Exercise: Voice Analysis Worksheet
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Exercise: Voice Analysis Worksheet
This exercise pulls together everything you’ve captured about your voice — your natural speaking patterns, your best written content, and your rejection inventory — and extracts the consistent patterns that define how you actually communicate.
The key thing to look for: what stays the same when you’re talking to prospects versus peers versus teaching someone new? Those consistent elements are your voice DNA.
Allow about 20 minutes.
Part 1: Speaking Pattern Analysis (10 minutes)
Listen back to recordings you’ve made of yourself explaining your work — a business explanation, a client story, anything where you were talking naturally without a script.
Natural conversation starters
- How do you actually begin explanations?
- What phrases introduce your main points?
- Do you start with problems, solutions, or context?
Transition patterns
- How do you connect different ideas?
- What words or phrases move between topics?
- Do you use questions, statements, or examples to bridge?
Authority signals
- How do you establish credibility naturally?
- What phrases show confidence without arrogance?
- How do you reference experience or expertise?
Engagement elements
- How do you involve listeners?
- What questions do you naturally ask?
- How do you check for understanding?
Part 2: Written Pattern Analysis (10 minutes)
Pull up your best 5-7 pieces of written content — the emails that got replies, the posts people shared, the proposals that won. Review them and look for:
Consistent openings
- How do you start different types of communication?
- What introduction or greeting feels authentically you?
Information architecture
- How do you naturally organize ideas?
- What comes first — problem, solution, or context?
Language consistency
- What words do you use instead of jargon?
- How formal or casual are you across contexts?
- What phrases appear in multiple pieces?
Personality markers
- What personal context do you include?
- What values show through your language?
- How do you balance expertise with accessibility?
Part 3: Rejection Pattern Analysis
Pull out your “never list” — the phrases, tones, and patterns you collected that make you cringe when you read them in other people’s content.
Look for patterns across your rejections:
- What types of language do you consistently reject?
- Are there tone qualities you avoid across contexts?
- What structural patterns feel inauthentic to you?
The phrases that make you cringe most are often exactly what your competitors use. Your rejections are competitive advantage.
Pulling It Together: Your Preliminary Voice Profile
Fill this in once you’ve done the analysis above.
My Core Voice Identity
- Primary characteristic (e.g., “Conversational Expert,” “Practical Skeptic,” “Encouraging Teacher”)
- Audience relationship (e.g., “coffee-chat colleague,” “trusted advisor,” “fellow experimenter”)
- Authority style (e.g., “confident but humble,” “expert but accessible”)
My Natural Patterns
- Conversation starters: [your actual phrases from recordings]
- Transitions: [how you naturally connect ideas]
- Authority signals: [how you establish credibility without arrogance]
- Engagement style: [how you involve your audience]
My Written Polish
- Organization style: [how you structure information]
- Formality level: [consistent across your best content]
- Technical approach: [your natural depth and accessibility balance]
My Rejection Boundaries
- Never use phrases: [your specific forbidden language]
- Never adopt tone: [styles that feel inauthentic]
- Never sound like: [patterns you actively avoid]
Quick Validity Check
Once you’ve filled in the profile, test it against a recent piece of writing you produced without AI:
- Does it use your natural conversation starters?
- Does it avoid your forbidden phrases?
- Would you actually say this out loud to someone?
If the profile matches how you actually write, you’ve captured your voice DNA. If something feels off, go back to Part 1 or 2 and look more closely at the patterns you’re actually using versus the ones you think you use.
Your authentic voice is often more consistent than you expect — and more distinctive than generic business communication. That’s exactly what you want.