Julian Treasure: How to speak so that people want to listen

TEDglobal 2013

The human voice: It's the instrument we all play. It's the most powerful
sound in the world, probably. It's the only one that can start a war or s ay "I
love you." And yet many people have the experience that when they speak,
people don't listen to them. And why is that? How can we speak powerfully
to make change in the world?

What I'd like to suggest, there are a number of habits that we need to move
away from. I've assembled for your pleasure here seven deadly sins of
speaking. I'm not pretending this is an exhaustive list, but these seven, I
think, are pretty large habits that we can all fall into.

First, gossip, speaking ill of somebody who's not present. Not a nice habit,
and we know perfectly well the person gossiping five minutes later will be
gossiping about us.

Second, judging. We know people who are like this in conversation, and it's
very hard to listen to somebody if you know that you're being judged and
found wanting at the same time.

Third, negativity. You can fall into this. My mother, in the last years of her
life, became very, very negative, and it's hard to listen. I remember one day,
I said to her, "It's October 1 today," and she said, "I know, isn't it
dreadful?" (Laughter) It's hard to listen when somebody's that negative.
And another form of negativity, complaining. Well, this is the national art of
the U.K. It's our national sport. We complain about the weather, about
sport, about politics, about everything, but actually complaining is viral
misery. It's not spreading sunshine and lightness in the world.

Excuses. We've all met this guy. Maybe we've all been this guy. Some
people have a blame thrower. They just pass it on to everybody else and
don't take responsibility for their actions, and again, hard to listen to
somebody who is being like that.

Penultimate, the sixth of the seven, embroidery, exaggeration. It demeans

And finally, dogmatism, the confusion of facts with opinions. When those
two things get conflated, you're listening into the wind. You know,
somebody is bombarding you with their opinions as if they were true. It's
difficult to listen to that.

So here they are, seven deadly sins of speaking. These are things I think
we need to avoid. But is there a positive way to think about this? Yes, there
is. I'd like to suggest that there are four really powerful cornerstones,
foundations, that we can stand on if we want our speech to be powerful and
to make change in the world. Fortunately, these things spell a word. The
word is "hail," and it has a great definition as well. I'm not talking about the
stuff that falls from the sky and hits you on the head. I'm talking about this
definition, to greet or acclaim enthusiastically, which is how I think our
words will be received if we stand on these four things.

So what do they stand for? See if you can guess. The H, honesty, of
course, being true in what you say, being straight and clear. The A is
authenticity, just being yourself. A friend of mine described it as standing in
your own truth, which I think is a lovely way to put it. The I is integrity, being
your word, actually doing what you say, and being somebody people can
trust. And the L is love. I don't mean romantic love, but I do mean wishing
people well, for two reasons. First of all, I think absolute honesty may not
be what we want. I mean, my goodness, you look ugly this morning.
Perhaps that's not necessary. Tempered with love, of course, honesty is a
great thing. But also, if you're really wishing somebody well, it's very hard to
judge them at the same time. I'm not even sure you can do those two
things simultaneously. So hail.

Also, now that's what you say, and it's like the old song, it is what you say,
it's also the way that you say it. You have an amazing toolbox. This
instrument is incredible, and yet this is a toolbox that very few people have
ever opened. I'd like to have a little rummage in there with you now and just
pull a few tools out that you might like to take away and play with, which will
increase the power of your speaking.

Register, for example. Now, falsetto register may not be very useful most of
the time, but there's a register in between. I'm not going to get very
technical about this for any of you who are voice coaches. You can locate
your voice, however. So if I talk up here in my nose, you can hear the
difference. If I go down here in my throat, which is where most of us speak
from most of the time. But if you want weight, you need to go down here to
the chest. You hear the difference? We vote for politicians with lower
voices, it's true, because we associate depth with power and with authority.
That's register.

Then we have timbre. It's the way your voice feels. Again, the research
shows that we prefer voices which are rich, smooth, warm, like hot
chocolate. Well if that's not you, that's not the end of the world, because
you can train. Go and get a voice coach. And there are amazing things you
can do with breathing, with posture, and with exercises to improve the
timbre of your voice.

Then prosody. I love prosody. This is the sing-song, the meta-language that
we use in order to impart meaning. It's root one for meaning in
conversation. People who speak all on one note are really quite hard to
listen to if they don't have any prosody at all. That's where the word
monotonic comes from, or monotonous, monotone. Also we have repetitive
prosody now coming in, where every sentence ends as if it were a question
when it's actually not a question, it's a statement. (Laughter) And if you
repeat that one over and over, it's actually restricting your ability to
communicate through prosody, which I think is a shame, so let's try and
break that habit.

Pace. I can get very, very excited by saying something really, really quickly,
or I can slow right down to emphasize, and at the end of that, of course, is
our old friend silence. There's nothing wrong with a bit of silence in a talk, is
there? We don't have to fill it with ums and ahs. It can be very powerful.

Of course, pitch often goes along with pace to indicate arousal, but you can
do it just with pitch. Where did you leave my keys? Where did you leave my
keys? So slightly different meaning in those two deliveries.

And finally, volume. I can get really excited by using volume. Sorry about
that if I startled anybody. Or, I can have you really pay attention by getting
very quiet. Some people broadcast the whole time. Try not to do that.
That's called sodcasting, imposing your sound on people around you
carelessly and inconsiderately. Not nice.

Of course, where this all comes into play most of all is when you've got
something really important to do. It might be standing on a stage like this
and giving a talk to people. It might be proposing marriage, asking for a
raise, a wedding speech. Whatever it is, if it's really important, you owe it to
yourself to look at this toolbox and the engine that it's going to work on, and
no engine works well without being warmed up. Warm up your voice.

Actually, let me show you how to do that. Would you all like to stand up for
a moment? I'm going to show you the six vocal warmup exercises that I do
before every talk I ever do. Anytime you're going to talk to anybody
important, do these. First, arms up, deep breath in, and sigh out, ahhhhh,
like that. One more time. Ahhhh, very good. Now we're going to warm up
our lips, and we're going to go ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba. Very good.
And now, brrrrrrrrrr, just like when you were a kid. Brrrr. Now your lips
should be coming alive. We're going to do the tongue next with
exaggerated la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la. Beautiful. You're getting really
good at this. And then, roll an R. Rrrrrrr. That's like champagne for the
tongue. Finally, and if I can only do one, the pros call this the siren. It's
really good. It starts with "we" and goes to "aw." The "we" is high, the "aw"
is low. So you go, weeeaawww, weeeaawww.

Fantastic. Give yourselves a round of applause. Take a seat, thank you.

Next time you speak, do those in advance.

Now let me just put this in context to close. This is a serious point here.
This is where we are now, right? We speak not very well into people who
simply aren't listening in an environment that's all about noise and bad
acoustics. I have talked about that on this stage in different phases. What
would the world be like if we were speaking powerfully to people who were
listening consciously in environments which were actually fit for purpose?
Or to make that a bit larger, what would the world be like if we were
creating sound consciously and consuming sound consciously and
designing all our environments consciously for sound? That would be a
world that does sound beautiful, and one where understanding would be
the norm, and that is an idea worth spreading.

Thank you.