When “find your voice” or “express yourself” comes before adequate care for our words, the student will come to think that self-expression and the self matter more than having something definitive to say and doing so clearly. Authenticity, whatever we take that to mean, then becomes something that an audience either feels in response to us as persons or does not and it is taken to determine the truth or falsity of what we say. If an audience does not feel what we want them to feel, we can scarcely force them to; and what results is a breakdown of discourse, since our views on things become more a matter of personal response to someone else and less a matter of truth. If the only test of speech or writing is that it came from the speaker and is in his voice, then no one can ever say that the speaker was wrong, unclear, or unjust, but only that he was not himself. But it is practically-speaking impossible for us to tell someone else that he is not himself.
These problems arise as much for the listener or reader as for the speaker or writer. If we do not know what another person is trying to say, that can sometimes be our own fault; but it is also incumbent on the speaker, since he is the one with something to say, to make sure that others are able to understand him. Speech is ultimately public.
The speaker, too, will have difficulty if he cares only for his own voice and expression. We cannot truly have an authentic and powerful voice if we are not able to use words, state claims, or build arguments. If we ignore these things, we will become less and less able to persuade and therefore less and less powerful as speakers and writers.