Voices are everywhere- speaking, singing, yelling, laughing, whispering. We use our voices to communicate, collaborate, challenge, clash and clarify. Sometimes the greater the volume, the greater the effect, and sometimes the opposite results. How we choose to use our voice depends on how we identify it and what we want to achieve. Everyone is guided by a voice that manifests through the actions they take, information they process and how they function in a team. While I used to think it was most important to simply use your voice, I recognize now that how you blend your voice with others truly defines success. 

 

Over the past few years, I noticed that I gradually went from telling myself to speak up, to reminding myself to shut up. This change was catalyzed by the leadership development electives I took as part of my commitment to the Walker Leadership Scholars Program (WLSP). As a part of my development, I took POLI 215: Introduction to Leadership Studies with Dr. Kirk Randazzo and completed an independent study in Leadership with Dr. Alan Spies at the USC College of Pharmacy. These courses challenged me to explore my voice and identify methods to shape a more impactful message. 

 

When you’re in pharmacy school, students often put their blinders on to focus on the rigorous coursework, internships and extracurricular activities. Pharmacy becomes a way of life and you quickly forget that there is a world beyond the walls of Coker with diverse perspectives and different ways of thinking. Dr. Randazzo is an advisory member to the WLSP and as such, he arranged for us to take his course along with students from all kinds of majors including business, political science and psychology. The class focused on the leadership process and we learned in a general sense how a leader can inspire others. 

 

In this class, I began to realize that there was a disconnect between my words and my actions. As a leader, I was good at executing on the projects and initiatives, but I wasn’t always vocalizing the goals I was trying to achieve to involve others effectively along the way, therefore making it harder for the project succeed. To become a better leader, I had to develop a voice that connected how much I cared, and the actions I was taking, to the words needed to inspire others to act as well. Toward the middle of the semester, Dr. Randazzo introduced the concept of vocal presence and defined it as the state where your words, facial expression, body language, tone of voice, imagination and spirit are all fully engaged and congruent in conveying your message. Finally, I understood the components needed to convey my message, but it wasn’t until I took Dr. Spies’ class that I understood how to craft a personalized message that spoke to a variety of individuals.  

 

With Dr. Spies, there were just four of us Walker Scholars in his class each day. We were quickly introduced to the leadership framework called “The Five Voices.” Much like the Myers Briggs or other self-awareness tools, The Five Voices asks that you read a variety of statements describing each voice and order the voices based on how strongly you feel connected to each of them. The Five Voices include the Nurturer, Pioneer, Creative, Guardian and Connector. While this exercise and the weeks of conversation that followed taught me that the creative is my strongest voice, I also learned how to craft a message that resonates with all of the voices. For example, my creative voice results in a very forward-thinking approach to situations and my ideas may be overlooked because others aren’t yet able to see how my idea connects to the situation at hand. As a result, this class challenged me to think about how I can communicate a more effective message by speaking to all the voices. For example, someone with a guardian voice may want to know how my idea will fit into the budget, whereas the nurturer may be concerned about how the change will disrupt the harmony of the group. Now, if I don’t feel heard or understood, rather than blame the other person, I am able to reflect back on my message and how it might have been received. 

 

This realization was put to the test when I was tasked with re-creating a student driven award ceremony at the College of Pharmacy. Historically, third year pharmacy students would hold an award ceremony to celebrate the class before they head off to rotations in their final year of pharmacy school. The Class President is in charge of managing this celebration, so when I committed to be class president that year, I knew the responsibility I had to my class. However, I could not predict that our Assistant Dean had other plans in mind. In the past, the ceremony was costly and inclusive to only third year students. Our Assistant Dean felt that by including the rest of the student body, we could mitigate some of the costs and generate an event better received by students and faculty. It was up to me and the other class officers to envision how the event would evolve to solve these problems going forward. As I gathered information, perspectives, and ideas, it was clear to me how we would transform the marketing and programming to produce the First Annual Spring Banquet. Next, I had to communicate this in a way that all students and faculty understood. Not only that, I had to inspire others to partake in the planning and most importantly, attend the new event. Along the way, I had to redirect the noise and opposition to change toward a positive direction. 

 

Until one particular meeting, I felt like “Banquet Situation” was out of control. I knew going into this meeting with the class officers from each pharmacy class, it was my best shot to use my voice to guide the situation where my officers and I had determined it had to go. Up until that point, I was gathering and processing the arguments on all sides of the situation. To make the Banquet a success, we had to alter the fundraising structure and re-brand the event. Both of these components proved to be very controversial. The goal of the meeting I held was to convey to the other class leaders that my vision for the future was not as dramatically different as they thought and that we all agreed on more than we thought. In Dr. Spies’ class, we talked about how sometimes the creative voice needs to build a bridge for others, so I essentially created that bridge through a list of points of controversy and worked the group toward agreement step by step. At that point, I needed to use an authoritative, yet nurturing tone, to convey that there was a plan and we had to move on to more productive conversations. 

 

More than ever, I had to rely on the lessons I learned from Dr. Randazzo and Dr. Spies in order to be successful. If I hadn’t relied on vocal presence, blending my words, expressions, and spirit to convey how this new event could unify the college, we wouldn’t have had 300 enthusiastic guests attend an event previously half the size. Keeping my vocal presence in mind helped me connect how much I cared about the event to the way we advertised and recruited volunteers to help. What I learned in Dr. Spies’ class directly complemented my vocal presence because it taught me how to think personally about my voice and how others heard me. I was able to understand that it’s less about what you say, and more about how you say it. When voices don’t work together, the environment becomes loud and the path forward becomes unclear. As a leader, my goal is to unify my voice with the unique voices of others in order to achieve our common goals and aspirations.