Tim Ojo My experience with VoicePrint

We have invited people development professionals, who have become VoicePrint trained and accredited, to share some of their thoughts and insights on working with the tool.

Tim Ojo is a coach, mediator, organisational Consultant and trainer. His background is in medicine with a particular emphasis on mental health and well-being and he has over 20 years experience as a Consultant Psychiatrist.

I became a VoicePrint Consultant in 2017 based on my conviction that it would add significant value to my work as a coach and mediator. The conceptual clarity and the ease of use of the profiling tool at an individual and group level were strong selling points for me. And my own voiceprint profile was a source of deep reflection and growth for me as a person. I have since then been able to deploy the tool to the benefit of a number of clients facing communication challenges in their respective organisational contexts.

Just under 2 years of using it for my clients has enabled me to observe at close quarters the transformational nature of the insights that can be drawn from a well conducted debrief on clients’ communicative efficacy. Indeed the increased self-awareness and confirmation of self-knowledge about how the clients use or misuse their preferred modes of expression, has been a tremendous catalyst for required change.

I have also been able to engage clients who have not necessarily undertaken a full profile in powerful coaching conversations about the use of positioning, exploring and controlling voices and the impact this has in context. For me, this is an indication of the strength of the model which underpins the VoicePrint diagnostic.

As mentioned earlier, I have picked up a number of very valuable insights from using VoicePrint with my clients. Three of which are as follows-

1. The importance of learning to listen effectively – the skill of listening is often under-deployed in the hurly burly of organisational communication, such that people get caught out reacting instead of responding. The time taken to tune into what is going on,  to make sense of what is going on and to determine the most appropriate ‘voice’ to use is an essential leadership, and indeed life, skill.
2. The power of the positioning voices – being able to articulate, advise or advocate at the right time for the right things, is a transformational skill that many people are fearful of using in situations that must require them. A number of clients have found using these voices as extremely liberating and affirming in ‘speaking truth to organisational power’ with surprisingly positive consequences.
3. Rehearsing and practising different voice types – helping clients work through the  repertoire of voice types in simulated conversations is very valuable for getting them to absorb feedback prior to the real conversation or situation they are mentally preparing for. Clients have found the freedom to mess things up in ‘rehearsal’ helpful in overcoming anticipatory anxiety and being able to communicate optimally in the high pressure real life encounter. 

I continue to be pleasantly surprised by the powerful and profound nature of change engendering potential in VoicePrint and look forward to many more years of exciting work with the tool.

Tim can be contacted for coaching, mediation, training or consulting at 

[email protected]