Build a better verbal brand: Communicate a confident and compelling verbal identity

Elevate your communication with simple, strategic language shifts and habits to strengthen your clarity, confidence and credibility. Build a verbal personal brand that feels unmistakably yours.

Your verbal brand is a powerful, yet easily overlooked element of your personal brand. Long before your expertise speaks for you, your tone of voice does. How you read, write, speak and choose your language shapes how others perceive you. In a competitive career and business landscape, and as content overflows, being intentional about your verbal personal brand - even in the most subtle ways -  helps you stand out in a sea of sameness.

Build a verbal identity that feels distinctly you; articulate, confident and compelling. Aligned with who you are and who you’re growing into.

Read regularly 

Building regular reading habits will naturally elevate your verbal brand. Swap streaming for reading to enhance your vocabulary. Research has compared the knowledge of readers and TV watchers. As books, magazines and written text use more unique words than television, this improves your vocabulary and communication skills. As an added benefit, reading also improves your analytical skills, problem-solving and judgement. 

Read actively 

As wonderful as reading is, it’s still a highly passive learning activity. The Learning Pyramid tells us that we only retain 10% of what we read. So, make an effort to turn passive reading into active engagement. 

Over the last couple of years, I’ve taken more time to look up words I don’t know the meaning of or fully understand, to better learn their appropriate application. Don’t simply skim past the unfamiliar or vaguely understood words. Reignite the child-like curiosity that built your vocabulary to begin with. 

Build your bank of compelling words

When you're reading, watching a video or listening to a podcast, if there are some words you like the look of or sounds like music to your ears, capture them in the moment. Your future self never remembers as much as you think it will. Use the Notes app on your phone to create a list of words that ignite your attention.

Curate your ideal verbal personal brand

If you’re a visual person, create simple systems that elevate your verbal personal brand in a more enticing way for you. I, for example, have a sub-board in Pinterest for words I love the look, feel and sound of. Nested under my branding boards, this helps create a vision for my ideal verbal brand. This isn’t about trying to sound smart. Clear communication always outperforms complexity. But it is about adding a touch of personality and individual flair to your verbal style. 

With a background in leading marketing and communications for big brands, this was one of the favourite parts of developing a brand’s style guide. What were the key dimensions of the brand's tone of voice? And which words were on-brand or off-brand? It’s the subtle shifts that can have a huge impact on a brand's verbal identity. So, think like a brand and identify what feels most you or who you want to sound like. 

Communicate with confidence 

In The Unfair Advantage, Ash Ali and Hasan Kubba say: 

“Your Status is your personal brand. It is how others see you. It is your social standing, your appearance, gender, age, how you dress, stand, and talk. It’s also your perceived credibility.”

Their sentiment is backed by science. Research has shown that people who sound more articulate are often perceived as more intelligent, educated and competent. This has obvious advantages for your personal brand, professional and personal. For example, studies have shown this can enhance your perceived leadership qualities, credibility and persuasiveness.

Communicate a more confident verbal brand by practising the art of active versus passive language.

Studies show that people who use an active voice over a passive voice sound more confident. An active voice is more direct and in control. What most clearly distinguishes an active voice from a passive one is who performs the action. With an active voice, the subject performs the action:

e.g. 

“I streamlined the process to enhance efficiency.”

This is unlike a passive voice, where the object of the action becomes the subject:

e.g.

“The process was streamlined to enhance efficiency.”

If you’re not confident in how to write with an active versus passive voice, try the free Hemingway App website. Copy and paste your content into the homepage. This will show where your passive “weak” voice is. 

Master the active voice to come across as a confident professional personal brand in your writing. 

For more, see my earlier blog, How to Communicate More Confidence in Your Writing.

Communicate like a CEO

Through my experience writing, scripting and consulting with CEO’s, I’ve noticed executives distinctly share common themes across their communication styles. As exceptional communication is critical to most career success, it’s easy to identify what about their communication style has helped them rise to the top - and keep them there.

High-performing executives have mastered how to communicate with cut-through clarity. Consider this: your every email is in some way a burden on the reader. It requires time and energy to process. Write each email with this in mind. Ease the burden of your email on the reader.

Concise writing is a finer art than writing fluff and pressing send.

As the famous maxim from Blaise Pascal captured:

“I would have written a shorter letter if I’d had more time.”

Whether you’re writing emails, presentations or reports, communicate concisely to project confidence.

Here are a few tips to make your point more clearly:

• Avoid over-qualifiers, e.g. say ‘“I recommend”, instead of “I strongly recommend”.

• Cut excessive words. Remove every word that adds no value.

• Avoid unnecessary apologies: Skip “I’m sorry to bother you” or “I hope you don’t mind”.

• Remove filler words, e.g. ‘just’.

For more, see my earlier blog, Email like an Executive (6 Tips). Project a confident and credible personal brand in your everyday emails.

Sound uniquely You

From what you consume to the words you choose and how you communicate them, build a verbal brand that naturally elevates how others perceive your professionalism and presence. Your verbal identity is a long-term brand asset. Every message, email, presentation and conversation shapes it. With a few intentional shifts, you can develop a verbal style that is clear, credible, and unmistakably yours. You’re not just choosing better words, you’re crafting a more compelling personal brand.