Voice Coach Rena Cook on Ways to Empower Your Voice
Many successful attorneys learned to be successful by being louder and stronger. And for women, being louder and stronger doesn’t necessarily mean success. Sometimes louder and stronger means aggressive and shrill.
In today’s episode, Rena Cook joins us to talk about how she helps women attorneys command a great deal of authority and strength without being shrill, and how you, too, can improve your voice as a trial lawyer.
Rena Cook is a TEDx speaker, author, trainer, coach, and the founder of Vocal Authority, a training consultancy serving corporate clients – attorneys, politicians, teachers, sales teams, and CEOs – who want to use their voices in more commanding and authentic ways.
Rena is the author of Empower Your Voice: For Women in Business, Politics, and Life; Her Voice in Law published by the ABA; and Voice and the Young Actor, used in drama programs throughout the US and the UK. She co-edited Breath in Action: The Art of Breath in Vocal and Holistic Practice. Rena taught high school drama for 16 years before she graduated to higher education.
For the next two decades, she taught professionally bound actors, many of whom can be seen on Broadway, film, and television. Through Vocal Authority, Rena adapts actor training techniques to help individuals and groups be more confident and dynamic communicators.
In this episode, you will hear:
- Breathing deeply to keep the brain engaged
- The importance of the last word of sentences
- Techniques using breath and space to improve your voice
- The power of change and variety
- Common mistakes people make with their voice
- How to plan out your movement on transitions
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Supporting Resources:
Rena Cook
Email: renacook@cox.net
Website: www.myvocalauthority.com
Book: Her Voice in Law Purchase here
If you have questions or a particularly challenging client preparation, email Elizabeth directly for assistance: elizabeth@larricklawfirm.com.
Episode Credits:
If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment.
He helps thought leaders, influencers, executives, HR professionals, recruiters, lawyers, realtors, bloggers, coaches, and authors create, launch, and produce podcasts that grow their businesses and impact the world.
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Episode Transcript:
Elizabeth Larrick: Hello and welcome back to the podcast trial lawyer prep with me, your host, Elizabeth Larrick. And today’s episode, we have a lovely guest with us. Who’s going to talk about something that we all possess. Always work more on Rena Cook is going to come and talk to us about how to improve our [00:01:00] voices.
So Rena, welcome to the podcast.
Rena Cook: Hey, thank you. Thank you for having me, Elizabeth. I’m really excited.
Elizabeth Larrick: Well, good. Well, I had no idea this was even an option. When we first met, we met through Lori Kohler, who our fellow listeners will know. She’s been on our podcast and a good friend of mine at Oklahoma, practicing out of Tulsa though.
And you had worked with Lori specifically, and we met kind of at a little bit of a women’s trial wear collective. So how, how did you and Lori
meet
up?
Rena Cook: Well, Lori, of course, is, what do I want to say, a self improvement hound, right? She’s always looking for the next thing that’s going to make her a better attorney.
And one of her mentors, David Ball, who is a major name in personal injury trial law, he told all of his students, his mentees, that they needed to have voice coaches that the people who use their voice in the most compelling ways are going to be [00:02:00] the best trial attorneys. So she sought me out. She found my information.
Oh, I think another attorney. Ah, it’s all coming back to me. Another attorney recommended me to her. I was teaching at the university of Oklahoma. She was living in Tulsa. So she drove to Oklahoma City once a month to work with me and we worked for almost four years together. And then she decided to pull me into some retreats for attorneys that she was having.
And then that’s how you and I met on one of her retreats. Absolutely.
Elizabeth Larrick: And so, you know, again, for four years, it seems like a long time. So did you guys work on anything specific? Something we’ll know about that.
Rena Cook: Well, she was usually prepping for trial, and I would deal with her opening and closing statements, and I would coach them in the way that I coach actors.
You know, I come from an [00:03:00] acting training background, and I would coach the opening on, Where to get slower, where to get faster, where to get louder, where to get softer, how to get the jury on her side, how to get the jury to feel what she wants them to feel. And so we worked on that half of the time. And the other half of the time we worked on voice technique.
Many women come to me. Many successful attorneys who have learned to be successful by being louder and stronger. And for women, louder and stronger doesn’t necessarily mean success. Sometimes louder and stronger means aggressive and shrill. And, and I help women attorneys command a great deal of authority and strength without being shrill.
And so we [00:04:00] worked on voice quality. We worked on the importance of breath for keeping the voice warm, compelling, not high in light. You know, I’m not about making women sound like I am like women. We want women to sound number one, like themselves. But the best version of themselves and so we worked on those kind of exercises and then of course, as I said, coaching openings and closings and if you’re an active trial attorney once a month for four years is really not that long, you have work ongoing and there’s always something new to work on.
Yeah. And one of the things that
Elizabeth Larrick: you, you said, you know, kind of triggered for me when we got to do the retreat together was the, the power without press. And I know that you have a really cool Ted talk on that as well. So tell us a little bit about the power without press.
Rena Cook: Ah, well, the way I found or discovered power without [00:05:00] press was analyzing people who come on too strong.
And we see them in both genders. And I looked at where their energy is, where they carry the energy in the body. And most of the time, it’s chin up, shoulders pulled back. Now, you can’t see me right now, but what I’m doing is pulling my shoulders back, lifting my chin, and assuming my armored stance. What that does to my voice is hardens my voice.
I have released the effort in my shoulders. I brought my chin down parallel to the floor and I’m breathing in my center and I’m feeling my energy low in my body, not high. In my throat, in my chin, you can hear the difference. When I move the energy down lower, I find power [00:06:00] without press. And it’s the pressing of the chin and the upper chest and the shoulders that makes us sound shrill, aggressive.
Lori calls it the Mr. Lawyer suit sound. I’ve put on my Mr. Lawyer suit. And we want to find that power, the authority, the competency, the trustworthiness by bringing our sense of our own energy lower into our center around the navel area, around the stomach as being the source of our power. And that also keeps us breathing deeply, which keeps the brain engaged.
Oftentimes women attorneys will say, I get nervous and my brain shuts down. I’m prepped. I know what I want to say, but my brain shuts down by breathing deeply and keeping the power low. [00:07:00] It keeps your brain online as well.
Elizabeth Larrick: Yeah. And I think for me, like, When you were explaining it, like breasts, I mean, it’s literally just to get your breath out, you’re just pressing it out so you can really project and then you’re literally not breathing.
Exactly. Exactly. And just, just being able to keep breathing, you know, keeping that the brain flowing and, you know, is sometimes half the battle. When you were talking and I think one of the things too in the retreat was about like when you’re able to keep The the breath low you’re keeping it regulated.
You’re keeping air in there and it’s easier to keep the thoughts going, but you also helped with like when to breathe, like literally. Yeah, that’s,
Rena Cook: that’s hugely important when to breathe. I recommend that a speaker breathe at every punctuation. semicolons, periods, commas. The only place that you wouldn’t breathe with [00:08:00] commas is if you have a list and you’re saying oranges, comma, kiwi, comma, lemons.
You wouldn’t breathe after each one of those. In that instance, it’s a list. You just keep the list going. Other than that, breathing at every punctuation is really important. And we often write differently than we speak. So if you’re an attorney who is used to writing it out, you then need to read it out loud and breathe at punctuation to see if you’ve given yourself enough punctuation.
An audience can only take in, and this is audience a jury, can only take in seven to nine words that they need the speaker to breathe. That’s how they process information. And if too many words are linked together on one breath, the audience doesn’t take in the content. So the first run through when you’re [00:09:00] practicing an opening or a closing, the first run through is always do I have the punctuation in the right place to allow me to breathe often enough to power my words.
And you want to power your words with breath. If I say too many words on one breath and I start to rush because I think I’m going to run out of breath and the words that I’m rushing there, the audience will not understand. They need me to breathe. They need me to take my time and they need me to empower the important words with breath.
Elizabeth Larrick: I mean, even if you just think about this from like a very simplistic standpoint, because one, we always want to have simple sentences like, right, that’s good. One point, but then also thinking about like, okay, I want to have more. So I will slow down and breathe at every punctuation, like, We’re doing so many [00:10:00] things.
We’re helping ourselves, but like you said, helping our jury or even our judge, because I know sometimes when I’m getting up to do a motion and I know, like, you’ve got to get your stuff out there. You’ve got to get it out there quickly, you know, and she, you know, whoever’s up on the bench could be rushing you.
It’s, it’s almost like, okay, it’s okay. Take your time, ride it out, you know, because again, Most of the time they’re having to learn at the same time. They haven’t read anything beforehand. There’s like a jury,
Rena Cook: right? And if you rush it, they are going to miss it. And also if you rush, you can’t give the words there.
Do let me just give you an example. Let’s just say, hypothetically, you are saying to a jury, this young man was raised in a ghetto. All right. We’re setting up the background information on the defendants. All right, so if I just say this young man was raised in a ghetto, they may intellectually understand it, but they don’t get in their [00:11:00] heart what that was like.
So you say, this young man was raised in a ghetto. So I have enough breath to power what I think a ghetto feels like, looks like. And I infuse the word with my feeling and my breath. And then the jury is much more likely to get that image than if I just say, this young man was raised in a ghetto. Yeah, they’re going to miss it.
Exactly. At least they’re going to miss it in their heart. They may get it in their brain. Well, but that’s what we want
Elizabeth Larrick: them, right? It’s the emotional places where we make these decisions. We want them, yes. They think.
Rena Cook: You know, a jury thinks they’re making their decision with their brain, their intellect and their rationale.
But we know that we make decisions based on emotional response. And then we find the facts that fill in the blank for our brain to think, oh, yes, we’ve done this based on facts.
Elizabeth Larrick: Yeah, we [00:12:00] find
Rena Cook: the facts to
Elizabeth Larrick: support our
Rena Cook: feelings.
Elizabeth Larrick: And I know I’ve seen you do this as well, where we basically, you know, you take an opening statement with these principles.
I’m going to breathe at every punctuation. I want simple sentences that you have make a point, but then also go in and realize word placement, word choice, that emotional illusionary get them into that understanding things deeper.
Rena Cook: Exactly. And, and because of training actors, as I have, I know how actors use language to make the audience feel what we want them to feel.
And there are specific techniques. It is talent, partly. The other half, fully, is technique. So I will have an attorney look at the text of the opening and circle all the nouns. so that you know what the important words are. And the nouns are always [00:13:00] your most important words. And you want to give the nouns Time.
In other words, you don’t say a noun quickly. If I want to say, for example, look at that house. If I say, look at that house. It’s like, okay, what? Look at that house. I take more time and infuse the word with what I feel about it. Look at that house. You know, you know what I feel about it or look at that house.
We communicate how we feel by how we use the words. So we have to acknowledge these are the nouns and these are the important words that I want them to see and I want them to feel something about. The second most important word are the verbs, the action verbs, like action. He stormed into the room.
Stormed being our verb. If I just say he stormed into the room, well, we kind of understand, but we don’t get it until we hear he stormed [00:14:00] into the room. We make the words sound like what it means, and then the audience feels it in their bodies, not just in their brain, they feel it in their bodies. Now, let me just, let
Elizabeth Larrick: me just take a, take a pause here because we could have some folks listening and definitely I will say sometimes I feel this way too.
I am a very low traumatic person. Like, I’m just not. And so, are we saying every sentence needs to have this powerful expression
Rena Cook: or? Well, we clearly
Elizabeth Larrick: can.
Rena Cook: Clearly no. And I am, and you know, actors like me tend to be very, very expressive. And most of the attorneys I work with fall more into the, I’m a little bit more relaxed than you are Rena.
I’m not quite that expressive. And so we find a way to help the individual be true to their authentic self. And also empower their voice and their language [00:15:00] within the range of what’s comfortable for them. Right. So if you are typically low key and there’s very little affect, you’re just giving information.
If you’re breathing and you know what words you want to bring out, you’re not going to throw those words away. Many, many people throw the last word of a sentence away. Particularly if they’re reading from a script that they’ve written. And so our usual thing is we read, read, read, come to the last word.
Come to the last word, right? And it drops away. Well, we need to, they come to the last word. It’s like lift the last word and it’s not like punch it or throw it. It’s just Let it go forward into the ears of the jury and not on the floor in front of you. So there are techniques to help us [00:16:00] break that habit of how you get the last word of every sentence, and know that the last word you say of a sentence is always the most important word in that sentence.
We do that. And if we make it as we deliver it, the least important word, then the jury, the audience has missed. a major bit of information. So it really is about some principles of presentation, and there really aren’t that many, and they’re pretty easy to practice. It doesn’t happen automatically in performance.
When you’re under pressure, you will go back to the old way of doing things. But if you practice intentionally, like I said, practice the breath, read the speech, just breathing at punctuation to see if that feels right. if it feels appropriate. And then we add another [00:17:00] layer. Maybe it’s let me circle the nouns and let me just give each noun its importance.
And then maybe it’s reading it again for verbs. Then it’s reading it again to make sure you’re not falling off at the ends of your sentences. So that there’s a focus for each run through and that helps it move forward. It helps it get better. If you practice it in the same way every time without thinking about what’s going to be the focus of my practice this time, you will just be reinforcing old patterns.
You won’t be learning anything new or moving the speech forward. Because by the time you present, you want it to sound like it’s totally authentic, that it’s off the top of your head, that you haven’t written out every word, and that you’re just speaking from your heart. Right. And most, most attorneys can’t do that.
There has to [00:18:00] be some preparation.
Elizabeth Larrick: Oh, I would say anyone that, you know, when I think to say, Oh no, I just, I’ll just go off the cuff. I’m like, you’re going to miss something. I mean, I talk about a lot here in, in right about, it’s like, there’s so much to be said about just writing it out. And I love that idea of like, okay, let me write it out now.
Let me go back and write for, for speaking, right. With the sentences and the punctuation and then like every single run through you’re doing something different. But for us, like, we are memorizing, like, the concept that we write so that when it comes out, like, We may try a different word, or, but we’re still going to have that breath with us and know how to get the message out.
Rena Cook: For people who don’t open their mouths enough, I mean, that’s a huge habit. For example, if I don’t open my mouth very much, Right. This is how I sound. I’m just not opening. I’m not making space. And so I have to help some [00:19:00] clients break the habit of speaking with a very tiny mouth and making more space because space is your megaphone, right?
Breath and space is your volume knob. Breath and space. And I will have someone do a whole run through just making space in the mouth. And I have some tricks to help you do that. Like I’ll cut a little inch of a soda straw and have an inch and put the, the soda straw between your upper and lower teeth and tell you ha ha and the where , right?
But then you take the spacer out, but keep the sense of the space. And automatically there’s more, more easy sound because your mouth has kind of gotten used to making more space. So we have little tricks that we can practice with. [00:20:00] Tricks that release our tongue. Tricks that release our jaw. And the tongue and the jaw are million dollar tension points.
For any speaker and how we relax the tongue, how we relax the jaw to get ourselves ready to speak in our best voice. So part of the practicing is also practicing good vocal usage, because when we’re presenting, we don’t want to think about breath. We don’t want to think about space. We don’t want to think about the nouns and the verbs.
We want to think about our message and is our message landing on who it needs to land on. So I take care of all of those details through my rehearsal. And the more times I rehearse, The more of it is going to stay with me when I’m in front of the jury.
Elizabeth Larrick: And so that leads me to my question. How many times should people be doing rehearsal?
But let’s take opening statement. Let’s take opening statement.
Rena Cook: Okay. Well, let’s, [00:21:00] let’s not include the writing portion and the research portion and all of that. You’re going to do that anyway. Once you have it in a form that you can practice, you need to practice it on several different times. In other words, the night before you present is not enough practice, right?
If you have it done a week, or two weeks even before you’re going to present. And then you spend 15 20 minutes a day with it, practicing breath, practicing space, using nouns, using verbs, not letting it fall off at the end, maybe finding a place where you’re going to get louder, maybe notating a place where you’re going to get slower, right?
Or big pause, big dramatic pause. You practice those things. And they will be there when you perform. 10, 20 minutes? I’d say 10, 20 minutes a day would be [00:22:00] optimal. Every other day would do the trick, but you can’t do it the night before and expect all of the bits to be there. I also encourage where it’s possible to go into the space you’re going to into the the courtroom into the space The night before if you can the morning of get in the space and try your voice in the space You know, this is where the jury’s going to be.
This is where the jet. Oh my goodness Look how far back that wall is. This is a big room Am I going to have to breathe a little deeper? Am I going to have to make a bit more space to be heard in this room? And then try some words. as you are going to give them so that the space is your friend and not your enemy.
When you start every space is different. Sure. And it feeds back voice in a different way.
Elizabeth Larrick: Whenever I was going to law school, I was an intern at a courthouse and it had, um, [00:23:00] very beautiful courthouse, but the very center had this like dome and the judge told us, and of course, work. You know, he knows where I said, there’s something special about this room.
He says, because I can sit where I’m at and the sound swirls in the dome and comes right back to me. So I can hear what you’re whispering at the council table because it gets up and I’m just like, Oh my gosh.
Rena Cook: Yeah. Yeah, and that’s a perfect example how every room is different and handles sound in a different way.
Some rooms are very live and you have to, in a live room, you have to slow down a little bit or your words bump into each other. If the walls are absorbing, then you have to breathe a little, a little more. You know, to make the sound a little louder. And if you have a partner, you know, a paralegal or a co counsel, go in and try the room together and give each other [00:24:00] feedback.
You know, go stand in the farthest part of the room. This is the level I’m comfortable projecting. Are you hearing it? And so you, you get that information before, and that’s really valuable information. So
Elizabeth Larrick: as far as like, let’s just, you know, you work with lots and lots of people, what, what’s a pretty common mistake people make with their voice?
Rena Cook: Well, the most common is not breathing, you know, it really is because untrained people don’t realize the importance of breath and they just breathe whenever they feel they need to. The other thing is not making enough space in the mouth. and not dealing with words, not making words matter. I mean, when we write, we will agonize over this word or that word, right?
But when we speak it, we just take it for granted. We just say the word. [00:25:00] So if we’ve chosen it that carefully as we’re writing, we need to speak it as carefully as we chose it because we chose it for a reason and we want the word to land. And the power of change, the power of variety. Most people have a rate variety that they always speak at.
They have a volume level that they always use. And they have a limited pitch range. Couple three notes of pitch variety over the course of a sentence. Those are very common issues that come to me. And I help them in each case, find a way to, maybe it’s find more vocal variety. Vocal variety in inflection.
Vocal variety in rate of delivery. In volume, some things can be louder, some things can be softer. Thank you. When we get to major points, we want to slow down, right? Another [00:26:00] thing is that movement trumps word. So if I have a big notion, a big statement that I want to make sure everybody hears, if I move while I’m saying that statement, the audience will not get it.
They will watch me move. So, you know, that’s a pretty big one because I know most of us love to walk around Well exactly walking must be deliberate When I move from point a to point b, it’s for a reason It may be a focus. I want to talk to someone specifically. I want the the jury to look at something specifically.
I move for intention. If I’m randomly moving, the audience quits, listening to what I say, they start watching me randomly move. And if I am moving on my key [00:27:00] sentence, the audience will not get it. So I help attorneys kind of choreograph their movement, you know, stand still for this, and then you can move here, you can move to here, and we’ll map out, you know, what we think the courtroom is going to look like in my studio.
We’ll put things out and we’ll walk through You know, in the end, the attorney will say, well, this is what I, what feels natural to me. Ah, great. Let’s keep that. But you’ve got to stop moving on this word or on this sentence or they’re not going to hear you.
Elizabeth Larrick: Yeah. One of my mentors would say, we would want to choreograph the room.
So if you’re going to talk about one particular subject, you go stand in that spot. Right. And it’s, and that helps you get a little bit choreographed too, because then you’re, some people won’t move at all. Right. They’re like trees. Right. A ton. And so like having that, like, okay, if you’re going to talk about that [00:28:00] thing, you need to go over that spot.
Right. Are you talking about the thing? Or like you said, a lot of times people will talk while they move, if they’re trying to get to an exhibit or get over to a board. No one’s they’re just watching you move. They’re not listening to what you’re saying.
Rena Cook: Exactly. So you plan your movement on transitions.
transitions from one subject to another. It’s like, I’m going to finish this paragraph or this point, and I’m going to focus completely on this person in the jury, and I’m going to stay there until the end. And now, new subject, I can move somewhere else. Or, and I usually do eye contact leads movement. So I’m standing, say, center, center.
Right. And I have just said something to the judge. So I have made eye contact with the judge and now I am going to walk toward the jury. I look at them first and the look leads me in that direction [00:29:00] because it gets what they do. They’re going to look,
Elizabeth Larrick: they’re going to look where you’re looking.
Rena Cook: Exactly.
Elizabeth Larrick: The other thing that I’m hearing me say is like, we have permission to stop talking if we’re going to be walking because you don’t want to walk and talk because they, they’re not, they’re not listening
Rena Cook: to you at all. Yeah. Unless you’re making a transition, right? So you’re saying something like, and now in the meantime, or we’re going to turn our focus to.
So as I’m giving signposting information, right, you’ve moved your, you’ve moved and now you’re going to, like you said, walk. Walk to it, and I walk to it on the transition pieces, the signposting, meanwhile back at the ranch kind of things, you know, that aren’t crucial, that can cover my cross to another side of the room or to an exhibit or something.
Just be aware not to make your important points [00:30:00] when you’re walking or moving. Get where you gotta go and then make it. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I will even deal with gesture. You know, what would be a strong gesture at this point? And I can usually see, you know, when your hands kind of move, you know, you, you get that, the typical movement, hand movement.
And I will say your hands are kind of moving. Your body is telling you, you need to gesture. What would be a strong gesture in that moment? And then we will brainstorm and try out various gestures that amplify the point and not distract from the point.
Elizabeth Larrick: And I want to say almost all this stuff, because I have Empower Your Voice, right, is one of your books that you have.
That’s a lot of it’s in the book that you have.
Rena Cook: It’s all in empower your voice and then Laurie and I wrote a book for attorneys together and it’s called her voice in law. It [00:31:00] was published by the America Bar Association and we wrote it together. At her suggestion, after we had worked together a number of years, she said, Rita, we ought to write a book about this.
And I thought, hmm, that’s a great idea. And so what Lori did is to contextualize the work. In the legal environment, right? I come from a theater environment, and then I started working in the corporate world with vocal development, but the legal world is a whole beast of its own. And Laurie would say. Say, no, we don’t call it that.
We call it this, or this is where I would use this kind of voice and this is the situation where I would need this kind of thing. Mm-Hmm. . And so that’s what she provided as we worked together on the book. She was invaluable as I translated this work into the legal environment. [00:32:00] Mm-Hmm. . That’s awesome.
Someone could pick up that book and just follow the book. And I have video component that shows the exercises and demonstrates and so on. So that someone could, without the presence of a coach, do the work on their own. I would hope they’d want to work with a coach because it’s better that way. But, but the book is for in the absence of a coach, you can do this work yourself.
Yeah. And although as we talk about it, it sounds complicated, just breaking it down step by step and then putting it all together, the work is done and you’ve had a good time doing it.
Elizabeth Larrick: Well, and I love that you, that you have a book because I love. Reading books. And I love to, to do all that. But I also know like working with somebody, working with the coach, it’s like leaps and bounds.
And the progress is so much faster than just reading, [00:33:00] reading the book. So, but I know you do, I know you do several other things, right? So tell us a little bit more about, you know, when I got the book out and you have a podcast as well. So tell us a little bit more about, uh, podcasts and other speaking that you’re doing.
Rena Cook: Okay, my podcast is called Let’s Get Vocal with Reena and it grew out of the pandemic like so much did at that time. It was like, how can I keep working? How can I keep getting my message out when I can’t be out and about? And so I started the podcast and I wanted to talk to a variety of people. It turned out to be all women.
And, but that wasn’t my initial thing was I wanted to talk to people. who got me excited about things. Often it was voice trainers. I studied voice in London, and so several of the people that I interviewed on the podcast are voice trainers in London, and we talk about dialect. We talk about a range of [00:34:00] topics.
I’ve interviewed some attorneys, some therapists, just things that interest me that I wanted to talk about. Thus, let’s get vocal with Rina and, and I hope that I put out some information that people want to hear that, you know, and I kept it to about 30 minutes, kind of the length of a workout. Cause that’s when I do my podcast listening is when I’m working out.
I also speak to various organizations, not just legal organizations, although I love to do that. I did a speech for women. They were called women in equipment distribution. They sell tractors. And they were the most amazing group of women, clearly in a male dominated profession. And we talked about how a woman holds her ground Holds her voice, carries authority and [00:35:00] competency, again, without pressing.
And, and so I travel the country speaking primarily to women’s groups, women who want to use their voice to further their mission. And, you know, as women in the last, what is it, five, six, seven years now, things have changed culturally for women, not as much as we want it to change, but it is changing. And we have new hearts, new imagination, new inspiration for sharing who we are and what we have to offer.
But if we are using the same voice, that we have used through all of those years of either subjugating ourselves, making ourselves smaller, or making ourselves more puffed up than we need to be. So finding the grounded and centered and confident voice that can communicate our truth in any situation seems [00:36:00] to be where the energy of my work is going.
And you like that work. I do. I do now. I’ve gone back to teaching actors again. Two days a week. I go to Oklahoma City University. I found that I missed mixing it up with actors. And the reason is when you’re Training professionally bound actors, you go into the nitty gritty, you get into the depth, right?
And, and I was missing that kind of depth. So I’ve taken that job two days a week. And then I work my consulting business the other days of the week. And it seems to be a really happy balance for me right now.
Elizabeth Larrick: Awesome. Awesome. And are you still doing like helping people, you know, one on one?
Rena Cook: Oh, yeah, that’s pretty much the bread and butter of my business is the one on one coaching.
I have a studio in my home or I go to their office if that’s more convenient. So I work both places, either their office, my [00:37:00] studio, and I have packages, you know, like some people say, Oh, I think I just need three sessions or I need 10. And 10 is really the number that I recommend for lasting change. You need to practice with the coach at least 10 times until you get it in your body and then you can carry the work forward by yourself.
Without a coach.
Elizabeth Larrick: Yeah. And you do it virtually too as well.
Rena Cook: Oh yeah. Yeah. Of course I discovered that during the pandemic. It’s not my favorite thing because when you’re working on a voice, you need to see the body 360. What’s happening with the feet? What’s happening with the knees? What’s happening with the breath in the center?
So I found ways to now turn your camera so I can see your feet, right? And then I’ve gotten to where I’m, my intuition is better. It’s like, it sounds. to me like your knees are locked. Is that true? Oh, yeah. Yeah, they were. [00:38:00] So I’ve gotten better at kind of trusting my intuition on the screen, but I’m an extrovert.
I want to be in the same room with people. Yeah. Right. Technology drains me. Human beings refresh me.
Elizabeth Larrick: Yeah.
Rena Cook: Yeah.
Elizabeth Larrick: Well, I, I love that, you know, the pandemic and again, same here for sure. Definitely made me become much more flexible and I enjoy doing a lot of virtual stuff now, virtual focus groups, helping people virtually.
It is nice to be in person, but it also, you know, I love the flexibility as well. So I’m glad to hear that. But if somebody wanted to connect with you, what’s, what’s the best way Platform or where should they go if they wanna, and just not anybody who’s listening, we’ll have, uh, rena’s email in the show notes, but tell us what the best place that they wanna just come follow.
Rena Cook: Well, my website is my vocal authority.com and, uh, there’s a contact route on the website, [00:39:00] but I, I love for people just to reach out to me at email, renaCook@cox.net. Pops being cox. net. And that’s really the most direct route to me. Okay. Well, I know you’ve got Facebook page. I know you’ve
Elizabeth Larrick: got some other things.
I just want to make sure. But
Rena Cook: yeah, yeah, I do. I do Facebook and LinkedIn. LinkedIn because my speaking agent, Says I need to have you active on LinkedIn. So I am, and I just use Facebook or this is fun. Look what I did.
Elizabeth Larrick: Well, there, I know there’s just so people know there are lots of really great resources on your website, videos and stuff to watch if you people are curious, but Rhea, before we wrap up, is there anything that I missed, but I didn’t, I didn’t ask you about that you think our audience or this audience would, would
Rena Cook: really appreciate.
Actually, there is one thing that we didn’t talk about that I want to just take a couple of minutes. A way to memorize a speech, because memorizing the speech is like the big old bugaboo. [00:40:00] And if you memorize word for word, you will get lost. A word will slip away and you’ll go, Oh my God, I have no idea where I am.
I was doing a focus group with an attorney. And he wanted me to, to hear this very complicated opening and he broke down three times, broke down meaning forgot what was next. It’s like, Oh my God, I am totally lost. I have no idea where I am. So we went back to his office and I realized that what he was saying was very, very visual.
He was wanting the jury to see a whole scenario. And so it’s like, okay, look at your first paragraph. What is it you want the audience, the jury to see? Draw that picture. And he said, well, I, I, I’m not, I don’t care. Just draw it, stick figures if you need to. And then we put it on, on the wall with a piece of tape.
And so we storyboarded essentially [00:41:00] every image that he wanted the jury to see and put them on the wall in order. And then I had him, because we can all talk about a picture, right? I want you to see this. And in this picture, this is happening. So he did his whole opening just by looking at pictures. It’s easier for us to memorize images than it is to memorize pictures.
this word, this word, this word. So he was able to recall the main details by recalling what is the picture I want the jury to see right now. And so that was an alternative way of memorizing and corralling all that information without getting tripped up and memorizing word for word.
Elizabeth Larrick: I think that also helps too with order because sometimes we get Uh, we, we may memorize and then we just, we go to the next thing and we’ve skipped a whole paragraph.
But if we have, we have [00:42:00] this, the visual story, we may not have it perfect, but we’re not going to skip over that visual. Exactly. Let me ask you one question too, because this is, uh, I’m just curious. So I have heard some people talk about, as far as opening statements, doing a large portion of it, silent, just showing visuals.
What would you, and again, what would you, what would be your maybe comments? Well,
Rena Cook: you know, I don’t know because I haven’t seen that to know if that’s effective. If you have really strong visuals, I can’t help but think you’re going to need some narration to tie the visuals together. And so, you know, I would love to coach that challenge.
Someone says, no, I do my opening with all visuals. What else do I need? And then to work through that in a creative way to see if voice helps to tie all of the visuals together. [00:43:00] Because the jury is going to find their way to link all of that, and it may not be the way you want them to link it. So you may need to use the voice and words to say now this is why this is here.
Now we’re going to go to here, and this is why this is the next step.
Elizabeth Larrick: I think there’s also for me a factor of wanting to be a little bit of the teacher. And the leader and not having that you’re taking a very much a very passive role. Like you’re saying, like you would have to, in my mind, you would have to really focus group it to make sure people aren’t making the wrong assumption, like creating their own story, you know, that everything is so clear, you know, the visual.
Rena Cook: And another thing occurs to me, Elizabeth, is that if I don’t talk, the jury is not forming a relationship with me. I help the jury attach to me by talking to them by [00:44:00] making contact with them. I need them to like me to go into the jury room to fight for me and my client. They have to believe in me. They have to feel good about me.
They have to trust me to take me in their brains and in their hearts into that jury room and maybe battle for me. You know, and the way I form that relationship is by talking to them. That’s just a thought.
Elizabeth Larrick: Yeah, well, I just think, you know, communication is what we say, but, you know, how we say it and you can say less.
You totally can. I think they would all, we all said less, but how we’re saying it and with that short amount of time that we have with jurors, how can we use that as best as possible? And maybe a portion of it is being silent, you know, big space. But maybe the portion of it is, like you said, growing that relationship and being that leader, if you will, and teacher.
So well, thank you so much. I appreciate you. Let me pick your brain on [00:45:00] that. Thank you so much for making some time to join the podcast today. Super helpful. I know that thinking about our voices. It’s our main tool when it comes to depositions and motions. Mm-Hmm. . And even talking to clients and getting people to sign up.
Mm-Hmm. . So I think it’s all like very helpful things to help prepare better, uh, be better lawyers. So thank you so much for joining us.
Rena Cook: Oh, it was so my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me, Elizabeth. I really enjoyed myself.
Elizabeth Larrick: Good. Well if anyone wants to reach out, Torina, like I said, I’ll put all the contact in the show notes.
For email and website and then also a link to the book if you’re interested in buying the book that she has her voice in law. So, all right, well, until next time, thank you so much.