Julian Treasure / How to Speak So That People Want to Listen

Welcome back, incredible BookDuck fans. Do you often wonder why people don't listen to you when you speak? Well, let's look at the TED talk by Julian Treasure, where he discusses how to talk so that people want to listen.

In his talk, Treasure goes over the list of seven deadly sins of speaking. He believes that those seven are significant habits we all can fall into.

1. Number one on his list is gossip. It's when someone is speaking ill about someone who's not present. It is not an excellent habit, and we all can agree that the person gossiping a bit later will be gossiping about us.

2. The second is judging. I am sure we know many people like this during conversations, and it's tough to listen to someone if you know that they are judging you.

3. Third is negativity. This is something you can fall into. Treasure opens up with his personal experience, which was related to his mother. He shares how she became negative in the last years of her life, and it became hard to listen to her. He remembers one day, he said to her, "It's October 1 today," and she said, "I know, isn't it dreadful." Let's agree; it's hard to listen when somebody's that negative.

4. And let's remember the other form of negativity, which is complaining. Our speaker calls it the national sport of the U.K. He mentions how people complain about the weather, sport, politics, and everything else you can think of. But complaining is viral misery and doesn't spread sunshine and lightness in the world.

5. Next comes excuses. It's okay. We have all met these guys and have been this guy. Some people also have a flamethrower who passes it on to everybody else and doesn't take responsibility for their actions. And again, it's hard to listen to someone who is being like that.

6. The sixth of the seven is an exaggeration. It demeans our language. Well, this exaggeration becomes lying, and we start not wanting to listen to people we know are lying to us.

7. And lastly, dogmatism. The confusion of facts with opinions. When those two things get conflated, it's difficult to listen to people bombarding you with their opinions as if they were true.

According to Treasure, these are the seven deadly sins of speaking, and these are things that he encourages us to avoid.

But, he questions if there is a positive way to think about this. And the answer is yes.

He suggests four really powerful foundations we can stand on if we want our speech to be powerful and to make a change in the world. And fortunately, these things spell a word. The word is "hail," which also has a great definition. And if you're wondering, not it's not the stuff that falls from the sky. The definition he is talking about is to greet or acclaim enthusiastically, which is how he thinks our words will be received if we stand on those four things.

So what do those four things stand for?

The H is for honesty, of course. Being true, straight, and clear in what you say.

The A is authenticity, just being yourself. Others may also describe it as standing your truth.

The I is integrity, doing what you say, and being somebody people can trust.

And L is for love. Not romantic love, though, but wishing people well.

When it comes to absolute honesty, it may not be what we want. An example is, "My goodness, you look ugly this morning." We can all agree that's not necessary. Tempered with love, of course, honesty is a great thing. But also, when you genuinely wish someone well, it's very hard to judge them at the same time. I am sure you can't do those two things simultaneously. So just hail.

This is an incredible tool, and yet this is a toolbox that very few people have ever opened. Let's have a little more rummage in there and pull some more tools out, which will increase the power of your speaking. For example, register. We vote for politicians with lower voices because we associate depth with power and authority. Now that's register.

Then we have timbre, which is the way your voice feels. And again, research shows that we prefer voices that are rich, smooth, warm, something like hot chocolate. If your voice is not like that, it's okay. It is definitely not the end of the world because you can train. Go and get a voice coach.

Next is prosody. The sing-song is the meta-language that we use in order to impart meaning. It's the root one for meaning in conversation. People who speak quietly and don't have prosody at all are hard to listen to. This is also where the word monotonic comes from.

There is also repetitive prosody, where every sentence ends as if it were a question when it's actually not a question; it's a statement. And if you repeat this, it's restricting your ability to communicate through prosody.

We also have pace. Sometimes we get excited by saying something really quickly, but it's okay to go slow and have some silence in between our thoughts. And along with pace also comes pitch which is done to indicate arousal.

And finally, volume. You have to make sure you are using volume correctly. If you are saying something important, it's okay to raise your voice a bit to match what you are saying. It is up to you to look at your toolbox and the engine that's going to work for you.

To sum up, we learned the seven deadly sins of speaking, the foundations of powerful speech, and the tools needed to make people want to listen to what we have to say. And lastly, remember, if we are creating sound consciously, there will be a world that is beautiful and one where understanding each other will be the norm.