Everyone has a voice. Even if you don’t have the ability to speak, you have a voice. However, not everyone has the opportunity to be heard. Your voice is one of the most powerful tools that you have in your toolbox. There is a great deal of evidence that highlights the influence a mother’s voice has on the development of an unborn child. Power to shape the unborn—incredible!
With something so powerful, why would anyone ever be unwilling to use it?
I can think of a number of reasons. With an excess of video calls, fatigue is real, and bad connections can make the simplest of statements unintelligible. I find it easy to get lost in the squares of a Zoom meeting and can attend a meeting without uttering a single sound.
Your voice is uniquely yours. It is the primary method of sharing your thoughts, feelings, concerns, and intentions. You are the only person to ever have your experience and perspective. No one else has lived your life but you, and your voice is important. There are more ways for people to share their thoughts and opinions than ever. So why not tell your story?
“The squeaky wheel gets the grease.”
“The nail that stands out gets the hammer.”
“Better to keep your mouth closed and have people think you are an idiot than to open it and prove them right.”
There are plenty of proverbs that reinforce the idea keeping silent has its perks. However, I challenge those because you are in the spaces you are in for a very particular reason.
There isn’t anyone else who knows what you know, who has seen what you have seen, and has felt what you have felt.
This is not a cry for people to begin shouting from the rooftops or taking to every space on the interwebz to voice their opinion. In fact, I think it is the opposite. I have used the following phrase for quite some time in my work with student leaders.
“I can say anything to anyone provided that it comes from a place of love.”
In this case, I don’t mean the word love in the physical sense or the everyday casualness of the word (i.e. I love tacos!). It is more closely related to the concept of compassion and empathy. If I truly care for you and want what is best, I can tell you that your behavior is reckless or that you’re using your social media for evil. Those statements can be hurtful, but if they are coming from a place of compassion and empathy, then that is where it should start.
Compassion can be used to rally those around you, and empathy can be used to unify people and build trust (read this article).
Either way, it is your voice. You have control over it. It is more powerful than you think. There is evidence that your voice is capable of revealing more emotion than your facial expressions (see here). So use it. Several years ago, I was having a conversation with some colleagues at The Gathering, hosted by AFLV (I highly recommend it!), and we discussed pursuing a doctorate degree. I made a statement that I had no intentions or desire to enroll in a doctoral program because it would put me in a room with many people who I could not relate to based on my experiences.
At that point, one of the lead facilitators said to me, “Your experiences may not be common to them, but they are more common among students and that is exactly why your voice should be in those spaces. And you aren’t likely to be in those spaces without the credentials.”
Any time that I am doubting if I should use my voice, I think back on this moment. I have yet to pursue the doctoral program, but I continue to look for opportunities where my voice can and should be heard to speak for those who are not there to speak for themselves.
P.S. 5 on the 5 is a way you can use your voice for good. Check in on that friend. Call your mother. Make sure that your students are okay. They won’t think you’re any weirder than they already do. You’ll be glad you did, and so will they.
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