The way we speak can shape how others perceive our intelligence, credibility and leadership potential. But should it? Cath Baxter challenges the everyday assumptions behind accent bias, explores its damaging impact on careers and confidence, and explains why being understood matters far more than sounding like someone else at work.
For the first time in more than a decade, the UK is being led by a voice that sounds unmistakably like where it’s from. Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s voice is firmly rooted in the north-west of England, and it’s not the sound we’ve been indoctrinated to expect from the top. For most of the last century, sounding “prime ministerial” largely meant sounding one specific way, Received Pronunciation, or RP, a southern English accent.
Plenty of would-be prime ministers worked hard to develop those prized vowels. Margaret Thatcher took elocution lessons and consciously lowered her voice. Edward Heath, the son of a builder, acquired an accent his father never had. In contrast to Gordon Brown’s Scottish voice, unmistakable throughout his career, Tony Blair could dial his Scottish roots up or down depending on the audience and the occasion.
We mistook that accent for competence, intelligence and leadership
For decades it’s been assumed that regional or international accents needed to adapt, to soften, shift, and neutralise themselves to be credible for serious leadership. But here’s what we got wrong: power historically sat with those who spoke RP, so we mistook that accent for competence, intelligence and leadership. That’s accent bias: the assumption that how someone sounds tells us what they’re worth.
The hidden cost of accent bias
For those with regional or international accents, accent bias hurts twice:
- There’s the impact on careers, such as the promotion that goes elsewhere or the idea that only lands when someone else repeats it
- However, there is a greater impact on internal confidence. Given enough time, we stop waiting for other people to judge our accent and start judging it ourselves. We question our voice before anyone else gets the chance
That is the real damage, that we internalise the bias early. According to the Sutton Trust, more than a third of university students are self-conscious about their accent, and among students from the North of England, 41% worry it could hold back their future success. So why does accent bias persist? Because we’re human. We’re naturally drawn to what’s familiar, so when we hear a voice we can’t immediately place, we make assumptions without meaning to. We all take a shortcut, and whilst they may be quick, they’re not always right. The accent was never the barrier. The assumptions surrounding it were. And the good news is that assumptions can be unlearned.
Clarity not conformity
Here’s what we need to understand:
- We all have an accent, it’s just the particular way we’ve each learned to shape vowels and consonants, and we’ve all learned it somewhere. RP is not the absence of an accent, it’s just the one that got to call itself neutral
- The ease we feel listening to some accents isn’t because they’re clearer, but because they’re more familiar. RP has been the sound of power, and of broadcasting, for so long that we’ve simply heard more of it. If Newcastle had been the seat of power for the last few hundred years, we’d all follow Geordie without a second thought, and RP would be the accent we claimed we had to strain to understand. Familiarity got mistaken for clarity
- Here lies the key to overcoming accent bias: when we genuinely can’t follow someone, it’s almost never the accent, it’s the delivery. Too fast, no emphasis, the ends of the sentences dropped. No one is easy to follow at 220 words a minute, regional accent, RP, or otherwise. And that’s not an accent problem. It’s a technique problem, and technique can be worked on without changing a single vowel.
We never needed to change how we sound. We needed to be clear. Our accents can stay exactly, entirely, beautifully as they are. Here’s where this leaves us, on both sides of the conversation. If you hire, promote, or sit on a panel, know this: awareness of accent bias reduces it. Even a brief reminder before an interview can change how fairly people assess candidates. Judge the answer, not the accent.
Personality is personal
And if you’re speaking, and you’ve ever felt the pressure to flatten your accent to fit the room, hear this: don’t. You don’t need to sound like anyone else. You need to be clear, and clarity is a technique, not an accent. Slow down. Emphasise what matters. Make it easy for people to follow your thinking. Do that, and your voice, your actual voice, becomes your greatest asset.
You never needed to change how you sound. You only needed to be understood. Accent was never the issue, the assumptions were. And assumptions can be unlearned.
Cath Baxter is a Voice and Public Speaking Expert at Cath Baxter Voice Coach and a regular facilitator for Total Events Diversity and Inclusion
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