Speak So People Listen: Julian Treasure

Hello everyone, welcome back to the Franklin Cubbies series on leadership. I'm your host and interviewer Scott Miller. We are now in our second year of leadership, which has quickly become the world's largest weekly newsletter dedicated to the topic of leadership. a different definition of leadership some of that for you is high competence something so high character something like communication discipline decision making we try to touch on all those topics while interviewing the guests if you have had a chance to watch some of our previous interviews they have been phenomenal Doris Kearns Goodwin Susan Cain dan pink Christmas Esme Cory Cogan Liz Wiseman Seth Godin the names go on and on and on and on if you haven't had a chance to dive back into the archive at this point There are close to 60 interviews, each of which is better than the previous one.

In fact, last week we had a production meeting and I asked the entire production team about 10

people

what their favorite interview was and they all had a different name for a different reason which I thought was cool because I think we're touching on a lot of ideas. different and today is a great conversation with the famous author

speak

er, really a kind of social scientist, communication expert, Julian Treasurer, who has written many books, including how to be heard. in his TED Talks, Get This and Sit Down have been viewed by over 90 million

people

worldwide. I couldn't be more honored to have Julian Treasure on the leadership show today.

Welcome Julian. Thank you very much Scott. It's good to be here, without any pressure. He said that now they get better and better with that list of names. Now I feel quite nervous. Well, I know you're a big fan of dr. Stephen r.covey because you mentioned it in the book and you're a fan of one of our co-founders and my dear friend Hyrum Smith, you mentioned an interview in your book so I feel like we're right at home so welcome back thank you very much Yes, I had a great time interviewing Hyrum. He was very insightful about

listen

ing and leading and it was a fascinating time.

Yes, in fact, he has also been a guest on our show, so he is a dear friend of ours and leaves a great legacy around the world Julian I want to take a few minutes before we get into the book and share with our audience what your journey. Do you know what your experience was? How did you become so passionate about this topic? communication sound noise

listen

ing we'll get into all that, we'll give everyone an idea of ​​how it got to where okay, first of all, I'm not an academic or a scientist. I have a long career in marketing in my previous life I ran a magazine publisher in the UK which grew very quickly and became one of the leading custom publishers working for big brands such as Lexus, Microsoft and Apple producing personalized magazines, so that I understood a lot about brand marketing and communication, of course, outbound communication. because when you say communication with a company, they always think that they are outgoing, never incoming, we can talk about that later, although I was a musician, I am still a musician and I think that musicians hear the world slightly differently than non-musicians, Yes When you play in a band or orchestra you have to listen to everyone else simultaneously, it's a kind of multitrack listening and I was doing that to the world and considering the world doesn't sound very good, there's this noise around us, it's nice . from the cheap sound exhaust gas is generally not designed, I mean whoever is listening to this, look around your room and just ask, since you see everything in your room, it was designed for the eyes, but was it designed for the ears?

I don't do much of that, so when I sold my magazine publishing business I really wanted to do something that combined branding and sound, so I formed an audio branding company called Sound Agency, which is still going 15 years later and doing very well. . Along the way I had the opportunity to do TED talks and I began to understand that sound is not only done by large organizations, although they do it a lot, and that most spend a lot on their appearance and nothing on how they sound, so many of them They don't sound, that good sound is also made by us as individuals and I really have to consider that we have deprioritized

speak

ing and listening to very, very important skills, we are much more obsessed with reading and writing, we teach them in school.

We teach speaking, no, we rarely teach listening, so these skills are being crushed. I think because of the amount of things we do for the eyes and that's how I actually started my second business, which is speaking, writing and I describe. Now I'm really a solid evangelist, so that's the role I think I'm playing in the academic work that other people have done, really spreading the message that it's vital to listen better than we do, to listen consciously to the world and to other people, and en It is also very important to speak effectively and powerfully and these things need to be trained, they are skills.

Julian couldn't agree more. I just offered a book about my self-management and leadership success and one of the thirty challenges I list in the book. All leaders face is the third challenge related to listening first. I talked a lot about how most of us have been trained to be powerful communicators, but we have little training in the listening part of communication, more on that in a moment. I'd like to know your assessment of why you think there are 90 million views of your TED talks. I mean, occasionally some of us know someone who once did a TEDx and on occasion you might want to meet someone who gave a real TED talk, why do you think?

There has been a global wave of interest in his ideas, especially and not only, but especially through Ted. I think the interesting thing to reflect on is that most of those opinions are more than half, I think for a talk that is at the top. 10 of all time now and that's the talk about how to talk so people want to listen, so it's a talk about talking and that was a pretty stressful thing if you're going to stand on a TED stage and talk. About speaking that is putting your head too high above the parapet, isn't it?

Yes, unfortunately they didn't take it away from me, but that conversation has certainly resonated with many people and what I find in the work I do with people when I am consulting or creating training is that the problem of not being heard, of the frustration of not being able to communicating to people who don't listen, it's a big problem, I think partly because we don't train kids in school how to speak effectively it's very rare that I'll have an audience if I say how many people have had formal speech training or training vocal, maybe one or two percent will raise their hand, not many these days, even now, so I think that has resonated with others.

It seems that listening has been seen by a fifth of the people who say something, doesn't it? We are much more focused on sending than receiving, generally speaking rather than listening, and that is true for organizations as well as many of them. As it is for individuals and others in the sound, I think it's a reaction I've had very often, it's so obvious and I've never thought about it before, so maybe you know that I have a talent for discovering what In this country We call it blue and obvious and reveal it when it has been right under people's noses all this time, the fact that buildings are poorly designed and often not fit for purpose, schools, hospitals, offices, these are places we inhabit a lot and the noise in them.

It's literally killing us in some cases, so I think the effects of sound on us, the importance of listening, are things that everyone knows intuitively, but maybe they've been squashed because the world is so noisy that we've gotten into the habit of suppressing our awareness of sound Julian, let's use your most famous TED talk, I mean, I think it has just under 40 million views on Ted alone, deconstruct it for a moment, what are some of the things you think you did well in terms of your posture your movement your body language you know you talk about how to hold the microphone and since you've now recorded it what are some of the things that you think you got wrong and that you could have done better as people you now know look at it like that time during The first time after this interview, what did you do right and what did you do wrong in terms of getting things right?

I was lucky to have done it in previous TED talks, so at that point I already had quite a bit of experience. The first TED talk I did was It's very stressful to look at the audience, to see this Bill Gates, oh, this Sergey Brin, oh, they know it's like that and it's not a little intimidating to talk to that group of people, once you get you get used to, you can get used to anything you want. I know who I am, how I tell people in the training I give about public speaking, and the more you do it, the more comfortable you become.

I'm, soon I'm going to go speak to an audience of 16,000 people, well, that's a big audience but I'm not afraid I feel excited but not scared it's a different feeling excited is good excited is the adrenaline is preparing you so I guess that I was lucky that I did this before I felt comfortable in that environment that I knew what I was doing and that probably gave me a lot of confidence. He had also worked with Ted's people. They are very, very good before giving a TED talk. They worked closely with you to refine the talk and make sure it was concise and correct. length and you are covering the correct material.

I was originally trying to fit even more into that talk and was advised to cut some things out, which I did and I'm very glad I did. I was going to cover something about public speaking. There was simply no time and I would have lost focus. I perfected it and perfected it and perfected it, which is what I do with a lot of the talks I give. I really think there is a concept in my book that you will remember. which is that we always talk in a listening session, so it is very important to think about: Who am I talking to?

Who am I talking to? What is the listening? I'm talking about what is the pain that these people feel or what are the problems that they face. I have or how can I help you, what gift can I give you? I had thought very clearly about those things for that talk and I was very clear that there were a lot of ineffective conversations in the world, so I came up with that. list of the seven deadly sins of speaking, which perhaps we would talk about a little later, making lists is a very good thing to do in a talk and I did it very well.

I think I could have addressed a couple of things in More Details and maybe the vocal toolbox I had to do it extremely quickly and, you know, maybe I could have negotiated that a couple more minutes with Ted and done a little more details about the vocal toolbox, but in general I would have to say about that talk. from from you know how I feel about that I think I hit it out of the park on that I don't always think the evidence of 40 million people would probably agree with you Julian, let's take some time and talk about hearing one of the things that really caught my attention the attention in the book of many types of um pokes to be more aware of yourself you talked about how you can tell a poor listener through a kind of mini bars one of them was the person in the meeting who is always asking someone to tell them explain the concept again and that's me and I was really humbled by that assessment in most meetings I'm on my mind it gets distracted I'm in a lot of meetings I have a lot of things to do and I think that although I'm a pretty effective verbal communicator, that's Arguably, I'm a terribly ineffective listener and I'm always that person who is trying to have something explained to me, what suggestions or advice would you give to people quite immediately and deliberately increase their effectiveness in listening.

There are some exercises throughout the book that I think help with that, but the first and most important thing to realize is that listening is doing something. It is not the same as listening. Hearing is automatic, just like your heartbeat. everything else is autonomous in your body what you hear you hear everything actually listening is a skill and you are actually doing two things when you listen first you are selecting things to pay attention to of all the things you hear pay attention to some of them, not all of them and the second thing you do is make those things mean something, you interpret them and many sounds affect us by association or interpretation in that way, so my definition of listening is giving meaning from the sound. and now it is absolutely a skill, if you become aware that you are doing something here, then you will become aware if you stop doing it and listen to the meeting again, listening to a meeting is not very effective, thinking about what I am going to do. for lunch or, oh, I forgot to turn off the oven or whatever you're thinking, you're still listening but you're not selecting and you're not interpreting, so there's no reaction.

There's no point in doing this and you're not really going to get much. We're not very good at listening to the overall numbers I've seen. We retain something like one word from eachfour of what we heard, so the issue is work. Scott, it's work and I think a lot of it is about preparing, being willing to do the work, going into a meeting and saying "I'm going to listen", you know, I talk about the four C's of effective listening and one of them It is the commitment. and I mean I'm going to listen in this meeting I'm not going to pick up my phone I'm not going to do my email I'm not going to worry about that thing I left in the office, I'm actually going to be present, so in a way it's a form of awareness and it's a very, very powerful thing to do because I really believe that there are a lot of people in this. planet, you've never had the experience of being listened to completely, we're so used to multitasking, so that would be my biggest advice to you Scott, would be to commit to yourself and you could do it for other people if you really want to. be great, but to yourself as you walk into the meeting, tell yourself this: I'll listen to it and take it as an exercise, it's exciting to do it that way.

I think that's great advice, especially for me because listening really is a selfless gift, isn't it? It really makes you be on the other person's timeline in their thought agenda and deliberately eliminating all distractions, consciously deliberately eliminating distractions in your mind, it's not easier said than done. It is very powerful and I say it in the book and I said it in all my talks there really is a reward for this not only is it nice to listen it is essential for oneself because listening and speaking are in a circle and this is the central thesis of the book it is not I talk, you listen, it doesn't work, simply because the way I listen affects the way you talk and the way you talk affects the way I listen and, furthermore, the way I listen affects the way you listen and The way I speak affects the way you speak, so we have this complex interaction in a circle all the time.

If you want people to listen to you and convey your message, listen to them, listening is the basis of speech all the time and someone who is not present and does not listen to other people, tends to appear rude or not very effective in their communication because they will be giving inconsistencies all the time, it's the kind of thing anyway. I was thinking about this and everyone leaves. Hey, it has nothing to do with what we were saying, so that type of communication is not tremendously effective, what listening always creates is understanding and if you want to guide people, what better way to do it than by understanding them and this in reality It was something higher.

Ed and Smith told me in the interview that listening is the most important skill any leader ever made. It was a great interview in the book. The book is exceptionally rich in practical advice. One of the ideas as we move into the type of speaking. part of communicating or being heard I was also Astro for your comments about the volume. I tend to be a quick and persuasive but very loud speaker and I don't know if it's because as I get older my hearing isn't as good or if it's because you know. a subconscious strategy for persuading people, but I tend to speak much louder than I need to.

What advice would you give to people who tend to speak too softly or too loudly? That's the right way to describe it, how can someone control the volume? of their voice works for or against them, there are many ways to do this and again, the key is awareness is to ask the question, many of us never think about the way we deliver content, there is a huge assumption that What a lot of people do is that they all listen like I do, so I'm fine speaking the way I like to be made to listen to people.

That is not true. Everyone's listening is unique, so you are always talking to a different listener and that suits you. If you really want to engage them across the network and get your message across effectively, ask yourself what audience I'm speaking to and then moderate or modulate your presentation style to fit that. That's called rapport-building. You know there are books and books. In this thing which is to match and mirror people's pace, if you're talking to someone who is very, very slow and really calm, trying to drive me crazy in some kind of pit, then a bombastic and aggressive style of expression will just annoy them and doesn't work well, so out of respect for other people, you know, ask that question, it's one of the biggest questions that I talk to people about in the book, ask what's the listening, what's the listening, if you're with a group of people who Talk loud and fast, then talking loud and fast will be brilliant and you may have to up your game a little to compete with them if, on the other hand, you are with a group of people who are very calm and sleepy and and restricted, then it's probably best to tone it down a little bit, so what I'm saying, Scott, is that there's no right arm, so there's no one size fits all here.

The important thing is to think carefully about how you are received and how the listener listens and you will automatically begin to speak more effectively Jelena. I want to save time to talk about posture, body language, and the seven deadly sins, but first let's talk about word choice. You have some ideas on how to be more deliberate. About the words we choose to communicate ideas and describe things give us insight into how each of us can become more conscious and aware of the positive and diminutive power of the words we use. Yes, I think words are very powerful and you alone.

We have to look at human history to understand that that is the case, whether they are in print or spoken, and I would tend to say that spoken ones are even more powerful than printed ones, although obviously you can publish printed works, but today the spoken word is also published and you know the YouTube phenomenon shows us that I feel frustrated by what I call language devaluation or inflation. Once upon a time, it was okay to be excited about things and now you have to be super excited and I guess in five years we'll have to be. super super excited because super excited won't be excited enough that kind of hyperbole is devaluing a lot of words that are left behind so for example now we have all these words that just mean nice like amazing fantastic brilliant, I mean they all just mean good or nice now they used to have special meanings, so I think it's a pretty powerful exercise and it's one that I recommend in the book, take it for a day if you want someone listening to this to say exactly what you mean without the hyperbole. that tends to go hand in hand with modern conversation, so yes, I think words are incredibly important.

It's also very helpful to ask yourself how much negative language you are using. There are a couple of deadly sins which are negativity or prejudice and if you were. I tend to use the word not very much, something to look for another one that I completely eliminated from my vocabulary is the word. I can't think of a single useful situation for that word. It really is a very critical word that should be lost. weight, I'm judging myself, you should, you should be doing a much better job than the one who is judging you, so there are other ways to say things without using the word should, there are many examples of this type of thing, but you can always replace but with and it actually improves the meaning of what you're saying.

Probably 99% of the time it will be done the Denny way, so language is important and it's important to be clear and clean in the words you're using. Julien, do me a favor. You repeat that challenge to everyone about maybe starting tomorrow because I think it's one of the best ideas you've shared so far on how to eliminate superfluous hyperbole, so challenge everyone, including me, tomorrow to take on that challenge again, okay , so accept it. tomorrow, you'll hear this today, you probably need to prepare for this, the challenge is saying exactly what you want to say and you'll be surprised how challenging it is to eliminate all the variations and recasts and wonders and fantasies or the hyperbole or you never listen to me, you really never, you don't.

I think, all those things that we do in language that tend to create arguments or fuel arguments or that allow us to speak louder and bigger than we need to. a conversation is a very beautiful skill to say exactly what you want to say you can enjoy it for a day you can even decide to continue join in I think I'm guilty of it and here is my premise and you can deconstruct this and send me to a therapist or a coach my feeling is In this super competitive environment with avalanches of options, opportunities, options, decisions, you want to eliminate the clutter, you want to influence, you want to persuade, and so sometimes I find myself to my detriment by explaining something one way. that is, hyperinflated.

I once used the term I am known for using the term inconceivable as if that decision were unconscionable. No, the Holocaust was excessive. I'm not sure this decision has any premise as to why people like me, who are otherwise true. Cashiers and credible people tend to inflate our language, so why is that okay? It is a habit and I think it exists quite a lot in your country. I would say that I am referring to the example that I gave in Ted's scenario, that it is always an easy target is the word incredible, I mean, if a pizza or a pair of sneakers is incredible, what is a sunset, it has gone, what we do, how we describe that thing that generates a feeling of real in us, so I think it's a shame.

That language is reduced in that way and diluted is a habit and I completely understand that it becomes a kind of game of competition. It's almost as if you already know that competitive speaking is a lot about looking good, being noticed, being noticed. right and so on, these are some of the habits that I talked about in the book that are not necessarily tremendously useful for us and I think American author Harville Hendricks said that you can be right or you can be in a relationship, these are natural human tendencies. and as you know, many of us eat more than we would like and would like to lose weight or feel like we should exercise more, oh, there was that word, we feel like we could exercise more, these language inflation things become commonplace, especially in the world where we are always armed with quick cuts with multiple import, everything has to be bigger and bigger, you know, the next superhero movie has to be twice as loud as the last one, everything has this addiction, which I think which is not unreasonable. words using this for bigger and I would challenge that I would opt for better quality, you know, countries, politicians, everyone wants more, we should grow, why aren't we happier?

So I think it would be much more along the lines of being more precise and, in particular, if you're asking what the listening is, you might not need to be so hyperbolic. Usually we may have to call you out because I think the British have some responsibility with their overuse of the word brilliant I lived there for a while, totally owned it and we complained a lot too, let's talk about posture and body language, you say something, I'm going to, I'm going to kill here, I think you called it a kind of texting stance. but after all these decades of doing this, we tend to talk that way, talk about the connection between our lifestyle around our phones and our text messages and the correlation with how our posture impacts our voice and our presence when we are on stage or When we talk to someone, many of us spend a large amount of time.

I mean, right now I'm sitting at a desk looking at a computer and the tendency is to lean forward like this and let my lower back go a little bit and If I lean forward, you can hear the effect it has on my voice because my strings Vocal cords are stretching and how many times do we sit on a phone like this and the vocal cords don't work effectively, but you can do the opposite if you retract your head towards the neck like this, the vocal cords get crushed and they can't work either. correctly there, so if you want to speak strongly and effectively, it is important that the vocal cords are well relaxed in the neck and that means you need to turn your head towards the neck. shoulders relatively vertical everything is stacked there is a great way to visualize this which is to imagine a rope on the top of your head and everything is hanging from that rope you can do it lying down like I am now or you can do it standing up and that's what I always do when I go up on stage and I give a thread of conversation on the top of the head, all loose and relaxed, put the shoulders back and down, put everything vertical and if you want to focus very, very powerfully on the stage, you can visualize the roots that go from your feet to the floor and that's a great way to stand up to give any talk and it will also cut down on awkward, irritating movements, so if you're speaking on stage, try that rope at the top and the roots at the bottom. all relaxed in the middle, ready, Julian, let's do a power round, quick rounds.

I want to include the seven deadly sins. Would you take maybe 30 seconds on each of theseseven deadly sins? What is a key takeaway? And then I'd love to talk. a little bit about how organizations will work with you to better manage this sound for your employees and customers, let's talk about the seven deadly sins, okay, real quick, gossip number one, badmouthing someone who is not present is not helpful and It devalues, especially since most gossip is made up or false or exaggerated and number two and, by the way, I'm not saying never do these things. What I'm saying is that if you do them a lot, it will be harder to listen to you and people won't listen to you as carefully. to you, number two, condemn the negative judgment, the kind of parent whose kid comes home and says I got ninety-five percent on the test and they say what happened to the other five, that kind of negative judgment is really hard. of being next to that negativity for a long time and that's what you know, I told the story of my mother and that she was tremendously negative towards the end of her life and I took her a piece of paper to the hospital and I told her that I would like it to be the October 1 and she said, "I know, isn't it terrible?" and you know, it just gets you down.

B, it's just that the sun is out, it's going to rain later, oh come on, you know you have to go and recharge to be around that kind of negativity and then another cousin of negativity complaining, who says we said the British national pastime If the food is bad, then. the restaurant complains if it's the weather or the sport that's just viral misery complaining about things doesn't help so we have excuses it's not my fault it's their fault you know some people are to blame because it's never their fault if it's never your fault you won't learn anything and that was something important that she and I discussed was the importance of mistakes, recognizing them and correcting them throughout the innovation process.

Then we have the hype that we just discussed and it starts like this, I mean, it gets bigger and bigger and we end up with outright lies and I'm sure no one listening to this has ever claimed to have read a book they haven't read or anything like that. , we all do it, but it is a matter of degree and finally we have Dogma. dogmatism my way or the highway confusing opinions with facts are two different things when you put them together there is a lot of discussion and banging on the table so those are the seven deadly sins of communication Julian's speech to the millions of little leaders who are Al listening to or watching this interview of those seven, is there one who has a disproportionately greater impact, positive or negative, in a leadership role with their team?

If they corrected it, they would become more aware, nip it in the bud, and their leadership influence would perhaps expand disproportionately. or exponentiate I think condemn is disproportionately negative, there's that movie about the drummer where the guy says there are no two words in the English language more harmful than good job, well that's tragic, I mean you're not going to have much equipment if that's the way you lead people, if it's all criticism and not praise, people need to be inspired, so I think it's particularly negative, what tends to show up positively in some organizations is dogmatism.

You know, if you think about Steve Jobs, a lot of his inventions were opinions, he went against all the evidence most of the time and said I know this is right and he was like that, sometimes you need an inspired leader who Be dogmatic enough to be able to deliver that genius, yes. I understood something well. Remember that Stefan might be my specialty. Julian. He talks to the parents who are listening. Any advice you would give to parents as they work with their children. What can they do to listen better and for their children to be heard more effectively.

What advice would you give them? you give to the parents I think if you want a child to listen to you you have to demonstrate the ability to listen to them and listen like an adult to another adult's word listening to a child that way I think it is immensely powerful I have a four year old daughter and we spend a lot of time listening to it, we give it, you know, our full attention, it's tremendously easy nowadays with cell phones, other devices available, yes, no, I'm listening, I'm really dead, that's really interesting, that's not listening. do something else Scott Peck, the author of a wonderful book that you've read less of, said that you can't listen to another person and do something else at the same time and I think that's absolutely true, so give your child the gift of 100% attention and you will be surprised what happens when you listen to them that way, teach them to do the same with you and you are in a virtuous cycle instead of the vicious cycle of not listening to anyone and they are already screaming.

Around the world, Julian, you spend a lot of time public speaking, writing, consulting with organizations. You are very passionate about the role that sound plays in organizations. How does a client relate to you when you work with the client? What types of problems exist? you solve for customers and how does someone, an organization, a CEO or someone work with your company? Well, most of the work I do at the moment involves traveling around the world and speaking at big events, these tend to be conferences and places where people think we do it. It would be really helpful to help people listen better, so sometimes I open up something important and teach people a little about how to listen so they can have a better experience for the next few days, for example speaking on stages is a great part of We also do consultation work from time to time, we do coaching for CEOs, that has happened and it's very intense and we do it for days and that really leaves them quite tired at the end, but for CEOs who maybe have challenges getting their The message you convey can be very effective.

What I'm really excited about right now is that we're putting the finishing touches on an online course called How to Speak So People Want to Listen, which will be available in just a few minutes. It's probably very similar to when this podcast comes out. I think Android. I am very excited because it will allow me to travel a little less. Stay in my beloved Orkneys. See my daughter a little more and convey her message to her. a lot more people, so it's a win-win from that standpoint, so talk a little bit about how someone learns to participate more closely in those sessions, what they like, how someone consumes them, where they can go. learn more about that, well the training will be online and the details of it will be on my Judean Treasure Calm website where we instantly put up a landing page for this podcast with some lovely free snippets for people training them on how to listen better.

Everyone there, Jullien

treasure

s communication leadership, so that would be the first place to connect there and then we'll keep you updated with everything that's happening on the email that's there as well if you want to contact us. Personally, I'm delighted to hear from you and see if we can help you with any communication challenges. Julianne. Great conversation. Thank you for joining us today from the coast of Scotland in England from your home. I hope everything goes well. I think The best part of this interview was the line "you may be right or you may be in a relationship that was prophetic thank you for your time sir, thank you very much Scott, it has been a pleasure, a pleasure.

Now I'm a little paranoid about my speaking and my voice and my tone and my posture, what a gift Jillian has given us. Thank you for joining us for another great conversation with Julianne Treasure. I highly recommend you buy the book for your team on how to be heard. Listen to her TED talks I guess after this leadership interview it will surpass one hundred million. Thank you for your interest in leadership. See you here next week with a new guest.