Unlocking the Power of Your Voice at Work

Are you using your voice to its fullest potential in the workplace?

In this episode of the Inclusive Growth Show, Toby Mildon sits down with Clinton Jordan, a vocal coach and performer who has sung with the likes of Mariah Carey and Tina Turner, and even performed at a royal wedding. Clinton now dedicates his work to helping professionals find their true voice and use it to lead with confidence and impact.

Together, they explore how the voice shapes our workplace presence, the concept of sonic impact trauma, and why many of us are held back by early negative experiences with speaking. Clinton shares practical strategies for moving from convincing to conviction in communication and how leaders can cultivate a truly inclusive environment by mastering empathy and sound.

Key takeaways:

• How sonic impact trauma affects workplace confidence
• Techniques for speaking with conviction, not just persuasion
• Why inclusive leaders must understand the musicality of communication
• The role of breathwork in boosting team performance and trust
• What comedians can teach us about tone, timing, and connection

If you're enjoying this episode and looking to boost equity, inclusion, and diversity in your organisation, my team and I are here to help. Our team specialises in crafting data-driven strategies, developing inclusive leaders, designing fair recruitment processes, and enhancing disability confidence. With a blend of professional expertise and lived experience, we're ready to support you on your journey. Reach out to us through our website. 

If you want to build a more inclusive workplace that you can be proud of please visit our website to learn more.

Transcript

Speaker 1: Welcome to the Inclusive Growth Show with Toby Mildon, future-proofing your business by creating a diverse workplace.

Toby Mildon: Hey there, thank you ever so much for tuning into this episode of the Inclusive Growth podcast. I'm Toby Mildon, and today I'm joined by Clinton Jordan. And I met Clinton through a business coaching program that I'm part of, and every six months or so we have these strategy away days, and Clinton delivered this amazing session to us about how we can use the power of our voice. Clinton has got a background in music, performance, acting, and his work is all about how we can use our voice. So Clinton, it's amazing to catch up with you. Thanks for making the time for this conversation.

Clinton Jordan: Absolute pleasure, Toby, absolute pleasure.

Toby Mildon: So one of the things that really stuck with me that you said, you said that we spend years perfecting our handwriting, but very little time working on our speech writing. And that really stuck with me. So how does our voice shape how we're seen and heard within the workplace?

Clinton Jordan: Well, I think that most of our time in education is spent being manufactured, presenting our best version in text. I think that's really strange when you actually think about it. You're not taught how to speak and present yourself as much as joining up those A's. [laughter] Does anyone remember? Now, instantly I start to get like really ticky about this because I'm left-handed and in the right-handed world, I come to realize that there was a very little time spent on left-handed people. Just go back a few hundred years and we were burnt at the stake. And so it makes me wonder this why young people, children are not presented or taught how to use the four components that actually develop and bring about our voice. And so that sent me on a magical mystery tour on figuring out how do we get a time and a space and a chance to present our speech writing. 

Clinton Jordan: And it means going back to repetition or shall I say going forward to repetition, into repetition. When we do that, when we start to actually look at, well, wait a minute, why was I joining my C's and my A's and my T's and cat and for such a long time, but I wasn't spending that time presenting a sound, the timbre, the shape of it, the dynamics, all of these things. The answer is quite simple is because if you've got a world full of confident people that know how to use their sound to change their atmosphere, I mean, we're going to have a whole lot more leaders than we actually thought were on the planet. And there are, there's a big why behind this. There are more leaders, people wanting to being able to lead their lives into doing new and dynamic things. And it stops at the epicenter as the breath. And so, yeah, it's a magical thing.

Toby Mildon: Yeah, because if we think about it, like in the corporate world, we do loads of writing. We write reports, write PowerPoint presentations, write emails. But I don't know the statistics on this, but I would say that we do more speaking than writing. If you think about the amount of Zoom calls that we have to go on, the amount of presentations we have to give or pitches or standing up in front of an audience to give a town hall meeting or something like that. And it's about how are you using your voice to make the right impact? And before we get into the kind of the next question, can you just give us a really quick whistle stop tour of your background in terms of voice and performance? Because when you did this session, our way there, you had me at famous wedding. I won't divulge any more than that, but you were involved in a very famous wedding, weren't you?

Clinton Jordan: Yeah, just a little small wedding in 2018, a couple named Harry and Meghan. You can Google the rest. Yeah, it was, listen, the journey in its synopsis is performing arts, Brit school, went into join a, went to, well, I was about to go to Berkeley, but I took a Berkeley College of Music, one of the best music colleges in the world. I decided to join the London Community Gospel Choir instead because they were singing with artists and celebrities and all amazing people already. So I thought, let me join them. Turned down my scholarship, nearly got signed a couple of album deals, turned that down because I'd had enough of doing all of these amazing performances. I've got the T-shirt, went into education as a learning music assistant and yeah, go figure that out from record deal to learning music assistant. I know this is the abridged version and then hooked up with a doctor of ethnomusicology. His name is Dr. Christoph Szyzewicz from Krakow, Poland. I was carrying his bags and writing everything down that he said for the best part of a decade in a room a quarter of the size of this. And he'd finished his PhD.

Clinton Jordan: I finished singing with people like Tina Turner and Mariah Carey and all of that kind of sort of stuff. And we fused an amazing world together where we had this cross-pollination between the two of us. He taught me that there's a book in me and I taught him about personal, about presenting yourself in classrooms and teaching. And we just exchanged ideas from each other. He very much empowered me to be the person that I am today. One of six ethnomusicologists on the planet. I went on an educational rampage with him, started a company, educational workshops all around London, then moved into a wedding and the wedding changed my life and then went into coaching.

Toby Mildon: Your own wedding, not with Meghan and Harry.

Clinton Jordan: Oh, no, no, sorry. This is the abridged one. It was Meghan and Harry when I started a new world coaching people in all walks of life. And then it brought me to this place here. Of course, let's not forget the pandemic. That was our, what on earth am I doing in this world moment that we all went through and it brought me to here. And yeah, so all of that, I say those rooms because every single one of those rooms were important into the fashioning of my voice. And the question I will pose is that how many rooms have you been in and how many opportunities to use your voice to shape the person that you are? That's what I discovered in my journey.

Toby Mildon: So talking with your experiences actually, can you explain to us what sonic impact trauma is and how past experiences affect how we show up at work?

Clinton Jordan: Sonic impact trauma is this in a nutshell. When one of your parents said to you, your voice is like a strangled cat. Or when you was in the school nativity play and you was singing and there was a group of kids laughing at your performance and you gave your heartfelt performance. It's the moment when you put your hand up in the class to go and answer a question and you had the right answer but the wrong sound and everybody decided to have a laugh or a snigger. But the class clown who had nothing, they had nothing to say of any value but because they said it so confidently, they were given the airspace. These little moments, they chip away at our confidence, what we call confidence, they chip away. And just by way of repetition, they fashion us into the kind of confidence that we have today. So it's no wonder when someone's in the boardroom and they're about to say something and they meet a person, person X, and maybe a pushback or a rebuttal comes and it takes them right back to the classroom. That's sonic impact trauma. It's the sound that causes this groove into our confidence that we bring into our present and then sometimes into our future.

Toby Mildon: That's really interesting. I'm linking that to, in my line of work, I talk about microaggressions or micro incivilities. So those are the small behaviors, often unintentional, often done unconsciously that undermine us. So it might be linked to a particular characteristic in case that's what we would call a micro inequity that could be the color of your skin or you've got a visible disability or something like that or how you present yourself if you're a member of the LGBTQ plus community. Or it might just be micro incivility is just more of those little behaviors that often undermine us, like a manager looking at their phone in a meeting and not paying you their full attention, for example. So if we think about people who are from say an underrepresented group within the workplace, what would you say are some of the practical steps that they could take to use their voice confidently and raise their profile within their organization or their team?

Clinton Jordan: The first thing I would say to anybody that feels that they're underrepresented in any fashion of life is to really repurpose your why on why you want to represent yourself. I think it's about making the conscious decision to use your voice because you want to build the vocal image that you want to feel good about. Not because it's validated in any room, but it's because you want to learn how to master this amazing gift of communication that we have, the voice, and that I want to reach as many people as possible. And this is one of the things that I really put in front of me that transcends beyond my need to, what's the word I'm looking for? Let's talk about race. I lived in a predominantly White area in terms of my culture, my two cultures, Asian and West Indian, were always on trial because of the time and the season that I'm in. After a while, I decided to want to increase the level of my communication because when I traveled the world and I saw that people communicate differently, not just because of language, not just because of phonation, but because of the musicality that each, let's say each culture has geographically, they lean towards different things musically.

Clinton Jordan: And I became a student to listen to the musicality of the message. And even if you just listen in nature itself, nature has this amazing way to get our attention. And so I decided to lean myself as a musician to the way I could communicate better. And so because of that being my impetus, that energy is now undeniable when I go into rooms. And so that fuels my why. Like someone said, when your why is big enough, your how will follow. And so what I say to, what I teach and coach people to do in all walks of life is this here is a windpipe. And because of this, we are now recognized as a musician. In fact, more so as a musical instrument. It is every single person's responsibility, the ability to respond, to master this so that they can carry their message. When you start to look at it from that perspective, how do I become more clearer? How do I fill the room? How do I conquer the spaces, places, and faces in my worlds that I'm going on? Then whatever message that you have to carry, it will be predicated on the mastery of using our sound.

Clinton Jordan: And you know, if I say I'm going to say by way of singing to an audience, they start to clam up. Why? Because we have a relationship with singing, which is also affected by a sonic impact trauma. But what I want people to understand is that they have the ability to expand upon the mastery of their sound. This is not about singing. This is not even about speaking. This is not about public speaking and being the best presenter. This is about being able to present your heart through sound, present your mind through sound. And then with that impetus, then everything starts to change. The gravity towards being the best version of ourself then starts to evolve.

Toby Mildon: So how can the person listening to us today move from convincing to conviction in the way that they communicate?

Clinton Jordan: So let me give you a practical exercise here. In my recent newsletter, in fact, a few weeks ago, called the 30-second mirror talk. Again, we go back to the handwriting again. We practice on a piece of paper because it becomes a reflection of what we know. That's what the paper is there. It is the carbon reflection of what we do. We've been doing that since the beginning of time, scribing through these pieces of rock and stuff like that. The mirror is the reflective surface where we can look into our eyes and see the truth of our delivery. Now, in modern times, we have moved it to the phone, the camera phone, the camcorder or the camera phone, all of these recorded devices. They've been now this process of reflection, but they actually miss. They taint. They edit the real truth reflective surface of ourself. So my practical advice is go to the mirror and practice for 30 seconds. The thing that you want to say today that's going to be of importance. See if you can look in your eyes and go, that's it. That's it.

Toby Mildon: I like that.

Clinton Jordan: I see it. The more you start having... You see, you can't have a relationship with other people if you don't know how to have a relationship with yourself. You can't go and try and force this conviction on other people if you can't stand in the mirror and look yourself in the eyes and go, no, no, no, that's the lyric. That's the silence I'm looking for after the sentence. That's the pause I need for it to drop. When you can start doing that to yourself, then you give yourself the permission to start experimenting on others.

Toby Mildon: I mean, just you describing that, I'm already seeing myself speaking in the mirror and I'm feeling confident at practicing something I need to deliver.

Clinton Jordan: Can you feel the fire? 

Toby Mildon: Yeah. And we're just talking about it. 

Clinton Jordan: Exactly.

Toby Mildon: If I actually go and do it that's probably going to be quite impactful.

Clinton Jordan: Listen, I feel passionate about this subject. Every time I talk about this and I've spoken about this thousands of times, I always feel the electricity in this thing because it's the spark. When you start to look at yourself in the mirror and you say something that lands, this is not even about the messages that we carry in the world that we have. We have many diverse messages. It's about understanding the conviction in you. It's about being able to say, can I convict that guy, that person, that being in the mirror? And when I can see that and I can feel comfortable, that's why we sing songs in the mirror. We sing it because we're testing the emotions. I do vocal coaching or song coaching with people on my other course, Sofa to the Stage, and it's about being able to sing that song in the mirror and see if it lands. Singing and speaking to people is like tennis and badminton. They're just different rackets. Different swings. But what we've got to do is start to get that personal connection. When we personalize it, then we can have the confidence with others.

Toby Mildon: So let's just think a moment about inclusive leaders. What could they do to create an environment where people feel able to speak up and use their voice, create that trust and that psychological safety?

Clinton Jordan: You see, empathy is a big thing. It's a big thing. You can have sympathy where you can look at someone else's shoes and you're like, oh, yeah, I can see where they're coming from. But empathy is when you put your feet in the shoes and you can feel where the big toe has made a groove. And it's when you actually sit in people's shoes and you start to understand where they come from, you understand that the power of empathy is now enabling you to be a better listener. And in the path of musicianship, we're taught that listening is a massive skill that we need. It's when we have that ability to listen, hear, and feel, then we can start invoking a conversation and a communication. And I think as leaders, sometimes we often are missing the expression of the tone and the sound where that's coming from. I teach in my course Vocal Edge, the four animals, the four vocal animals. And one of the animals is the animal of empathy. And I think leaders, if people are going to be entrusted with a team, they need to understand the sound of people. Sometimes some people say some harsh things, but they don't really mean it. They're not being harsh. It's because of the sound.

Clinton Jordan: It's not what they said, it's how they say it.

Toby Mildon: Yeah, it's like being accused of, oh, you're sounding very angry about this. And it's like, I'm not angry about this. This is the way that I speak.

Clinton Jordan: Yeah, it's because on the time and pitch axis, we have a type of relationship with sound and silence, timbre, texture, duration, tongue, rhythm, syncopation, contrapuntal movement in conversations. When we start to understand the musicality of this, which is a lot of information, musical intelligence is one of these big open subjects which very few people have in their weaponry of communication, being able to conquer the world of communication. Can I understand where someone is coming from by their tone? Some people say, I don't like the tone and how you're saying it, but they actually don't realize what they mean when they say, I don't understand the tone. Is it that you don't like the tone because of the school bully that used to use the same tone when you were younger, but now you're met with someone that has a similar tone and so you're transported back to primary school when person X said this and that triggers off something, you're like, no, no, no, that sounds threatening. But no, it's just a big cuddly person that just has a big deep resonant voice and they just speak like this all the time and because they feel the room, it just feels so, and they're rattling my cavity, my chest cavity, and I'm feeling threatened by this sound, but they're really, a really cute and cuddly person.

Toby Mildon: I find that quite sexy actually. I wouldn't find that intimidating at all. 

Clinton Jordan: But it goes to show, doesn't it? People have a different response to different sounds and this is the problem they're in. And so we have to uncover, especially when we're in leadership, what is the sound of your message? What are you sounding off?

Toby Mildon: You actually introduced me to a word that I hadn't come across before, cargos, and you say that we've got different cargos, so leadership, fellowship, friendship, and stewardship, and it's linked to musicality. So how can leaders adapt their cargos to bring people together and make everyone feel like they're included and that they belong to the team? 

Clinton Jordan: Again, when we are speaking with people, we have to master the tonality of our speech. We have to shape shift. When we are leading people, there are people from different spectrums of the frequency that also resonate, they pick up, they feel through their cavities, and it's a lot of information to take in, but it's something that we have to grow with to master the art of communication. Communication needs to be on, I'm talking about the sound of communication, that needs to be right up there to process these things that we are going through. And when we start to master that, then we can start to not only just see the question that we've been asked, not just a statement, but also the spirit behind the statement. And that comes from this epicenter, which is the breath. Many people don't understand that the breath has its own information. Did you know that the breath of where it's placed, how it's placed, whether it's from the diaphragm or if it's from the chest, we need to read some other things that are going on in the invisible so that these statements are predicated on. Not to mention, I think these things happen naturally when we grow with our teams in our communication and people start to relax.

Clinton Jordan: For example, in this conversation now, it may have started a bit more structured in terms of its flow and the tone of our speech and the pitch. But as we've gone along, we've become a bit more undulated. That's through connection. And the only way we can have a relationship is when we visit and we visit with conversation and we start to tune into the musicality of our sound with each other. And that makes the difference in our conversation of inclusivity.

Toby Mildon: Yeah, I mean, there's people that use their voice professionally and for a living. So there's musicians like yourself and comedians. So what can we learn or what can leaders learn from musicians and comedians about things like timing, tone and connection?

Clinton Jordan: Beautiful question. So comedians, let's pick on comedians, shall we, for a minute? 

Toby Mildon: Yeah. 

Clinton Jordan: I love comedians.

Toby Mildon: I think they need picking on, definitely. 

Clinton Jordan: They've got, I mean, this probably is, not probably, arguably I think it's the hardest public speaking gig you can do. It is like the evol-can-evil of public speaking. They get paid for the attempt to jump the canyon of laughter. But it doesn't mean necessarily they might make the stunt. And they do this live, stand-up, in front, impromptu, and maybe scripted, but by and large they are reading the room at a very, very high level. What can we learn from the comedian? Well, first of all, they operate strongly in a quadrant on my four animals, which is the monkey. And the monkey is the one that knows how to just glue everybody together. They are highly charged in the rhythm section. They are highly well-endowed in the pitch undulation section. And they're constantly undulating their pitch and going up and down. And sometimes they may speak like this because they're trying to set up a joke. And they're doing this because it's like a misdirection. Because if I can get you concentrating on this pitch axis, which is going up and down, sometimes if I'm going down, you're still going down with me while I'm setting up the joke.

Clinton Jordan: And the joke is somewhere here on the brick wall. And so I keep you going up and down on this pitch pendulum, up and down, up and down, until I get to the wall. Bang! And you've got to make a decision whether you laugh. But because you've hit that wall so violently, so abruptly, whether you agree the joke is funny or not, sometimes you just hit it and laugh. And because of the succession of rhythm and this pendulum of pitch, they are setting you on a momentum of laughter. Now, how can we learn with that to make our audiences engaged? Well, it's about flirting around and being playful with our pitch. Again, that's the 30-second mirror talk. This is not just for comedians to be well-endowed with this pitch. They practice their musicality on the audience. And when it hits, they remember a sonic impact and turn it into a triumph. And that's the magic of a comedian, is that they are very much versed in the art of repetition, relentless repetition, so they can reap rewards. And we can learn from the comedian, your favourite comedians. And how can I bring that into my conversation? And it's not hard to do.

Toby Mildon: Yeah, I can see that. I need to put you in touch with my cousin. He's a stand-up comedian and he does some really good shows, political satire shows. And there's this woman comedian that I really like following on TikTok. She's a South African woman. And I think her accent actually is part of the act as well. I really like her accent and how she uses her accent to help land the joke. And I do wonder if she had a different accent, whether the joke would be as funny, to my ears at least.

Clinton Jordan: Yeah, yeah. I think when we... Languages, especially with comedians, they lean into the musicality of their language. And they press it a little bit more harder so that it's leaving an indelible mark in the mind. You're now tuned into that. You've got some people that lean into monotonal because it's a form of hypnosis. They lean into it because you know the wall is coming, you prepare yourself with this flatline monotonal. So even monotone can be useful as setting up a joke. And there are some amazing comedians that lean into that so hard. Yeah, because it's all to do with the pitch awareness.

Toby Mildon: So, in the business world, we talk about return on investment or ROI, and you've got your own ROI, which is return on inhale, and the role that the breath has in communication. How does one's physical awareness about breath, tone, and pace impact the way that our messages are received when we communicate?

Clinton Jordan: You see, many of us, in fact, most of us, we go to a type of breathing, which I would say probably about after five years old, hits us because we are told in school we have to sit down. And sitting is like the limiter to our potential. When we sit down, we're now not using our lungs at its optimum. When we slouch, it's even worse. And so what you're doing is you're limiting the potential space to create a new form of breath. So when you stand or you sit up with your torso extended, you're allowing your lungs to drop down. When you open your belly, so it's a little bit of practical advice, open your belly like you've just had Sunday dinner, and you've got that little rotund pudge there. Mine is sometimes permanent, but that's another conversation. You breathe into your groin, but breathe, imagine that you're going to the floor. Breathe to the floor. Now you should feel your lungs drawing down and your diaphragm now pulling down because it's causing a suction. This is what we call diaphragmatic breathing. And what it's doing is you're enlarging the space and you're filling it. 

Clinton Jordan: Now I teach the three Fs of breathing. First of all, you're feeding your body with the oxygen. Second of all, in that oxygen, I'm fueling that inhale with a thought. And I'm taking inventory on every inhale. And then the last thing is that I'm creating a feeling. Now, very seldom do we actually pay attention to our inhales to actually bring about an intention with that. And that's what I call a return on inhale. Now, if you're slouching and you're doing this chest breathing like we did in school, what's one times two, Mark? Five. How do you spell chrysanthemum, Mark? K. Now, imagine we're doing that all through our educational life, because that's what it is. And I've seen it in education because I used to teach in schools. And this is what I call programmed anxiety. On a repetitious level, you are breathing from your chest, shallow breathing, causing the energy excitement. Notice how I said energy excitement, because there's two forms. It could be either euphoria or dysphoria, which are a word that we're not often accustomed to. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. I just won 10 million pounds. Euphoria.

Toby Mildon: Yeah.

Clinton Jordan: Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. I just lost two billion. Dysphoria. And so with the program anxiety from when we were younger, all the way up on this relentless repetition, we are reaping the rewards of this program anxiety. And that's the reason why people don't feel comfortable in themselves to produce a good sound, because the breath has already been committed to the information that we have relentlessly repeated commonly in our lives. And that is we're more so just coasting or sliding backwards on empty. Now, my thing is to you, Toby, is that if you have not fueled every breath with the intention that it deserves, then you are not going to reap the potential that you are capable of in your sound in the future, because you have to work on building an ROI on these inhales.

Toby Mildon: What's the difference that this has on team productivity and team performance?

Clinton Jordan: Well, it's a massive knock-on effect. Imagine if every single person is bringing their sonic impact trauma into work, first of all. If everybody is not breathing correctly, like I encourage teams to build in five breath stations, five breath stations throughout the day. They can either put on a bit of music that brings them down, or they can go and get my deep dive from my vocal workout volume two, and they can just sit in that zone for 12 minutes, breathing good, fueling, feeding and feeding. That energy comes back into the work environment. Can you imagine what would happen to the productivity just changing the breath alone? Maybe it might be upping the breathing and doing some breathing that's excitable with every single team member and them tuning in onto a powerful thought. There are studies that have been shown that when you increase the tempo, the BPMs, with positive intention, it changes the dynamics of a room. Don't you think that's worth investigating to change the productivity to a room? And when everyone does that together, they become better communicators, which then releases the chemical oxytocin, which is known for bonding and love.

Clinton Jordan: So when you've got better breath, you're going to have better communication. When you have better communication, you're going to release a new chemical. And in places where this is more mindful, you can see people wanting to come to work because it's a better place. It's not just because it's by magic, it's because people are better communicators.

Clinton Jordan: So yes, it starts with the breath. It starts with the breath, Toby.

Toby Mildon: Definitely. So this is the Inclusive Growth Show, based on the title of my first book. What does inclusive growth mean for you?

Clinton Jordan: Inclusive growth means for me understanding where people are coming from so that you can know and help and assist to where they're going to. Sound is no better personification of that, is that when I can start to communicate with people that are in different journeys of this path with me. It doesn't mean that we're on the same journey. It doesn't mean that we're walking in the same shoes. But when we start to become better communicators because we are in a space where we have to learn to live with each other for a cause, like, for example, work, it allows us to learn to understand each other. And I think the voice is one of the most powerful things that we can use to better understand each other.

Toby Mildon: Well, it brings people together and it creates the vision. We've got a lot of division in the world at the moment, but think about some of the best orators and people that have given really powerful speeches that have changed the course of human history and brought people together. So the voice is hugely impactful.

Clinton Jordan: The voice is hugely impactful. And we need to connect with each other on a human level. We are earthlings and this windpipe actually dictates quite a substantial amount of where we go forward. Sound moves things.

Toby Mildon: Yeah.

Clinton Jordan: So we have the ability to move each other for the good, for the good.

Toby Mildon: So if the earthling listening to us right now wants to explore further how they can use the power of their voice, or maybe they're even thinking about how they can empower their team to use their voice for good, what should they do? How can they learn more about what you do?

Clinton Jordan: So you can reach out to me on my site, all the W's, clintonjordan.com, and you will see a number of different ways you can work with me. One of the two or two of the most popular ways is, especially for corporate and community world, is vocal edge. Vocal edge is where people, like I said, they know what to say. It's just when you've landed that speech and then you go home and you go, I should have said this, I should have said that. We want to time travel and be able to get you better prepared for your future engagements. Like I said, I'm not teaching you to be a better public speaker. I want you to find your voice. You will do the rest. And I'm going to help you through the musicality of finding the melody in your message and dividing the mess from your message. And you'll be left with something that you can be proud of. You can be proud of and you can go forward with. So that's one of the ways. And then for those of you that want to build teams, I have a fun and dynamic way where you are able to unlock your team's voice. And that is just me coming, disrupting your world for a minute and having some fun ways of engaging with each other and with a serious overtone, but in a fun and dynamic way. And if you're curious to know what that is, then just hit me up on my website or just go and find me on LinkedIn. I'm very active on LinkedIn.

Toby Mildon: Brilliant. Clinton, thanks ever so much for your time today. It's been lovely to learn from you. We've covered so much ground. We've talked about the power of your voice, how we've spent years perfecting our handwriting. But actually, if you think about a lot of the work that we do in the workplace, it's about our speech writing and what we say and how we use it and how our past traumas or our sonic impact trauma affects how we show up. We've also talked about how you can speak up when you're feeling invisible, how we can raise your profile using your voice, how we can shift from convincing other people to having conviction in your communication. We've talked about the importance of psychological safety and what leaders can do to really empathize and empower other people to be able to speak up and use their voice effectively. We've looked at language and musicality and adaptability in terms of how comedians and musicians use their instruments. And we've talked about the energy of communication as well, getting that return on inhale. So I really, really appreciate your wisdom and I really hope that it's been helpful to the person listening to us right now.

Clinton Jordan: Yes, beautiful, beautiful. And if it's been helpful to you out there, I'm on a mission to activate one million voices. And listen, feel free to go to my site. There's the vocal workout volume two. It's absolutely free. Just go through it and tell me that you've been activated. That's all you need to do. And you will be one of the million and you'll help me for my mission.

Toby Mildon: I love it. Brilliant. Thanks, Clinton. Thanks for joining me today.

Clinton Jordan: No problem.

Toby Mildon: And thank you for tuning into this episode of the Inclusive Growth Show. Hopefully you found it really interesting and helpful in the work that you do. If there's anything that I can do to support you on your equity, diversity and inclusion journey, then reach out to me through my website, milden.co.uk. Like Clinton, I'm also very active on LinkedIn. So just connect with me, send me a message on LinkedIn and we can have a chat. And if there's anything that Clinton can do to help you, then as he's described, reach out to him through his channels as well. I can give personal testament. I've done a workshop with him. It is fantastic. He got me singing when right at the beginning, I was really cringe. I found it really cringeworthy. I have actually done singing lessons myself. And I went to the speech and drama school for a two-week musical theatre course when I had a quarter-life crisis. I did karaoke once in Chicago. I thought I was enough miles away from London that no one would even notice or bother. That's why I did it. But I did do karaoke recently in Manchester. So it was good fun.

Toby Mildon: But yeah, thanks ever so much, Clinton. Wonderful to catch up with you. And thanks for tuning into this episode. And I'll see you on the next episode coming out very soon. Take care. Bye bye.

Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to the Inclusive Growth Show. For further information and resources from Toby and his team, head on over to our website at milden.co.uk.