The Speaking Expert: How To Speak So Everyone Hears You! Julian Treasure

If you have a boring voice, you can do something about it, Julian may

treasure

the authentication of how to be heard. Your Ted Talk is the sixth most listened to Ted Talk of all time. I have put together seven deadly sins when

speak

ing here. It's the most common mistake I see in business in relationships you're talking to teams you're trying to inspire people you're trying to lead people you build relationships with people this is part of your life and you've never paid attention to it we teach to read and write in schools we don't teach

speak

ing, which is crazy, we are much more interested in being heard than in listening to others what is the biggest complaint in relationships he or she never listens to me our happiness and Our well-being is fundamentally affected by whether we master the skills of speaking and listening.

How do you speak with authority at work? In the life. In my relationships. What advice can you give me? People often tell me. I do not feel safe. How can I do it? interact with people and the answer is before this conversation starts. I have to ask you a favor. 74 of the people who watch this podcast frequently have yet to hit the Subscribe button and nine percent of people have yet to hit the bell to turn on notifications the bigger this platform gets, the bigger the guests get, so if you could do me a favor if you've ever enjoyed this podcast, hit that subscribe button and turn on notifications without further ado.

I'm Stephen Butler and this is Diary of a CEO. I hope no one is listening to me, but if so, keep this out. You've had a unique and wonderful career and it's twisted and twisted and twisted and twisted in a really fascinating way, one that I can't imagine anyone doing. I really could have predicted in advance what I need to know about you and your early years to inform the person listening to this about whatever context ended up determining where you would end up in your life. I think I was very fortunate to have a good education that maybe I didn't take full advantage of, but I appreciated it enormously, but I think that from a very young age I grew up with the confidence that everything will be okay and that I suppose could be summed up in the word faith, No.

Talking necessarily about religious faith, even though I've gone in and out of that in my life, it's just a conviction that everything will be okay and I think that's an important thing, I mean business people tend to be the people who will take the leap and It's like oh I think I'll make it to the other side, whereas a lot of people would be standing there, you know what you're doing, so when things have come up, I've felt comfortable going with the flow to say well. Let's see where this goes. I'm sure it will be interesting.

I read your Ted Talk about speaking and being heard. I think that's the sixth or seventh most listened to Ted Talk of all time, which is amazing because there are thousands and thousands of TED Talks, I've done one, no one listened, um, and that's how I was when I saw that, I thought how much it changed. that moment in your life, if anything changed, um and can you tell me about the decision to do that talk? that day and how it came about well, it was actually the fifth of five talks I did, five teds in a row, uh, Ted Global was in the UK and Oxford originally and the first one I did was about how sound effects are the four effects. of the sound is called uh, looking back, I'm a very young Slimmer on stage, it's pretty fun to watch now.

Nobody had used sound before in a TED talk like that, so they were really excited about it and then I had to do the The next one was about sound and health and then one about listening, which is kind of a religion for me, and then one about sound and the environment the way architects designed for the eyes, not the ears, so I had those four TED talks. to practice, I guess, and become a master, I guess, to do a TED talk, I mean, it's a discipline, you have 12 minutes or maybe even I think the first one was six, you can't chat, you can't cut, cram too .

There are a lot of things that you have to be very clear about the big idea, why people would be interested in this, what is the journey that I am taking people, where I am moving them and you need to know how to do it, how to stand. that stage on that red dot and project it with confidence and clarity and engage people to take that journey with you, so I guess by the time I did the fifth one, I was more adept at giving Ted Talks than most people will ever be. I would have thought. chance to be because I had done four before and that's unusual, so certainly when I went on stage I felt pretty good in that talk and yeah, I think I nailed it, you know, I had re

hears

ed a lot and you know we can talk. about the principles of public speaking and so on, which you know I've worked a lot on, but I did a good job and the audience really responded.

There was a great feeling in the room, so when I walked out I felt like Actually, you know, they made that Justice, they didn't release it for a year and I thought, oh, maybe they didn't like it, but I do remember Bruno Jassani, who is one of the guys who runs Ted at Edinburgh Castle. I ran into him about three hours after giving that talk and he said "hail" and I thought "ah, okay, well, Bruno wasn't there, so obviously word is getting out that there's some good stuff in there and he held the acronym you said in that talk about how to be a great public speaker um honesty authenticity integrity and right love um what was it like when that Ted Talk came out how did it change your life because I know how algorithms work it takes some time for things to fall into place. gain momentum, but once they get going and the algorithm says the watch time for this episode is very, very good, so we will continue to show it to more and more people, so it might have taken some time, but What was it like?

Things change for you at that point and so does your personal and professional orientation. Yeah, it took off pretty quickly once it came out. I stopped looking at numbers every day a long time ago. You know, the first Ted Talk that I did. 10,000 obsessive people watch this, you know, and I'm sure

everyone

does a TED talk and starts stuff like that, but this one was clearly going ballistic pretty quickly, it went up, you know, over a period of months. was in the top 20 I think, and yes, it has changed my life fundamentally, in a very powerful way, because I have spent many hours on airplanes traveling around the world giving talks and getting paid to give talks, so my career went from direct the sound agency to create an audio brand. company in the UK, which is a relatively small company and who writes, knows about my first book.

Solid business. Then I had the opportunity to write the second book, which grew out of that Ted Talk. I had the opportunity to travel the world, meet people, um. giving talks and spreading the message, which is what is important to me because, as I say, I am an evangelist who listens. I'm passionate about persuading people to start listening, so yes, this completely moved my career into a totally different path, a public speaking path. writing books on how to be a speaker and author professionally and in hindsight, when you look at this, the huge success, I mean the TED talks combined now have over 100 million views, so one talk in particular I think has around 40 million views on YouTube alone, probably. right, I mean, Chris Anderson says because you have ted.com, so it has many millions on there that I haven't looked at recently, but then you add the YouTube views.

Chris says whatever it is on ted.com, you should duplicate it. to get a reasonable estimate of the number of views of embedded podcasts and all that kind of stuff on the Internet, so yeah, I think over 100 million, which is mind-blowing to me in retrospect seeing the success of that, so wild . You know, the unprecedented success of that particular video delivered that way on that topic, what has it taught you about why people care so much about that video and the topic? I think a lot of people don't feel heard in the world, so that talk was about how to get your message across, how to speak so that people want to listen.

And I think it's a necessity and it's interesting, isn't it? You said the number five times is really interesting. The talk about listening has been seen by a fifth of people who talk about talking, so we are more interested in being heard than listening to others and there is an imbalance there that I think is endemic in modern society, why do we want to be difficult to do? a difference to forge relationships to be validated so that they mean something to someone to feel good, unfortunately, which is a huge human need that I talk about a lot, being right is a pretty dangerous thing in the world right now and a lot of people need to do it .

Feeling justified in that way to be right. What is being heard or being right doing to us at our most Primordial level? What helps us belong to a TR in the tribe? Is it yes, human family of the tribe? race and um, you know a reason to exist. I guess you know what I'm doing here and if people listen to me, that gives me importance, that's certainly true, so I think it's about validating yourself. I mean, I'm big. I'm a big fan of Eckhart Toller and his theories on the ego and I think a lot of them would agree that you know the ego needs to be massaged, the ego needs to be affirmed and listened to to make a difference in people. part of that, but you know, on a more altruistic level, making a difference in the world, you know your life has affected millions of people, my talks, hopefully, you know, throw a rock into a pond and the ripples They are coming out and many more people.

I hope they're listening as a result, well, that's good, you know, whether it makes me feel good is another thing, but it's actually a good thing in the world that we were talking about before we started chatting about uh, it's ironic. that you come here today. and talking because you have a kind of call in your chest, yeah, yeah, a cold that's in my chest, so my voice is low, I would say two tones right now and it's a little hoarse, you know, it's also frustrating. as a speaker because I love this instrument that we have, you know, the human voice is an incredible instrument and it's an instrument that we all play, even though most of us have never had any training or spent time learning how to use it very well. and it's frustrating, right now I'm dealing with a slightly broken instrument, it's funny because you know when I am when my team sends me potential guests that you know want to come to the podcast and we reach out to them to come to this. podcast there are a couple of criteria that I look for and one of the most important and non-negotiable where we have had the most interesting and intelligent people in the world is their ability to talk and when I say talk I don't mean you know how well they can, you know how fun what they are or things like that, literally I mean if they are monotonous we can't have the conversation because I don't have data to support this, but if someone is monotonous in their delivery, then I find it difficult to follow the story regardless of what you say, you say that the two most important things in speaking are the content and then the delivery, and that's what I'm really getting at, is like that point of delivery.

Do you have any evidence to support the importance of that or is it just something in my head that I think well, it's something else? I asked Chris Anderson, who has more experience listening to speakers than probably anyone else in the world because they do. that all the time with Ted and I I was telling him which is more important the content or the delivery and his response was the response was quite interesting, he said well if you had to choose, both are important if you had to choose your content because if someone is delivering earth-shattering content in a boring way.

I can really make an effort and listen to them and in the end it's worth it, whereas if someone says vapid nonsense in a brilliant way, it's actually just irritating, so I understand that, but I think they're both important, I mean, it's a It's a shame that someone says something incredibly important and isn't using what I call the vocal toolbox. You know, there are all these things that we can implement if we start paying attention to our voice. you have a boring voice can you do something about it is it possible to get a vocal coach to work on it you know, practice breathing improve your posture just practice prosody prosody intonation you know really exaggerate it I'm a big fan of doing this is the kind of thing that actors and singers do and many times, for example, I've given talks where I've been looking at an audience of CEOs, hundreds or thousands of them, and I tell them how many of you have to speak in public.

Forest of Hands increases how many of you have had formal vocal training three or four people I'm going what this is part of your life it's an important part of you you're talking to teams you're trying to inspire people you're trying to lead people with you are trying to communicate, build responsive relationships with the people you are trying to move, you know mountains with your voice and you have never paid attention to it, it istragic you know we teach reading and writing in schools no I don't teach speaking or listening which is crazy it's funny because when people ask me I always say the most important skill you can learn is selling because you're selling all the time.

I am selling right now. I'm sorry. I meet a girl in a bar. I'm just going to sell to her to try to get her number. Have a girlfriend. I wouldn't do that. I'm selling in a business. I'm selling to my teams. I've been trying to inspire investors to join us. It's a scam, this caught me. My life is full of sales pitches, whether I'm selling myself or an idea or a vision or whatever, but I've never done it. I really reflected on the fact that the basis of that sale is this instrument, of course, well, actually, even more than that.

Next, what is the most important part of the sales conversation: listening, it is not the speaker, it is listening, listening, understanding the other person. his island to understand what his pain is. Please point out what I can solve or help you here because if you can't it's a waste of time. How many times have we all had that irritating sales conversation where someone is trying to sell something? we don't need it at all and because they're not listening, then you know it can be good, but very well directed, to talk to someone who we've listened to and respected and understood, that's something different, it's powerful, what would that have to do? do I? because there are a lot of people who are listening to this podcast who start their own podcast and want to be podcasters and a lot of them message me and want to come and sit here on this podcast one day, what are the types of things that you?

I would advise someone to do with their voice to be heard, treating their voice as a skill is the first thing, so become aware that this is a skill, it is not a natural ability, just like listening is a skill, listening is a capacity, listening is a skill. a skill, so I talk a lot about these two things, since speaking and listening skills are skills that we don't teach in school or college, which is crazy, so we have to take it on ourselves because they are important, already You know, they affect our results in life. They affect, I always say they are happiness, our effectiveness and our well-being are fundamentally affected by whether we master the skills of speaking and listening, so in terms of listening comprehension, the first thing is a vocal toolbox, so things like breathing, your voice is just breath. that's it, it's breath moving through your vocal cords and to speak well it's very good to develop a breathing practice maybe do yoga maybe something else Jane, my wonderful fiancé has taught me a breathing practice that is very, very Simple, anyone can do it. and it's called resonant breathing, which is inhaling through the nose and then exhaling through the mouth as if you were blowing so you can hear it and you practice that and you lengthen, you count and you lengthen the inhalation and you lengthen the exhalation and we should also breathe from the diaphragm from the stomach because, if you watch a baby breathe, it's his stomach that goes up and down, not his chest, so he just develops.

I wonder if people listen to this podcast when was the last time? You breathed very deeply, we tend to breathe, you know, only to a fraction of our lungs like a little bird, but with your voice it is very important to breathe deeply and practicing that practice is also a great cure for nerves, you know, if you come. on stage and you're a bit like this, hello

everyone

, then a big breath will calm the voice, so it's a really powerful thing to do that breathing practice, what is it doing then in terms of improving my playing? the nerves part but in terms of my vocal cords or it gets you right, what did Aristotle say?

Excellence is uh no, we are what we do repeatedly, so excellence is not an act, it's a habit, so it gets you used to breathing better. and deeper and you know that when you speak in public there is nothing wrong with taking a deep breath and filling your lungs. Actors do it all the time. I mean, a singer can sing the longest note. Do you know what the world record is? Static apnea 28 minutes kind of like lying at the bottom of a pool on one breath, you know, and that static apnea, then you have the free divers, there are things we can do with our lungs that are beyond imagination virtually and However, most of us just breathe a little, so it's also good for you to exercise your lungs to inflate them.

Unfortunately a few years ago I had a pulmonary embolism which is pretty scary and can kill you and it's blood clots going to the lung. They have to go through the heart to get to the lung, so you know that's where you can die, and that's why my lungs are not as efficient as they were before and that has made me even more aware of the importance of deep breathing for expand. lung capacity is part of being healthy, apart from anything else, having great lung capacity is that what exercise does, yes, somewhat consciously, in part, yes, absolutely releases all kinds of good, happy chemicals in your system, as well as exercise, but breathing is very, very good for you in general and we don't do enough of it, so I did my breathing exercises.

I'm heading to the Diary of a CEO podcast, what else would I have to do to be heard? by The Listener what are the types of tips or skills? Well, I think variety in general is a very important aspect of speaking, so you talked about people being monotonous and that literally means tone, so if I talk like that throughout the entire podcast. It would be extremely boring for people, there's not much intonation there. I don't have any emotional resonance speaking like that, so it's just boring, so intonation, the ups and downs when speaking, are really important, it's also crucial to be sensitive. cultural differences in that, for example, in Scandavia they have very restricted prosody or intonation compared to, for example, Latin countries where you know people are like why are there so many ups and downs like this all the time?

I'm squawking here um, I remember doing a I spoke in Finland at The Amazing Concert Center in Helsinki, which was designed by a brilliant architect called Toyota and has incredible acoustics and at the end of my talk there was a little murmur of applause and I thought no they liked it. You know, it's been America, there was screaming and shouting and whatever was going on and I went down for a coffee and people came up to me and said thank you, that was the best chat we've had in a few years, that's great. for you. They are very taciturn and calm people, they don't get very excited, unless they have had vodka, maybe, but you have to adapt to the prosody or the president of the audience you are talking to, which is the prostitute president, is the intonation of both.

The upward and downward delivery, which is Route One to emotion, is absolutely crucial when speaking and it is also the rhythm when speaking, the blank spaces you leave and the emphasis you put on the words, so it is understanding how to do it, it's not just reading a script, it's putting your personality into what you say and that makes all the difference in the world, so anyone who's interesting, I mean, I have friends who run voiceover studios and actors come to read things, TV commercials, books and all that, some actors can read something. Isn't being able to read something or speak in an interesting way a skill that everyone possesses?

It's not a script that you learn and then actually work on it etc, just reading something is quite technical, you actually have to understand it. get out of the way, so yeah, working on your voice is about variety, it's about breathing, it's about getting comfortable with silence, for example, not filling every little space with arms, like you know, you know what I mean , verbal tics, so all these things are It's very important to record yourself, listen to it and start taking it as a skill and like Mastery, become your own coach effectively. I mean, I'm sure you watch your podcasts and there's always something to learn, there's always something to look at and say, oh.

Okay, I couldn't have done that or I couldn't have said it better or whatever and that's how we became Masters and of course you can get a coach, a vocal coach, a singing coach, a drama coach, a acting coach, a speech coach, there are some. There are a lot of them out there, so anyone who has, for example, a restricted timbre, I mean, timbre is the quality of your voice and we tend to like voices that we would describe in the same way that we would describe a hot chocolate, rich, dark, warm, sweet, soft, all those words. "If it's not you who

hears

this when you have a great voice, but if it is, if someone has a thin, squeaky or hoarse voice or whatever, get a vocal coach, you can work on these are things that we normally do" .

We have a habit, the way we speak is derived in part from our physical being. I mean, we have a body, there are resonant cavities, we have vocal cords, but it also depends on how we use them and that is much more important. Anyone can learn to maximize their voice and get the most out of it, so it's about the instrument itself and then how you play it, what emotion you put into it, if you're aware, you know, what I like most about public speaking, it makes me more conscious at that moment than anywhere else. If you're not on stage, you know, I've talked to audiences of 11,000 people, there's a big spotlight, there's cameras pointed at you, you're standing on a stage, 11,000 people are looking at you if you're not aware of that.

The moment you have a problem, you know it, so every gesture, every moment, is the maximum awareness of being me and communicating with those people, so it's like turning on the light at maximum intensity and I really love that that experience has colored. the way I treat life in general now because you know it's my biggest passion is to become more and more conscious to grow a little bit every day to be more conscious every day and talking helps with that. I've never talked about it before, but We, um, we've removed some episodes from this podcast, so don't worry, this is a perfect episode, but what's going to happen is a guest came on and, honestly, there might be some cases. in which they are the largest in the world. in your industry and I can think of a particular example where if I said the name of the guest that we had on the episode that we had eliminated, people would be surprised because I think he's one of the biggest stars in the world, he has like 50 60 million online followers um and then there's another individual that I'll think of if I said the name now everyone knows this person he's a legend in many ways um but we removed that episode as well and the content is one factor but the other factor that's really it. makes and results in that decision.

I think it's going to be very hard to hear and I feel like I have this sense of responsibility on Mondays and Thursdays when we post that, even if they don't know the name. our audience will listen and we see that in the numbers if we post an anonymous or a superstar we get the same amount of clicks in the first 24 hours or so because people go. I don't mind. I trust this team to put people in. out there, so I just wanted to say that because I know there's a lot of people that want to be on this podcast, there's a lot of great CEOs that reach out to us and one of the biggest things in my decision criteria is literally how are they? interesting to talk to and by that I mean the instrument, the delivery, um, so I don't think it was funny when you were talking.

I was thinking about people who have said no, too big and don't do it, maybe I should give them their opinion. but maybe that's not my place it's literally about delivery um very often so let's continue with the thread of delivery you're talking about being there speaking in front of 11,000 people on a stage one of the things which I am sure of. What would stop most of us from trying to do something like this is a lack of confidence. You have almost a hundred thousand online students, something that crazy, who all come to take your courses and learn from you.

Trust must be one of them. In the first few conversations, you have the right to get someone to be a great speaker. Yes, it's important, although it's interesting to note that many of the people who have given some of the best TED talks, like me, are actually introverts. I'm not. As an extrovert, it's not as natural for me to do these things and it's also true for people like Susan Kane. Introverted, you can get on stage and you can overcome fear, which is part of growing as a human being. I think I'm doing things that are challenging and overcoming barriers and doing it anyway, so yes, confidence is important.

I mean, we could have a long conversation about confidence because I was educated at one of the best state schools and I think one of the things that the best state schools in the UK do is to give you a commanding arrogance and, um, to absolutely convince you. that you know everything about everything and, more than that, the ability to sound convincing andpersuading people that that is, in fact, the case and it has taken me decades to get over it. to discover humility and discover the importance of being, you know authentically what I can really do, so yes, I think public speaking like anything else is like riding a bicycle, if you do it enough, you become confident in knowing it. the first time you or I drove. a car our hands were welded to the steering wheel you know we were shaking with terror now you drive a car and you think about everything but driving you know so it just falls off a log I've talked enough now so I don't get scared anymore nervous, yes, nervous, it's good, nervous, it gives you the right chemicals to perform at your best, so I never want to lose touch with that and I think that's true for anyone, just a professional footballer, before a game, the nerves will be there, the adrenaline It's taking you to the next level once you get bored of what you're doing you should do it that's a great question but the confidence to do it comes from practice and that's what I always tell people it's part of my course, you know, I talk. about doing things just doing things public speaking Toastmasters for example you know they're in every city in the world you can go and join a Toastmasters chapter and start speaking in front of people that's what they do and while you do.

You become more and more familiar with what is happening and you know that it is not really the end of the world. No one will stand up and criticize you for being a useless fool. You know you know even if you forget. Your words can really say: I am so sorry. I have forgotten where I was and everyone. I mean. I've seen that happen with Ted. Okay, people rely on memory, which is a very high-risk strategy for me. You know that always. use slides, but if you go on stage and you have a Memory Palace or a chain or one of those routes and you rely on that and lose the chain, it breaks and your cast is left adrift in an ocean of Terror.

I've seen it happen and what happens when someone turns red and starts shaking and says, I'm so sorry. I have completely forgotten what comes next. The audience starts applauding because they are on your side. It's not the end of the world and really that. It can make a relationship deeper than being clever and perfect and brilliant at every moment. I've seen overly confident and rehearsed people where you know every one of those gestures has been rehearsed hundreds of times and was there for the duration, I mean, there was a moment in Ted where it was almost a Reger crying at a TED talk and I remember having said that there was a talk by, you know, an international banker or something about economics who halfway through talked about his late fatherhood and brought tears to his eyes.

I thought, please. This is like being put on by a coach who says you have to connect emotionally and it was really incongruent so I think it's about being yourself, I mean that's the way to be authentic, being yourself is okay, it's so It is much easier than trying to be someone else and having faith that if you are yourself and have a good message, people will be with you on the journey and will be on your side, that is certainly the case that people of Ted don't do it. go to is not a comedy night where people throw things and Heckle, it's a place where people expect to learn to be transported to be changed by almost every talk, so talk means they love you in hell.

I've learned that I think humans are much better at detecting authenticity than we give them credit for. I think from our own perspective we think we can criticize it and we underestimate the extent to which the viewer or the person. I'm trying to criticize him so he understands that I'm not being authentic, like we think we're better, much better actors than we really are, and it's funny that one of the things that makes this friend of mine angry right now is about Ago Three weeks ago there was a CEO who went viral on LinkedIn because he had fired several members of his team and then took a photo of himself crying and posted it with a caption like "I'm so sorry, I'm sorry today." It was a really difficult day.

I had to find members of my team and if you look at it, it feels wrong, it's almost hard to explain, but I think your mind is fine. I would have had to cry, something very unnatural in the midst of crying. It's picking up your phone and taking a selfie and then going to social media, so on that point of authenticity, is your suspicion of him the same? We people are much better at detecting someone who is not authentic than we believe than we understand. I think so. I live in a world where social media and the spread of viral opinions make it quite difficult to be truly fake.

I mean, there are a lot of companies, a lot of people that do what is now called virtue signaling and people can realize that you know we can, we can. catch the whiff of inauthentic manipulative posturing that is trying to make us understand in the best most acceptable way, whatever the current food is, whatever the current style is, it should be completely acceptable and socially correct, so for me this is another time. This is part of the human need to be right and be seen as right, which is a big problem in the world right now.

I guess what I mean is that we're seeing silos around the world and interveners have made this worse, you know. you go online and say there you are I know I was right 10,000 people agree with me yes, but there are a million who don't, but you're not going to ask them, you just go and find the people you agree with so you can stop validate your point of view and that's why we have these extreme silos of conspiracy theories of people who have crazy views and persuade each other that they're right because they're just talking to each other, they're not going to check it out. you know, kick the tires and see if there's an alternative hypothesis here that might be worth considering, so I think it's a little bit dangerous at the moment and it's about the need to be right and of course what the easiest way to do it. to be right is to make you wrong if you're wrong I'm a writer and that's a slippery slope of depersonalization of dehumanization of um prejudice and hate and you know, at the end of that slope is the guy from Isis' response to the world disagreeing with me. , I will kill you, so it is a dangerous slope and the media has been contributing to that slope, you know, all this addiction to outrage that we see in the world, that is scandalous, someone is to blame, someone must be punished. and that's all I'm saying, yes, someone should be punished.

I'm right, they're wrong, so it's this kind of ego fire that we have. Building within us the desire to be the most correct person and to cancel out everyone else, that is absolutely advice, advice and making people wrong, left, right and center, being critical, that is one of the seven deadly sins that I talked about in that Ted Talk, judgment is pointing the finger at people you know, the kind of parent whose son or daughter comes home and says, "I'm 95." in the test and says what happened with the other five, you know, it's hard to be around people who point that finger, the other thing with those with that point, inhale the authenticity that, actually, I've learned from doing this podcast.

Hmm, there is a real mental cost to not being authentic over a long period of time and I see it over and over again when I sit here with people who were forced to be in the media or who were forced to be in the media first, not forced, but they chose to play a role or a character in the public eye and then their identity became their true authentic self they became imprisoned by this public identity that they felt they had to maintain and then the midlife crisis hits, it's usually like 35 45 where they have a kind of burnout that they are in in the case of one of my guests last week who came home and cried every day and had no idea why he was crying because they had spent a decade being disingenuous in every interaction because I felt that sometimes they had to survive because of some early trauma, um, and we don't talk about that enough, and you know I learned that from doing this podcast myself, because the most liberating thing for me is I sit here, in my socks, in my house, saying whatever I want for three hours and knowing that, honestly, if I tweet it, I'll get dragged, I'll get retweeted quite a bit, people will get taken out of context and go into different echo chambers and everyone will try and Um, find a way to get likes for what I've said, whereas I can sit here and say anything about almost anything in my most authentic self.

It's like a weight I lift every day. Um and it's been very good for my mind, but. Do you know what the biggest challenge of being authentic is? What is it about knowing who you really are? Yeah, good point, so what are your values? Stephen, it's a good question because, as you know, when people ask, I'm too afraid to say what I think. I want to hear how I know what my values ​​are. Write them down. Think about it. What I would do. What I would write. I worry that what I would write are things that have been so deeply conditioned to be my values.

Society, well yes, that's worth challenging, isn't it? So this is a great exercise. I mean, I highly recommend that everyone do this because not many people, you know, we just live our lives in this kind of um, bumping into things making it up as we go along. go a long way if you have values ​​that is your moral compass if you have values ​​that is what you tend to define who you are then you can be authentic what is a value this seems crazy to me to say but I want to be really clear, what is a value, it is something that you believe in, that's what they call in business, a north star for your life, it's something that you will sacrifice to achieve, so I carry mine, okay, I have four values ​​that I turned into an acronym because I have a terrible memory, so I like acronyms, the acronym is flag, so they are faith and that's it, everything will be fine.

I'm not talking about a religious faith, I'm just talking about the feeling that everything will be okay because I, if I have faith that the future will be okay, it gives me the courage to try and find out. You know it can be a disaster, but if it hits disaster, I've had a better trip than if it did. always oh it's going to be a disaster it's going to be a disaster there you are I told you well I've had a miserable trip and I've ended up in a disaster so I prefer to follow the path of everything will be fine oh No it's yes, but it will still be fine to find one way, yes, so Faith the L is love, by which I mean thinking well of people and there is a great practice that a very wise old friend of mine gave me for many, many years. it does which is amazing um instead of walking you know we're in London right now well I live in a much more remote place so when you walk around London you're always walking amongst people and we have this if we're not careful we have this nasty voice in our Head, get out of my way, you still got fat and, oh, you're ugly and stupid, and you know this nasty side of us that involves doing a little monologue and being really judgmental and critical of people. instead, it is to cultivate the habit of saying in your head, not out loud, bless you, not religiously again, just bless you, I wish you the best, I will leave you, get into that habit of walking and bless you, person who just got in my way.

It's amazing what a difference it makes to the way you are, it's like walking floating three inches above the ground, you meet people's gaze and may even share a smile because it's not your fault or you just think they're horrible, is it? You know? You have this nasty voice in your head all the time, you don't look at people in case you get their attention and they can see what you were thinking, so love that way, wishing people the best and of course love for family and love for well, love for life, as well as being positive, you know, the a is acceptance, which is something very important to me and I tend to try to go with the flow, if an opportunity presents itself, I will try let there be a reason for it.

See, so I'm not going to get into the secret or any of that stuff, but I tend to believe that things come to me for a reason, you know, whether it's God or the universe or whatever you want to say. I'm happy to go with the flow and accept too when things don't work, you know, I don't bang my head against a brick wall always trying to make it work, okay that doesn't work, we'll try something else, so acceptance and also about people the way they are that's really very important we spend a lot of time putting people down why you are like that why you do so well that's the kind of tree that person is and you know you don't get mad at trees for being that type of tree, so that's the type of person that's in front of you, except someone once said something to you on the podcast that relates to they said if you had gone through that, if you had walked in their shoes and had their experiences. would be doing exactly the same thing oh, totally fine, let's move on to validation in a minute and then the G in um flag can I guess so, it's gratitude, yeah, it totally is, um, you know, I don't like that slogan and attitude. of gratitude but it is very important to me uhyou know make a gratitude list when I'm miserable when I'm feeling depressed you know I have a cold yes, but now let's look at all the good things I have I have in my life, you know, I have a loving partner, I have two wonderful little children, I live in an incredible Orkney, which is a joy every day, you know, there are so many things to be grateful for and I have some financial security.

You have to know a lot in life that being grateful for usually outweighs the bad things now. That's not true for everyone. You know, if I were living cursing right now, for example, or somewhere like that, there would be a lot of things. more like being ungrateful, afraid, etc., so I don't mean this in a wishy-washy way, but even in the worst places it's important to focus our attention on the good things, because a lot of it has to do with where you are. the focus is not all the time reality is huge it is all around us we do not perceive reality we have a map in our head and it is up to us to select what we pay attention to so you know that it is much the same as listening, which is selecting certain things to pay attention to and then make them mean something good, it's the same with gratitude, there is always something or usually there is something that you can focus on and say, okay, there is something that I can be grateful for, so that It's all, yeah, faith, love, acceptance, gratitude, so those are mine and I know that's my moral. compass and that's what I try to be in life and I recommend to anyone who listens to this if you've never written down your values, think about it, not the ones that you think will be accepted by more people, the ones that really resonate. true in your heart, what does your heart tell you? and then you have a map, you have a, you have a root, you have a direction in life, which I think is incredibly important, a quick word from my sponsors.

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Yes, what is this validation? Well, it's part of active listening, so you know, if we talk about listening, I talk about listening positions and one of them is active listening, so it's a place to listen to me from and inactive listening, there are three stages , so Stage one is the reflection where I repeat exactly what you said without coloring it so that it doesn't make sense in the way that I understand it, but I say something like, okay, what I just heard you say is that it can be a little formulated or you know. So you said this or something like that, are you saying this?

So I'm checking that I really understood what you said. I heard you. It's surprising how we don't do that very often. Stage one is reflection, which is used in therapeutic professions. Deal I hear you say this stage two stages of being a great listener is a very important way of listening it's not appropriate all the time to be an active listener um because it's kind of like a sledgehammer to crack a nut in social conversations, for example, you know? If we were sitting in a pub or a coffee shop and I said what I heard you say, Stephen is this good and then validation says, "Okay, I understand that it makes sense that you feel like I totally understand why you're thinking." that's true, I don't agree with you, but I understand why you think that because then I'm thinking about your background and your path to this conversation and we've gone down different paths to this conversation and you're going to have different life experiences so validation is really important.

That's the empathy part of active listening and once I've reflected and validated, then we're at stage three, where I can contribute instead of invalidating, yeah, oh, no, no, that's nonsense for you. , why do you think you know? We do a lot to validate other people's positions in the world, and you can't sell to someone or persuade someone if you invalidate them as a human being. It's really important to validate to show that you understand where that person is coming from, even if you don't completely agree, then we can start to fix things, make sense, and move on.

I'm thinking about all the romantic conflicts I've had, but you've also taken me to a lot of client meetings where the client raises a concern or an issue um and in that moment, even if you don't agree, you know you have to show that you've accepted their concern and then used that acceptance, that place of empathy to move them to another place of thinking, but you also know obviously the most obvious scenario, people. What you think about is your partners when they're trying to resolve conflicts, you know, what's the biggest complaint in relationships? He or she never listens to me and that's not just about hearing the words, it's about validating the other person or invalidating the other.

There's a thing that's actually called stress-induced audio dysfunction s-i-a-d that can affect people when there's a noise that they're exposed to a lot and they don't like it and psychologically they start to erase it, so for example, my father in the In the last years of his life he was deaf to the frequency of my mother's voice and that is not uncommon in relationships in which one of the members has the habit of intimidating or scolding the other and simply Stop being able to hear it because it is a noise that they do not like it.

You know, it can happen to people with industrial noise or irritating noises. So it is very important not to invalidate someone as a habit and we can easily. you fall into that habit and it's so powerful in relationships to validate people. You know, one of the seven deadly sins that I talk about in that Ted Talk is negativity and that's a very strong habit that people can fall into, so you can audit how often. Do I say the word no or no or can't I do anything negative like that because if it's a habit that you fall into, it tends to invalidate other people a lot?

I can not do this. I do not see why. You'd think you couldn't be serious, you know? And that's not a very nice way to behave around people, even if you don't agree, even if they're being stupid. I can understand why you think that now. Would you like an alternative perspective? I give you a different way of looking at it that may be useful to you so you said you know that what you are doing is not useless, it is not stupid but maybe there is another way and that is respectful. I think everyone has the experience of invalidating. someone and they then repeat themselves and then you invalidate them again and then they repeat themselves yes that's called argumentation yes well I know it well because I think in my previous relationships it would have been funny because I think I was the problem it definitely was The one who wasn't willing to let them feel heard is the pleasure of listening, actually, listening is the heart of all good relationships for me and if you listen to someone, I mean, what did Scott Peck say, you can't really listen to it? another human being and do anything else at the same time and I absolutely agree with that because it's so rare in this world now we're so distracted um you know I'm a big fan of the Near Isle book um indestructible yeah because we're so prone to distract me now I'm listening to you now you're texting he's not listening he's doing something else so it's weird that we drop everything and do what you and I are doing right now, which is looking at each other's eyes you know when you look when you're listening I have an acronym for this um in the book in the courses and so on rasa Russia which is r-a-s-a and the r is receive and that means look at the person who is speaking The dance of the eyes in the West tends to be that the person speaking looks around like me now, you know, thinks about other things and looks back every now and then to see if the other person is still listening if you're with him.

Someone who talks and looks at you all the time can be a little intimidating. I mean, we're in a slightly unnatural situation, so you know we're face to face at a table, which is potentially confrontational, but... Do you know I'm really making an effort to communicate here so you know I'm looking at you? much more than I would if we were just on a street or, you know, chatting, so that's rasa, the r is receive which? It's paying attention to the body language facing the person, not with your feet pointed towards the door, which is always a good indication that someone doesn't really want to listen to you, they're not doing anything else at the same time, it's appreciated, they're small noises and head.

Movements and gestures, you know, raise your eyebrows. Smiles, oh really, that kind of thing that greases the conversation, the s is summarizing what the word is like that and I get really angry with the word, so it's actually been totally degraded in the modern world for some reason. It has become a habit for people to start every sentence with the word So, what is your name? So, I'm John, how are you John, because I just asked you because that means, therefore, no, you were John before and you're going to be John after. the word so I haven't seen people come up on Ted's stage and say so no, I don't know who you are, I don't know what you're going to say, there's no before, um, it's very degraded. but it's such a powerful word, so we've all agreed on this, now we can move on to that or in the long corridor of a conversation, so what I understood you just said is that this is like this, the old, repeat, reflect, etc., close doors behind. you're in the hallway so you can move forward and keep moving forward, so that's the S for rasa and the final a is asking questions at the beginning and then, you know, people often say to me, "I don't feel safe," people He doesn't listen to me.

For me, how can I relate to people when they talk? The answer is to ask questions, and if you're in unfamiliar or uncomfortable territory, you can ask bonding questions. That's really interesting. Stephen, you just said that. How could I? How would that relate to this thing that I know to be able to take the conversation home and start to feel like I can contribute something, so that's rasa and that really helps in a conversation to listen directly and make the conversation fruitful. for both sides, so yeah, one of the things you said reminded me of another issue that I think is really important when we talk about speaking, which is how to speak with authority.

I think about all the people in the boardrooms. and that may be a bit of a Junior in an organization and they are struggling to be heard because they lack the authority that a title will give them. How do you speak with authority? What advice can you give me to be a more authoritative speaker? um at work in life my relationships always well, first let's steal the situation where you're talking, you want to talk to someone who is a powerful figure or you consider them powerful um, I'm a big believer in agreements, contracts in informally. Stephen, do you have five minutes?

I have something that I really want you to listen to well and put you in a position where you can say yes or no, if you say no, okay, I won't say it now, when would I? It will be a good time, but I will tell you about a great experience I once had on a beach in India and this is one of the best sellers I have ever met. It was a seven-year-old boy and he approached me. I was sitting on the beach he came and said you want Coca-Cola and I said um you're trying to be British right now, no thank you very much, okay, whenever you want Coca-Cola, oh well, at four, at four o'clock, he was back. here your Coca-Cola, I love it, it was brilliant, so it taught me a lot about being authentic because I wasn't being, no, I don't want to buy you a Coca-Cola and also about perseverance and you know, asking for the right thing. questions and so on like that in the same way if I ask you if you have five minutes and you don't, I can park it and come back another time because it wouldn't be the right time if you don't have five minutes. okay, I can respect your time, but from your point of view, yes, okay, I have five minutes and you just committed to listening to me, so I have the right if I talk to you and you're out. something else, you know, responding to an email or something, Stephen, you said you had five minutes.

I understand that if you are busy, when would be a better time? So there's kind of an obligation for you to listen to me, so that's one thing that I think is a strategy that works really well if you're in a meeting and you don't feel like you're the loudest person.powerful, so again asking for permission from the meeting is a good thing, guys, I have something that I think will really contribute here, right? Now is a good time to tell them that it doesn't always work, but I think if they ask for it and people commit, then they have a contract and a communication channel that has been explicitly opened as one of the things you talked about is that kid on the beach with Coke offering you a can of Coke and how that violates your inhale piece of authenticity.

It also violates honesty, so my question is: is there any time when One should not be honest, well, I think honesty should be tempered with love, so the answer is that it is a filter that is inhalation L and It's absolutely fine. I think being dedicated to being ruthless and permanent, always with honesty, is quite dangerous. strategy in life because you would go around telling people that you look terrible today I really don't like you what you just said it was stupid you know it's not necessary to say those things to people it depends on what you want to achieve No I don't think it's dishonest to withhold Judgment and many of the things I just said are opinions and it is very important to distinguish between opinions and facts, they are not the same and are very often confused in the modern world, so opinions, that is what I think, what I believe, what I judge to be done.

It's Saturday actually we're not going to disagree about that We can disagree with my opinions and you know I often say I wish we lived in a society where maybe people would ask before giving their opinion. Would you like my opinion on this? No. I had such a good opinion, ready to go and you didn't. We want it, but we don't do that, we simply offer opinions and often confuse them with facts, which leads to a lot of banging on the table. I grew up in a family where there was this confusion, there was a lot of arguing and banging at the table because people had different opinions and I didn't accept that they could be challenged by talking about your parents talking about your mother no, my father was actually a my father was an enormously confident and very successful man in advertising.

Did you know he was known as Mr. Advertising? For a few years in the 1960s he was extremely confident and extremely articulate in that way, but Brook didn't disagree very easily, so disagreeing with him was quite difficult and that was certainly my experience growing up. . be ready with chapter, verse and references if you were going to challenge a point of view, how did that shape you? Because I think a lot about how my parents, you know, my mother sounded a little like what you described before. I yelled at my dad so much that I couldn't understand how he stopped reacting to the sound of yelling when he was young.

I remember he wanted them to get a divorce because I didn't like yelling for six hours. My dad didn't really respond to me, but Well, that has definitely shaped how I communicate now, but how did it shape you? Well, it's very similar. I mean, I think you know that my first response to conflict is to leave. It's actually the same strategy and I think probably a lot of calmer people than I have had the experience of conflict growing up, there are quite diverse conflicts and I think it's very important to harden yourself on that to a certain extent because conflict exists everywhere.

I'm not talking about physical conflicts, which, of course, we want to avoid. at all times, but um, a disagreement or someone getting mad at us or someone being upset, well, sometimes that's necessary in life and responding to them inappropriately can really damage relationships. I mean, I'm talking about four leeches that undermine communication and The fourth of them is fix, fix, it's not okay for someone to get upset around me, don't get angry, don't cry, don't express emotions, you know, so it's a kind of suffocation of everything that happens around me. I'll tell you a story about that she told me my art um when her little sister was going to be born with my grandparents there was great excitement they decorated the nursery uh the room was already made the day off arrived her parents went to the hospital and she was beside herself with excitement when she was about six years old they came back no baby ever said a word about all this because they didn't want to bother her and what she learned from that for the rest of her life was that you can't trust people people never tell you what's going on It is known that your people are not heterosexual.

You know that there were many bad lessons that she learned from that lack of communication. The child was stillborn. It was a tragedy. They were upset but they did not share it with their daughter because they did not want to bother her. That is being fixed and it can be enormously damaging in relationships to behave that way, obviously one wants to be sensitive, you know, you sit the child down, you explain briefly. ways perhaps starting with "you know the baby isn't coming" and then moving on to explain what happened as the child gets older. Jane and I had to survive having a baby who couldn't survive and it was deeply traumatic for us and me.

I'm very happy to say that with Holly we involved her every step of the way Holly was uh what six at that time five I don't remember, but we brought her, you know, when little Lily was still born, we brought her. she met Lily, we gave Lily a name, you know, we did everything we could and Holly still talks about Lily, she talks like she can communicate with her, she considers her a member of the family, so we didn't fall into that trap. to pretend nothing had happened and fix it, sometimes people need to be upset, you know, Holly was upset, we were upset and it's authentic to be angry, so I think being so resistant to upset is a pretty dangerous thing in life, it's funny because when you told that story I was engrossed, I was engrossed for various reasons that point exactly to that when you said I was engrossed and I've talked a lot about the actual delivery of a point and a story, but not much about what it takes to design. content in a way that can captivate someone, what advice would you give to someone who potentially knows that the presentation has an upcoming proposal? he's going to do a podcast about expressing your thoughts in a way that's fascinating as far as the content itself because I can, I can guess why he was engrossed, but hey, it's a story, yeah, a story we love stories. .

Storytelling is actually very powerful. I mean, what's the number one Ted Talk of all time? It's a talk by Sir Ken Robinson. Unfortunately now I miss him, but I see a wonderful man and in the center of that talk there is a small story that he tells because the thesis of the talk is that we are educating creativity in children, that is what his talk says and this tells story about a girl who is drawing at the end of class and normally she doesn't do it and the teacher goes to the back and says what are you drawing and the girl says I'm drawing a picture of God and the teacher says but no one knows what God looks like and the girl says they will do it in a minute it's a classic story, it takes 15 seconds to tell it, it makes me laugh every time, that's all your ted talk rolled into one beautiful charming story, storytelling is the best way to do it. really talk if you can think of a metaphor that matches what you are trying to communicate to people in a compelling story where maybe you know the classic elements of a story there is a protagonist there is an antagonist there are challenges there is a journey there is a destination there is help on the way from unexpected places obstacles to overcome you can do it in a very short space of time you can do it as a personal story like I did in my TED talk about my mother's negativity you know it's a true story you know she was in the hospital, I took a document and said oh look, it's October 1st and she said, I know, isn't it terrible?

And you know well that if someone is that negative, it's very difficult to be around them and that was a true story that I told, so it's almost like you can have a little niche of narration in your talk, you know, I'm going to tell you a story and everyone says, oh yeah, come on, so storytelling is a massive, enormously powerful way, there are books. In this, uh, if someone wants to speak in a captivating way, become a good Storyteller and that will really help a lot, but the other big part that I always say is understanding the listener that you're speaking to, I repeat, understanding the listener. who you are talking to.

We are speaking well because we all listen in a unique way, this is something, it is the most common mistake that I see in business in relationships, is that people think that everyone listens like me, they don't, our listening is unique, your listening is as unique as you, your iris, you. Fingerprints are your voiceprint and mine too, and they are different, so it is a big mistake to assume that other people will receive this message in the same way that I would, so it is a hugely valuable tool if you are talking to one or ten people. thousand it doesn't matter to say what the listening is I'm talking to what the listening is I'm talking who is this person what is their listening where did they come from or who are these 10,000 people because in a large room you have a Gestalt listening that changes over time You know I've given talks right after lunch in what they call the graveyard slot he's a Ted talker he can deal with that and they're all a little dizzy the blood has rushed to their guts they're a little tired they're not Very bright, you know, or there's the last bit of the day just before people leave, when everyone's desperate to go have a drink at the bar or something.

You know, there's different listening throughout the day and different listening from person to person, so it's not a fixed thing and it's important to be sensitive and actually, you know? What I have discovered is that all you have to do is ask what the listening is and you will become very good at detecting it. I don't know how it can be little body language signals, it can be pheromones, it can be intuition, whatever, you will do it if you pay attention and ask that question consciously, at least you are respecting the other person enough to say this.

The person is talking very slowly so I should probably slow down my pace a little bit or this is a very, very fast person so let's be Buzzy here or you know they might have cultural or political views or something so you need to be sensitive to If you're trying to accomplish something, point too about storytelling. I was fascinated by it because it reminded me of my time at the social network, we bought the social media company, we never had any outbound sales. team, our strategy was maybe four-fold, but the two most pertinent to what I'm talking about are personal branding and speaking on stage so that we can grow our business from nothing to tens and tens and tens of millions. in revenue, the agency business, the global business, 600.7 billion in revenue, never with an outbound sales team and the one thesis that I don't think people trying to scale an agency realize is that we just tell stories really great and the best.

The way I can prove this is that I remember my first talk when I started Social Chain when I was 21 and I was in London and I woke up on stage and I said that's exactly why you got kicked out of school, you're incapable of doing it. . I listen to anyone and you always think you know a better way. Don't call me or the family until you return to college and with that my mom hung up the phone. That's how I started all my talks for about four years. trying to sell you advertising on social media here and at the end of this presentation you would find out what happened to the minor mother's relationship, then I would be this heart and say and my mother and I have never had a better relationship and I You really know all the things we did as a business.

I truly believe he spoke 50 weeks a year. I went to every corner of the world to learn about all the brands, our biggest brands, like Coca-Cola, all came from hearing that exact talk. With respect to my mother, the conventional and normal thing is to provide information. I will give you as much information as I can. You can see it in every slideshow, in every presentation, but we all know from a human level the best part. of this conversation will be the stories, yes, of course, they will involve people and make them curious. Curiosity is absolutely essential to listening.

Now I talk about the four Cs of listening, which are, um, compassion for the other person, for the audience, whatever it is. it can be commitment because listening requires time and effort listening is work it is not just a capacity yes we have ears but in reality we have to leave things focused and so on Awareness that you are actually doing something now this is an action this is not something that happens deep down and curiosity and if you can engender those things in people, especially the curiosity that we get from stories, especially if you start a story and don't finish it, come on, Stephen, we want to know what happens. in the end, yeah, yeah, then you have the middle part where everyone goes.

I really want to know what happened at the end and then you give them the ending at the end to satisfy them, that's a brilliant way. to get people involved was able to hear this and actually that's funny because I was actually reflecting on what I told you, my company in San Francisco just raised a lot of money and I broke allthe rules that I just said, there are simply 10 slides of just information. I mean, it worked, but I think it's funny because I actually thought I didn't care if it worked. I would have liked to do it my way, yes, you know it well, also because then you are settling. the Rules that are there is where everyone does things that are a deck, you know, I mean, I hate that word deck anyway, but you know, here let me show you if you have a good deck, yeah, but there's something in the actual deck design that says a lot more about you than the information will ever say, yeah, and it's funny because this is actually what's going through my head while he was talking about the narrative.

He was thinking about how he should have structured it. I'm sorry for not listening, but you just inspired me. I, to go from this tangent in my head, was thinking how much I should have started that deck as a story and that would have been a lot more exciting, yeah, um, instead of just putting your logo on the front and then you know. you wonder about statistics and figures. I broke my own rule there and I'm a little disappointed in my own personal philosophy, which I consider the most important thing to not do that. It's a struggle for me too.

I mean, I'm writing. a book right now about sound and what I'm trying so hard to do is put human stories in it, you know, but I have a terrible memory and when I read great books by people, I mean, I read books by people who have written. amazing books on all kinds of different topics and what impresses me is that they say that on March 5, 1992 I had this conversation with this person who walked that way and did this and said this and I think, how do you remember it? with you, I mean, I have no idea what I was doing in 1992.

I don't remember my childhood, so you know, it's a pretty big problem if, like me, you were in a miasma of I mean, it's very good because I'm a great believer in being here now and living in the ordinary in the current moment living in this moment which is all the life we ​​have in this moment the future has not happened the past there is nothing we can do about any of them at this moment, so being here now is very important to me, but it has almost become an excuse for me to get everything. I also imagine, imagine how many I have the privilege of sitting here with the smartest people in the world. world that they are giving me all these incredible things, so you are tremendously wise, yes, you would believe it, but I sit here and say, oh my God, flag.

I'll write it down later and then we'll have an hour and a half and I'm just my, it's like I have this short term memory, yeah, what I turn to is I go, the best thing will stay with me because it will help me in such an emotional way. deep that I won't be. capable of forgetting, so maybe I'm just absorbing the best, well maybe and you also have the privilege of having it all recorded in high quality video and audio so you can watch it again. I don't always have time to see everything. of them, yes, but in the gym I try to make sure I listen to them.

What would life be like if we could remember everything we've done, all the conversations we've had, and learn from them? Wow, pretty scary, yeah. I would be much better as a human being, I also know that I tend to see life as a spiral staircase, so the important thing for me is to grow a little every day, that's the important thing, to learn something you know, even if it's how not. doing something so you know when I meet people who are obviously making a mistake or doing something wrong is fine, I learned not to do that doesn't work very well because you've made an effort to grow, but you've continually had the intention to do so. uh, I would say uh, in my nutrition more than anything else, I'm probably very lucky to live with Jane, who is a four-time world champion in martial arts and a health and fitness

expert

.

I train with her several times a week, so you know I'm a 64-year-old man who can easily touch his toes and, you know, my core strength and flexibility are incredible for someone my age, but I still I eat too much. I really enjoy the food and unfortunately it's not always the right food, I think it is again. You know, that's something that comes from our upbringing from our childhood, where food was a very important part of our family and it was a reward and it was, you know, my mother was also a very, very good cook, so there was always Too much food.

It was kind of a stalemate between me and my brother, who ate large portions, so, um, I became acclimated from a very young age to having large portions of not necessarily very healthy things. It's difficult, isn't it? Education and relationship with food that way, so kale is good, it's really good. I have to really learn some of those things and get away from habits that have been with me for 60 years or more. However, it's very emotional and that's what I never really appreciate, we think it's just a yes or no decision, but it's actually a deeply emotional thing.

All of these things are, yeah, deeply psychological, so it was actually funny. I was talking to my friends about this the other day. I said, I think you will because we're all trying to get in shape and we're working out together Etc um and one of my friends said, well, I'm going to go on a diet. I was like the problem with that. Isn't what you're doing there sustainable? Are you depriving yourself? You are actually sacrificing something you want to do. How do you do it? I said, I think the best way for us all to be healthier is to actually go see a therapist, you know what you just said, it absolutely touches me because Jane always tells me that a lot of times clients come in and it's more of a healing session. therapy than a physical exercise because they talk while they do it. things and it's talking that helps them more than maybe exercise or at least as much, so you know, I understand that and adjusting the whole psyche to see things that were perceived as treats in childhood as not being treats and the things that were perceived as punishments or um, you know, very negatively in charge of your greeting, yeah, exercise, go for a run, do something, you know, these things are really good for us and it's really important to do them, it's funny because there are a sound associated with food, yes. the sense of just from a psychological or emotional perspective, you know, candy, it always sounds like that, well, the sweet rapper crinkles for a reason, oh yeah, and the crunchy, crunchy packages are crunchy for a reason, huh, because yeah you had soggy crunchy packets.

You know, rubber containers, you wouldn't think the chips were going to be fresh or that delicious, so the sound of the packaging certainly has a big effect on the way we perceive the flavor. I mean, sound and taste are very associated. I've never heard of broccoli. he said enthusiastically, but I've heard McDonald's and candy, yes, and Coca-Cola, you know, yes, but also from a marketing and branding perspective, you know. Brands like Coca-Cola spend a lot of their time trying to associate even a bottle, so sound has been used in advertising for many years in a very profitable way.

I think the first sound was Wheaties back in 1926 and it was a four-part barber quartet that had a little song. Have you tried Wheaties and it revolutionized Wheaties sales tremendously? and since then it's been huge and mouth-watering, just a few years ago I got hooked on the term audio branding and then I became really obsessed with it because obviously running a podcast, people listen to our podcast every week. in their ears there are certain sounds that they are familiar with there are even certain sayings at the beginning of the podcast where I say I hope no one is listening to you I'll keep it to yourself you've gotten used to um what is it to have a good audio brand and how It works, because there are several CEOs and brand owners who are listening to this and have never considered the fact that they have an audio brand, plus, how do you do that?

It's important, the first thing to say is that every company, every organization and every brand is already making noise because I've had many conversations with CMOs or CMOs where I said, "You know how powerful this is." and they said "oh, maybe we should start doing something." sound you already are just not designed is accidental it could be the sound of your delivery trucks pissing off people at four in the morning it could be the sound of your music on hold or your automated call handling system press one to press two for that, you know nine levels later, you're still hearing those types of sounds that can be really damaging and can lose a business incredible amounts of money.

I mean, how many times have we hit the phone in frustration because one of those? systems designed by a technical person not a marketing person which doesn't mean older people hate them and we have an aging demographic in all western countries so they are becoming less and less popular so it seems like They can be enormously harmful. the sound of your corporate reception the number of corporate receptions I have walked into where there was a TV on the wall with the news on and I remember when 9/11 happened I walked into the mechanics reception and in London they had big screen TVs with skyscrapers on fire.

How do you expect to have a good meeting when you inflict that kind of thing on people? I guess it's supposed to say we're up to date and we're up to date and we're you. I know in tune with world events, but the news is generally bad news. I think it's thoughtless. Yes, someone just said. Put something there. If you have a screen at the reception, they are playing something about your company that is informative and attracts people. You don't know the news. Especially not business news that may have your competitors' ads showing on your own front desk, so those kinds of sounds I think are very stupid.

There's a lot of stupidity about sound that we design for the eyes to a large extent and it's not that often that companies think about designing. With your ears you very often have a company that spends huge amounts of money on images, whether it's a retailer you know like a supermarket, and doesn't think about the awful sound of beeping checkouts and colliding carts and horrible music. canned sound that plays out of tiny little speakers that were never designed to play music and so on, you know the cacophony that you and I have to go through so much of our time in life, which is a result of people not designing what brands They do well, they sound good, yes, generally good.

I think airlines, airplane manufacturers, and automakers are getting very good at designing the sonic experience of using the airplane. I mean, there is an incredible noise in the fuselage of a plane traveling at 500 miles per hour and inside I didn't hear it, so the design is very good and the same goes for cars nowadays, most of them sound very good , although there is one thing with electric cars: we have electric cars at low speed, they are very quiet and it can be dangerous. you need a noise to warn people that the car is coming and you know a lot of times they make a nice chord or something as they move through brands that have cool and powerful Sonic logos, there are a lot of those you think. from Intel, for example, below, which is something you know, if I tell people, can you sing the intol logo? a lot of people can, if I tell you, can you draw the Intel logo?

No, it's not really square, is it? Designed by a guy named Walter, it's worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Intel and the value of the brand and they have banks of lawyers who approve any small change because it's a trademark to them and it's really important, that's consistency. because we've heard it a lot, yeah, is there anything more than consistency for people thinking about your sound signature and your content in your podcast in your brand videos? Whatever it is, is there anything else besides making sure people hear it? a lot, yeah, fine, if you're going to listen to it a lot, it doesn't have to be irritating either and there have been some pretty irritating Sonic logos, but I mean, if you think back, we talked a moment ago about the history of advertising. and the sound through advertising, I remember it from my childhood, so this is aimed at older listeners, uh, things like liquid fairy jingle, you know, four hands washing dishes, that kind of thing that They were from 1965 or something and I still remember them now.

There are things that can be hugely iconic and powerful, since Tony the Tiger, those kinds of things are great and last for years and years and years. There have been at least five Tonys saying that it has lasted so long that they have kindly all died and been replaced. Is there any emotion in even a jingle that we talked about earlier? How does storytelling implant it in your brain in a way that information can't? It's really important because sound effects come in four forms and this is a conversation that's really interesting to me. I mean, it was my first Ted Talk, it's not the most watched of the TED Talks and it's something that's the reaction I get from people.

This is often the same, well, thatIt's absolutely obvious, but I never thought about it. I have never been aware of it. You know, we are very, very ocular in the Western world in particular and we are very oriented around the eyes. There are a lot of design awards in the world they are all for how things look, there are no design awards for how things sound, it's strange, architects care about how things look very often and design things which sound horrible and are not fit for purpose because they look. Great and that's all they care about, so it's very important to become sensitive.

Sound changes your body physically, so, for example, I could pick up your heartbeat if you go, if I drop you off at a nightclub with loud dance music at 140 beats per minute of your heart rate. will immediately increase or if there's a sudden sound, you got me, yeah, so your heart rate just jumped because you got a shot of cortisol, your fight and flight hormone and norepinephrine, and that prepares you for fight or flight, so your heart rate , your breathing, your hormonal secretions. your brain waves all change with sound that's the first way sound changes your feelings think about music is the most obvious example but for me you know my favorite sound in the world is the sound of rain on leaves outside. from the window Summer rain on the leaves outside the window, well that's enormously calming for me, other people, it might be a gentle surf or something, so the sound can affect our feelings.

Birdsong makes people feel safe because birds have been here much longer than us and we have been learning for hundreds of thousands of years, so when birds are tweeting happily, things are safe, we are fine. if they suddenly stop, you have to worry because the birds stop it, there is a big predator like a lion, okay, then the Third Way sound effects are how good. you can think cognitively you know we're all completely used to could you be calm? I'm trying to think here, especially people's conversations, the most damaging sound of all, it's really hard to think about, which is why we are a third as productive in open plan offices, as we are in quiet workspaces, a third if we are trying to work with knowledge, you know, manipulating words or numbers in our head and writing, for example, so I have friends at the BBC, you know, the BBC has destroyed all that. building on Portland Place and now it has a basement where everyone sits and writes with a four-story space above them and it drives them crazy if you're a journalist trying to write a story and you run into a deadline and you have people around you speaking, it's very difficult to concentrate, so in terms of cognition, how well we can think is affected by the noise around us or the sound around us, and ultimately sound changes our behavior, changes what you do and what you do. what I do.

In fact, every day there is a brilliant study that was done a few years ago by some academics. They had a supermarket with two ends of the gondola, French wine, one German wine and the other, visually identical and all they did was alternate the music so that the first day you had some French or accordion music, the second day there was a some German referee music and they continued to do so for an extended period of time in the French music days. French wine outperformed German wine five bottles to one, which may not be surprising. It sells more in the world, so okay, we might expect that, but in the days of German music, German wine outsold French wine three bottles to one, now that's a massive change in behavior and It's not like people come in and say ah, German music, so. bought a bottle of German wine, they were not even aware of the music, most of the people surveyed had not realized it, so this is an unconscious response to a sound situation, that is the amount of sound that changes our entire behavior time and So part of my message, part of my drive and the difference I want to make in the world is to get people to listen consciously so that we begin to become aware of the ways that sound is changing our bodies, our emotions , our thinking and our behavior so that we can begin to take responsibility for the sound we consume and possibly even more importantly, responsibility for the sound we make with our voice and, you know, also inflict sound on other people, possibly in ways cruel, which very often also happens to everyone who listens. this podcast you know and I even imagine that the title that will work best when we do our ab tests will be about how to be a great speaker, we've talked about why that's why we all want to be heard more, it gives us an idea. of importance helps us feel valued, what makes us part of the tribe and all these things, but you, as we said at the beginning of this conversation, are really leading a crusade to get people to listen more, why should that be title? from the podcast why it is potentially even more important to the world and if we all started listening a little more why the world would be a better place personally and globally because I believe that with conscious listening the result is always understanding and that is what We need understanding in the world.

The phrase conflict means that people can coexist alongside people they disagree with and we have seen that this is not happening in the polarization of politics, for example in the United States, where it becomes a hated topic. What happens is that someone doesn't agree with your views, you know, we're seeing such polarization in so many countries now and that has to do with being right and not listening to other people, not trying to learn anything, but being every more rooted. in a set of opinions that you know can be useful to you, but is that true?

Is that universally true? Would you throw out some kind of antithesis to that? Any type of contravision. Any competitive solution for the world. How can you grow if you are stagnant? in a bunker and you are listening through a small crack of an ingrained listening position that I am writing, everyone else is certainly wrong on this issue, so for me the passion of listening is about coexisting with people you don't I agree. They may not like it, but they have a right to be here and they have a reason. There's usually a good reason for what people often think or do and you know, I'm not saying to feel sorry for the mass murderer and so on, necessarily, you know.

Possibly there will be reasons for that too, we certainly need to understand them to prevent this from happening again, so listening to even people like that, I think there are things to learn, i.e. how could you become like this and why would you behave like that? So if we just dismiss people that we don't approve of or people that we don't like, then we don't learn much, so I think listening is, you know? I said this. I did a tedx talk in Athens, the birthplace of democracy and I went up on stage and said listening is the sound of democracy because without it it is very difficult if I am the minority, it is very difficult to accept the opinion of the majority, isn't it?

They are all wrong and I am going to fight well. that's just a recipe for anarchy conflict warfare, as we've seen, whereas if I can say it's okay, I can understand why you all think I'm going to try to change your mind, but you know I'm not depersonalizing you. I understand that you are human beings, you have a different vision than me and I can see why you came to that vision. So I can grow, you can grow, we can possibly come to some kind of synthesis, think a lot about modern listening and the tools we have to listen to each other, one of them is social media, yes, one of the things that is so tempting to do for all of us and that I abstained from about two years ago.

I made a very conscious decision to do this, but I used to just unfollow people I didn't like what they said, so I wouldn't follow Trump, for example, or Nigel Farage, or people I thought I they were idiots who had ulterior motives, whatever, I just unfollowed them and the problem with that approach is that when I saw other Echo Chambers popping up online, I wasn't making progress in any way. As you said, I was increasing the size of my information, my exposure, therefore my capacity. having empathy or understanding for people who didn't think like me, so I started following people who were like me and who made me feel uncomfortable, is the best way to describe it, yeah, well, uncomfortable is a call for reevaluation, it is not.

Yes, and that's very important, but I think social media has a lot to answer for in the way that people have abused it with trolling and particularly shaming. There's a brilliant talk by John Ronson, who has become a friend of mine. over the years on social media embarrassing themselves and if anyone hasn't seen it I recommend you watch it because it's really chilling to tell how a mob can take someone's job for what was originally a pretty innocent post so now we see This, you know, we see that insults are unacceptable words tagged over people who find it difficult to defend themselves, whether we're talking about racists or homophobes, you know, the moment that person is tagged with that thing.

It is very difficult to remove the stain, isn't it? And then a crowd appears and starts punishing the person without even understanding what caused this in the first place, so I think we need to be very careful with the form. These things are used and without listening to the person and what their point of view really is, it's very easy to fall into a sort of knee-jerk Lynch Mob mentality where we're being right, we're back to that again, aren't we? . that and that person is wrong and should be punished, shamed, canceled or whatever, so I think listening is really important and like you tell people who make us uncomfortable, that's a warning sign that maybe We may need to reevaluate or analyze.

Or what is happening here? Why does this make me uncomfortable? Does it actually go against my views or my values ​​or does it go against my social conditioning? Would my friends disapprove of me if I thought that kind of thing I would love to experience? In a world where everyone, including me, is much better at listening and also accepting ideas that made us uncomfortable, that's partly what I think we're trying to do here is have conversations to see ideas that collide and that help make moving forward into the world um and I just started thinking about that the other day when we had a guest named Africa Brook, that maybe that's ultimately the net benefit of this is just fearless conversations in a medium where no one is going to be edited or or cut and manipulated, that will hopefully move the conversation forward and I'm not right and my guests are just opinions sometimes.

We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the previous guest asks a question for the next guest they write to. It's in the book Jack can see it. I can't see it so far, so give me a second to read it. They don't know who they are writing it for and they will ask you to do the same too. I've been really dreading this moment, why is it so funny that everyone gets really nervous now, yeah, and I'll just say that you know everyone takes a long time to answer, but they also take even longer to think about a question. write well, okay, this person wrote, look, they really gave themselves away, but I have made my living doing sports.

I have presented, I have acted and I have sung songs, but I would still love to do one more thing with my life. What is your most thing? I think for me, I've resisted doing a lot of things that I know intellectually are really good for me, so I can probably crystallize that in Scotland, where I live, we don't have a thing called Monroe, these are a set of peaks. I think they are over 3000 feet or something like that. I don't remember how big they are, but they are considerable and the other day I saw an amazing story about an 83 year old man. man, I think he just finished climbing all the monroes, there are a lot of monroes, you're talking about over a hundred and he just completed that, I mean, these are serious problems, you know, and at his age he just completed it.

It was a wonderful image of all his friends with canes forming a kind of corridor so that he could walk at the end of it. I would love to do at least one Monroe a year as a hike Jen and I just started. Seriously walking where we live in Orkney and we did the Eight Mile Walk the other day and the next day I was practically crippled. I couldn't move, so I'd love to get to the point where my body gets used to that kind of thing. It's so beautiful to be outdoors, to be in a beautiful landscape, to exercise my body that way, to lose weight, to be in shape.

I mean, all of this is nothing but good and taking to do it. meeting Monroe, that would be a serious challenge for me, so one a year for the rest of my life would befantastic, amazing and I'll find out if that happens so Jane and I will keep in touch um and maybe I'll come do a couple of monroes with you because I'm getting more and more interested in hiking we'd love it lately so invite me if you end up doing it, but definitely thank you very much for your time today. Thank you Stephen, you have given me so much through your content and the videos and especially the TED talks you have given me.

It's one of those conversations we've had today, but also watching your videos where I start to reevaluate everything. As I describe it as the thoughtless thing I've done with the sound, I just haven't thought about it enough and through this conversation I even thought about our little jingle at the beginning of Diary of a CEO that we've always had since episode one and, to be honest I've never really thought about it, it's just been there and it's that kind of reevaluation because I completely agree with everything you've said about the importance of sound, but if I agree, why not?

My actions and my why aren't as high a priority in the way I think and design the things I create, so yeah, and also everything you've said about conflict resolution and relationships and the importance of that sound. . There's such an important conversation that I hope we can continue long after this podcast, but I just wanted to thank you for your time today, thanks for listening, yeah, that's a lovely way to end, thanks for talking and thanks for listening it means a lot to me thank you , thanks Stephen. I had a few words to say about one of my sponsors on this podcast.

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