0:13 The human voice:
0:16 It's the instrument we all play.
0:18 It's the most powerful sound in the world, probably.
0:21 It's the only one that can start a war or say "I love you."
0:23 And yet many people have the experience
0:25 that when they speak, people don't listen to them.
0:28 And why is that?
0:29 How can we speak powerfully to make change in the world?
0:33 What I'd like to suggest,
0:34 there are a number of habits that we need to move away from.
0:37 I've assembled for your pleasure here seven deadly sins of speaking.
0:41 I'm not pretending this is an exhaustive list,
0:43 but these seven, I think, are pretty large habits that we can all fall into.
0:49 First, gossip.
0:51 Speaking ill of somebody who's not present.
0:54 Not a nice habit, and we know perfectly well
0:56 the person gossiping, five minutes later, will be gossiping about us.
1:01 Second, judging.
1:03 We know people who are like this in conversation,
1:05 and it's very hard to listen to somebody
1:07 if you know that you're being judged and found wanting at the same time.
1:12 Third, negativity.
1:14 You can fall into this.
1:15 My mother, in the last years of her life, became very negative,
1:18 and it's hard to listen.
1:20 I remember one day, I said to her, "It's October 1 today,"
1:22 and she said, "I know, isn't it dreadful?"
1:25 (Laughter)
1:27 It's hard to listen when somebody's that negative.
1:29 (Laughter)
1:30 And another form of negativity, complaining.
1:33 Well, this is the national art of the U.K.
1:37 It's our national sport.
1:38 We complain about the weather, sport, about politics, about everything,
1:42 but actually, complaining is viral misery.
1:44 It's not spreading sunshine and lightness in the world.
1:48 Excuses.
1:50 We've all met this guy.
1:51 Maybe we've all been this guy.
1:52 Some people have a blamethrower.
1:55 They just pass it on to everybody else
1:57 and don't take responsibility for their actions,
2:00 and again, hard to listen to somebody who is being like that.
2:02 Penultimate, the sixth of the seven,
2:04 embroidery, exaggeration.
2:08 It demeans our language, actually, sometimes.
2:10 For example, if I see something that really is awesome,
2:13 what do I call it?
2:15 (Laughter)
2:17 And then, of course, this exaggeration becomes lying,
2:21 and we don't want to listen to people we know are lying to us.
2:24 And finally, dogmatism.
2:27 The confusion of facts with opinions.
2:31 When those two things get conflated,
2:33 you're listening into the wind.
2:34 You know, somebody is bombarding you with their opinions as if they were true.
2:38 It's difficult to listen to that.
2:40 So here they are, seven deadly sins of speaking.
2:43 These are things I think we need to avoid.
2:46 But is there a positive way to think about this?
2:48 Yes, there is.
2:50 I'd like to suggest that there are four really powerful cornerstones, foundations,
2:55 that we can stand on if we want our speech
2:58 to be powerful and to make change in the world.
3:02 Fortunately, these things spell a word.
3:04 The word is "hail," and it has a great definition as well.
3:07 I'm not talking about the stuff that falls from the sky
3:10 and hits you on the head.
3:11 I'm talking about this definition,
3:13 to greet or acclaim enthusiastically,
3:15 which is how I think our words will be received
3:17 if we stand on these four things.
3:18 So what do they stand for?
3:20 See if you can guess.
3:22 The H, honesty, of course,
3:25 being true in what you say, being straight and clear.
3:28 The A is authenticity, just being yourself.
3:32 A friend of mine described it as standing in your own truth,
3:35 which I think is a lovely way to put it.
3:37 The I is integrity, being your word,
3:40 actually doing what you say,
3:41 and being somebody people can trust.
3:44 And the L is love.
3:47 I don't mean romantic love,
3:49 but I do mean wishing people well, for two reasons.
3:52 First of all, I think absolute honesty may not be what we want.
3:56 I mean, my goodness, you look ugly this morning.
3:58 Perhaps that's not necessary.
4:02 Tempered with love, of course, honesty is a great thing.
4:05 But also, if you're really wishing somebody well,
4:08 it's very hard to judge them at the same time.
4:11 I'm not even sure you can do those two things simultaneously.
4:15 So hail.
4:16 Also, now that's what you say,
4:18 and it's like the old song, it is what you say,
4:20 it's also the way that you say it.
4:22 You have an amazing toolbox.
4:24 This instrument is incredible,
4:26 and yet this is a toolbox that very few people have ever opened.
4:29 I'd like to have a little rummage in there with you now
4:32 and just pull a few tools out
4:33 that you might like to take away and play with,
4:36 which will increase the power of your speaking.
4:38 Register, for example.
4:39 Now, falsetto register may not be very useful most of the time,
4:44 but there's a register in between.
4:46 I'm not going to get very technical about this
4:48 for any of you who are voice coaches.
4:50 You can locate your voice, however.
4:51 So if I talk up here in my nose, you can hear the difference.
4:54 If I go down here in my throat,
4:56 which is where most of us speak from most of the time.
4:58 But if you want weight,
5:00 you need to go down here to the chest.
5:03 You hear the difference?
5:04 We vote for politicians with lower voices, it's true,
5:08 because we associate depth with power
5:11 and with authority.
5:14 That's register.
5:16 Then we have timbre.
5:17 It's the way your voice feels.
5:19 Again, the research shows
5:20 that we prefer voices which are rich, smooth, warm,
5:24 like hot chocolate.
5:26 Well if that's not you, that's not the end of the world,
5:29 because you can train.
5:31 Go and get a voice coach.
5:32 And there are amazing things you can do
5:34 with breathing, with posture, and with exercises
5:36 to improve the timbre of your voice.
5:39 Then prosody. I love prosody.
5:41 This is the sing-song, the meta-language
5:43 that we use in order to impart meaning.
5:45 It's root one for meaning in conversation.
5:48 People who speak all on one note are really quite hard to listen to
5:52 if they don't have any prosody at all.
5:54 That's where the word "monotonic" comes from,
5:57 or monotonous, monotone.
6:00 Also, we have repetitive prosody now coming in,
6:03 where every sentence ends as if it were a question
6:06 when it's actually not a question, it's a statement?
6:08 (Laughter)
6:11 And if you repeat that one,
6:12 it's actually restricting your ability to communicate through prosody,
6:16 which I think is a shame,
6:17 so let's try and break that habit.
6:21 Pace.
6:22 I can get very excited by saying something really quickly,
6:25 or I can slow right down to emphasize,
6:28 and at the end of that, of course, is our old friend silence.
6:34 There's nothing wrong with a bit of silence in a talk, is there?
6:38 We don't have to fill it with ums and ahs.
6:41 It can be very powerful.
6:43 Of course, pitch often goes along with pace
6:46 to indicate arousal, but you can do it just with pitch.
6:50 (Higher pitch) Where did you leave my keys?
6:52 So, slightly different meaning in those two deliveries.
6:56 And finally, volume.
6:58 (Loud) I can get really excited by using volume.
7:01 Sorry about that, if I startled anybody.
7:03 Or, I can have you really pay attention by getting very quiet.
7:08 Some people broadcast the whole time.
7:10 Try not to do that.
7:11 That's called sodcasting,
7:13 (Laughter)
7:15 Imposing your sound on people around you carelessly and inconsiderately.
7:20 Not nice.
7:21 Of course, where this all comes into play most of all
7:23 is when you've got something really important to do.
7:26 It might be standing on a stage like this and giving a talk to people.
7:29 It might be proposing marriage,
7:31 asking for a raise, a wedding speech.
7:34 Whatever it is, if it's really important,
7:36 you owe it to yourself to look at this toolbox
7:40 and the engine that it's going to work on,
7:42 and no engine works well without being warmed up.
7:45 Warm up your voice.
7:47 Actually, let me show you how to do that.
7:49 Would you all like to stand up for a moment?
7:52 I'm going to show you
7:53 the six vocal warm-up exercises that I do before every talk I ever do.
7:58 Any time you're going to talk to anybody important, do these.
8:01 First, arms up, deep breath in,
8:04 and sigh out, ahhhhh, like that.
8:07 One more time.
8:09 Ahhhh, very good.
8:12 Now we're going to warm up our lips,
8:14 and we're going to go Ba, Ba, Ba, Ba,
8:16 Ba, Ba, Ba, Ba. Very good.
8:19 And now, brrrrrrrrrr,
8:22 just like when you were a kid.
8:24 Brrrr. Now your lips should be coming alive.
8:26 We're going to do the tongue next
8:28 with exaggerated la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la.
8:32 Beautiful. You're getting really good at this.
8:35 And then, roll an R. Rrrrrrr.
8:37 That's like champagne for the tongue.
8:40 Finally, and if I can only do one,
8:42 the pros call this the siren.
8:44 It's really good. It starts with "we" and goes to "aw."
8:46 The "we" is high, the "aw" is low.
8:48 So you go, weeeaawww, weeeaawww.
8:54 Fantastic. Give yourselves a round of applause.
8:56 Take a seat, thank you.
8:58 (Applause)
8:59 Next time you speak, do those in advance.
9:02 Now let me just put this in context to close.
9:04 This is a serious point here.
9:07 This is where we are now, right?
9:09 We speak not very well
9:10 to people who simply aren't listening
9:12 in an environment that's all about noise and bad acoustics.
9:15 I have talked about that on this stage in different phases.
9:18 What would the world be like
9:20 if we were speaking powerfully
9:22 to people who were listening consciously
9:24 in environments which were actually fit for purpose?
9:27 Or to make that a bit larger,
9:30 what would the world be like
9:31 if we were creating sound consciously
9:34 and consuming sound consciously
9:36 and designing all our environments
9:38 consciously for sound?
9:39 That would be a world that does sound beautiful,
9:42 and one where understanding would be the norm,
9:46 and that is an idea worth spreading.
9:49 Thank you.
9:50 (Applause)
Chrome Extension