"Can Your Voice Indicate Leadership Potential?" w/ Prof Bill Mayew

When a CEO speaks during an earnings call, investors typically focus on the numbers being reported. But studies suggest they should also be listening to how those numbers are delivered. The emotional undertones, vocal pitch, and subtle inflections that executives unconsciously broadcast may reveal as much about a company's future as the financial data itself.

In this episode, Professor Bill Mayew of Duke's Fuqua School of Business reflects on his research analyzing CEO voices and how vocal cues can predict market reactions and executive success. His paper, The Power of Voice: Managerial Affective States and Future Firm Performance, published in the Journal of Finance, shows that layered voice analysis can detect emotional cues in CEO communication during earnings calls. These subtle vocal signals—particularly expressions of positive or negative emotion—predict both immediate market reactions and longer-term firm performance.

Mayew's second study, Voice Pitch and the Labor Market Success of Male CEOs, analyzed the voices of nearly 800 male corporate executives and found that deeper-voiced CEOs consistently manage larger firms, earn higher compensation, and enjoy longer tenures. This correlation raises complex questions about leadership perception: Do deeper voices signal better leadership capabilities, or do early-life biases create advantages that compound over decades?
 
As Mayew explains, it’s difficult to disentangle perception from reality. If those with deeper voices are perceived as more authoritative beginning in childhood, they may receive more opportunities to develop actual leadership skills, making initial perceptions self-fulfilling over time.

Today, academic findings about vocal cues are driving company decision making. Some hedge funds now deploy algorithms that analyze vocal patterns in real-time during earnings calls, executing trades based on emotional cues that human listeners might miss. Recent advances in AI voice analysis are pushing this technology even further, with platforms now capable of detecting "emotional peaks" to enhance portfolio performance. Meanwhile, the same voice analysis technology originally developed for police interrogations is being repurposed to help managers craft more confident communication.

The conversation spans finance, psychology, linguistics and leadership — and will change the way you think about the most human element of communication: your voice.

Duke Fuqua Insights features digestible conversations with our faculty about the most impactful research from their careers, including studies they teach in Fuqua classes. New episodes every other week in season.

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