How to Speak So That People Want to Listen | Julian Treasure | TED

0:13 The human voice: It's the instrument we all play.

0:18 It's the most powerful sound in the world, probably.

0:21 It's the only one that can start a war or say "I

0:23 love you." And yet many people have the experience that when they speak,

0:26 people don't listen to them.

0:28 And why is that?

0:29 How can we speak powerfully to make change in the world?

0:33 What I'd like to suggest,

0:34 there are a number of habits that we need to move away from.

0:37 I've assembled for your pleasure here seven deadly sins of speaking.

0:41 I'm not pretending this is an exhaustive list, but these seven,

0:44 I think, are pretty large habits that we can all fall into.

0:49 First, gossip.

0:51 Speaking ill of somebody who's not present.

0:54 Not a nice habit, and we know perfectly well the person gossiping,

0:57 five minutes later, will be gossiping about us.

1:01 Second, judging.

1:03 We know people who are like this in conversation,

1:05 and it's very hard to listen to somebody if you know

1:08 that you're being judged and found wanting at the same time.

1:12 Third, negativity.

1:14 You can fall into this.

1:15 My mother, in the last years of her life,

1:18 became very negative, and it's hard to listen.

1:20 I remember one day, I said to her, "It's October 1 today," and she said,

1:23 "I know, isn't it dreadful?" (Laughter) It's

1:27 hard to listen when somebody's that negative.

1:29 (Laughter) And another form of negativity, complaining.

1:33 Well, this is the national art of the U.K.

1:37 It's our national sport.

1:38 We complain about the weather, sport, about politics,

1:41 about everything, but actually, complaining is viral misery.

1:44 It's not spreading sunshine and lightness in the world.

1:48 Excuses.

1:50 We've all met this guy.

1:51 Maybe we've all been this guy.

1:52 Some people have a blamethrower.

1:55 They just pass it on to everybody

1:57 else and don't take responsibility for their actions,

2:00 and again, hard to listen to somebody who is being like that.

2:02 Penultimate, the sixth of the seven, embroidery, exaggeration.

2:08 It demeans our language, actually, sometimes.

2:10 For example, if I see something that really is awesome, what do I call it?

2:15 (Laughter) And then, of course, this exaggeration becomes lying,

2:21 and we don't want to listen to people we know are lying to us.

2:24 And finally, dogmatism.

2:27 The confusion of facts with opinions.

2:31 When those two things get conflated, you're listening into the wind.

2:34 You know, somebody is bombarding you with their opinions as if they were true.

2:38 It's difficult to listen to that.

2:40 So here they are, seven deadly sins of speaking.

2:43 These are things I think we need to avoid.

2:46 But is there a positive way to think about this?

2:48 Yes, there is.

2:50 I'd like to suggest that there

2:53 are four really powerful cornerstones, foundations,

2:55 that we can stand on if we want our speech

2:58 to be powerful and to make change in the world.

3:02 Fortunately, these things spell a word.

3:04 The word is "hail," and it has a great definition as well.

3:07 I'm not talking about the stuff that falls

3:09 from the sky and hits you on the head.

3:11 I'm talking about this definition, to greet or acclaim enthusiastically,

3:15 which is how I think our words will

3:16 be received if we stand on these four things.

3:18 So what do they stand for?

3:20 See if you can guess.

3:22 The H, honesty, of course, being true in what you say, being straight and clear.

3:28 The A is authenticity, just being yourself.

3:32 A friend of mine described it as standing in your own truth,

3:35 which I think is a lovely way to put it.

3:37 The I is integrity, being your word,

3:40 actually doing what you say, and being somebody people can trust.

3:44 And the L is love.

3:47 I don't mean romantic love, but I do mean wishing people well, for two reasons.

3:52 First of all, I think absolute honesty may not be what we want.

3:56 I mean, my goodness, you look ugly this morning.

3:58 Perhaps that's not necessary.

4:02 Tempered with love, of course, honesty is a great thing.

4:05 But also, if you're really wishing somebody well,

4:08 it's very hard to judge them at the same time.

4:11 I'm not even sure you can do those two things simultaneously.

4:15 So hail.

4:16 Also, now that's what you say, and it's like the old song,

4:19 it is what you say, it's also the way that you say it.

4:22 You have an amazing toolbox.

4:24 This instrument is incredible,

4:26 and yet this is a toolbox that very few people have ever opened.

4:29 I'd like to have a little rummage in there

4:31 with you now and just pull a few tools

4:33 out that you might like to take away and play

4:35 with, which will increase the power of your speaking.

4:38 Register, for example.

4:39 Now, falsetto register may not be very useful most of the time,

4:44 but there's a register in between.

4:46 I'm not going to get very technical about

4:48 this for any of you who are voice coaches.

4:50 You can locate your voice, however.

4:51 So if I talk up here in my nose, you can hear the difference.

4:54 If I go down here in my throat,

4:56 which is where most of us speak from most of the time.

4:58 But if you want weight, you need to go down here to the chest.

5:03 You hear the difference?

5:04 We vote for politicians with lower voices, it's true,

5:08 because we associate depth with power and with authority.

5:14 That's register.

5:16 Then we have timbre.

5:17 It's the way your voice feels.

5:19 Again, the research shows that we prefer voices which are rich,

5:23 smooth, warm, like hot chocolate.

5:26 Well if that's not you, that's not the end of the world, because you can train.

5:31 Go and get a voice coach.

5:32 And there are amazing things you can do with breathing,

5:35 with posture, and with exercises to improve the timbre of your voice.

5:39 Then prosody.

5:40 I love prosody.

5:41 This is the sing-song, the meta-language that we use in order to impart meaning.

5:45 It's root one for meaning in conversation.

5:48 People who speak all on one note are really quite hard

5:51 to listen to if they don't have any prosody at all.

5:54 That's where the word "monotonic" comes from, or monotonous, monotone.

6:00 Also, we have repetitive prosody now coming in, where every sentence ends as if

6:05 it were a question when it's actually not a question, it's a statement?

6:08 (Laughter) And if you repeat that one,

6:12 it's actually restricting your ability to communicate through prosody,

6:16 which I think is a shame, so let's try and break that habit.

6:21 Pace.

6:22 I can get very excited by saying something really quickly,

6:25 or I can slow right down to emphasize,

6:28 and at the end of that, of course, is our old friend silence.

6:34 There's nothing wrong with a bit of silence in a talk, is there?

6:38 We don't have to fill it with ums and ahs.

6:41 It can be very powerful.

6:43 Of course, pitch often goes along with pace to indicate arousal,

6:46 but you can do it just with pitch.

6:48 Where did you leave my keys?

6:50 (Higher pitch) Where did you leave my keys?

6:52 So, slightly different meaning in those two deliveries.

6:56 And finally, volume.

6:58 (Loud) I can get really excited by using volume.

7:01 Sorry about that, if I startled anybody.

7:03 Or, I can have you really pay attention by getting very quiet.

7:08 Some people broadcast the whole time.

7:10 Try not to do that.

7:11 That's called sodcasting, (Laughter) Imposing your sound on people

7:17 around you carelessly and inconsiderately.

7:20 Not nice.

7:21 Of course, where this all comes into play most

7:23 of all is when you've got something really important to do.

7:26 It might be standing on a stage like this and giving a talk to people.

7:29 It might be proposing marriage, asking for a raise, a wedding speech.

7:34 Whatever it is, if it's really important,

7:36 you owe it to yourself to look at this toolbox and the engine

7:41 that it's going to work on, and no engine works well without being warmed up.

7:45 Warm up your voice.

7:47 Actually, let me show you how to do that.

7:49 Would you all like to stand up for a moment?

7:52 I'm going to show you the six vocal warm-up

7:55 exercises that I do before every talk I ever do.

7:58 Any time you're going to talk to anybody important, do these.

8:01 First, arms up, deep breath in, and sigh out, ahhhhh, like that.

8:07 One more time.

8:09 Ahhhh, very good.

8:12 Now we're going to warm up our lips,

8:14 and we're going to go Ba, Ba, Ba, Ba, Ba, Ba, Ba, Ba.

8:18 Very good.

8:19 And now, brrrrrrrrrr, just like when you were a kid.

8:24 Brrrr.

8:24 Now your lips should be coming alive.

8:26 We're going to do the tongue next with exaggerated la,

8:29 la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la.

8:32 Beautiful.

8:33 You're getting really good at this.

8:35 And then, roll an R.

8:37 Rrrrrrr.

8:37 That's like champagne for the tongue.

8:40 Finally, and if I can only do one, the pros call this the siren.

8:44 It's really good.

8:45 It starts with "we" and goes to "aw." The "we" is high, the "aw" is low.

8:48 So you go, weeeaawww, weeeaawww.

8:54 Fantastic.

8:55 Give yourselves a round of applause.

8:56 Take a seat, thank you.

8:58 (Applause) Next time you speak, do those in advance.

9:02 Now let me just put this in context to close.

9:04 This is a serious point here.

9:07 This is where we are now, right?

9:09 We speak not very well to people who simply aren't

9:12 listening in an environment that's all about noise and bad acoustics.

9:15 I have talked about that on this stage in different phases.

9:18 What would the world be like if we were speaking powerfully to people

9:22 who were listening consciously in environments

9:25 which were actually fit for purpose?

9:27 Or to make that a bit larger,

9:30 what would the world be like if we were creating sound consciously

9:34 and consuming sound consciously and designing

9:37 all our environments consciously for sound?

9:39 That would be a world that does sound beautiful,

9:42 and one where understanding would be the norm,

9:46 and that is an idea worth spreading.

9:49 Thank you.

9:50 (Applause)