How to Find Your Voice: Your Authentic Journey Toward Confident Leadership
It takes time to find your voice, that thing that makes you authentic and a force to be reckoned with. Knowing how to find your voice, honing your message, and learning to trust your voice will make you influential and unforgettable. Is that your heart’s desire? After all, we’ve all experienced how icky it feels to be overlooked, unappreciated, put down, dismissed, unheard, underestimated, or undervalued. What can we do to make sure that doesn’t happen again?
Perhaps you can relate to what happened to me years ago:
I sat in a high-stakes leadership meeting, bursting with ideas. I’d done the research, thought through the strategy, and knew my perspective could shift the direction of our project for the better. But when the time came to speak up, I hesitated. The words stuck in my throat, and I left the meeting with a hollow pit in my stomach.
It wasn’t that I didn’t have a voice. I just hadn’t yet cultivated the inner permission and confidence to fully use it. I needed to learn how to own my voice.
That moment taught me something powerful: success doesn’t only come from what you know or how hard you work. The key to success is often how clearly and authentically you express yourself. Your voice is your instrument for influence, leadership, and legacy. And like any skill, it can be refined and elevated.
And while we can’t control how others may overlook us, we can take away their power to hurt us. When we find our voice and express it with clarity and confidence, we KNOW we’ve put our best out there, and it’s GOOD. If they reject it, so be it, but our voice was heard, and it was valuable. That’s power they can’t take away from us.
That’s why the final “E” in my EMERGE Method stands for Expression based on our Communication Intelligence, Leadership Intelligence, and Influence Intelligence. It’s the part of your inner fitness that allows you to lead with clarity, impact, and integrity while leaving a lasting mark on the people around you. (If you’d like to review information about the different intelligences we possess, here’s more on the full spectrum of human intelligences.)
How to Find Your Voice and Command Respect
As driven, ambitious women, we often spend years mastering our craft, building skills, and climbing ladders. Yet we struggle to feel fully seen and heard in the rooms we worked so hard to enter. Expression intelligence changes that. It’s what turns knowledge into wisdom, action into influence, and ambition into legacy.
When you strengthen this part of yourself, you:
- Communicate with clarity and presence.
- Share your ideas in ways that resonate and create impact.
- Lead with a voice that commands attention without force.
- Align your actions and message with your deeper values and vision.
Most importantly, you stop shrinking or reshaping yourself to fit into expectations and start showing up as the fullest version of you.
The Three Cornerstones of Expression
To lead with clarity, confidence, and meaningful influence, strengthen these three cornerstones of powerful self-expression. These pillars help you shape not just how you communicate, but how you inspire, innovate, and leave your mark.
1. Authentic Communication
Owning your truth and expressing it clearly and confidently is at the heart of expression. Developing your voice means refining what you say and how you say it, cultivating presence, and trusting that your message matters. How do you share ideas, set boundaries, and inspire action in everyday conversations and public speaking?
2. Creative Flow
Great leadership is distinguished by its vision. Expression intelligence gives you access to your creative and innovation intelligence, which leads to generating new ideas and imagining better solutions. How do you articulate your vision so it excites and mobilizes others?
3. Legacy Creation
We all leave a mark on the world, whether intentional or not. Cultivating your voice will allow you to consciously shape how you impact others. How do you share your wisdom and transmit your values so that you build something that lives beyond you?
When you develop these areas of expression, you’ve not learned how to find your voice — you amplify it!
“Dream Big, Start Small.” Here’s the one thing you can do today.
The 3-Word Leadership Statement that Strengthens Your Expression. This simple yet profound exercise helps clarify how you want to show up and lead in your world.
- Take a few deep breaths and reflect on how you naturally express yourself when you feel most alive, confident, and connected.
- Ask yourself: What qualities do I want to radiate as a leader, partner, and creator?
- Choose three words that capture the essence of how you want to communicate and lead.
(Examples: Bold. Compassionate. Strategic. Or Grounded. Visionary. Relentless.)
Write them down somewhere you’ll see them often, perhaps on your phone background, notebook, or bathroom mirror.
When faced with a challenging conversation, presentation, or decision, pause and ask: Am I expressing myself in alignment with these three words right now? This simple awareness check will help you speak and lead from your authentic center.
Your Voice, Your Message — The World Needs to Hear It!
Your ideas, voice, and perspective aren’t just valuable; they’re essential. The world needs more authenticity. It doesn’t need more noise, it needs more relevancy.
As you integrate Expression intelligence into your leadership, you’ll find that influence becomes effortless, creativity flows more freely, and your legacy takes shape, one honest conversation at a time.
If you’re ready to activate your voice, clarify your mission, and lead with power and grace, my EMERGE Method can help you unlock that next level. Reach out for a complimentary 30-minute consultation and let’s explore how this work can elevate both your leadership and your life.