at half your normal speed. Whether it’s ordering from a barista or asking a grocery store employee where the yams are.

Even go as far as to make a game of how slow you can ask these questions. You can also practice strong eye contact to boost your confidence.

Assume People Want to Know What You Have to Say

Imagine two scenarios. 

Scenario 1: You’re sharing about your day with a friend, but you feel afraid that you’re boring them. Every time they look away, even for a second, you’re worried you’ve lost them. Anxiety creeps up your body and through your words as you desperately hope you don’t lose their attention.

Scenario 2: You are sharing your day with a friend, and you know they feel engaged, curious, and interested in what you have to say. Every time they look away, even for a second, you assume they’re taking in what you shared. A relaxation glides up your body and through your words as you speak freely, knowing that your share is being received.

You can probably guess which scenario will lead to great speaking confidence!

The reality is people aren’t as uninterested in you as you might think. Most of the time, people are worried about what you think of them! And you can also gather more interest from them by holding the frame that they are interested in you.

There is a psychological theory called the looking-glass self^{3https://lesley.edu/article/perception-is-reality-the-looking-glass-self#:~:text=The%20looking%2Dglass%20self%20describes,worth%2C%20values%2C%20and%20behavior.}, which refers to how we view ourselves based on how we think others view us.  

And we can use different perspectives to shift how we think others view us. 

Try it out for yourself and see if you discover anything.

Action Step: Ask a friend if you can practice this with them. Try these steps:

1. Set a timer for 1 minute and share about your day with a friend. Have your friend listen with a neutral expression. However, while you share, assume that they don’t care what you have to say. 
2. Shake it off!
3. Set a timer for 1 minute again and share about your day; again, have your friend listen with a neutral expression, but this time, assume that your friend is fascinated and engaged.
4. Reflect afterward on what you noticed.

This tip will also help the quality of your conversations. And if you’d like some more ideas on how to have more fulfilling conversations, you might enjoy this:

Toss Your Fillers

In the quest for confident communication, one hurdle many face is the overuse of filler words like “um,” “uh,” “like,” and “you know.” These words often creep in when we’re unsure or trying to buy time to think. 

While it’s a common habit, reliance on these crutches can chop at the clarity and impact of your message. Using too many fillers will make you come off as less confident.

The good news is that with awareness and practice, you can reduce their frequency, speak more succinctly, and deliver a clear message.

Action Step: Attend a local Toastmasters Club!

Toastmasters International is a global organization dedicated to skill development in speaking and leadership. It’s essentially a group of friendly people who gather in every major city to practice public speaking together. 

And if you choose to go up to speak, someone at the meeting will track the filler words you use and let you know!

The idea of practicing public speaking might sound terrifying, though all good things are just on the other side of our comfort zones.

Use a Vocal Warm-Up

A vocal warm-up is key to speaking with confidence. Here is a video showing some nice vocal warm-ups:

Yes, they might sound a bit silly. But if you’ve ever hopped on a call when you haven’t spoken to anyone all day and noticed your voice sounds like… well, blah… you’ll probably benefit from a vocal warm-up.

Think about it this way: your muscles need to warm up before a run. Your voice also needs to warm up before a speech, presentation, or call. 

Here’s a go-to vocal warm-up exercise called “Goog” that’s both fun and easy from vocal coach Roger Love. 

The exercise sounds like this: “Goog goog goog goog goog goog goog.”

• Start with a comfortable or low starting pitch for the first “goog.”
• Say “goog,” and each time you say it, increase your pitch until the fourth “goog.” 
• Starting with the fifth “goog,” decrease your pitch until you hit the final, seventh “goog.” You should end up back at the starting pitch.
• Repeat this exercise for a few minutes or until your voice is ready to rock and roll!

The Goog exercise is designed to prime both the low notes and high notes in your voice so that you sound confident and clear—so when you walk in the room, you’re coming in as an amazing, finely-tuned instrument. And when do the words come out? They flow out in a stream of beautiful harmony!

Action Step: Before you walk into a meeting…before you walk into a networking event… before a conversation….and before a speech or a pitch… carve out a few minutes to warm up your voice.

Check Your Tone

If you’ve ever wanted to check how your vocal tone is during a meeting or conversation, worry no more! You can develop greater self-awareness by tracking when you sound positive, negative, frustrated, or happy in your meetings.

The app called Poised: Speaking Tones and Auto-Record allows you to do just that. You can think of it as an “autocorrect” for your voice, as each time it senses your vocal tone becoming angry or frustrated, or even if it catches you rambling, it’ll send you a real-time alert to adjust your speaking mood—this is super helpful during meetings when you could use an extra helping hand.

Stand Ready to Speak

It’s not just your breathing and vocal cords that make your voice sound better. Public speaking coach Kate DeVore says that when public speaking, it is essential that you stand or sit with your back straight. 

This good posture makes your voice stronger and more clear by not only allowing you to breathe deeper but also by communicating confident body language.

This is one of the most important tools, and you can apply this not just to public speaking but to any conversation!

The reason this works is it creates more space in your chest, vocal cords, and mouth. The more space you create in your body, the easier it is for you to get breath, volume, and power behind your voice.

Here’s the best way to create a perfect standing posture for a confident voice:

• Lift the top of your head towards the ceiling.
• Tuck your chin inwards.
• Push your shoulder blades back and down.
• Relax your stomach.
• Keep your knees straight and your legs tall.

Action Step: If you can, stand while you talk on the phone. If you have to sit during a meeting, use the armrests to give your body as much broadness as possible.

Wear Your Confident Clothes

They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. But it turns out we judge ourselves based on what we wear. In a 2012 paper^{4http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103112000200}, the idea of “enclothed cognition,” i.e., whether our clothes affect our thoughts, was studied. In one experiment, participants wore either a doctor’s coat or a painter’s coat.

Can you guess which group performed better at tasks? If you thought it was the group with the doctor’s coat, you’re right!

But why?

The research behind enclothed cognition suggests that it’s not so much about what we wear but what we think about what we wear.

The participants who wore doctor’s coats felt more competent wearing them, so they performed better at tasks. Similarly, if you wear an outfit that makes you feel confident, you’ll also sound more confident!

What clothes make you feel confident?

• Do you like certain brands?
• Look good in tailored suits?
• Have a favorite shirt?
• Like a certain color?
• Have your own personal style?

If you want to speak with confidence, appearances matter. Find out your confident clothes and wear them to bring out your A-game!

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) on How to Speak with Confidence

Takeaways on How to Speak with Confidence

Best of luck with learning to speak with confidence. You got this! 💪 Just remember these tips:

• Gather data: Record your voice in different scenarios.
• Read a Book to Your Cat: Practicing speaking slowly, articulately, and deliberately to a pet or stuffed animal.
• Call Customer Support to Practice: Speak to customer support reps to practice in a low-pressure environment.
• Don’t Turn Statements Into Questions: Avoid lifting your intonation at the end of sentences.
• Slow down: Take deep breaths and long pauses. Speak at your own pace.
• Assume People Are Dying to Know What You Have to Say: If you assume people want to hear what you have to say, you’ll speak with more confidence, and in turn, they will want to hear what you have to say.
• Toss Your Fillers: Kick out your “ums” and “likes!” 
• Use a Vocal Warm-Up: War up your voice, mouth, and tongue before a conversation or meeting.
• Check Your Tone: Use the app Poised to track the sound of your voice and autocorrect your tone in real-time.
• Stand Ready to Speak: Stand up straight to open your speaking instrument.
• Wear Your Confident Clothes: If you feel confident, you’ll speak more confidently.

And if you’d like to contemplate how to improve your overall confidence, you might enjoy this article on 15 strategies to become more confident.