10. How to speak so that people want to listen (subtitles)

00:13

The human voice:

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It's the instrument we all play.

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

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It's the only one that can start a war or say "I love you."

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And yet many people have the experience

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that when they speak, people don't listen to them.

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And why is that?

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

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What I'd like to suggest,

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

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

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I'm not pretending this is an exhaustive list,

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but these seven, I think, are pretty large habits that we can all fall in o.

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First, gossip.

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Speaking ill of somebody who's not present.

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Not a nice habit, and we know perfectly well

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the person gossiping, five minutes later, will be gossiping about us.

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Second, judging.

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We know people who are like this in conversation,

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and it's very hard to listen to somebody

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if you know that you're being judged and found wanting at the same time.

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Third, negativity.

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You can fall in o this.

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My mother, in the last years of her life, became very negative,

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and it's hard to listen.

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I remember one day, I said to her, "It's October 1 today,"

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and she said, "I know, isn't it dreadful?"

01:25

(Laughter)

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It's hard to listen when somebody's that negative.

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(Laughter)

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And another form of negativity, complaining.

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Well, this is the national art of the U.K.

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It's our national sport.

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We complain about the weather, sport, about politics, about everything,

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but actually, complaining is viral misery.

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

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Excuses.

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We've all met this guy.

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Maybe we've all been this guy.

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Some people have a blamethrower.

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They just pass it on to everybody else

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and don't take responsibility for their actions,

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

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Penultimate, the sixth of the seven,

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embroidery, exaggeration.

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It demeans our language, actually, sometimes.

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For example, if I see something that really is awesome,

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what do I call it?

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(Laughter)

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And then, of course, this exaggeration becomes lying,

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

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And finally, dogmatism.

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The confusion of facts with opinions.

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When those two things get conflated,

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you're listening in o the wind.

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

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It's difficult to listen to that.

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So here they are, seven deadly sins of speaking.

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These are things I think we need to avoid.

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But is there a positive way to think about this?

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Yes, there is.

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I'd like to suggest that there are four really powerful cornerstones, foundations,

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that we can stand on if we want our speech

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to be powerful and to make change in the world.

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Fortunately, these things spell a word.

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

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I'm not talking about the stuff that falls from the sky

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and hits you on the head.

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I'm talking about this definition,

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to greet or acclaim enthusiastically,

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which is how I think our words will be received

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if we stand on these four things.

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So what do they stand for?

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See if you can guess.

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The H, honesty, of course,

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being true in what you say, being straight and clear.

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The A is authenticity, just being yourself.

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

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which I think is a lovely way to put it.

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The I is integrity, being your word,

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actually doing what you say,

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and being somebody people can trust.

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And the L is love.

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I don't mean romantic love,

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but I do mean wishing people well, for two reasons.

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

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I mean, my goodness, you look ugly this morning.

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Perhaps that's not necessary.

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

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But also, if you're really wishing somebody well,

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

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

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So hail.

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Also, now that's what you say,

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and it's like the old song, it is what you say,

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it's also the way that you say it.

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You have an amazing toolbox.

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This instrument is incredible,

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

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I'd like to have a little rummage in there with you now

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and just pull a few tools out

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that you might like to take away and play with,

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which will increase the power of your speaking.

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Register, for example.

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

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but there's a register in between.

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I'm not going to get very technical about this

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for any of you who are voice coaches.

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You can locate your voice, however.

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

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If I go down here in my throat,

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which is where most of us speak from most of the time.

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But if you want weight,

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you need to go down here to the chest.

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You hear the difference?

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

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because we associate depth with power

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and with authority.

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That's register.

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Then we have timbre.

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It's the way your voice feels.

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Again, the research shows

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that we prefer voices which are rich, smooth, warm,

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like hot chocolate.

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Well if that's not you, that's not the end of the world,

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because you can train.

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Go and get a voice coach.

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And there are amazing things you can do

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with breathing, with posture, and with exercises

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to improve the timbre of your voice.

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Then prosody. I love prosody.

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This is the sing-song, the meta-language

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that we use in order to impart meaning.

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It's root one for meaning in conversation.

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People who speak all on one note are really quite hard to listen to

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if they don't have any prosody at all.

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That's where the word "monotonic" comes from,

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or monotonous, monotone.

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Also, we have repetitive prosody now coming in,

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where every sentence ends as if it were a question

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when it's actually not a question, it's a statement?

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(Laughter)

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And if you repeat that one,

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

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which I think is a shame,

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so let's try and break that habit.

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Pace.

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I can get very excited by saying something really quickly,

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or I can slow right down to emphasize,

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

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

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

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It can be very powerful.

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Of course, pitch often goes along with pace

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to indicate arousal, but you can do it just with pitch.

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Where did you leave my keys?

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(Higher pitch) Where did you leave my keys?

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So, slightly different meaning in those two deliveries.

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And finally, volume.

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

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Sorry about that, if I startled anybody.

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

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Some people broadcast the whole time.

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Try not to do that.

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That's called sodcasting,

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(Laughter)

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Imposing your sound on people around you carelessly and inconsiderately.

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Not nice.

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Of course, where this all comes in o play most of all

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is when you've got something really important to do.

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

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It might be proposing marriage,

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asking for a raise, a wedding speech.

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Whatever it is, if it's really important,

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you owe it to yourself to look at this toolbox

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and the engine that it's going to work on,

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and no engine works well without being warmed up.

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Warm up your voice.

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Actually, let me show you how to do that.

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Would you all like to stand up for a moment?

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I'm going to show you

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the six vocal warm-up exercises that I do before every talk I ever do.

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

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First, arms up, deep breath in,

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and sigh out, ahhhhh, like that.

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One more time.

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Ahhhh, very good.

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Now we're going to warm up our lips,

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and we're going to go Ba, Ba, Ba, Ba,

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Ba, Ba, Ba, Ba. Very good.

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And now, brrrrrrrrrr,

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just like when you were a kid.

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Brrrr. Now your lips should be coming alive.

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We're going to do the tongue next

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with exaggerated la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la.

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Beautiful. You're getting really good at this.

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And then, roll an R. Rrrrrrr.

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That's like champagne for the tongue.

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Finally, and if I can only do one,

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the pros call this the siren.

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It's really good. It starts with "we" and goes to "aw."

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The "we" is high, the "aw" is low.

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So you go, weeeaawww, weeeaawww.

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Fantastic. Give yourselves a round of applause.

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Take a seat, thank you.

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(Applause)

08:59

Next time you speak, do those in advance.

09:02

Now let me just put this in context to close.

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This is a serious point here.

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This is where we are now, right?

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We speak not very well

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to people who simply aren't listening

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in an environment that's all about noise and bad acoustics.

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

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What would the world be like

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if we were speaking powerfully

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to people who were listening consciously

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in environments which were actually fit for purpose?

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Or to make that a bit larger,

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what would the world be like

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if we were creating sound consciously

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and consuming sound consciously

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and designing all our environments

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consciously for sound?

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That would be a world that does sound beautiful,

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and one where understanding would be the norm,

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and that is an idea worth spreading.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)