304: Speak More Confidently and Calm Your Nerves with David Pope

If you’ve ever cringed at the sound of your own voice during a Zoom call or playback, you’re not alone. But what if your voice was the key to getting promoted, speaking with more confidence, or finally being seen as a leader?

In this episode of The Mid-Career GPS Podcast, BBC-trained executive voice coach David Pope joins John Neral for a transformative conversation about how your voice impacts your leadership brand, career growth, and personal confidence.

With a client list that includes CEOs, TEDx speakers, and professionals worldwide, David breaks down the science behind vocal perception and how people make snap judgments about your competence and executive presence based on how you sound.

You’ll walk away with actionable strategies to sound more confident in interviews, meetings, and presentations—even if you're feeling nervous inside.

Tune in to learn:

• Why mid-career professionals must pay attention to their voice in today’s competitive job market
• The psychological impact of how we sound—and why it affects hiring and promotion decisions
• How to project authentic gravitas without faking a deeper or “stronger” voice
• The real reason we hate hearing ourselves recorded—and how to get over it
• How vocal variety, pace, and strategic pauses can dramatically increase your impact
• A practical voice training toolkit: posture, diaphragmatic breathing, pitch control, and articulation
• Why slowing down helps you own the room and lead with authority
• A powerful success story of a job seeker who used voice coaching to land her dream role
• How to build a “virtuous circle” of speaking confidence and positive feedback
• The deep connection between your voice, self-worth, and career clarity

Whether you're preparing for a big interview, looking to get promoted, or want to show up with more confidence in your current role, this episode gives you the tools to speak like the leader you already are.

Connect with David Pope

Free Voice and Presence Toolkit | LinkedIn

Chapters

• 0:01 Overcoming Public Speaking Fears
• 2:35 David Pope's Career Transformation
• 6:17 Speaking Confidently with Authentic Gravitas
• 10:30 The Power of Vocal Variety and Pausing
• 17:19 Practical Toolkit for Speaking Under Pressure
• 22:12 Success Story: Returning to Work Confidently
• 26:43 Building a Voice That Builds Your Career
• 30:47 Final Thoughts: Showing Up Authentically

Transcript

John Neral: 0:01

One of the biggest fears we have as human beings is speaking in public. Now I'm not just talking about getting up on a stage and delivering a presentation. I'm talking about even speaking up at a meeting. What would it look like for you to have more confidence when speaking? Would you like to have a greater presence when you're speaking or delivering that presentation? And have you ever said to yourself I don't like the sound of my own voice? I have. If you've answered yes to any of these questions, my guest today will help you calm your nerves, speak more confidently and have more people wanting to hear what you have to say. Today, you will meet BBC trained executive voice coach, david Pope. David joins me to help you improve your voice so you can advance your career. Let's get started.

John Neral: 1:09

Hello, my friends, this is the Mid-Career GPS Podcast and I'm your host, John Neral. I help mid-career professionals like you find a career they love, or love the one they have, using my proven four-step formula. If you've ever wanted to improve your public speaking skills or speak more confidently when presenting at meetings, David Pope is here to help you. Starting at the BBC, David has since worked as an audio producer, studio director and now as an executive voice coach Through the company he founded, all Voice Talented Limited. He brings 30 years of experience in recording studios to the thousands of business professionals he has worked with globally, from managing partners, lawyers and CEOs to business executives and TEDx speakers. His one-on-one coaching sessions, workshops and online video courses focus on transforming voices, helping good speakers become great speakers. Let's get into it. I hope you enjoy my conversation with David Pope. David Pope, welcome to the podcast. It is great to have you here today.

David Pope: 2:19

Thank you so much, John. I'm absolutely delighted to be here Thrilled.

John Neral: 2:23

I am as well. I am looking forward to our conversation today, but, david, before we get started, you've got a couple of mid-career moments that I'd love for you to share with the listeners, just so they can get to know you a little bit more.

David Pope: 2:37

Absolutely Okay. Let me share the two things that have really shaped where I'm at right now. So the first one was I spent many, many years in recording studios as an audio producer and a studio director. About 15 years ago, because people had heard the work that I've been doing with helping professional voiceover talent to be able to use their best voice to sell a product. Now what happened was people started emailing me saying things like I've been hearing about you, I work in corporate communications, I'm in banking, I'm in legal, I have to have interviews, my boss has told me that I need to speak with more authority, feel less than I've got imposter syndrome. I hate giving presentations. Is this something that you can help me with? So I realized of course I can, because I spent many, many years working with people to give their best voice, and so what I did was I created a series of coaching programs empowering people to be able to use their voice more effectively in the workplace. So that was my first career moment, because, basically, I shifted into this whole area of being an executive voice.

David Pope: 4:00

My second one came, and I specifically February 2020. And this was because I was asked to work down in Singapore. I was down there for one week. My diary was full. I was giving workshops, I was doing one-on-one voice coaching, and COVID started.

David Pope: 4:23

Bit by bit by bit, all of the jobs that I've been hired for started getting cancelled. So there I was. I was in this hotel room. I couldn't get a flight back to Hong Kong where I'm based, and I could go two ways. The first way was to have a pity party and sit there and think, oh, my goodness, woe is me, or I could actually use the time effectively. So I got onto the one thing that I've been wanting to do for a long time, which was to create online video courses, and when I got back to Hong Kong, I created these, and to date, these online video courses have been bought by global companies, by law firms, by people from all around the world. So you know, sometimes out of these situations a challenge and then you see an opportunity. So really, those were my two big career changes career changes.

John Neral: 5:26

Well, and they are big, and I love how you walked us through those, especially because, through circumstances out of no control of our own, such as COVID and the pandemic, you certainly found a way to pivot and reach more people. That's why you're here today, right? So when we think about the person who is mid-level, mid-career and they have been given some kind of feedback from somebody a supervisor, a leader, an executive and they're told you need to speak more confidently and that's all they tell them, so they're left to interpret what that actually looks like, when you're helping people be a great speaker and use their best voice, what does speaking confidently sound like and look like to?

David Pope: 6:17

you. Whether we like it or not, we make judgments about people based on the sound of the voice, and whilst we're making judgments about other people, people are making judgments about us. For me, what I always talk about with clients is this idea first of all, authenticity. This is absolutely important. So we can speak confidently, but we need to be authentic. I work with people focusing on this core element, which is about gravitas. Now, a lot of people think that gravitas is just about this strong, deep, authoritative voice. Absolutely not. Gravitas is about two things. It's about integrating passion for the thing that you're talking about. So, if you're in an interview coming across passionately, enthusiastically, engaging, but also keeping it grounded in this sense of authority. So, for me, speaking confidently is about a balance. It's about having authority in the voice but also having energy, so having warmth, being inspiring and being engaging. Now people might think, wow, that's a lot of stuff I've got to think about, but if you are authentic and if you are fully aware of how you sound, then you can really start putting the work in.

John Neral: 7:50

Do you recommend that people listen to themselves when they're speaking, like so they're listening to a recording and they're hearing it, and then when somebody says, oh, I hate the way my voice sounds, how do you coach them through that?

David Pope: 8:08

Right, okay, well, most people I work with, it doesn't matter what level they are, if they're C-suite and they're down to junior executive most people I work with. My whole process is about recording the voice, playing it back and analyzing Nearly every single person that I work with. When they hear their voice, they do exactly that. John, oh, my goodness, I hate the sound of my voice, but this is about the science, you see, because the voice that we hear is not the voice that other people hear. Voices are like sound waves. So when somebody speaks, the sound comes through our ears sorry, comes through into your ears. Right? You're hearing me on this podcast. When we speak, the sound comes into our ears, but we feel the vibration that comes up through our stomach area, our chest, into our head. This is what we call our resonance chamber. So we sometimes think that we're deeper and more resonant than we actually are, and then, when we hear ourselves on a recording, we always get a little bit of a surprise Our voice is a bit weaker, a little bit tinnier.

David Pope: 9:18

Now, the process of recording your voice and understanding exactly how you sound. This is the best way to be able to change, because people usually don't like this. They shy away from this process. So, for example, you know, in the interview preparation stage, just recording yourself. Just do it on your phone, don't need fancy equipment. Record yourself, play it back and you will pick up on some of these things I mentioned about making judgments. So it might be I speak too fast, my pitch is too high, everything that I'm saying I'm going, uh, um, all of these things. If you get all of this information before you step into that interview room, before you sit on a panel interview, you've done a lot of the work.

John Neral: 10:15

Hey there. Have you ever been hesitant to like a LinkedIn post about finding a new job because you're fearful of being seen by your employer or colleague? I get it. I see you, my friend. A new job because you're fearful of being seen by your employer or colleague? I get it. I see you, my friend.

John Neral: 10:28

Since you're already listening to this podcast, I want to help you get an even bigger win in your career and to do that, I'm inviting you to join my free email community and subscribe to the Mid-Career GPS newsletter. It's delivered to your inbox twice each week with helpful tips, strategies and resources to help you find that job you love, or love the job you have. It's all free and you can subscribe by visiting my website at https://johnneral. com. Check the show notes or my LinkedIn. For now, let's get back to the episode. How do you help someone slow down when they have listened to their recording and they feel as if they're speaking too quickly? Where they've gotten that feedback from someone and says I can't understand what you're saying because you're talking way too fast. Where does that come from? Saying because you're talking way too fast? Where does that come from?

David Pope: 11:30

Okay. So first of all, the pacing issue. This is related to that gravitas as well. So we're thinking about mid-career going up. If we are wanting to have a voice which potentially has those leadership qualities, we do need to slow down, because if we're moving into, maybe, leading teams, if we are speaking to large groups of people, we have to slow down. But what we need to do is we need to make sure that we're not speaking at a very, very slow speed.

David Pope: 11:57

A lot of people make that mistake. They, they have this connect like oh, if I speak really slowly, then I will have authority, I will have executive presence. Absolutely not. You'll put people to sleep and they'll be starting to zone out. What you need to do is have vocal variety. Now, vocal variety is where we speed up, we slow down, we speed up, we slow down. You know you and I are doing this in this podcast, right, and so this is how you engage people.

David Pope: 12:27

So, again, coming back to the recording process, some people I work with they think that they're really slow speakers and then they hear themselves and they go oh, my goodness, I speak really fast. What I actually do is I turn it around and I say, ok, here's the thing you are trying to influence, you are trying to get a buy in, you're trying to sell yourself. You need to first of all slow down on the key pieces of information, because if we lose those key pieces, you're going to lose that impact. But at the same time you need to have the charisma and this is about being a fast speaker as well. So it's a balance. And then this comes back to your question earlier about the recorded voice. If you hear your voice and then you work at measuring your pace not too fast, not too slow.

John Neral: 13:44

So, david, I want to stay here for a moment on the power of pausing and letting a particular point sink in, to give those who are listening an opportunity to process and respond without the job seeker or the job candidate here feeling like they need to interject and say something right away. Otherwise they're going to be fearful that they've disconnected from the conversation in some way.

David Pope: 14:17

Okay, well, mark Twain. He once said words are important, but no word is as important as a rightly timed pause important as a rightly timed pause. So pausing does two things, as you've said, just in terms of an interview, it allows the audience to understand what you're saying. So I like to call it audio punctuation. So just like you've got full stops, commas, new paragraphs, pausing of different lengths allows the audience to take in the information, and pausing can also help you to control the conversation.

David Pope: 14:53

Now, two things happen when we get nervous. Well, first of all, people don't like those pauses, right? People feel that they I've got to say something. But when we get nervous, two things happen. Number one is we speak quicker, so our pace increases. Number two, the pitch of our voice goes down. Sorry, the pitch of our voice goes up.

David Pope: 15:16

So what we're trying to do is, when we are noticing that the pitch of the voice is going up and we're speaking fast, this is when it's a good idea to pause. So these are the practical elements, but pausing is also it's allowing, as you rightly said, it's allowing the audience, the panel, the interviewer to understand what you're saying, because when people speak fast, they tend to potentially sort of an information dump. I've got to say this, I've got to say this, and they feel that they've got this short space of time and they've got to squeeze everything in. But what they don't understand is just by pausing, as you suggested, it allows the audience to take in the key pieces of information you see, and so when you pause, it allows for reflection and again, with interviews, it's very much a two-way conversation. So pausing is showing, it's giving a cue that it's time for the dialogue to change, for people to start asking questions, et cetera, having a conversation.

John Neral: 16:26

So, yeah, asking questions, et cetera, having a conversation. So yeah, for the person who will say I'm awful at interviews because I get too nervous, I stumble over my words, I don't put coherent sentences together, and while that may be true and let's acknowledge that interviews can be an extremely nerve-wracking experience for some it is also the thing they have to do sufficiently well, if not exceptionally well, in order to get that job offer. In your expertise, david, you help people build a toolkit to help them speak more confidently when under pressure. Could you share some of those components with us today about what you might put in someone's toolkit to help them speak more confidently when under pressure?

David Pope: 17:19

Absolutely Very, very practical stuff. So, neuroscience when we get nervous, cortisol, cortisol rages. This is the amygdala, you know, it's the reptile brain terrifying. And what happens is we get into our head. And when we get into our head, this is when, potentially, things start to fall apart. And so what I do when I'm working with people, I work them through a process. So I've worked with TEDx speakers, I work with C-suite level, getting them ready for conferences, speaking in front of like maybe 2000 people.

David Pope: 17:56

It happens to all of us. We do get nervous, even one on one in an interview. Okay, so what I will usually do? I focus on specific areas. First of all, posture how we sit, how we stand. So what I will do is I will help people to ground themselves, so I walk them through this exercise. It's almost like a sort of guided visualization. It's about rooting yourself to the ground. It's about then stretching up, opening the body, because when we are open, when the body is tall, think about like ballerinas, when you see them just walk, they're so graceful, right, and so thinking about this open posture as a voice coach, having an open posture, the chest is open. This therefore means that the voice can shine.

David Pope: 18:50

We then look at the breath. This is the foundation for having a good voice. When we get nervous, as I said before, the pitch of our voice goes up. So I walk people through diaphragmatic breathing exercises. We work on belly breathing, or it's otherwise known as abdominal breathing, or, if anybody does yoga there, pranayama, so we breathe into the stomach area. Now what this does is when we're getting very nervous and it's manifesting. Maybe, I don't know, we're sweating, we're getting a dry mouth, our voice is starting to shake a little bit. Moving the breath down into the stomach area, it grounds us. The other area, then, is we look at the pitch of the voice. So, again, I give people exercises in understanding keeping the pitch lower. So I walk them through a process of that.

David Pope: 19:48

And then the final part, which is often overlooked, is the articulation piece. Because I'm based in Asia, in Hong Kong. I've been there for 31 years. I'm very blessed to work with many nationalities, all the way through from Japan well, even down from Australia to Japan, to Korea, southeast Asia, all the way through to the Middle East, dubai and Saudi Arabia. Now, everybody if they are interviewing for an international company, a global company, linguistic issues as well. So again, it's coming back to the idea of speaking fast. If they speak very fast, they maybe trip over words, but the same can be said for us as native speakers. So I walk people through a process of articulation. This is enunciation and pronunciation, and this is around exercising the tongue, releasing the pressure from down by the hyoid bone. This is this area down in our throat and this gives us clarity. So the toolkit basically we have the posture, we have the grounding, we have the breath and then we have the clarity of speech. Go through that process, bam, you're ready to go.

John Neral: 21:12

So, david, for anyone who is listening to us today, I hope they, when they are safe if they're driving in a car right now, they're not going to do this while they're driving I hope they bookmark these three minutes of this conversation and they go back and they listen to them before their next presentation or before their next interview, because what you shared with us, especially so richly rooted in the science of it all, are things that I know many people don't understand, they're not familiar with. They think, oh, I'm just nervous, I just need to get over that. With all the people you have worked with across the globe, I'm sure you've got a ton of success stories. Could you share one with us, though, please? That would perhaps inspire some of our listeners today.

David Pope: 22:00

Absolutely, I think. Probably the one that stands out for me most is I was invited down to Singapore and I was running a workshop. It was Gravitas, voice and Presence, one of my workshops for a group, a wonderful organization, and it was specifically focusing on women returning back into work. And so women who professional women, who had had children, they'd taken time out and they were coming back into work. And so women who professional women, who had had children, they'd taken time out and they were coming back into the workforce. And you know some of the issues that come from that. Again it's the feeling, less than it's the imposter syndrome, it's I've lost my toolkit. Oh, I will never be good enough. You know the younger generation, they're much better than me. So I ran this workshop and somebody reached out to me Because I was in Singapore for an extended period.

David Pope: 22:55

I then worked with her. She had an interview coming up, so I worked with her, really focusing on the confidence piece. That was the first thing. But what we actually discovered was what she'd done as a sort of safety net was to write out her questions in very, very long form, and so when I was really doing a mock interview with her, she was taking so long to get to the point. I wasn't quite sure what the point was. I was getting lost in all the detail.

David Pope: 23:30

We worked on the content. We broke it right down because in terms of an interview, obviously it's a two-way conversation. I feel from my experience, it's better to leave the interviewer time to ask questions, if they have questions. If you just give them more and more and more and more, sometimes it becomes, I don't know, like the David show. It's about showing that you are there. If you're going for a job in management, you're, you know, you're a leader. You're there to draw out information from people, etc. To draw out information from people, etc. So I worked with her and we reduced the content of what she was saying, so she was landing her points succinctly and very clearly.

David Pope: 24:18

We then went through a process of I was back in Hong Kong. We did some online because her interview was online and this is very important as well. We need to understand not only how we sound but how we look in this online environment as well. So all of those nuances around voice and presence. We did mock interviews. Anyway, I was delighted to find out that she actually got the job that she'd been going for. The competition was extremely strong. She was returning back into the workforce and she nailed it, so that would be my great success story. I was so happy and we're still in touch with each other. She's been promoted and whenever she has anything high stakes she gets in touch with me and we work on her speech, her presentation, her pitch or whatever. So wonderful, wonderful.

John Neral: 25:09

How wonderful is that? Right, I mean, that's such a great story and something for all of us to kind of lean into a little bit. That something that a lot of people, in all fairness, may overlook or think, oh, I can just figure this out on my own. They need to tag someone in, like you, to truly help them level up their voice, their confidence, their presence, and to do it in a way that you shared earlier, that is very authentic to them, that helps them make the connections, that opens doors.

David Pope: 25:47

Absolutely, absolutely. The key is authenticity. I do feel that if something is very high stakes and this is a key job that you're going for then definitely just working with somebody who can basically give you feedback. Right, it's not feedback about oh you were good, oh that was OK. No, you need specific targeted feedback. Work on this, do this, record yourself, listen, learn, let's do it again, repeated, repeated yeah. So absolutely, it makes sense to, to, to work with somebody.

John Neral: 26:22

I would say say David, I thank you so much. You have shared so many wonderful things with us today and certainly given us a lot to consider as we start to wrap up here. What advice would you give someone to help them build their mid-career GPS to whatever's next for them in their career?

David Pope: 26:43

Okay. So for me, voice is linked so much to self-worth and confidence. So the most important thing is to learn to love your voice because, as we've mentioned before, it's about authenticity. We need to have an authentic voice way of working on your voice. So if you work on your voice, your audience it doesn't matter interviewer, or if you're in that job and you're starting to speak to groups of people your audience will respond to you more positively. When you lap up that sort of positive impact in the room in front of lots of people, then you feel more energized and more confident and, as a result, you speak with more confidence and the audience respond energized and more confident and, as a result, you speak with more confidence and the audience respond to you more positively.

David Pope: 27:32

So it's very much a cycle, a virtuous circle. So my really the most important thing I would say keeping coming back to this thing recording your voice, understanding the nuances but do the work before you walk into that interview room, make sure you've ironed out some of these little things because, as I said, we all make judgments about people based on the sound of the voice and if you've got an interview, you've got lots of things that you're working for right. You've got to make sure that you sound good, that you look good, that you come across well, that your content is good. So nail that part, and then the rest can start flowing.

John Neral: 28:20

That's wonderful. Thank you so very, very much, David. If people want to find you, connect with you, learn more about you, I'm going to turn the microphone over to you. Please share with us all the great places where people can find you.

David Pope: 28:32

Wonderful, okay. So if they can find me on my website, which is called allvoicetalentcom allvoicetalentcom, that's one word and actually on the website, they will find there's a free resource which is a toolkit, and that tip sheet toolkit this is something where I've been working with people, as I said, for many, many years, working with thousands of people actually recording their voice and playing it back and analysing. Now, these are really the top, top things that I've come across. These are the key issues. So if they're wanting to get that, they can find that on the website. There's also actually a toolkit as well, a presentation skills toolkit which is there. And finally, linkedin. I think all of us are all on LinkedIn. You can find me, pope voice coach, and I'm probably the only one, I think, in Hong Kong. And if you do link to me in uh in on LinkedIn, please mention that you heard me on John's podcast. That would be lovely for me to know, okay.

John Neral: 29:40

Please do so, David. Thank you so very much for sharing your expertise and your insights and your tips with us. This was absolutely incredible. Thank you so much for being a wonderful guest on the Mid-Career GPS podcast.

David Pope: 29:53

My absolute pleasure. John, Thank you so much for having me.

John Neral: 29:57

All right, my friends, as we wrap up here, I'm going to keep this really short with you today, because David dropped so many wonderful things. It's this Be authentic. How many times on this podcast with almost, I think we're going to be at over 300 episodes by the time this episode drops how many times have we talked about how you show up matters? Well, I'm going to add one of David's words in today how you show up authentically matters. No one can do what you do and you need to be the best person out there telling your story from that place of value and service.

John Neral: 30:34

So, until next time, remember this you will build your mid-career GPS one mile or one step at a time, and how you show up authentically matters. Make it a great rest of your day authentically matters. Make it a great rest of your day about how I can help you build your mid-career GPS or how I can help you and your organization with your next workshop or public speaking event. Don't forget to connect with me on LinkedIn and follow me on social at John Darrell Coaching. I look forward to being back with you next week. Until then, take care and remember how we show up matters. Thank you.