Vocal Strategies for Dad

This verbal strategy is engineered to help you feel and sound great every day as an awesome father, husband, and person. (Watch the full video for specific details and exercises to get these results from your voice today!)

• Use more Chest Voice
• Cut verbal fillers
• Embrace the use of commas and pauses in your sentences while speaking

Hi, I’m Roger Love, celebrity voice coach, top-selling author and founder of the Voice of Success Live. I’m working to make the world a better place, one speaking voice at a time, starting with yours!

The way I see it, parents make the world a better place every day, but I’m dedicating today’s special video lesson specifically to Dads. I’ve created a verbal strategy to help fathers get even more of what you deserve—respect and admiration!

As a father myself, I know how many roles we play every day—friend, mediator, disciplinarian, role model, comedian, and coach, just to name a few. So I understand how difficult it can be to strike the right balance between them. The verbal strategy I’ll share with you today is engineered to help you feel and sound great no matter what character you may want to play. So, let’s get started!

First, let’s get some depth.

The bottom part of the vocal range—known as Chest Voice—is where we can create a lot of vibrations that make listeners perceive us as strong, passionate, grounded, and powerful. The lower range creates a very deep sound because it vibrates the full length of the vocal cords.

Work on your chest voice to communicate strength and confidence every time you open your mouth, you need to stay a little lower in the vocal range. Whether you’re talking about their day at school, giving advice, or reminding your kids to do their chores, the key component to a fatherly voice of strength and knowledge is a lower pitch.

By the way, this same Chest Voice, the lower part of the range, can also come in handy outside of the home if you want to close a deal, sound more powerful, or move people to immediate action. Using more Chest Voice can even decrease misinterpretations because the thick sounds convince listeners of your total commitment to the words you’re speaking.

Next, Cut The Fluff

To ensure your family, colleagues, and friends perceive you as intelligent, savvy, and worth listening to, we need to cut down on your verbal fillers. The “non-words” like “um,” “uh,” and “like” that are ruining the English language and other people’s positive impressions of you.

By filling pauses or thinking time with these “non-words,” you communicate to your listeners that you’re disorganized, less intelligent, or that your brain just doesn’t work as fast as you want it to.

So cut the fluff—no more fillers in your conversations! Remember that commas, periods and pauses have their place in our conversations for a reason. They’re supposed to be a gift for your listeners! Those moments of silence right after a comma or period allow your listeners to reflect and process the words you just said, before you jump in and say anything more.

Here’s an example to bring this point home. If I say, “I um love red, um I love um blue, and um I love green.” When your listeners hear the filler words, they nearly disqualify the actual words’ meanings. Suddenly they’re not actually sure what colors I like or if I love any colors at all.

Instead, if I say, “I love red, I love blue, and I love green,” people believe the words I’m speaking and their mind moves on to think about red, blue, green and what those colors mean to them. Suddenly, they’re aware of your message and engaging with it personally. That’s a big difference.

The consequences for using filler words in your daily life are even more extreme. For example, when your son or daughter comes to you asking for advice about something that happened at sports or dance practice, you want to give them a thoughtful, impactful answer that makes them feel supported and understood. If you litter those lessons with “um,” “uh” or “like,” you’ve already diminished your credibility before your kid can follow your advice!

Or, as another example, think about your relationship with your significant other. If they ask you, “Honey, did you take care of that task I needed your help with?” And you respond with, “Uhhh…” In just that second, they’ll probably conclude that you forgot what they asked you to do or that you never followed through. That’s not the impression you want to make! And it’s not the appreciation your contribution deserves. Cut down on fillers and you’ll increase everyone’s faith in you and your abilities to be an amazing father, husband, and person.

On this wonderful Father’s Day, I hope you put this verbal strategy into action and get more of the outcomes you want and deserve as a Dad.

From my family to yours, happy Father’s Day!