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