Your Voice Matters: Speaking Soulfully and Leading with Purpose

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here. Another episode of High Velocity Radio, and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show, we have the CEO and the Soulful Speaking Coach with Voice Matters, Laurie Smith. Welcome.

Lauri Smith: Thank you so much, Lee. It’s great to be here.

Lee Kantor: Well, I don’t think I’ve ever spoken with a soulful speaking coach. So tell us about your practice.

Lauri Smith: I would love to. I feel like most speakers have received training that is very outdated. Leaders and speakers. That’s coming from a one way, one size fits all mold. And you know what they say about the definition of insanity. If you keep repeating the same actions, you’re doomed to get the same results. Speakers and leaders who really want to change the world need to be not speaking from that cookie cutter place. So soulful speaking is something that is untamed, radiant. Everybody embracing and resonating with their own vibrance and their own charisma. With 8 billion people on the planet, there are 8 billion possible flavors of charisma. And one size fits all just isn’t going to get us where we want to go next.

Lee Kantor: So how do you go about helping your clients and speakers or aspiring speakers kind of break out of the mold and, and have that authentic voice that you’re talking about?

Lauri Smith: First, shining a light on the sneaky and insidious places that they may still be thinking that there’s a way that they should speak, or a kind of leader that they think they need to copy. So really shining a light on what are the limiting beliefs and what are the habits that may be stopping them from being their full selves? And sometimes those habits create what I call a speaker alter ego mask, where the real you is not the one that gets up on stage. It’s not the you that you are with your closest friends. It’s it’s using personality traits that you’ve been rewarded for in your life, and then only using those so that they sort of harden into. I’m going to lead with my intelligence because there’s a voice inside that’s telling me that I’m actually not smart enough for this, and it becomes like carpal tunnel in your wrist where the range of the human gets limited and only poured into that mask. So I help them figure out what mask might kind of be controlling them, what the limiting beliefs are, and release them and then open up their body, their breath, and their energy to play their instrument, which is them the way it was really designed to be played, the way we all came in as babies and marry that to a sense of purpose or an intention that they have now as an adult that they did not have as a small child.

Lee Kantor: So how do you help them actually kind of discern between a persona that they might be using as a mask and their authentic true self? Are there some activities or exercises you do to uncover them?

Lauri Smith: I might do some values work with them. If I hear the word should come out of their mouth, I’m going to point that out. Or if I hear it kind of underneath the words. And a lot of times it’s envisioning the change that they want to see in the world and mining the values from that and then asking them, are you embodying the change that you wish to see in the world right now? And most of the time, their answer, once they start to really feel it and look at themselves is, no, I’m not, I’m I’m doing some weird thing of what I think I need to be. And once they become aware of it, once they shine the light on it with exercises and reflections back, um, especially if I’ve been chatting with them and then they get up on a stage or turn on a green camera light and they seem different. We can have a conversation about that, and once they’re aware, they start to choose to let it go and be more and more and more themselves. Another thing that I often do with them is to help them remember to set the intention for what they want to create. Whereas a lot of speakers are unconsciously focusing on what they want to avoid, and then they end up creating more of what they want to avoid. So when a speaker sets an intention to create more curiosity in an audience, or to invite a sense of opening in an audience, and then they start being in conversation with the audience and looking for movement from wherever they started, to that hope or possibility or curiosity or opening, they become more themselves because their attention is on what they want to create, rather than what they’ve been told to avoid for their whole lives.

Lee Kantor: So it sounds like a good portion of your of the activities being done is to kind of identify the mask and then slowly remove the mask so we can get into their authenticity. Authenticity is there. After doing this for a minute, have you kind of come to the conclusion that maybe there’s some common masks that are out there that, you know, humans tend to have these X number of masks, and then once you identify them, then you can kind of move them off of that.

Lauri Smith: Yeah. There are there are five that I created a quiz around that specifically show up when speaking. There’s one that I call a porcelain doll, which is sort of a quiet, um, trying to create. The piece actually will not speak very much quiet, smiling, very still energy. And, um, in the attempt to keep the peace, they might avoid actually doing things the way they really want to do them, or even speaking up when they want to. The heady hipster is the one that’s focused on leading with the mind, attempting to prove things to people intellectually. The peppy pleaser is a smiling perky tends to happen on women more than men. The the bad speaking advice out there of you need to smile more when you speak can create that over time, where someone is just smiling and peppy for every single moment of their talking, and there is no range there because they feel like they need to earn the attention of the audience. The Jivin Jokester is a speaker who feels like they need to be entertaining the audience at all times, and if there’s ever a moment of stillness, they tend to be uncomfortable with it. They don’t trust it. They don’t understand that the silences may be powerful and actually make the laughs louder. And then the final one is the deranged mannequin. It’s the one where everyone hates the name. It’s a lot of effort and passion that gets channeled into too much effort, too much work. Even physically, in the body and in the face. It’s like every single muscle is doing something that’s actually doing nothing. And that’s that’s the one that I test the highest for in my own quiz when I’m off. I tend to have a little to a lot of deranged mannequin going on, and then people can sort of have combinations. I’ve shown up in a version of Deranged mannequin meeting Heady Hipster, so I’m intellectually trying to prove something to myself through proving it to you with a lot of effort as I’m speaking.

Lee Kantor: So when you identify, um, the persona that’s closest to you or the combination that’s closer to you, what do you do next with that information?

Lauri Smith: Um, depending on the mask, it. You know, it’s surprising how easy it is for most of the masks to set the intention for what you want to create in the audience, rather than, for example, the heady hipster is I’ve got a voice in my head that tells me that I’m not good enough, and I need them to see me as smart. So what do I wear? What do I say? How do I say it? When do I gesture? What do I do with my slide presentation? To have them see me as smart versus I want to create curiosity in the room, and I’m going to look at their faces and read their body language, looking and feeling for signs that they are stepping into more curiosity. It’s a little bit like years ago there was this Volkswagen Jetta commercial that I loved, and when I went looking for Volkswagen Jettas, I saw them. If I had been looking for little red Honda fits, I would have seen those. And that does a lot of the work of letting go of the mask, because their attention is not on how they need to be seen. The attention is on what they want to create, and they tend to show up more as their full selves when they do that.

Lauri Smith: The other thing is, is calling them on it. So I have a background in theater and sports and in theater and sports. You go and you practice, and in theater you have a director who’s watching your performance and calling you on your bad habits when they see them. So I watched them speak, and if I feel like there’s a moment where they’re making a joke, and the key thing with the jive and jokester is not to never joke. If you’re funny, you’re funny. It’s part of your gift, but it’s to notice. Were you making the gift, the joke for you in that moment as a speaker, for your own comfort? Or were you making a joke in service of the journey that you’re taking people on? And if you call someone on it, they usually know right away? Yeah, I was uncomfortable with the silence, so I made a joke. Well, the silence was actually incredibly potent and powerful. So know that and allow yourself that moment of silence and then go where you want to go for the journey you’re creating, the ride you’re creating for the audience. From there, rather than thinking that if they’re not laughing, you’re not likable, um, you haven’t earned their attention or something like that.

Lee Kantor: Now, have you, uh, found that over the course of your career and coaching, uh, speaking, that when we’ve shifted to, uh, a lot of online and virtual training and virtual speaking Is the tactics and techniques the same for an online speaking opportunity versus an in the in a room, face to face speaking opportunity or the fundamentals the same. But maybe you have to physically, uh, change how you deliver the speech.

Lauri Smith: Yeah. Some of the fundamentals of this, you know, how do you be authentic? How do you really unleash your your own unique charisma are the same. And yet if someone knows how to fill a 500 seat theater with their energy, they may not know how to do that on zoom, because our our energy tends to follow where our attention is. So as soon as we sit down or stand in front of a device that is 1.5ft away from our faces, for some people, their energy gets really small, like I’m doing right now. Their voice follows, their body language becomes really small. And it’s okay because I have a mic in my face right now. And yet when someone does that, subconsciously the audience becomes less compelled to listen to them because it’s like their body, their breath, their voice and their energy are saying, this is private, this is not for you. Whereas if they’re aware of the whole room that they’re physically sitting in, instead of just kind of zeroing in on this two dimensional device, that’s a foot or a foot and a half away from their face, their body language, their voice and their energy become more inclusive. And that’s one of those things that has people in an audience not just saying, oh, yes, I could hear him, but I couldn’t stop listening or I couldn’t stop watching. If it’s a zoom webinar where they can actually see the speaker. That’s one difference. That is pretty big. Movements are different, just like they are between stage and film. So a movement to connect with an audience on a stage might be walking ten feet over to the left side of the audience, right side of the stage. And when you get on camera, it’s very different. It’s going to become the same impulse to connect, but in a smaller, more camera sized way.

Lee Kantor: Now, is there any, um, maybe techniques or strategies you can share with a listener who maybe have had experience on a stage being big and having large movements and gestures, but now they’re being forced to be kind of static. Uh, you know, just maybe their facial expressions, um, in front of a microphone? Is there some things dos and don’ts when it comes to taking somebody who’s big, maybe on a in real life stage and then now has to kind of convert that to still kind of creating that big emotions but with much less physicality.

Lauri Smith: Yeah, I’m a big rule breaker, and what I would love for them to do is to be in the conversation that they’re in. So if I’m in a conversation with someone and they’re 500ft away from me, I’m going to do different things in order to be in that conversation. They might be bigger. They might be actually jumping up and down on a table or something like that. When we get closer together, if I’m actually listening to your half of the conversation, I’m probably not going to move in the same ways, even though I have the same impulses for what I’m communicating. And one of the things that I often kind of a hack is, um, I’m a big talker. I, I cannot talk without my hands. Once in a corporate world, I was telling a story about the showerhead breaking off and water spraying in my face, and I was gesturing all over the place. And this woman said, just out of curiosity, can you sit on your hands and tell that story again? And I couldn’t do it. So sometimes it’s a matter of put your hands underneath the camera line so that you can move and gesture as much as you want to, but they’re down so low that they don’t become distracting.

Lauri Smith: And then when you really want to illustrate a point, you bring them up like the showerhead and you’re gesturing and you are still you and it is helpful if it’s vibrant and alive in the person’s whole body. The other thing that I might do with a speaker who moves around a lot on a stage and feels trapped themselves when they need to do it in front of a video camera, I might have them sit down so that they feel more grounded because they can feel their seat in the chair and it becomes the same amount of vibrant and alive energy, but harnessed by the act of grounding and sitting down. Other folks, if their energy and their voice is getting really small when they’re sitting down on zoom, I might tell them, get a standing desk and stand up for your speeches, because that’s what helps you become harnessed and alive.

Lee Kantor: And do you remember the moment when you started in your career, when you Realized, hey, I have something to add to the conversation when it comes to helping people become better, more dynamic speakers. Do you remember that moment when you were like, oh, I can do this. I can really make a difference in this area?

Lauri Smith: Yeah, there were a couple, and the one that flashed into my head. I was at a coaching community meeting, and someone else was speaking about speaking at this meeting, and he was in a large flat room, and he was talking about just having a conversation with one person at a time in the audience. And he had so much beautiful stuff, and he was helping so many people. And yet the conversation went something like this. He would get very quiet. He would look at somebody in the right part of the audience and say, you don’t think about the audience, you just think about one person at a time, and someone on the other side would go, what? We can’t hear you. And then he would go say the same thing to another part of the. And that happened probably five times. And I was sitting in my chair feeling this huge calling forth energy, and I wanted to stand up and say, but everybody paid the same amount, and you are the leader holding the room. What about actually holding the room when it’s in a group? And he had so much beautiful stuff and it was his event. I did not stand up and shout that I took it as a hey, he’s really helping people with how he’s telling people to truly connect when they’re talking. And the next step is, how do you truly connect with one set of eyes at a time, while you’re also actually almost hugging the rest of the room with your energy so that it’s an intimate conversation that everyone in the space is a part of, and that is part of what great leaders have. It makes people in the room feel more safe to go on the ride that you’re creating, as the person taking them on that ride.

Lee Kantor: Now, is there a story you can share about working with somebody who may be needed some help in becoming the speaker they’d like to have been? Um, can you share? Don’t maybe name their name, but just share what the challenge was they presented to you and how you were able to help them get to a new level?

Lauri Smith: Yeah, absolutely. I one of my favorite stories was a a corporate client, uh, that included a 360 report. And when I was conducting, it was a, a more introverted, quiet leader in an organization where that’s not the majority and a real superstar in terms of the work getting things done. You know, top 2% of people in the organization. And I was conducting the 360. A potential promotion was on the line. And his boss said, frankly, I don’t think he has it in him. His boss was a very extroverted, loud, talkative, take up all the space in the room kind of leader. And you know when you’re conducting a 360, you don’t really answer back. You’re just recording and taking down the notes and the feedback. And inside I thought, well, frankly, you don’t know what you’re talking about. It, it he did get the promotion. That’s the end of the story. And he learned how to be himself and hold a room. And he transformed into one of those people who might only speak once or twice in a meeting. A dynamic meeting with 50 people, all hashing something out. And when he speaks, people listen to what he has to say. The whole because he knows how to hold the energy of the room and then add his voice in and where he started was quieter.

Lauri Smith: Not holding the room, sometimes trying to do it like his boss, which was not his natural 1 in 8,000,000,000 charisma. And he did get the promotion. And that’s one of my favorite stories because. Presence. Charisma can go in waves throughout time, where a speaker will come along and everybody will think that that’s charisma. So they need to copy that person, when in reality what that person was doing was being themselves. And that’s why it worked for them and that’s why they were such a popular speaker. So when someone is the kind of speaker leader that isn’t the popular one in their organization or in their world, and they find their way to their charisma, and his was so needed in that organization. They needed someone who wasn’t talking for the whole entire meeting. They needed someone who was listening to the conversation and chiming in at just the right moment to share the perspective that might shift everything. And I could see that was who he was probably going to be from the moment we first met. And to have that actually happen and the promotion happened when the boss is saying, frankly, I don’t think he has it in him, made me very happy for him, for the organization and brings me joy now, even thinking about it now.

Lee Kantor: Do you find when you work with organizations that you have to manage the expectations that you’re not going to be cloning whoever the boss thinks is a great speaker, that you’re just going to be bringing out kind of the natural voice of each of these individuals. It’s not you’re not kind of a duplication machine where you’re just taking, you know, this person’s speaker and just, you know, creating, you know, copies of that.

Lauri Smith: Absolutely. And I didn’t think organizations would be as open to it as they have been. And I find a lot of the time, if I’m being brought in, they’re more open to it because the boss has already tried to make him a clone of himself or make her a clone of herself, and they’ve realized this isn’t working. We need an expert here. So they’re more open to the possibility that they are going to be charismatic, but they’re going to have a very different style than you do because they’ve tried and failed, tried and failed, Tried and failed in a lot of circumstances already. So when I mention it, sometimes they even look like the confusion is clearing up. I now see why it wasn’t working. I was trying to make him into me, but I already know he’s not a clone of me.

Lee Kantor: Now, when you’re working with somebody, do they kind of at some point come to the realization that, hey, we might have brought Lori in for speaking, but this really transcends into any maybe customer facing, uh, opportunity where it might be our salespeople may need some of this work, or anybody that’s dealing with customers might need some of this work, because speaking doesn’t have to be, you know, in large form. It could be in small form too.

Lauri Smith: Yeah, that has happened a few times. It also happens a lot, even on the executive coaching engagements. They would call it executive presence or leadership presence, that there’s an element of that where sometimes they are more focused on traditional speeches, and sometimes they’re already aware that it’s the communication and the presence of the person in multiple situations. And there have been a few where I’ve been working with the leader of a team, who then decides to bring me in to do some kind of an event or a program with the team.

Lee Kantor: Now, who is your ideal client? Is it that individual that’s looking to kind of uplevel their speaking, or is it an organization that might need kind of training for a group?

Lauri Smith: My ideal clients tend to be unconventional leaders and loving rebels, most of whom have their own mission that they’re on. They might be a solopreneur and, um, there’s some aspect of rebel in them. So whether it’s inside an organization or they’re running their own, there’s a bit of, I don’t want to do it the way everyone else does. I don’t like traditional, I like innovative, and my dream, dream, dream clients would say that they want to feel the vibe in the room shift when they talk. They don’t just want to inform people. They would even say it’s beyond touching people’s hearts. They want to feel an energy at the beginning and feel that through their speaking, the vibe has shifted. There’s a different energy and emotion in the room because of their speaking performance.

Lee Kantor: So if somebody wants to learn more about your practice and maybe would like to learn about speaking more soulfully, or maybe get a hold of your book. Your voice matters a guide to speaking soulfully when it counts. What is the website? What is the best way to connect with you?

Lauri Smith: My website is voice hyphen Matters.com and there’s a page for the book. There’s a page for my podcast, and if you love the socials and you scroll to the bottom, you’ll be able to connect with me on LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube. From there.

Lee Kantor: Well, Lori, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Lauri Smith: Thank you. Thank you very much.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on High Velocity Radio.