![]() ![]() Like Ms Bahra, Ms Blackett sees this as a strength. MediaCom UK chairwoman Karen Blackett, who comes from “a Barbadian family in Reading”, knows that “how I talk is very different to the industry norm”. ![]() I want to come across as down to earth, and how I speak is crucial.” ![]() “I don’t think the ‘Rumpole of the Bailey’ style works any more: jurors can’t relate to it. It is an audience she believes many of her colleagues alienate. “What makes me an effective advocate is that I’m always conscious that I have an audience,” she says. She is a criminal defence barrister and was made a Queen’s Counsel (senior barrister) this year. ![]() While authenticity is now considered essential to projecting authority, high-pitched, working-class accents like Narita Bahra’s are a rarity among senior members of the legal profession. “I give people the confidence to find their natural voice, which is usually a couple of notes lower.” “When you’re nervous, your throat muscles tense and your pitch rises,” she explains. Pitch lowering is never Ms Lee’s intention when working with a client, though it is often one effect. Whereas Thatcher’s coach might have been tasked with getting her to sound a certain way, most coaches are now focused on helping people sound like themselves. Research like Prof Klofstad’s has informed a new approach to voice coaching. We like depth, in other words, but not when it is faked, and especially not when it is faked by women. We do not like people deviating from their natural voice, particularly in a way that is “sex atypical” (meaning higher for men, lower for women). But the human ear likes “averageness, prototypy ‘normal sounding’ voices,” he says. On the one hand, “lower is better for obtaining positions of leadership”. Prof Klofstad says that when it comes to using the voice in a professional setting, women are “trapped”. Why, then, did Ms Holmes strike the wrong note? I put the question to Casey Klofstad, associate professor of political science at the University of Miami, who has studied how voice pitch affects perceptions of leadership capacity. If you wanted students to listen, the most powerful thing was to speak deeper, not louder,” she says. “We were told that nobody respects a shrill teacher. Kate Henney teaches at an inner London secondary school and says that “strong voice” - a technique devised by Doug Lemov in his book Teach Like a Champion - was integral to her teacher training programme. Pitch lowering is not exclusive to politicians and chief executives. ![]()
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