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

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1. 0:13The human voice:
2. 0:16It's the instrument we all play.
3. 0:18It's the most powerful sound in the world, probably.
4. 0:21It's the only one that can start a war or say "I love you."
5. 0:23And yet many people have the experience
6. 0:25that when they speak, people don't listen to them.
7. 0:28And why is that?
8. 0:29How can we speak powerfully to make change in the world?
9. 0:33What I'd like to suggest,
10. 0:34there are a number of habits that we need to move away from.
11. 0:37I've assembled for your pleasure here seven deadly sins of speaking.
12. 0:41I'm not pretending this is an exhaustive list,
13. 0:43but these seven, I think, are pretty large habits that we can all fall into.
14. 0:49First, gossip.
15. 0:51Speaking ill of somebody who's not present.
16. 0:54Not a nice habit, and we know perfectly well
17. 0:56the person gossiping, five minutes later, will be gossiping about us.
18. 1:01Second, judging.
19. 1:03We know people who are like this in conversation,
20. 1:05and it's very hard to listen to somebody
21. 1:07if you know that you're being judged and found wanting at the same time.
22. 1:12Third, negativity.
23. 1:14You can fall into this.
24. 1:15My mother, in the last years of her life, became very negative,
25. 1:18and it's hard to listen.
26. 1:20I remember one day, I said to her, "It's October 1 today,"
27. 1:22and she said, "I know, isn't it dreadful?"
28. 1:25(Laughter)
29. 1:27It's hard to listen when somebody's that negative.
30. 1:29(Laughter)
31. 1:30And another form of negativity, complaining.
32. 1:33Well, this is the national art of the U.K.
33. 1:37It's our national sport.
34. 1:38We complain about the weather, sport, about politics, about everything,
35. 1:42but actually, complaining is viral misery.
36. 1:44It's not spreading sunshine and lightness in the world.
37. 1:48Excuses.
38. 1:50We've all met this guy.
39. 1:51Maybe we've all been this guy.
40. 1:53Some people have a blamethrower.
41. 1:55They just pass it on to everybody else
42. 1:57and don't take responsibility for their actions,
43. 2:00and again, hard to listen to somebody who is being like that.
44. 2:02Penultimate, the sixth of the seven,
45. 2:04embroidery, exaggeration.
46. 2:08It demeans our language, actually, sometimes.
47. 2:10For example, if I see something that really is awesome,
48. 2:13what do I call it?
49. 2:15(Laughter)
50. 2:17And then, of course, this exaggeration becomes lying,
51. 2:21and we don't want to listen to people we know are lying to us.
52. 2:24And finally, dogmatism.
53. 2:27The confusion of facts with opinions.
54. 2:31When those two things get conflated,
55. 2:33you're listening into the wind.
56. 2:34You know, somebody is bombarding you with their opinions as if they were true.
57. 2:38It's difficult to listen to that.
58. 2:40So here they are, seven deadly sins of speaking.
59. 2:43These are things I think we need to avoid.
60. 2:46But is there a positive way to think about this?
61. 2:48Yes, there is.
62. 2:50I'd like to suggest that there are four really powerful cornerstones, foundations,
63. 2:55that we can stand on if we want our speech
64. 2:58to be powerful and to make change in the world.
65. 3:02Fortunately, these things spell a word.
66. 3:04The word is "hail," and it has a great definition as well.
67. 3:07I'm not talking about the stuff that falls from the sky
68. 3:10and hits you on the head.
69. 3:11I'm talking about this definition,
70. 3:13to greet or acclaim enthusiastically,
71. 3:15which is how I think our words will be received
72. 3:17if we stand on these four things.
73. 3:18So what do they stand for?
74. 3:20See if you can guess.
75. 3:22The H, honesty, of course,
76. 3:25being true in what you say, being straight and clear.
77. 3:28The A is authenticity, just being yourself.
78. 3:32A friend of mine described it as standing in your own truth,
79. 3:35which I think is a lovely way to put it.
80. 3:37The I is integrity, being your word,
81. 3:40actually doing what you say,
82. 3:41and being somebody people can trust.
83. 3:44And the L is love.
84. 3:47I don't mean romantic love,
85. 3:49but I do mean wishing people well, for two reasons.
86. 3:52First of all, I think absolute honesty may not be what we want.
87. 3:56I mean, my goodness, you look ugly this morning.
88. 3:58Perhaps that's not necessary.
89. 4:02Tempered with love, of course, honesty is a great thing.
90. 4:05But also, if you're really wishing somebody well,
91. 4:08it's very hard to judge them at the same time.
92. 4:11I'm not even sure you can do those two things simultaneously.
93. 4:15So hail.
94. 4:16Also, now that's what you say,
95. 4:18and it's like the old song, it is what you say,
96. 4:20it's also the way that you say it.
97. 4:22You have an amazing toolbox.
98. 4:24This instrument is incredible,
99. 4:26and yet this is a toolbox that very few people have ever opened.
100. 4:29I'd like to have a little rummage in there with you now
101. 4:32and just pull a few tools out
102. 4:33that you might like to take away and play with,
103. 4:36which will increase the power of your speaking.
104. 4:38Register, for example.
105. 4:39Now, falsetto register may not be very useful most of the time,
106. 4:44but there's a register in between.
107. 4:46I'm not going to get very technical about this
108. 4:48for any of you who are voice coaches.
109. 4:50You can locate your voice, however.
110. 4:51So if I talk up here in my nose, you can hear the difference.
111. 4:54If I go down here in my throat,
112. 4:56which is where most of us speak from most of the time.
113. 4:58But if you want weight,
114. 5:00you need to go down here to the chest.
115. 5:03You hear the difference?
116. 5:04We vote for politicians with lower voices, it's true,
117. 5:08because we associate depth with power
118. 5:11and with authority.
119. 5:14That's register.
120. 5:16Then we have timbre.
121. 5:17It's the way your voice feels.
122. 5:19Again, the research shows
123. 5:20that we prefer voices which are rich, smooth, warm,
124. 5:24like hot chocolate.
125. 5:26Well if that's not you, that's not the end of the world,
126. 5:29because you can train.
127. 5:31Go and get a voice coach.
128. 5:32And there are amazing things you can do
129. 5:34with breathing, with posture, and with exercises
130. 5:36to improve the timbre of your voice.
131. 5:39Then prosody. I love prosody.
132. 5:41This is the sing-song, the meta-language
133. 5:43that we use in order to impart meaning.
134. 5:45It's root one for meaning in conversation.
135. 5:48People who speak all on one note are really quite hard to listen to
136. 5:52if they don't have any prosody at all.
137. 5:54That's where the word "monotonic" comes from,
138. 5:57or monotonous, monotone.
139. 6:00Also, we have repetitive prosody now coming in,
140. 6:03where every sentence ends as if it were a question
141. 6:06when it's actually not a question, it's a statement?
142. 6:08(Laughter)
143. 6:11And if you repeat that one,
144. 6:12it's actually restricting your ability to communicate through prosody,
145. 6:16which I think is a shame,
146. 6:17so let's try and break that habit.
147. 6:21Pace.
148. 6:22I can get very excited by saying something really quickly,
149. 6:25or I can slow right down to emphasize,
150. 6:28and at the end of that, of course, is our old friend silence.
151. 6:34There's nothing wrong with a bit of silence in a talk, is there?
152. 6:38We don't have to fill it with ums and ahs.
153. 6:41It can be very powerful.
154. 6:43Of course, pitch often goes along with pace
155. 6:46to indicate arousal, but you can do it just with pitch.
156. 6:48Where did you leave my keys?
157. 6:50(Higher pitch) Where did you leave my keys?
158. 6:52So, slightly different meaning in those two deliveries.
159. 6:56And finally, volume.
160. 6:58(Loud) I can get really excited by using volume.
161. 7:01Sorry about that, if I startled anybody.
162. 7:03Or, I can have you really pay attention by getting very quiet.
163. 7:08Some people broadcast the whole time.
164. 7:10Try not to do that.
165. 7:11That's called sodcasting,
166. 7:13(Laughter)
167. 7:15Imposing your sound on people around you carelessly and inconsiderately.
168. 7:20Not nice.
169. 7:21Of course, where this all comes into play most of all
170. 7:23is when you've got something really important to do.
171. 7:26It might be standing on a stage like this and giving a talk to people.
172. 7:29It might be proposing marriage,
173. 7:31asking for a raise, a wedding speech.
174. 7:34Whatever it is, if it's really important,
175. 7:36you owe it to yourself to look at this toolbox
176. 7:40and the engine that it's going to work on,
177. 7:42and no engine works well without being warmed up.
178. 7:45Warm up your voice.
179. 7:47Actually, let me show you how to do that.
180. 7:49Would you all like to stand up for a moment?
181. 7:52I'm going to show you
182. 7:53the six vocal warm-up exercises that I do before every talk I ever do.
183. 7:58Any time you're going to talk to anybody important, do these.
184. 8:01First, arms up, deep breath in,
185. 8:04and sigh out, ahhhhh, like that.
186. 8:07One more time.
187. 8:09Ahhhh, very good.
188. 8:12Now we're going to warm up our lips,
189. 8:14and we're going to go Ba, Ba, Ba, Ba,
190. 8:16Ba, Ba, Ba, Ba. Very good.
191. 8:19And now, brrrrrrrrrr,
192. 8:22just like when you were a kid.
193. 8:24Brrrr. Now your lips should be coming alive.
194. 8:26We're going to do the tongue next
195. 8:28with exaggerated la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la.
196. 8:32Beautiful. You're getting really good at this.
197. 8:35And then, roll an R. Rrrrrrr.
198. 8:37That's like champagne for the tongue.
199. 8:40Finally, and if I can only do one,
200. 8:42the pros call this the siren.
201. 8:44It's really good. It starts with "we" and goes to "aw."
202. 8:46The "we" is high, the "aw" is low.
203. 8:48So you go, weeeaawww, weeeaawww.
204. 8:54Fantastic. Give yourselves a round of applause.
205. 8:56Take a seat, thank you.
206. 8:58(Applause)
207. 8:59Next time you speak, do those in advance.
208. 9:02Now let me just put this in context to close.
209. 9:04This is a serious point here.
210. 9:07This is where we are now, right?
211. 9:09We speak not very well
212. 9:10to people who simply aren't listening
213. 9:12in an environment that's all about noise and bad acoustics.
214. 9:15I have talked about that on this stage in different phases.
215. 9:18What would the world be like
216. 9:20if we were speaking powerfully
217. 9:22to people who were listening consciously
218. 9:24in environments which were actually fit for purpose?
219. 9:27Or to make that a bit larger,
220. 9:30what would the world be like
221. 9:31if we were creating sound consciously
222. 9:34and consuming sound consciously
223. 9:36and designing all our environments
224. 9:38consciously for sound?
225. 9:39That would be a world that does sound beautiful,
226. 9:42and one where understanding would be the norm,
227. 9:46and that is an idea worth spreading.
228. 9:49Thank you.
229. 9:50(Applause)