How to Give Your Voice Depth & Why it Matters

Three rules to attain an influential voice

Female Fallow Deer evaluate potential sexual mates by evaluating auditory cues underlying a males mating groan. Males who possessed lower fundamental frequencies compared to their rivals were judged by females to have higher social dominance and were more successful in passing their genes on. Photo by Will Swann on Unsplash

You may have heard through the grapevine that human communication can be broken down into three proportions:

55% of communication is body language, 38% is the tone of voice, and 7% is the actual words spoken.

Although, these proportions tend to change over the years because the jury is still out on this one; it is too simplistic to explain such a complex matrix but it did provide a nice framework for life coaches everywhere.

Indeed, so as not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, body language is vital due to the effects it has on the unconscious parts of our perception and body! For example, mirror neurons fire when we observe subtle cues in another’s body language which influences us to replicate the same movement in our own body. It happens spontaneously, and albeit unconsciously, and may have been a survival mechanism to prime the body for danger before we are aware of a threat - a useful trait given that social cohesion was so pivotal for our survival.

Fun fact: observing someone yawn, which causes us to yawn, is a result of these mirror neurons firing.