312. Quick Thinks: Speak with Confidence, Clarity, and Power

Summary

Podcast Summary: Think Fast, Talk Smart – Episode 312

"Quick Thinks: Speak with Confidence, Clarity, and Power"

Host: Matt Abrahams
Date: August 6, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this Quick Thinks episode, Matt Abrahams, communication expert and Stanford GSB lecturer, focuses on a crucial yet often overlooked aspect of communication: vocal projection and volume. He shares actionable strategies to help listeners make their voices heard—literally and figuratively—by improving vocal strength, breath control, stamina, and microphone usage. These practical techniques are geared toward anyone seeking to communicate more confidently and clearly in presentations, meetings, or any speaking situation.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Why Volume Matters (02:05)

• Fundamental to effective communication is being heard. Matt notes that many professionals struggle not just with inserting themselves into conversations, but with ensuring their vocal presence is impactful.
  • Quote: "People aren't wondering, how do they insert it into a conversation? They literally want to understand how can my volume go up?"
    — Matt Abrahams [02:10]

2. The Role of Breath in Voice Projection (02:41)

• The voice is described as a wind instrument; effective volume starts with breathing technique.
• Common Mistake: When nervous, people breathe shallowly and quickly from the upper chest, limiting projection.
• Solution: Breathe deeply into the lower abdomen for stronger vocal support.
• Self-awareness Exercise: Place one hand on your upper chest, one on your lower abdomen to physically feel where you're breathing from and train yourself to use deeper breaths.
  • Quote: "To help build that awareness of where your breath is coming from, give yourself a sensory experience of it."
    — Matt Abrahams [03:19]

3. Reading Out Loud for Vocal Development (04:00)

• Technique: Practice reading out loud, focusing on breath control rather than content.
• Benefit: With familiar words, you can attend to your breathing and how it supports your voice.
• Application: Use any reading material—work emails, novels, etc.—to develop this skill.

4. Placing Your Voice (05:00)

• Actor’s Technique: Instead of generally broadcasting your voice, focus on "placing" it toward a specific person or spot in the room.
• Mental rehearsal: Imagine projecting your voice intentionally to the farthest person at the table.
  • Quote: "Rather than just thinking about projecting your voice forward, actually pick a place where you want to put your voice."
    — Matt Abrahams [05:16]
• This physical focus naturally improves posture, breathing, and projection.

5. The Importance of Body Posture (05:43)

• Avoid hunching (especially in virtual meetings), which inhibits breathing and volume.
• Professional speakers stretch and open their bodies before presenting to optimize airflow.

6. Building Vocal Stamina (06:12)

• Analogy: Just as you’d train for a marathon, you must train your voice for extended speaking.
• Practice: Read out loud daily, gradually increasing time to build endurance for long presentations.
  • Quote: "Reading out loud to build vocal stamina is like running on a treadmill to build your stamina for running a road race."
    — Matt Abrahams [06:47]
• Emphasis: Sustain vocal energy through to the end of your talk, not just at the start.

7. Using Microphones Effectively (09:47)

• Lavalier Mics: Keep approx. six inches from your mouth; turn your whole body to maintain mic orientation if you move your head.
• Handheld Mics: Lightly hold; elbow against your body for consistency; gesture with the other hand.
  • Quote: "Some people clutch it because they're so nervous. Lightly hold the mic, put your elbow against your body... I gesture with the other hand."
    — Matt Abrahams [10:23]
• Be aware of cables to avoid accidents during presentations.
• Key principle: Proper mic technique helps ensure your message is heard clearly and professionally.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "Your voice is a wind instrument."
  — Matt Abrahams [02:45]

• "Lower, slower breathing gives you more vocal support so you can project your voice."
  — Matt Abrahams [03:48]

• "If you're going to speak for 5, 10, 30, 60 minutes, you should build vocal stamina. Because most of us can start out strong, but can we sustain it so we can continue to project our voice?"
  — Matt Abrahams [06:23]

• "Hold [the mic] in place, gesture with the other hand and again come back to it. These are all techniques that will help you project your voice and make sure your point is heard."
  — Matt Abrahams [11:18]

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Important Segments & Timestamps

• [02:05] - Why Being Heard Is the First Step to Effective Communication
• [02:41] - Breathing Techniques for Stronger Volume
• [04:00] - Practicing with Reading Out Loud
• [05:00] - Placing Your Voice: Actor’s Visualization Technique
• [05:43] - Importance of Body Posture
• [06:12] - Building Vocal Stamina for Long Talks
• [09:47] - Microphone Usage: Lavalier and Handheld Tips
• [11:10] - Recap of Key Points and Practical Takeaways

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Conclusion and Resources

Matt recaps the core areas:

• Focused breathing (lower and slower)
• Intentional voice placement
• Open body posture
• Building stamina through daily reading out loud
• Effective microphone techniques

He encourages listeners to try these techniques and to seek out episode 262 with Patsy Rodenberg for a deeper dive into vocal presence.

Recommended Resource:
– "Episode 262 with Patsy Rodenberg" (Voice and Presence)

Community & Further Learning:
– Join the Think Fast, Talk Smart Learning Community (fasterSmarter.io) for lessons, discussions, and additional communication resources.

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This episode provides a concise but powerful toolkit for boosting vocal confidence and presence—essential skills for every professional communicator.

Transcript

[Matt Abrahams]

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Fundamental to effective communication is being heard. I'm Matt Abrahams and I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to this Quick Thinks episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast I'm often asked, how can I make sure my voice is heard? People aren't wondering, how do they insert it into a conversation? They literally want to understand how can my volume go up? So today I'd like to have a conversation about volume. And you can't have a conversation about volume without talking about breath. Then we'll talk about how to expand your volume, build vocal stamina, and finally we'll conclude to talk about how microphones can help you communicate better. Your voice is a wind instrument. The more you do with it, the more your volume and voice can be affected by it. We need to think about how we Breathe to help us project our voice. Many of us, when we get nervous or are uncertain, we breathe shallow and tight in the upper chest. We also breathe very quickly. This changes our ability to project our voice. You have to be able to fill your lower abdomen to support your voice fully. Something you can do in the privacy of your own space. To figure out where you're breathing from is to put one palm on your upper chest and one on your lower abdomen. If I'm speaking from my upper chest, as I'm doing now, I feel vibration and a little movement here and nothing in my lower abdomen. But when I take a deeper breath and speak lower and sometimes slower, I actually feel a lot of movement here and a little vibration in my upper chest. So to help build that awareness of where your breath is coming from, give yourself a sensory experience of it. Another way to help you learn about your breathing is to read out loud. Reading out loud is a proxy for speaking out loud. And the benefit of reading out loud is you can focus on your breathing because the words are presented right in front of you. I don't care what you read. It can be something for work, for pleasure. It can be email, a magazine, does not matter. By reading out loud and really paying attention to where the breath is coming from, you, you can gain more control of it. And the more control you have over it, the better able you are to project. So lower, slower breathing gives you more vocal support so you can project your voice. Now, there's a really interesting technique that I learned from an acting professional. While I'm not an actor myself, I really like this technique. Rather than just thinking about projecting your voice forward, actually pick a place where you want to put your voice. So imagine you're in a conference room sitting around a large table. You're at one end, and there are people far away from you. Instead of just broadcasting out, focus your voice in front of the person who's sitting farthest from you. In doing so, it changes the structure of your body. You'll tend to open up more. You'll breathe more deeply, and you'll be able to position your voice so it'll be louder. So it's not about broadcasting it out. It's about focusing on placing your voice in a certain space. I alluded to body posture just a moment ago, and this is really important. You want to open your body as much as possible. Many of us, especially when we're on virtual calls, we're. We hunch over and close our body off. That reduces the oxygen. In fact, many actors and actresses or professional speakers. Before they go out on stage and project, they'll work on stretching their body and opening it up. That's a great place for us to start. Once we have the mechanics and the breath, we have to work on stamina. Very few of you would wake up one morning and say, I'm going to go run a marathon and just start running. If you wanted to run a marathon, you'd train first. And the same thing is true with your voice and vocal projection. If you're going to speak for 5, 10, 30, 60 minutes, you should build vocal stamina. Because most of us can start out strong, but can we sustain it so we can continue to project our voice? Best way to do this again is reading out loud. Reading out loud to build vocal stamina is like running on a treadmill and to build your stamina for running a road race. So if you know you have a 30 minute presentation that you have to give in a week or two, you should start reading out loud for five or ten minutes a day to build that stamina so you can project your voice all the way through. And you want to make sure that you have the energy at the end of your communication as well as at the beginning. Many of us start energetic and excited and because we're speaking for so long, we. We lose our wind, we lose that energy. By building vocal stamina, you'll continue to have the energy and be able to project your voice.

[Matt Abrahams]

We'll be right back to finish our conversation. But first, a quick word from our sponsors. Their support allows us to bring you

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Now, fortunately, we live in a world where there's technology that can help us project our voice. Microphones are very useful for helping you not just record what you're saying, but to make sure your voice is projected. Now we have to use microphones appropriately. The first type of mic I want to talk about is a lavalier mic a lav. This is a little microphone that usually gets clipped right under your chin. Now, it tends to have a cord and a battery pack. You have to be careful and make sure that you're prepared for that because often you'll drop the cord through your shirt and you need to have a place to clip the battery pack or a pocket to put it in. I've worked with some speakers who came dressed in a way that did not allow for those to easily be done. When it comes to a lavalier, you want to make sure it's about six inches away from your mouth. And because it is fixed, you want to make sure that your head stays in the same position. So if the lavalier is here and I turn over here, notice I've increased the distance. And unless you have somebody working the soundboard that is controlling the volume, your voice will get quieter. So if you have a lavalier mic, you simply turn your whole body so you keep the orientation the same. So make sure you have something to clip it to, both the mic and the pack and try to keep your head in relationship to the mic the same so your volume stays the same. Now, sometimes when you're speaking, you actually have a microphone. Handheld mic needs to be kept at the same distance from your mouth so that the volume stays the same and you make the life of the soundboard operator much easier. So lightly hold the mic. Some people clutch it because they're so nervous. Lightly hold the mic, put your elbow against your body. This is the only time I ever encourage people to connect the elbow to the body. Usually when gesturing, we want it away and I gesture with the other hand. Notice I'm keeping the distance about 6 inches the same. Now if I want to switch hands, which is a good thing because this arm might get tired, I come to the mic, keep the mic in the same place and gesture with the other hand. Some mics have cables and you need to be careful with where the cable is. I saw a speaker once trip over the cable, embarrassing for them and dangerous. So if you're using a handheld mic, hold it in place, gesture with the other hand and again come back to it. These are all techniques that will help you project your voice and make sure your point is heard. We want to think about body posture and breathing. We want to think about placing our voice. We want to make sure we build that vocal stamina to support our energy and volume throughout what we say. And finally, we want to leverage microphones appropriately to help us make sure we're heard. Thank you for joining me for this Quick Thinks episode of Think Fast Talk Smart, the podcast. To learn more about voice, please listen to episode 262 with Patsy Rodenberg. This episode was produced by Kathryn Reed, Alex McCarthy, Ryan Campos and me, Matt Abrahams. Our music is from Floyd Wonder, with special thanks to the Stanford GSB Video Crew. Thanks also to Podium podcast company. Please find us on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. Be sure to subscribe and rate us. Also, follow us on LinkedIn, TikTok and Instagram and check out fastersmarterio for deep dive videos, English language learning content and our newsletter. Please consider joining our Think Fast Talk Smart learning community at FasterSmarter IO Learning. You'll find video lessons, learning quests, discussion boards, an AI coach and book club opportunities. Again, that's FasterSmarter IO learning to become part of our Thinkfast Talk smart learning community.

[Matt Abrahams]

Thanks for joining me for this Quick thanks episode.

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If these takeaways were helpful, I'd love

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for you to listen to the full

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episode that started this conversation.

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There's more context, more stories and more

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tools to support your communication.

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Give it a listen and as always,

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thanks for your support.

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Before we wrap up, I just want

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to say thank you for listening.

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It really means a lot to hear how people all over the world are

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Explore past conversations.

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