Earlier this year I was asked to conduct a series of voice workshops for one of the most influential companies on the planet; a company that profoundly affects all levels of industry and management skills in Western business.

I was briefed by the directors of the company. By employing me they were admitting that they had a huge problem at the heart of their company, a problem that was costing them millions of dollars a year. It existed among the high fliers. The creative blood of the company. These young executives were constantly alienating colleagues and business associates through insensitive and arrogant use of voice and language. In communicating, they came over as dismissive of others. In the words of their directors, they were 'pompous, supercilious and too powerful'. My job was to humanise their communication skills and encourage sensitivity. My initial reaction was, is this a new problem? No, it wasn't. The company had always employed the brightest and most dynamic of graduates. What the company had suddenly recognised was that in the industrial climate of the late twentieth century, these qualities were not appreciated or tolerated. They had identified a trend towards transformation of practices and were determined to keep ahead of the game.

My first workshop demonstrated a clear example of the problem and gave me a startling insight into a new business consciousness. I had 19 young, dynamic men and one, seemingly reserved, woman. I started the workshop with exercises to encourage listening, the unthreatening use of the body and voice, the sensitive use of language and the power of words. They were bright and understood the work but found the physical and breath work difficult. As anyone in the voice field knows, if you can connect fully to your body, breath and voice, you have a chance to connect to your emotions and through the emotions you can become sensitised to the rest of the world. This was a new experience and for some of them very disturbing. They were feeling vulnerable. One of them commented, 'We are really just brains on sticks'.

As the workshop progressed, I worked on each participant individually. Their fears grew. The last person to work - which is often the case - was the young woman. As she got up, to my horror there was an immediate unwholesome energy in the room. An energy thrown at this woman by most of the group that was partly sexual intimidation, partly mocking, with a pinch of the schoolboy wolf whistle. No wonder she was reserved. I was shocked but had come across similar situations in other workplaces. I stopped the session and called them to order. They squirmed and apologised to her. Privately, I wondered whether she was the butt of their fear, or had she in their history encouraged their behaviour by flirting to aid their acceptance of her female presence in a very male world, or was she not very good at her job?

The last was proved wrong immediately. She started her presentation. She was good; better than any of them. She did need work on her voice - it was underpowered - but what she was doing was very effective. She was open, clear and uncluttered, approachable, sensitive, listening. Nothing in her work got in the way. Any tension that covers our voice or words is, in some way, off-putting. She had no off-putting habits. All the men had tried to bluff their way through their presentations. Bluff is common in male habits of voice. Bluff: being too loud; refusing to be interrupted or respond to the energy of a group; making general eye contact or looking down on the auditors. Pinning the audience to their seats and not tolerating interaction, keeping attention and control by brute force. For many years this form of delivery was common and it was considered effective. In fact it was taught as the way to control your employees.

All this flashed through my mind and with these thoughts the light began to dawn. The woman's skills were the ones I had been employed to teach the men. The wheel had come full circle; the times are changing. Business is now needing and is prepared to invest in teaching men what have until now been seen as traditionally female vocal habits and skills.

This article is an attempt to chart the journey I have made over the last 25 years with hundreds of women trying to succeed and survive in the workplace, a workplace that was initially completely male, where the female skills were undervalued. This article is only based on experience and work. I am not qualified to comment in any academic way. I have not spent years researching the topic of women in the workplace. I've merely worked with women striving within it. I can only describe the journey and the comments and observations made by women tackling their problems practically on a daily basis.

To be completely honest, when I entered the voice world in the seventies I only expected to work with performers. This expectation was quickly shattered. By the mid-seventies, I was constantly working with lay men and women. I was teaching in prisons. I was teaching teachers, lawyers, bankers, politicians and business people. And I was being approached weekly to work with women struggling to establish themselves in the workplace. The common cry was that their voice, presentation and interview skills, their language, failed them in their careers, in interviews, in controlling others and later, after promotion, it failed them in the boardroom. The voice might be only the tip of the iceberg, but it was one that mattered and it matters today. I journeyed into this work without any knowledge of how it would develop. I just started to solve problems. People started to come for help in these areas in the seventies as a last resort. The work is now more known and appreciated, and consequently it gets done earlier. But at that time it was about working in crisis.

This crisis helped me to formalise my philosophy of voice. I began to passionately believe that we are all born with a great voice, a clear, free and natural voice. This idea grew as simple voice work revealed wonderful voices overwhelmed by dire vocal problems. The first batch of professional women who arrived generally hated their sound or~ more accurately, had been taught to believe that their voice was inadequate. These negative reflections had created physical clutter in the body, breath and voice that ultimately constricted their free voice. Life batters the joy of voice out of many people and these were the people who sought help. Of course this is a simple explanation, but whatever the cause of our voices being restricted - and there are many, since every voice is unique - somewhere along the line the physical result is lodged and manifested in the body, the breath and the voice itself. A lost voice is lost power, and voice work, therefore, often empowers the speaker.

It seems that after the initial intellectual awareness of the feminist movement, the physical manifestations surfaced in the mid-seventies. Women seeking my help either felt that their voices were denied, not heard or, if they had good strong voices, they were mocked or called unfeminine, their vocal power deemed inappropriate.

In the workplace women felt tolerated as servers but not as equals or leaders - in those positions they weren't tolerated. In the arenas of power men didn't want to hear women holding or expressing opinions. Gossiping, giggling and flirting yes, but an intelligent woman speaking with freedom, clarity and power was too much and these women were constantly punished. In hindsight, no wonder voice specialists were sought by professional women.

This story really starts or at least was clarified in the theatre. In the seventies it started to become fashionable for actresses to play male roles and so at this time I also had many requests for this kind of transformation. At first the actresses and I believed that to appear male you had merely to lower the voice. A lower pitch would indicate maleness.

This idea was rapidly scuppered. A lower voice was only a cosmetic change that didn't really communicate maleness. As I worked on this problem, I began to realise the signals communicating maleness were connected to every physical aspect of power and a person's relationship to power. This power is expressed throughout the body, breath, voice, speech and use of language. Every stage of communication expresses power or its denial. In the actresses' case language wasn't an issue as they had a male text, but the rest was essential to any truthful transformation.

Simple shifts throughout the whole voice system, energy and focus could effectively communicate a man. These shifts were small in technical terms but huge in emotional ones. Panic set in with these shifts as they made the women feel sensations of power and control to which they felt they had no right. To appear male they had to stand, walk, sit, breathe, look and listen differently - all these shifts of habit before uttering a sound. I started to categorise these differences and habits. Remember this list is general: no one fits neatly into any category.

Male communication habits revolve around taking up space. Not giving in. Standing feet apart, sitting legs open. Chest open or puffed out. Energy forward, probing. Head held high. Choosing to look or not look without apology. Breathing slowly and deeply into the body. Speaking when they want to and not rushing. Driving the voice. Often being too pushy without apology. Not falling off a line, but sustaining an idea. Speaking about what they want to talk about and not being distracted or feeling the necessity to change subject matter if asked. Listening without supporting another speaker. Not withdrawing when challenged or interrupted, in fact just getting louder to drown out any interference. Clear, sure and uncompromising language. Words without room for debate.

If we take these habits to the highest level of confidence and self-satisfaction, you can witness a speaker pausing - long pauses without the fear of being interrupted - droning on without realising or perhaps even caring that they are boring the listener rigid. Speaking about things the listener has no idea of and perhaps relating everything in personal anecdotes.

This list highlights the most extreme of the male bluff techniques. Of course it is out of balance and later I will be describing the work that puts both male and female habits into harmony. Truly powerful people don't have to bluff; they can be still and quiet. But 25 years ago, these habits seemed vivid and lodged within the male domain and maybe became more exaggerated when challenged by powerful women.

Female habits revolve around reduction, denial, giving way and not taking up space.

Standing, sitting with feet together, thighs clamped, spine slightly slumped, shoulders rounded, chest collapsed. Head looking down. Physically apologising or being demure. Short, high, rushed breath. Never taking a full breath because that would be taking full power and space. Speaking when not ready. Hesitating and struggling to get into a conversation. Backing down if confronted. Losing steam and falling off lines. Changing topics of conversation if the listener seemed uninterested in what was being discussed. Rushing into incoherence. Being off voice. Too quiet, too high pitched, not showing passion in the voice but being a good listener by supporting other speakers with encouraging sounds and remarks. The most extended form of these habits could include whining, a very effective means for an underdog to get her way - you give in to stop the noise and the nagging. Chipping away at the resistance of the powerful member of a partnership. As a last resort, screeching.

These habits were the antithesis of the male domain. They were the habits of victims and were in greatest emphasis in cross gender communications, particularly in the presence of an aggressive man. Women talking to women could be freed from some of these habits, but they were very entrenched in most women in the seventies.

These descriptions of male and female habits could be interpreted as energy, and the qualities of male and female energy can be found mixed within each individual and sex.

The immediate result of this work was that women, by adapting the more extreme male habits, could appear male organically. The transformation in theatre started to be deep and filled, not a caricature male voice but a male being. This work made me assess all my work differently. I began to notice how hard it was for my female students to engage in open discussions with men in class. Even if there were only 3 men in a group of 20, the women were the last to come forward and contribute to a discussion and the first to give way. All the listed habits were manifest and even if I worked openly on these habits they were so physically entrenched that they were hard to let go. I realised by the late seventies that women had a huge mountain to climb. It was no good just recognising the problems intellectually; they had to be worked out as these physical habits were constantly letting them down and were communicating weakness subliminally in every act of expression. It starts the moment you are seen. If the chairwoman of a board didn't enter a space and sit with all the habits of power, however good her voice or language, she would fail on some levels. However good the female politician was in her constituency, if she stood weakly to ask a question in the House of Commons no one would listen or even see she was there.

It occurred to me that we gather habits in order to survive. We might not like the habit or it becomes redundant and has to be dug out of us, but it is there for a reason. At some stage we need it to defend ourselves or manipulate others. If we let a habit go we will lose some of the benefits. Three weeks ago I had a young female student confide in me - this story is typical and versions of it crop up weekly.

This student has many of the female victim habits. Closed body that fidgets and wriggles when she speaks, high gasped breath and a very 'off' voice with no support, no energy. She has been working hard and has begun to achieve physical and vocal power. What she confided was a wonderful example. 'When I use my full voice Daddy doesn't give me money.' She has learnt that the £50 handouts come only when she is using, in her words, her 'sweet voice

But in the workplace women's 'sweet voices' weren't being rewarded. Flirting, being sweet and silly often made life easier, but these habits did not facilitate promotion. And there began to appear a bigger sting in the tail. Many women, by using their good female habits of listening, reassuring, giving way and stroking, were irreplaceable in the lower levels of a company. The really good PA or personnel manager was never going to get a promotion, however well she interviewed, because she was so successful in serving the higher status men and men couldn't, and didn't want to, do her work. If she was in a company that did have the grace to promote her, she found herself in a position whereby all the habits that made her good at her job - ie supporting others - were redundant on the board or as a manager. My response to all these problems (and I describe the work below) is to train the whole voice so any speaker can move appropriately around the whole gamut of habits. Starting from the centre of every voice, you can develop enough awareness to choose your habit. Express power or passiveness.

So the theatrical work informed the work I was doing with professional women. Many of these women believed that if they lowered the pitch of their voice, pushed it down and constricted it they would achieve power and be on an equal footing with men in the workplace. After all, that is what Mrs Thatcher did as we moved into the eighties.

I resisted this option as I sensed that, like the work with actresses, this would only produce a cosmetic result. Instead I started to teach these women all the discoveries I had made in the theatre work. I tried to balance the positive aspects of each group of habits - marrying the good qualities of each. We worked on taking physical space, finding a stillness in the body. Breathing low and fully without rushing. Good strong breath support, accessible when needed. Strong eye contact. A full, strong, sustained and focused voice. Speech without hesitation or irrelevant words or sounds - 'um's' and 'ah's'. Held lines, no falling off. Listening without losing sight of what you want to say. Keeping to a point until it has been fully addressed.

The feedback on this work was good; it was not only helping many women to understand their own voices and habits but started to inform them of their male colleagues' habits. This put some women at an advantage. Some were rapidly promoted. Many reported much more efficient performances at interviews, board meetings and debates. They felt they were in greater control of themselves and their colleagues. A very common observation was that male colleagues were more tolerant of one another - they would allow each other to ramble on - but would dismiss a woman if she did this. At least with knowledge, women could identify the behaviour and act accordingly.

Women also started to recognise that the arenas of power jarred female energy. The actual geography of the House of Commons, the Stock Exchange and lecture halls was designed for conflict. To exist in these spaces women had to face an energy that was intentionally aggressive - an energy that many women organically fear and withdraw from, but that most men adore. They had to draw themselves together and engage on a very different level.

One female MP defined this challenge as the formal versus the informal. She realised that women were better communicators in the informal - one to one or sitting in a circle with no formal leader. Men thrived in the formal. She also referred to the formal as the feudal!

In geographical terms there were certain danger zones. Conducting business in bars with alcohol could send the wrong messages to men. In the seventies and early eighties, it was still conventional for men to stand in a pub while women sat - thus excluding the women from the action. Men did a great deal of business in pubs and bars, so women had to change the attitude of men within a bar or change the place where business was done. Office parties or conferences are still great arenas for men to safely talk business, but not so for women. Even last year a female bank manager said she had never been allowed to do business in a bar without some male colleague coming on to her. We had this discussion at a conference after I had done a workshop. During the discussion, which was in a hotel bar, two male participants of the conference then tried to intervene and pick us up. Both of us were soberly dressed and neither of us was flirting!

Having mentioned flirting, I have to say no serious high flier ever risks this at work. Some women admit that they have tried, but it has always backfired. Most miss flirting as it has, historically, been a great aid in bridging difficult moments in a male/female dialogue - we've all tried to flirt with the police officer who has stopped us for speeding - but use it in the wrong context and you are in trouble. Many women resent always having to be too efficient and grown up. The little helpless girl voice has also been a good ploy in the past when in need of help or just overwhelmed. Women in power always report there is no relaxation or respite on their journey to power and then on the one to keep it. A top saleswoman said recently, 'I can never afford to have too much to drink as it would be circulated around the office the next day with everything I said reported. My male colleagues can be rolling in the gutter without comment'.

As women achieved more commanding presentation skills they had to face the next challenge - language. To keep up with the men some women started to swear - yet this often made them shunned even more. Others said they tried to tell jokes - not a very usual activity for women. Joke telling is a great male bonding activity and again is a useful faucet into business deals. Only a few women said they could do this - most failed and felt foolish trying.

One powerful chairwoman of a multi-national company worked with me and soon found she could control the boardroom and command a great deal of respect. However, when there was a coffee break the men resorted to talking about football, a subject she knew nothing about. This effectively kept her out. Ever resourceful, she studied matches and teams. To her horror, when she joined in with football remarks, they deftly changed the subject to rugby.

Although the concept of political correctness in language is good, initially it opened up a lot of women to ridicule. Their language rights were simply mocked (although that seemed to calm down a bit in the late nineties).

It was also clear in the eighties that successful women not only had to change their physique, voice and language but they had to change their thought structures. They had to structure thought more directly and not be so lateral and emotional in their thinking. Objective not subjective. The adverse side of this change led to many who achieved it being called 'hard'. It was this accusation of hardness that began to trouble many women in the late eighties and into the nineties.

I started to notice a different temperature in workshops. I began to receive requests from women to have workshops in humanising their skills. The women in these workshops were highly skilled and successful communicators in their fields but they were beginning to resent having to adopt male habits - after all, many were mothers and needed their natural nurturing skills at home, so why not at work! They were becoming aware that their whole relationship to language, thought and feeling was different from men and that they didn't want to change their nature - although ironically they all had, to some extent, used the male habits to obtain power! Some recognised this and felt ashamed that they had used some of the worst habits learnt from men, bullying other women and victimising men in lower positions while using the worst habits of women - flirting inappropriately with men in higher positions.

Something had been lost. Women felt empty and hollow. They were losing the skills that have always made life interesting for women, the skills that in some cases had put them in power in the first place. The skills of listening, supporting, sharing emotional experience with others, bringing out the best in work mates. Allowing others to contribute and express themselves in a shared experience, not a lecture. Enjoying human communication and emotional intelligence, not always being a rational control freak. As one woman said to me, 'I'm in danger of losing my grace'.

An older and very wise politician summed it up with an equation relating to her career. She was a good debater (male trait) plus a great listener (female trait) which made her presence more palatable to male politicians and therefore equalled power. But she was old enough to have invested in all those female skills before honing her male ones - which she maintains are absolutely necessary if you wish to keep power. Her real concern is that her younger colleagues are a generation of women who are just using male habits. They have not lived through a time when female habits were lauded and therefore they have not invested in them. They are in danger of losing a connection to their female energy and if they do, something might break within them. Around conferences and workshops I've posited this opinion and have had only positive feedback in as much as the younger women are relieved that they can allow themselves to be less aggressive and more passive when appropriate.

This is still in debate. But if I return to the story at the beginning of the article, men are already striving to learn the female habits and in some cases women will also have to relearn them alongside their hard-fought for and found male ones. It might sound as if I only work with women. In fact I've worked with men as much if not more. The men who came for work in the seventies and eighties needed exactly the same skills as the women. They were men who needed more power in their voices. However, in the nineties I started to see many more men who were considered too powerful, too bossy or even a bully in the workplace. Their company was investing money for them to learn the female habits of listening and giving way.

So where does this all leave the work? Let's return to theatre and the basic training actors receive. The physical, vocal, speech listening and language demands made on an actor are immense. They are trained to be flexible, to work as a group, and they have to be heard clearly in a variety of venues. They must be able to make many forms of thought, feeling and language real. They must move easily between the formal and informal. No wonder actors are now being used at every level of business and industry to train employees!

Most training starts from the concept of centre. The middle way. A balance between male and female energy. A place of absolute strength and absolute vulnerability. The natural breath and voice are freed. All habits, male or female, are cleaned out of the system. The voice is stretched and placed forward so that words can be effortlessly released. The speech muscles are worked to facilitate clear speech. Listening is taught. Not only the ability to hear better but the ability to listen without prejudice. Use of language is exercised. Different styles of language, thought structure and intensity are explored. All this work enables an actor to transform, to change voice, walk, language, thought and feeling, etc. It is a starting point of harmony which can move when appropriate to any place of energy.

The finished place towards which all this is leading is often termed 'being in the moment'. It is the start and the end of the work. A marriage between all energy. All being possible, all being right and all energy depending on all other forms of energy. This might sound mystical but the work is completely practical and it is this work I now do with men and women in business. Transformation is possible. No difference is wrong. Power when appropriate and vulnerability when needed. To recognise fear in yourself and have compassion for it in others.

To have choice

To have strength

To have grace