Tips From a Top TED Talker on How to Be Heard
Episode Stats
Summary
Julian Treichert, founder of The Sound Agency and author of How to Be Heard: Secrets Are Powerful, Speaking and Listening, discusses the importance of being a good listener and the practices you can use to do so.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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Now, Julian Treasure knows a thing or two about how to speak well.
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He's given five TED Talks, which have been watched over 125 million times,
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including one on, well, How to Speak Well, which resides in the top 10 TED Talks of all time.
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But as a former audio branding strategist, Julian got his start in the world of hearing.
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And as the title of his book, How to Be Heard, Secrets Are Powerful, Speaking and Listening,
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implies he believes that if you really want to be a good communicator,
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So that's where we begin our conversation today.
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Julian shares why becoming a skilled listener is so important and the practices you can use to do so.
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We then segue into the vocal part of communication,
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and Julian shares the four foundations for powerful speaking
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that apply whether you're talking in a casual conversation or on the TED stage.
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He discusses what separates the best TED Talks from the just-so-so,
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the breathing practice and posture cue that'll improve the effectiveness of your vocal toolbox,
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We also discuss the physical gestures to generally avoid when speaking,
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including the placator, and a highly effective tip for refining your body language.
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After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash howtobeheard.
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All right, Julian Treasure, welcome to the show.
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Well, thank you very much. Thanks for having me, Brett.
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So you're someone who's had an interesting career.
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You founded the Sound Agency, which helps companies hone in on their audio brand,
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and then you became a highly successful TED speaker.
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So you have experience and expertise in both listening and speaking.
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And in your book, How to Be Heard, you make the case that those two things are very connected.
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And you start off the book by making the case that for the benefits of being intentional
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And I think people already intuitively understand the importance of being intentional with speaking,
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but they tend to neglect the importance of listening sometimes.
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So what are the benefits of not only being intentional about speaking, but also you're listening to?
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Well, apart from anything else, I think there's a huge benefit from becoming as conscious as possible
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in the way we live our lives, so conscious of what's going on around us, noticing things
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and doing things consciously as opposed to, you know, we can all go into this kind of sleepwalking
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way of just bumbling along and not really noticing much.
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So I'm a great fan of consciousness, and I think applying it to speaking and listening
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is a wonderful way to enrich one's experience of life and also to transform one's outcomes.
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So in listening, it's very, very often the case that listening is confused with hearing,
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conflated with hearing, and they're very different.
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We can all hear, I mean, some people have got more or less hearing damage, and there's
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a lot of it around, especially with headphone abuse.
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I think one in six American teenagers are experiencing noise-induced hearing loss as a result of hours
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and hours of loud music going into their ear canals and flattening those tiny little cells that
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So there's a big problem brewing with deafness, but leaving that aside, hearing is a capability.
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You know, your heart beats, you breathe, you hear.
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You don't have to think about those things all the time.
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Listening is a skill, and that's a huge misunderstanding.
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It's something that many people simply don't think about.
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This is a skill that you can practice, you can improve, you can master, and there are enormous
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benefits to becoming a masterful, really excellent listener in life.
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I mean, what's the most common complaint in relationships?
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We feel hurt when people don't listen to us, and yet, how much listening do we do?
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I mean, how can you lead people if you don't listen to them and understand them and know
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And, of course, conscious listening is always the doorway to understanding.
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Any great salesperson will tell you that the most important part of a sales conversation
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And I was just saying, actually, today, there's a piece of research that was done a couple
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of years ago where they found that the ideal proportions in a sales conversation of speaking
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to listening are something like 40 speaking to 60 listening, give or take, not the other
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And so many of us, when we're trying to persuade somebody of something, we go, yetta, yetta,
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yetta, yetta, and hardly give the other person the chance to get a word in.
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So listening is a fundamental part of human connection, of relationship, and of making
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I mean, the basis of my work, really, is that speaking and listening are in a circular relationship.
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So it's not a straight line, I speak, you listen.
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It's a circle all the time, organic, continuous circle, because the way I speak affects the
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way you listen, the way you listen affects the way I speak, and the way I speak affects
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And the way I listen affects the way you listen, and vice versa.
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So there's all this stuff going on the whole time in a conversation, particularly face-to-face.
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But even as we're speaking now, I mean, I can't see you, but I'm listening to what you say,
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and the way you respond to me will affect the way I respond to you, and so forth.
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So it's really fundamental as part of communication to be listening.
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And yet, so many of us are wrapped up, and there's a couple of human capabilities or tendencies
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which so get in the way of effective listening.
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So it's, you know, that gives rise to things like what I call speech writing.
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So instead of listening to you in a conversation, I would be thinking about my next brilliant
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bit of monologue, and really, you know, not paying much attention to this inconvenient
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noise that's going on in front of me, which is you talking.
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So speech writing is a pretty disrespectful way to treat other people.
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And it tends to give rise to the sort of non sequitur where you go, anyway, never mind
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Now let's talk about this, what I want to talk about.
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And people feel pretty marginalized and upset if you do that kind of thing to them.
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So looking good can really get in the way of effective listening, which is a very generous,
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calm state to be in without all that stuff going on.
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Listening is not easy because you think far faster than people can speak.
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You know, people speak at maybe 120 words a minute.
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So if you're being with the person as they're speaking, you're having to slow your thinking
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right down, or you can train yourself to be thinking productively and in an involved
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way, as opposed to going off and, oh, wonder what I might have for dinner tonight, you know,
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which we can do, you know, we can leave a conversation and, and just be listening to
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So listening is challenging, but it's a wonderful thing if we can get there.
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And then the other big thing that gets in the way of listening, even more than looking
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Being right, being right, such a tendency in modern society now always has been to a degree.
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So we have to be careful about that because being right can really damage our connection
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with other people if we're just overriding them, dogmatism.
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So listening, speaking, circular relationship, and it does require work in order to become
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good at both of them, because there are obstacles within us and there are obstacles in society,
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And it's very important to be open to different listening positions and to understand that
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I mean, one of the most important things in the book and in all of my work is a potentially
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transformative realization, which is that everybody's listening is unique.
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It's as unique as your fingerprints, your voice print, your irises.
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And it's a huge and very common mistake to make that people think everybody listens like
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So you speak in the way you'd like to be heard, you know, speak in the way you'd like
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But it's not true because we listen through all of these filters and the filters are different
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You've come a different road to this conversation today than I have, Brett, and you're listening
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I mean, you know, apart from anything else, you're American, I'm British.
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I mean, there are many, many things you can think of, you know, the culture we're born
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into, the language we speak, the values, attitudes, beliefs that we accrete along the way from
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teachers, parents, role models, friends, and so forth.
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And then situationally, we may have different intentions or expectations going on.
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I mean, we all know we listen in a very different way.
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If we're really upset or if we're really happy, that changes our listening.
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Listening changes over time, depending on have you eaten?
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You know, I often get the graveyard slot at events when I speak on stage, which is just
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after lunch because they think, oh, he can cope with that.
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And, you know, you have to work harder at that one because everybody's just had lunch and
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the blood's all gone to the gut and they're all a bit sleepy and so forth.
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Very different from listening at 10 in the morning after they've all had coffee or two,
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or at five in the afternoon when they all want to go home.
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So listening changes over time and from person to person.
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And so the corollary of that really important transformative understanding that everybody's
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The corollary of that is that you always speak into a unique listening, whether it's one person
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or a thousand people, there's a listening you're speaking into.
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And if you can start to ask yourself the question, what's the listening I'm speaking into?
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That's how you can hit the bullseye instead of missing the target altogether, because a
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lot of misspeaking or ineffective communication is simply because somebody hasn't tweaked, hasn't
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appreciated the listening they're speaking into.
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It could be you're speaking to somebody who speaks very, very slowly like this.
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And if I'm speaking like this and rattling away, they're going to feel pressured, uncomfortable
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It's natural that, you know, it's part of the way you listen affecting the way I speak.
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If you're a very fast speaker, then I would probably speed up a little bit in order to
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We do it naturally to a degree, but it's great also to become conscious.
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If it's an older audience, you might change your vocabulary slightly.
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If it's a younger audience, the same might apply.
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You might change the way you gesture, the way even you prepare and dress and the subject
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And so what's the listening is a really important question to ask.
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So in the book, you give some practices on how to be more conscious with your listening.
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What are some ones that stand out to you that you think if someone started using it today,
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Well, the first and easiest one probably is to spend a bit more time with silence.
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We don't encounter silence very much in the modern world at all.
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And I think it's really important a couple of times a day, if you can, just for a few minutes
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And in, you know, maybe you have to go into a bathroom or a cupboard or something or a
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They're normally the quietest rooms in the house.
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And be with yourself for two or three minutes and let your ears reset because we do tend to
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be surrounded by noise a lot of the time and we go a bit deaf and we get into the habit
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of suppressing our consciousness of sound simply because a lot of it's not very pleasant.
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So I think silence is a great way to recalibrate your ears.
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The one that a lot of people have said to me they really find powerful is a practice
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And that's an acronym RASA, which stands for receive, appreciate, summarize, ask.
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So receive means actually giving the other person 100% of your attention.
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Scott Peck said, you cannot truly listen to another human being and do anything else at
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And yet, you know, I challenge everybody listening to this.
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When's the last time you put everything down and truly listened to another person?
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When we're so used to partial listening, tapping away on a phone, you know, no, I am listening
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No, you're sending a text that's different or, you know, listening while we're cooking or
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ironing or doing whatever else it is, reading a book, watching TV, watching a movie.
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And it's something that's really a great gift to give to somebody.
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So perhaps all of you listening to this, after you stop listening to this and you, the next
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time you engage with somebody in your family or in your work, put everything down and receive
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Now in the Western world, the dance of the eyes typically is the listener will look at the
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speaker almost all the time, maybe 80%, maybe more.
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The speaker will be looking away from time to time and looking back to check that the listener's
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listening, but the listener is definitely looking at the speaker, point your body at them, lean
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These are all cues that show that you're receiving what's being said.
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And the A is appreciate, which is little noises or gestures, which reinforce that, which show
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Now, you know, if we were on a phone call, we'd be doing a lot more of that on a podcast,
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It's much more polite to be doing what you're doing, which is being silent and listening.
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I imagine you're nodding from time to time, but you're not doing the little appreciate
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noises that we would typically do on the phone.
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And if you're face to face, of course, there's little eyebrow raises, head bobs, smiles, you
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know, little gestures, which show you're engaged.
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And it's really kicked off with a very important little word, which I think is getting terribly
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Now, the reason I say it's getting abused is because there's a habit which started in your
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country, I think, but it's becoming very common all over the world to start every sentence
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I've even seen, I mean, there are a bunch of TED Talks where people walk on stage and
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It kind of establishes, you know, maybe there's a sort of theoretical relationship we've just
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But it's unfortunate because the word so is a really powerful word.
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It's a word that you can use to summarize the content of what's gone before.
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So, in the long corridor of a conversation, you can be closing doors behind you.
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You know, we've all had the experience of meetings where huge numbers of people waste vast amounts
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They say meetings are places you take minutes and waste hours.
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Well, that's true of meetings where there isn't a so person going, so, guys, I think we've
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Now, we can move on to the next item on the agenda, which is that.
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And if that's not happening, the meeting can really just go round and round and become
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Ideally, open-ended questions, starting with why, which, when, what, where, who, and so forth.
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Questions that do not permit the answer yes or no.
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And often people say to me, you know, I find it difficult to get people to listen to me.
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And I always say the best way to do that is to start with questions.
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Because if you're showing great interest in what somebody else is saying, it's a little
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And you can use the questions to steer the conversation into waters that you feel more
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Oh, that's really interesting now that you say that.
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What aspect of that do you think would feed into this thing that I actually know about?
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So, in that way, questions can really help you to get engaged and to have the other person
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So, that's us at Receive, Appreciate, Summarize, Ask.
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And I think it really can be very helpful to anybody who ever struggles to be heard in
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We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.
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Now I'm going to be all self-conscious when I say so now.
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And I hope we can tap into your expertise as a TED Talker on how we can do a better job
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of being effective communicators when we're giving a public presentation.
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But I think maybe that some of these insights and tips you have can also apply to one-on-one
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And so, in the section about speaking, you start off with this acronym, HAIL.
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Why do you think that's a useful place to start when you're thinking about crafting what
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Well, HAIL is four foundations for powerful speaking.
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And I think it's really important to understand when you're speaking that it's not all about
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If all sound has intention or, you know, created sound has intention or intention is very important
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And so, I've seen, you know, quite a lot of people stand on stage and it's all about them.
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Well, that's a bit transparent and people can tell if that's what you're about.
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So, it's really important in public speaking to understand it's not about you, it's about
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And it, therefore, is very important to stand on firm foundations.
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And the four that I suggest in the book, in the TED Talk, and in all my work, really, in
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I like acronyms because I have a terrible memory.
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So, acronyms help me a great deal to remember what I'm doing and especially things like
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HAIL stands for honesty, authenticity, integrity, and love.
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So, honesty, I simply mean be clear and straight in what you're saying.
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So, not obfuscating everything by using big words.
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I get quite annoyed when I read academic papers, for example, or particularly legal documents
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It's almost willfully obscure and it's almost proving that those people are worthwhile because
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And there's been a big movement over the past 20 years in simple, clear language, which I
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I love simple words and I think that's a really strong rule to use in communication.
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It's all about getting the ball over the net to the other person.
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And as I said before, if you ask the question, what's the listening, you may change your vocabulary.
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So, honesty, being clear, being straight, of course, very important in what you say that
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The A is authenticity, which is being yourself.
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Well, it's a lot easier to be yourself than to pretend to be somebody else.
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You can be authentically yourself and yet do things that are challenging to you.
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And I think a great example of that is Susan Cain, who gave a great TED Talk about the power
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And I know Susan, she is an introvert and she spent a lot of time practicing and being
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Not to the point where every gesture was tutored or it became unnatural, but just doing something
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over and over again to become confident enough to step over the fear and do it anyway.
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I mean, she's got very good at it now because she does a lot of it.
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But, you know, sometimes we have to push the envelope a little bit, but without becoming
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You know, that doesn't mean you have to stand up on stage and become a sort of rah-rah extrovert
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The I is integrity, and that's being your word.
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Well, if that's how you are in life, then your words have great weight.
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If you say it and it tends not to happen, then your words tend to evaporate like puddles
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People don't really take you very seriously in terms of the weight of your communication.
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And I'm not here talking about romantic love, obviously.
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And that is a fantastic place to come from when you're speaking, whether it's to one person
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If you're genuinely wishing the other person well, how can I help you?
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And I remember reading, I think it was a religious author years ago, who was in the
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habit of going up to strangers and saying, how can I help you?
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Well, that's a pretty nice first question to ask, and it's a nice intention to have,
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And I remember I was given a great exercise to do by an old guy that I used to know, which
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is to, instead of walking around as we do, and it tends to be that you walk around kind
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You know, we think negative things a lot of the time.
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What on earth possessed you to put those clothes on this morning?
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You know, this kind of critical monologue is going on in our heads a lot.
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And it's much nicer if you walk around thinking two words and only two words, bless you.
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Or, you know, I wish you well if you want to be.
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I'm not talking religiously here, simply wishing people well.
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And if you do that, it is amazing how after a while you feel that you're walking a foot
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And if you meet somebody's eye, you might even smile at each other because, you know,
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you're not frowning or grimacing at them or thinking something bad.
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You know, so often if we meet somebody's eye in public, we look away because we were just
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I hope this isn't just me, by the way, who thinks these things.
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We tend to be quite judgmental of people who are different and so forth.
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And it's important to counteract that with a practice.
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And if you walk onto a stage in front of an audience and you're focused on that, wishing
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them well, I've got something to give you and it's going to help you.
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Well, that's great for counteracting the nerves because it's not about you.
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It's not about what they're going to think of you.
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It's not about how much they're going to like you or respect you.
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From your experience, what makes an engaging TED talk the most engaging?
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What are they, what are like the TED speakers who are really able to capture an audience?
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What are they doing different from the ones who, you know, they're giving a good talk,
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Well, first of all, in TED, the whole thing is about ideas worth spreading.
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So a good TED talk, and I'd say that's true of most talks you ever give, you need to have
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And there needs to be an idea in there that's, that's going to move people from where they
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are at the beginning to a different place at the end.
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Now, it may be that you're setting out to inform, educate, inspire, entertain, who knows?
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But at the end, they should feel that something's changed in the room.
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And so I think that's the first and most important thing.
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And as soon as you start thinking of ideas like that, there's a very important question
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And it's the question that editors will ask, you know, trainee reporters all the time.
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You put yourself into the shoes of the audience and you just go, so what?
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And if you can answer that, then I think you're a long way down the road to a great talk.
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Of course, content is the most important part of a talk.
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You know, I asked this question to Chris Anderson when I interviewed him for the book.
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And, you know, people who get the book, there's a, there's a website you can go to and listen
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And I said to him, what's more important, content or delivery?
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And his answer was, well, they're both important, but if I was forced to choose, it would be
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content because I will bear with somebody who's delivering earth shattering content in a boring
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But if somebody's delivering vapid nonsense brilliantly, it's just irritating.
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I mean, we probably all had the experience of seeing somebody who's saying not very much,
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You think, what a waste, you know, why don't you use that talent to say something important?
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I mean, that is the first and most important thing for a TED talk or for anything.
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And, you know, whether it's an after dinner speech or a wedding speech, content.
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Certainly asking what's the listening is where I would start.
00:29:01.020
And then brainstorming, you know, I'm a great fan of post-it notes and just writing down
00:29:07.020
on post-it notes, everything you can think of about the idea.
00:29:16.440
And those clumps are your main bits of content.
00:29:19.140
And then you can start to organize the clumps and think about, well, you know, should I start
00:29:23.460
I'm a great fan of kind of a funnel structure for a talk where you go from the general to
00:29:29.080
the specific, but you can do it lots of different ways.
00:29:31.820
And there are ways of doing it, which surprise and delight people.
00:29:38.980
Shocking people with a question or a statement at the beginning.
00:29:46.640
You know, if you walk onto a stage and say, you're all idiots, that's going to make people
00:29:52.180
You'd have to have a pretty good reason for saying it and justifying it and being amusing
00:29:56.600
But, you know, when you rattle people's cages a little bit with something like that, you
00:30:08.040
And I'm quite a fan of the old essayists structure, which is say, say, say, say what
00:30:15.960
you're going to say, say it, and then say what you said.
00:30:20.560
And actually with my, the TED talk about speaking, which is the one that did so well, I did a
00:30:26.720
video, which is on my website with Neil Gordon, who's a top US speaker coach, where we kind
00:30:33.840
So it's about half an hour, I think, of us doing that, where I kept stopping it.
00:30:37.700
And we say, okay, what I did there is this, and what we could have done is that, and the
00:30:43.520
And so with that TED talk, I started off by saying the human voice, the instrument we all
00:30:49.960
And I think I ended up saying pretty much the same thing at the end.
00:30:53.360
And I did the same thing, I'm sure, with the one on listening.
00:30:57.220
So it's a very good idea to start with a kind of strong statement at the beginning.
00:31:05.680
I mean, that cadence I used at the beginning there, the human voice, da-da-da-da, I have
00:31:11.600
You know, those four syllables can be a very strong way of starting a talk with a strong
00:31:21.620
And it's a cadence people are pretty familiar with.
00:31:28.100
And then, of course, you want to think about how does this flow over time?
00:31:36.520
And there's a reason for that, for the classic TED talk being 18 minutes.
00:31:45.040
You can't just walk up and make it up on the spot.
00:31:48.200
But it's too short to give your usual hour-long lecture or whatever it is for most of the people
00:31:57.000
And it has to be specifically made for the stage.
00:32:00.400
I think my first TED talk actually was six minutes, that first TED University talk on sound.
00:32:05.640
And I seem to remember I did deliver it quite quickly.
00:32:12.740
And I'm sure we can come on to some of the aspects of the vocal toolbox in a moment.
00:32:21.740
Having said that, it's a shame to have riveting, brilliant content and deliver it in a very tedious way that sends people to sleep.
00:32:33.660
So the content, I think the big idea there is have a big idea.
00:32:40.480
I think we've all been in talks where the speaker's trying to convey lots of complex ideas.
00:32:50.680
Use storytelling to buttress it if you need to.
00:32:59.540
First off, what are some things people can do to be more effective with their vocal toolbox?
00:33:08.720
It's a kind of metaphor for all of the aspects of the voice that we don't really think about very much.
00:33:14.320
Because this voice that we all have is an amazing instrument.
00:33:23.080
You know, we teach reading and writing at school.
00:33:29.120
But it is very focused on public speaking, I think.
00:33:31.300
And even less do we teach listening, hardly at all, anywhere.
00:33:38.340
And yet speaking and listening are the most primal and effective modes of human communication.
00:33:45.140
I know you can't publish these things quite in the same way you can publish the written word.
00:33:50.880
And certainly books have changed the world in dramatic ways.
00:33:55.200
But now we've got audio and video to the degree we have, it's even more important.
00:34:01.220
Because, you know, there are YouTubers out there who are influencing millions and millions of people.
00:34:07.460
And the way they speak is a big part of that, I should imagine.
00:34:14.980
First and foremost, I'd say the simplest and most important thing to do is breathing.
00:34:22.740
It's breath coming through your vocal cords and resonating them.
00:34:28.500
And then you resonate that voice in various chambers of your head and your chest and so forth.
00:34:37.240
I wonder how many people listening to this have a breathing practice.
00:34:43.980
Maybe some of you exercise and enjoy that sort of rhythmic breathing that comes with aerobic exercise.
00:34:52.140
But not many people, in my experience, treat it as a breathing practice.
00:34:59.380
And we tend to breathe in a very shallow way most of the time.
00:35:04.000
So taking a huge, deep breath is a wonderful thing to do for yourself.
00:35:13.020
If your voice goes a bit like this when you're going on stage, a big, deep breath will really settle that down.
00:35:24.720
So without a deep breath, you can't speak so well.
00:35:28.020
And, of course, it counteracts something which I'll mention when we talk about different registers, which is vocal fry, which, again, I have to say, I think originated in the USA.
00:35:42.000
Which, you know, talking like this is a very croaky way to talk.
00:35:48.400
And it's not particularly attractive to listen to.
00:35:51.500
The research shows that it's not considered attractive or intelligent by people.
00:35:56.120
People who speak in vocal fry are considered less hireable, less intelligent, less capable, less strong.
00:36:05.000
You know, there's a lot of lesses in the way that it lands.
00:36:08.700
So, you know, if you get into that habit, and it is just a habit, we've all got a voice.
00:36:13.760
I think one of the saddest things about vocal fry is that it's really ignoring the huge capability of this wonderful voice we have.
00:36:25.360
You know, if I don't breathe very much, I can get in vocal fry like this.
00:36:29.360
It doesn't take much breath, and I don't breathe much at all.
00:36:32.360
Whereas if I take a deep breath, then suddenly I've got the ammunition to speak and use the whole capability of my voice.
00:36:42.640
You know, a nice breathing practice, breathe in through your nose, and then breathe out through your mouth,
00:36:48.820
pursing your lips as if you're going to whistle.
00:36:50.600
And practice lengthening, count as you do those things, and practice lengthening the count day after day.
00:36:59.540
You don't have to do it for hours, just a minute or two.
00:37:02.380
And at least you're starting to explore the limits and push the limits of your lungs and get them really working for you.
00:37:11.280
And then the other thing I'd mention, which I think is really important, is posture.
00:37:17.000
And many people don't pay much attention to this.
00:37:23.320
You know, I think there's lots of stuff out there, isn't it, about sitting being the new smoking or whatever.
00:37:33.680
And a lot of us sit on chairs for six, eight, ten hours a day, even longer than that.
00:37:41.920
So posture tends to fall by the wayside, especially if you're leaning forward and looking at a screen that's below you.
00:37:52.560
And we get into a kind of stoop, which becomes very common.
00:37:58.260
And the important thing to realize about the voice is that your vocal cords need to be vertical to work properly.
00:38:05.220
So, you know, if I lean my head right forward, you can hear the effect it's got on my voice as I stretch my vocal cords.
00:38:12.800
Equally, if I put my head back in my shoulders, I'm compressing my vocal cords, and that's not great either.
00:38:18.460
So, in order to speak effectively, you need to have a relatively vertical posture, certainly for the top half of your body, even if you're sitting.
00:38:28.820
The easy way to do that is to use a visualization that I use whenever I go on stage or when I'm doing webinars or whatever it may be, sitting in front of a camera,
00:38:40.360
which is to imagine that there's a string attached to the top of your head and everything is hanging from that string.
00:38:48.880
So that automatically puts your shoulders back and down.
00:38:54.580
If you're standing up, it makes everything vertical and it gives you pretty immediately a much nicer posture where your vocal cords are vertical.
00:39:04.060
And if you're standing on a stage, it looks strong as opposed to leaning on one side or having a leg cocked or, you know, looking a little bit sort of off center or with one shoulder higher or whatever it may be that we get into the habit of doing.
00:39:19.960
You have a bag over one shoulder for years and that shoulder goes up eventually.
00:39:24.500
So string in the top of the head, let the shoulders go down and it'll really help the voice.
00:39:30.020
And then let's just talk about register for a moment.
00:39:34.080
I mean, there are actually four registers of the human voice, but the one we've already talked about, vocal fry, I strongly advise not to use.
00:39:41.980
There's another, the whistle register is way up high.
00:39:46.400
You have to be a professional singer with incredible range to get up there.
00:39:55.380
And that's the register that I'm speaking in now.
00:39:58.040
And in modal, you can move your resonance by practicing.
00:40:05.440
So of course, your vocal cords are where you make the voice, but the voice can resonate in different chambers.
00:40:13.260
And the biggest resonating chamber you've got in your body is the chest.
00:40:17.940
So that's the one to practice because we tend to vote for politicians with deeper voices.
00:40:29.440
Big things have deeper voices than little things.
00:40:34.200
So there's a kind of long, long genetic appreciation that deep means authoritative.
00:40:41.400
And that's an association that we all have, pretty much.
00:40:45.640
So in order to do this, you know, if you speak in your nose, like I am now, that's, you know, fairly light.
00:40:52.960
And that's where I tend to speak a lot of the time from.
00:40:56.680
But if I move it down and speak from my chest, you can hear the difference.
00:41:02.980
And the way to check that is to put your hand on your sternum, on the chest bone, and feel the vibration.
00:41:11.580
And practice working on that so you feel that more and more in what you're speaking.
00:41:17.680
So it's not an exercise where you're trying to, you know, you don't want to go down here and speak in a really strange way.
00:41:24.740
I'm not talking about being unnatural with this.
00:41:28.220
And if you practice with that hand on sternum exercise, you can start to resonate, use that big chamber that you've got, and make your voice more and more authoritative for when you need that.
00:41:43.100
You know, I mean, you don't necessarily need that all the time.
00:41:57.200
So there's some of the aspects of the vocal toolbox.
00:42:03.180
I know that when people do public speaking, a lot of times they get really self-conscious about how they're using their hands or who are they looking at.
00:42:13.580
Well, I expect I will walk on stage again at some point in the future.
00:42:16.400
And when I do, body language is very important.
00:42:19.340
I talked about posture, and that's a big part of it.
00:42:21.980
You know, standing in a way that's not distracting, eliminating physical tics.
00:42:30.720
I mean, I've seen many people walk around and around in a tiny circle as they're speaking.
00:42:37.660
Things like that can be very distracting, or people who will walk three paces to the right and speak a bit and then walk three paces to the left and speak a bit.
00:42:49.580
And after a while, you know, the audience is going, is he going to, oh, there he goes again.
00:42:54.400
And, you know, these things can become distracting if they have no meaning.
00:43:01.140
So I think the key thing when you're on a stage in front of people is to be conscious about everything you're doing.
00:43:09.420
That's one of the reasons why I love speaking in public, actually, because it's one of the times when I'm most present, most conscious.
00:43:16.220
I'm really making an effort to think it's not so much planning everything as being conscious of what you're doing.
00:43:26.140
There are things to learn, and there are certain gestures which are to be avoided, and others which can be very powerful.
00:43:35.080
One example of that, a gesture which I would suggest people probably wouldn't want to use, is one called the placator.
00:43:42.860
This is one of the archetypal gestures that goes along with Virginia Satter's sort of archetypal relationships.
00:43:49.800
And the placator is an open hand, both hands, palms up in front of you, and open and waving.
00:44:04.620
Now, I've seen people give entire talks with their hands doing that.
00:44:08.860
And that's not what they meant to convey, but that's what they are conveying with that body language.
00:44:16.560
So if you happen to like having your hands out in front of you and waving them to emphasize points,
00:44:23.580
then my suggestion would be, rather than palms up, turn them sideways so the thumbs are up.
00:44:30.780
You can still do exactly the same gestures, and you'll see a lot of politicians.
00:44:35.880
Now, I've mentioned that if you watch them speaking, a lot of politicians will do that.
00:44:40.200
They'll be gesticulating with both hands, emphasizing points, thumbs up, fingers vertical, no begging there.
00:44:50.040
So that's a good example of why it's important to be conscious about the way that gestures tend to land with people.
00:44:59.980
You know, pointing at people is quite threatening, and that's one you want to be really careful about.
00:45:06.920
That's kind of the blamer when you point at an audience.
00:45:14.640
And I think with all body language, the key is to make it congruent with what you're saying.
00:45:22.000
I mean, if you are asking people for a generous donation to something, then hands out, palms up, absolutely appropriate.
00:45:32.020
It's just when is it appropriate to use that kind of thing?
00:45:35.420
I mean, I've done trainings in public speaking over the years, lots of them, and, you know, some of the multi-day efforts where for two or three days, you were not allowed to use your hands at all.
00:45:48.480
You had to stand with your hands by your sides and speak to people.
00:45:52.040
And that's quite challenging, but it does teach you to become conscious with what you're doing when you use your hands, as opposed to waving them about.
00:46:01.700
Now, I mean, some people are very hand-wavy, and that's authentic for them.
00:46:07.580
As long as it's congruent, it's authentic, and it's putting across the message, and it's not putting people off, I think that's absolutely fine.
00:46:17.980
So you want to be yourself, but a good tip with all of this stuff, really, is video yourself.
00:46:24.880
You know, you can just do that with a phone these days.
00:46:27.740
Set a phone up, video yourself speaking, and watch it back.
00:46:32.740
And I guarantee you'll be going, oh, my goodness, I never knew I did that.
00:46:38.020
So asking yourself the question, is that useful?
00:46:42.460
Is that amplifying my message or getting in the way of it?
00:46:52.580
Well, Julian, we've covered a lot of ground today.
00:46:55.000
Is there someplace people can go to learn more about the book and your work?
00:47:01.900
And as I say, there's a free download on there of this analysis Neil and I did of my top seven all-time TED Talk.
00:47:09.240
So it's pulling that apart and asking, why was that so popular?
00:47:13.320
And I think there's a lot of really valuable lessons in there.
00:47:15.800
So if people pop by, that one you can download.
00:47:19.360
I mean, the book's available from all the usual places and in both print and audiobook, which I narrated.
00:47:26.080
And I was very proud that that won both of the two big global audiobook prizes for Best Business Audiobook
00:47:32.880
because we recorded that in a tiny little studio up here in Orkney, where I live off the north coast of Scotland.
00:47:40.760
And it was a source of great pride to us that we managed to win the awards there.
00:47:47.760
There's a course as well, which you can access through the website, which is a full seven and a half hours of everything I know about speaking and listening.
00:47:55.420
And, of course, if you sign up to the list, then we – I do a little weekly audio blog, like five minutes a week, just exploring a little topic.
00:48:04.540
And that goes out free to everybody on my list.
00:48:09.980
And JT at juliantreasure.com, if you want to contact me, be delighted to hear from you.
00:48:24.480
It's available on Amazon.com and bookstores everywhere.
00:48:26.780
You can find out more information about his work at his website, juliantreasure.com.
00:48:30.040
Also, check out our show notes at awim.is slash howtobeheard, where you can find links to resources.
00:49:05.620
Also, I'd appreciate if you take one minute to give us a review on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher.
00:49:11.080
Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who you'd think would get something out of it.
00:49:14.660
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00:49:17.720
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