How to speak so that people want to listen

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The human voice:

It's the instrument we all play.

It's the most powerful sound

in the world, probably.

It's the only one that can start a war

or say "I love you."

And yet many people have the experience

that when they speak, people

don't listen to them.

And why is that?

How can we speak powerfully

to make change in the world?

What I'd like to suggest,

there are a number of habits

that we need to move away from.

I've assembled for your pleasure here

seven deadly sins of speaking.

I'm not pretending

this is an exhaustive list,

but these seven, I think, are pretty large

habits that we can all fall into.

First, gossip.

Speaking ill of somebody

who's not present.

Not a nice habit,

and we know perfectly well

the person gossiping, five minutes later,

will be gossiping about us.

Second, judging.

We know people who are like this

in conversation,

and it's very hard to listen to somebody

if you know that you're being judged

and found wanting at the same time.

Third, negativity.

You can fall into this.

My mother, in the last years of her life,

became very negative,

and it's hard to listen.

I remember one day, I said to her,

"It's October 1 today,"

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

(Laughter)

It's hard to listen

when somebody's that negative.

(Laughter)

And another form

of negativity, complaining.

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

It's our national sport.

We complain about the weather, sport,

about politics, about everything,

but actually, complaining is viral misery.

It's not spreading sunshine

and lightness in the world.

Excuses.

We've all met this guy.

Maybe we've all been this guy.

Some people have a blamethrower.

They just pass it on to everybody else

and don't take responsibility

for their actions,

and again, hard to listen

to somebody who is being like that.

Penultimate, the sixth of the seven,

embroidery, exaggeration.

It demeans our language,

actually, sometimes.

For example, if I see something

that really is awesome,

what do I call it?

(Laughter)

And then, of course,

this exaggeration becomes lying,

and we don't want to listen

to people we know are lying to us.

And finally, dogmatism.

The confusion of facts with opinions.

When those two things get conflated,

you're listening into the wind.

You know, somebody is bombarding you

with their opinions as if they were true.

It's difficult to listen to that.

So here they are, seven deadly

sins of speaking.

These are things I think we need to avoid.

But is there a positive

way to think about this?

Yes, there is.

I'd like to suggest that there are four

really powerful cornerstones, foundations,

that we can stand on if we want our speech

to be powerful and to make

change in the world.

Fortunately, these things spell a word.

The word is "hail," and it has

a great definition as well.

I'm not talking about the stuff

that falls from the sky

and hits you on the head.

I'm talking about this definition,

to greet or acclaim enthusiastically,

which is how I think

our words will be received

if we stand on these four things.

So what do they stand for?

See if you can guess.

The H, honesty, of course,

being true in what you say,

being straight and clear.

The A is authenticity,

just being yourself.

A friend of mine described it as

standing in your own truth,

which I think is a lovely way to put it.

The I is integrity, being your word,

actually doing what you say,

and being somebody people can trust.

And the L is love.

I don't mean romantic love,

but I do mean wishing people

well, for two reasons.

First of all, I think absolute honesty

may not be what we want.

I mean, my goodness,

you look ugly this morning.

Perhaps that's not necessary.

Tempered with love, of course,

honesty is a great thing.

But also, if you're really

wishing somebody well,

it's very hard to judge

them at the same time.

I'm not even sure you can do

those two things simultaneously.

So hail.

Also, now that's what you say,

and it's like the old song,

it is what you say,

it's also the way that you say it.

You have an amazing toolbox.

This instrument is incredible,

and yet this is a toolbox

that very few people have ever opened.

I'd like to have a little rummage

in there with you now

and just pull a few tools out

that you might like to take

away and play with,

which will increase

the power of your speaking.

Register, for example.

Now, falsetto register may not

be very useful most of the time,

but there's a register in between.

I'm not going to get very

technical about this

for any of you who are voice coaches.

You can locate your voice, however.

So if I talk up here in my nose,

you can hear the difference.

If I go down here in my throat,

which is where most of us

speak from most of the time.

But if you want weight,

you need to go down here to the chest.

You hear the difference?

We vote for politicians

with lower voices, it's true,

because we associate depth with power

and with authority.

That's register.

Then we have timbre.

It's the way your voice feels.

Again, the research shows

that we prefer voices

which are rich, smooth, warm,

like hot chocolate.

Well if that's not you,

that's not the end of the world,

because you can train.

Go and get a voice coach.

And there are amazing things you can do

with breathing, with posture,

and with exercises

to improve the timbre of your voice.

Then prosody. I love prosody.

This is the sing-song, the meta-language

that we use in order to impart meaning.

It's root one for meaning in conversation.

People who speak all on one note

are really quite hard to listen to

if they don't have any prosody at all.

That's where the word

"monotonic" comes from,

or monotonous, monotone.

Also, we have repetitive

prosody now coming in,

where every sentence ends

as if it were a question

when it's actually not

a question, it's a statement?

(Laughter)

And if you repeat that one,

it's actually restricting your ability

to communicate through prosody,

which I think is a shame,

so let's try and break that habit.

Pace.

I can get very excited by saying

something really quickly,

or I can slow right down to emphasize,

and at the end of that, of course,

is our old friend silence.

There's nothing wrong with a bit

of silence in a talk, is there?

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

It can be very powerful.

Of course, pitch often

goes along with pace

to indicate arousal, but you

can do it just with pitch.

Where did you leave my keys?

(Higher pitch) Where did you

leave my keys?

So, slightly different meaning

in those two deliveries.

And finally, volume.

(Loud) I can get really excited

by using volume.

Sorry about that, if I startled anybody.

Or, I can have you really pay attention

by getting very quiet.

Some people broadcast the whole time.

Try not to do that.

That's called sodcasting,

(Laughter)

Imposing your sound on people around you

carelessly and inconsiderately.

Not nice.

Of course, where this all comes

into play most of all

is when you've got something

really important to do.

It might be standing on a stage like this

and giving a talk to people.

It might be proposing marriage,

asking for a raise, a wedding speech.

Whatever it is, if it's really important,

you owe it to yourself

to look at this toolbox

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

and no engine works well

without being warmed up.

Warm up your voice.

Actually, let me show you how to do that.

Would you all like to stand

up for a moment?

I'm going to show you

the six vocal warm-up exercises

that I do before every talk I ever do.

Any time you're going to talk

to anybody important, do these.

First, arms up, deep breath in,

and sigh out, ahhhhh, like that.

One more time.

Ahhhh, very good.

Now we're going to warm up our lips,

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

Ba, Ba, Ba, Ba. Very good.

And now, brrrrrrrrrr,

just like when you were a kid.

Brrrr. Now your lips

should be coming alive.

We're going to do the tongue next

with exaggerated la, la, la,

la, la, la, la, la, la.

Beautiful. You're getting

really good at this.

And then, roll an R. Rrrrrrr.

That's like champagne for the tongue.

Finally, and if I can only do one,

the pros call this the siren.

It's really good. It starts

with "we" and goes to "aw."

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

So you go, weeeaawww, weeeaawww.

Fantastic. Give yourselves

a round of applause.

Take a seat, thank you.

(Applause)

Next time you speak, do those in advance.

Now let me just put this

in context to close.

This is a serious point here.

This is where we are now, right?

We speak not very well

to people who simply aren't listening

in an environment that's all

about noise and bad acoustics.

I have talked about that on this stage

in different phases.

What would the world be like

if we were speaking powerfully

to people who were listening consciously

in environments which were

actually fit for purpose?

Or to make that a bit larger,

what would the world be like

if we were creating sound consciously

and consuming sound consciously

and designing all our environments

consciously for sound?

That would be a world

that does sound beautiful,

and one where understanding

would be the norm,

and that is an idea worth spreading.

Thank you.

(Applause)