The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 497: Julian Treasure - How To Speak So That People Will Want To Listen

Episode Date: October 30, 2022

Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of Mindful Monday. Receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right... Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12    https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12 Julian Treasure is a sound and communication expert. His TED Talk, "How to speak so that people want to listen" is in the top 10 TED talks of all time and collectively, his 5 TED talks have been listened to more than 100 million times! He is also the best-selling author of How to be Heard and Sound Business. Notes: "I was taught this exercise many years ago by a wise old friend named Charlie. I was bemoaning someone being in my way and Charlie put his hand on my arm. "You know, resentment is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die," he said. When we're unconsciously in the habit of judging and blaming others, it can have a huge impact on our well-being." You can't judge and love at the same time. Being judgemental is the opposite of being curious. "Being judgemental comes from ego and from darkness in the soul." Julian's values: Write them down. Be clear. They help you make decisions... Faith - A decision that all will be well Love - Wish people well Acceptance - Go with the flow Gratitude - Be focused on the half-full bit of the glass There are 4 foundations that we can stand on if we want our speech to be powerful and make change in the world HAIL - To greet or acclaim enthusiastically H - Honesty - Be clear and straight A - Authenticity - Be yourself I - Integrity - Do what you say. Be your word. L - Love - Wish them well. "If you're really wishing someone well, it's hard to judge them at the same time." 7 deadly sins of speaking Gossip Judging Negativity Complaining Excuses Exaggeration Dogmatism Listening is a skill. Hearing is a capability. Listening is making meaning from sound. You can practice it and master it. As leaders, we need to continue working on this skill to ensure the people we're leading know they are heard and seen. We all can picture that bad boss that looked at their phone while we talked to them. Let's not be that person. Listening is making meaning from sound...

Hey, it's Ryan. Quick announcement. As the Learning Leader Show continues to grow, I would like to involve you even more than I already do. I'd like you to become part of future episodes. We're going to record more and grow along with all of you. And there's a couple ways we can do this. One, if you'd like to hear your voice, your questions on this podcast, The Learning Leader Show, which is my preference, then you can send a voice recording

with your question to Ryan at LearningLeader.com. And if you're perhaps a bit more shy and you'd prefer to write your question and have it read by me, you can send an email to Ryan at LearningLeader.com. This way, The show will become more interactive. We will add in more of this Q&A that I think will ultimately add more value to your life.

That's my intention. That's my goal. So send a voice recording to Ryan at learningleader.com or an email with your question to Ryan at learningleader.com. And we'll do our best to make this more interactive, more engaging, and more useful for all of you. All right. Here we go. Welcome to The Learning Leader Show, presented. by Insight Global.

I am your host, Ryan Hawke. Thank you so much for being here. Text, Hawk to 666866 to become part of Mindful Monday. You, along with tens of thousands of other learning leaders from all over the world, will receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right. You'll also receive details about how my book The Pursuit of Excellence, will help you become a more effective leader. Text, Hawk to 66866.

Now, on tonight's featured leader. A great one. Julian Treasure is a sound and communication expert. His TED Talk, How to Speak, so that people want to listen, is in the top 10 TED Talks of all time. And collectively, his five TED Talks have been listened to more than 100.

million times. He's also the best-selling author of How to Be Heard and Sound Business. During this conversation, we cover the five keys to becoming a better listener, then the four foundational elements of a powerful speaker. And then Julian shares exercises for us to be less judgmental. This one is so good. We packed a lot into it. We may even need to do. do a round two. I think you're going to love it. It's Julian Treasure. Julian, it's so great to have you here on the Learning Leaders Show. Welcome. Well, thank you for having me, Ryan. Delighted to be here. So I was reading a story that you'd written, and this is about an exercise that you learned many years ago from a wise old friend named Charlie. I love that name, by the way, my daughter's

name of Charlie. And you said, you were bemoaning someone being in your way, and Charlie, he puts his hand on your arm and he says, you know, resentment is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die, he said, when we're unconsciously in the habit of judging and blaming others, it can have a huge impact on our well-being. To start, I love for you to unpack that idea of being judgmental and why we shouldn't be. Well, it's one of the seven deadly sins of communication that I talked about in my TED talk about speaking actually, but it applies just as much to listening. I don't think you can judge and love at the same time.

I think it's kind of a one-way street. And judging is part of a larger issue, which I think is becoming more and more of a problem in the world, which is the tendency for people to be right, to need to be right. and the easiest way to be right is to make somebody else wrong judge them condemn them and criticize them so every time we we criticize or pan somebody else and you can see this in the media the whole time i mean this you know this is terrible somebody's to blame somebody needs to be punished for this

this is outrageous and all of that kind of um self-aggrandizing sitting on my high horse and judging other people makes me feel higher than them So it's kind of an ego thing, which is understandable in a tough world where we're, you know, very often it's dog eat dog or our egos are getting squashed by the feeling of insignificance or lack of purpose or whatever it may be or just the overwhelm of so many things to do and so much input and we lose ourselves a little bit and hang on to that thing of being right. Now, judging that's not very nice to be around.

You know, the example I think I gave in the TED talk is the parent whose child comes home and says, I got 95% in the test and the parents says, what happened to the O'5? You know, nothing is ever good enough when you're that condemnatory. And it's uncomfortable for people to be around that. So it compromises your communication skills. it's what I call a hole in the bucket. It loses power in your communication because people feel automatically defensive or angry even, upset.

They will put barriers up. They'll ultimately try not to be around you if that's what you're doing. So it's not the greatest thing to do. And internally, spiritually, if you like, it's a darkness in the soul. you know that feeling of anger of you know the boiling inside that's not being expressed when you just look daggers at somebody who stepped in front of you that isn't good for you so the exercise charlie good old charlie i haven't seen him for very very many years he lives in america now um but the exercise that charlie gave me was a very simple one and i do commend it to anybody listening to this as a kind of, it's almost a detox for the soul in a way. And I'm not saying this is necessarily going to make you a great leader or anything like this,

but I think it'll make you a happier human being. And, you know, who knows, that may help to be a good leader, is to think the words, I wouldn't advise saying them out loud, but think the words, bless you as you see people. Or if you don't want to think that, I mean, I'm not saying this religiously. It's not about a particular faith. Can be if you like, of course. Or you can just think, I wish you well.

That's all it's about. And if you get into that practice, like any practice, I think it was Aristotle who said, excellence is about action. So it's, sorry, excellence is about what we do. So it's not an action, it's a habit. So this is a habit that you can easily get into if you do it for a few days.

What you will find, or at least what I found in doing it is that as I walked around a big city encountering people left right and center, I felt like I was walking on air because I was thinking nice things. I was thinking, bless you, bless you, bless you. I mean, not all the time because I was thinking about other things too, but you know, if I encountered people, and little magical things happen when you're doing that,

which are, for example, you meet somebody's eye and you might smile at each other morning. As opposed to you meet somebody's eye and you were just thinking the darkest thoughts about this idiot person or whatever it is that you're being critical about. In which case you meet their eye and immediately shiftedly look away because, you know, the eyes at the window to the soul. So maybe they could tell what you were thinking. So it's a very positive way to operate internally makes one happier and forges better connections with other people. And also really opens that street up for being kind. Because bless you is a form of love.

You know, well-wishing is the L of my little acronym for powerful speaking. Hail, the L stands for love. And by that, I mean well-wishing. I want to dig more into your TED talk that has more than 51 million views. how to speak so that people want to listen. And you mentioned the seven deadly sins, which we'll dig into as well as the four foundations, the acronym Hale.

And one of those deadly sins we've already covered is judging, and probably negativity too. Gossip is the first deadly sin of speaking. And this is basically how to, this part of the speech the TED Talk was on how to get people to not want to talk. to you and I this one's important to me especially in our family because I've written about this in both my books in fact of this idea of spreading positive

gossip meaning speak kindly behind others backs as opposed to what most of us do and we're all guilty at times you know we try not to be which is speaking negatively can you share more about why gossip was number one on the seven deadly sins of speaking. Yeah, I've encountered leaders in organizations who indulge in this. It's kind of politicking to a degree. And I've been in organizations which have been massively political like that. They're not nice places to work where everybody's backstabbing.

Everybody's making snarred comments the moment somebody leaves a room. It's, God, did you hear all that kind of thing? It's kind of like a cancer that goes through an organization. and it is not a happy place to work if everybody's operating at that level. You're right. Gossip, my definition of gossip, is speaking ill of somebody who's not present. So saying a nice thing about somebody who's not present, I don't even define this as gossip.

I think that's just speaking kindly of somebody. I think, let's be clear, that gossip is inintentioned. Very often it's embroidered and not true. Very often it's, you know, the old multiple hands that something's been through and it's been slightly exaggerated each time and it becomes something completely different from what actually happened at the first place. And very often it comes from somebody making an assumption in the first place about what happened or what somebody meant. So it very largely gossip is off the mark. It's harmful. it may even be in your lovely country, you know, litigious in the sense of, you know,

it could give rise to a suit against you because it's untrue and it's libelous or slanderous, I think, if you're speaking, isn't it? I can never remember the difference. So on every level, really, it's not a great thing to do. And again, focusing inward, focusing on one's own intentions, not just the effect. one is having in an organization by, you know, making those unpleasant waves, it causes one to be less seriously listened to because we know that gossip is often untrue. So it brings into doubt the validity, the authority of the person speaking, if they're continually passing on stuff that's not validated, that's not referenced,

checked, you know, are they a serious person to listen to? Probably not. Why do we do this so much? Well, it is, again, human nature and it's about being right very often. So, you know, you're saying something nasty about somebody else and I'm not that, so I'm elevating myself again. Looking good is the other big human failing that I reference a great deal. And those two things, looking good and being right are behind a great deal of communication which is unhelpful. So you know if I know something then my friends might think I am wiser or in some way you know more important because I'm giving this nugget of information they didn't know. So it's partly looking good, it's partly being right, it's partly, you know, wanting to be

at the source, wanting to be important, I suppose. I did an exercise on a course I did years and years ago of abstaining from all gossip for a week, which was very challenging because that means you've got to switch off the TV, the radio, the newspapers, the magazines, walk away from your friends sometimes. I mean, it does become very challenging. It is all around us, and it's not an easy thing to withdraw from it. But certainly we, as individuals, as conscious human beings, we can abstain from promoting it. You know, you don't have to hold your hands over your ears and go into a fit if somebody's doing it around you. You can make an excuse and leave or you can just patiently wait until it's finished. As long as you're not doing it yourself.

I mean, that's what we can control. We can't control other people. I want to get to those in a second, but I can't help. this right now, you come across as having this really authentic security in one self is, I guess, the way I would put it, meaning this kind of, and I think we, if you call that self, actualize, comfort in your own skin, maybe all those things. Whenever I come across somebody like that, which is pretty rare, even on the show. I have to ask, like, what are the steps

or what have you consciously done to at least seem to me to be a person who can authentically be very comfortable on your own skin? Well, it's a long story, and I'm 64 years old, so I've lived through a lot of stuff in my life. I've made mistakes. I've had tragedies. I have had points in my life where I've been pretty much broken.

The point of the whole thing, I think, is to grow a little every day. You know, at the end of the day, you say, well, how's the day being? What have I done wrong? Sorry to whoever I've, you know, harmed or whatever it might be, if that's appropriate or simply learn and don't do that next time. And what's gone right? in which case gratitude would be appropriate.

So to me, it's a spiral staircase. You know, we go around every day is a day. Every year is a year. Things changed. Other things don't change. But, you know, if you're going round and round, it's not on the spot.

It's going up every time. That's the point. The intention is to grow a little bit every day by learning something every day. And that's what I set my sights on. So, you know, I've had a lot of fortune in my life. I had a good upbringing. I had a good education.

I've had the fortune to be involved in and run a couple of successful businesses. And, you know, that's a lot me and a lot and luck. But I guess the values that I finally have arrived at, well, not finally now, I mean years ago, I ended up writing them down. And I do recommend for any leader, or indeed for any human being, really, I think it's a great practice

to review and write down your values. Many people haven't done that, you know. And it's amazing how we go through life without that moral compass, without a direction, without knowing, is it this way or is it this way? If you haven't got your values clear, then it's very difficult to make those choices

and you're kind of busking it a lot. So when you're writing down values, I mean, you don't want to have 25 of them because it's hard to remember. I've got four. The most I could possibly remember probably would be six. And I have a terrible memory, so I tend to use acronyms,

as you will have spotted if you've seen my TED talks. So my values spell the word flag, which is easy to remember. And they are faith, love, acceptance, and gratitude. Faith in the sense that I have a conviction as a decision, right? This is a decision that all will be well. So again, I'm not talking necessarily, it's not a religious faith for me. This is simply about the belief that all will be well. Now, beliefs are choices. So, you know, when I get to wherever it is, it might not be well. It might be a complete disaster.

but I've had a nicer journey than I would have had to the complete disaster if every step of the way I'd been going, oh, it's going to be a nightmare, it's going to be a disaster, it's awful. So there's no upside to that. That's a miserable journey and a miserable end. And doing it my way, if I have a miserable end, at least I've had a nice journey, which is better. So that's the way I've always rationalised this. And I think for entrepreneurs, actually, this is a really important point.

because to me, entrepreneurs are the people who will take that leap in the faith that they will get to the other side or will be well, whereas everybody else is standing around going, you know what, you do that, I'll just wait and see, and they're not the people who end up with the success. Now, you know, plenty of entrepreneurs don't make it to the other side, as we know. Many, many businesses fail in the first year or don't even get started. but making that leap that has to come from the faith that you will succeed as faith that's a choice

so it's love i've talked about love is is wishing people well acceptance is simply about going with the flow to me you know i i wouldn't go to the point of you know um thinking this is some sort of universe giving it all to me on a plate type scenario but i do tend to um take things as they come, you know, that's happened for a reason, and I'll go with that. Not everything, you know, bad things I would resist very much, but, you know, where somebody out of the blue gets in touch with me and we have a conversation many times in my life, that kind of synchronicity or happenstance has turned into something very, very important. So acceptance is, to me, going with the flow and then gratitude.

absolutely crucial, remembering to be focused on the half full bit of the glass, not a half empty bit, because otherwise one gets into bitterness and the R words that I don't believe in, resentment you already covered, and the other one is regret. Thank you for sharing that. One of the other deadly sins, this is seven real quick, gossip, judging negativity, complaining excuses, exaggeration. dogmatism. I want to focus on that last one. The confuse because this seems to be, I don't know how it is in your country, but it seems to be happening a lot here. The confusion of facts with opinions when someone bombard you with their opinions as if they are true is this last

one that I'd love for you to expand on. And as leaders, I mean, these seven, we have to make sure they're not a part of our daily being. And I think this last one comes up a lot. So can you share more about this and how to make sure we don't become this person? Well, I think it's part of being an aware human being to be able to differentiate between opinions and facts. You know, today is Tuesday. That's a fact for me right here, right now as we record this. Opinions are completely different things. And it's so tempting to get sucked into one's opinions being facts. Now, some leaders can get away with that. You know, Steve Jobs, for example, I mean, I used to do work for Apple when I was running a magazine publishing company. We produced Apple's magazine in

Europe for a couple of years when Steve Jobs wasn't there. He came back to Apple, cancelled the magazine. He said, I don't need to find out what my customers want. I know. Well, he was right. And so, you know, as a genius, well, you know, perhaps you can get away with it, but for every Steve Jobs, there are dozens of people that you really don't enjoy working for who have strong opinions about stuff which turn out not to be correct, which turn out to be bad forecasts or based on bias or prejudice or whatever it may be. So, if we can discern, differentiate between those two things, then I think it becomes an awful lot easier to be wrong, to make mistakes. And those are really important things in any business,

allowing people to make mistakes. I'm not talking about repeatedly making the same mistake. But, you know, there are legion stories about, well, what is it? Post-it notes. You know, somebody who's trying to make a strong glue and they didn't succeed and they ended up with a post-it note and then somebody said, hey, that could be useful. So mistakes can be amazingly productive things in an organisation and letting people make mistakes, as long as they're kind of pointing in the right direction, trying to innovate, trying to improve, that's how you move forward. And that is part of innovation to me. So having entrenched opinions is like the opposite of being flexible learning growing and taking on board what's happening around you the world i mean it's a truism

it's not even interesting to say the world is changing faster than ever before and my goodness you know if you're stuck in entrenched opinions you'll be the next kodak or whatever it might be you know we make we make slide rules and everybody's always going to need slide rules that didn't go down too well did it so Yeah, I think it's really important. I mean, not to be blown around by the wind, not to be influenced by, you know, hordes of consultants that you bring in to tell you what's going to happen and so forth. Yes, you need passion. Yes, you need a vision. But you need the flexibility to alter the vision if things turn out to be different from what you thought.

And as long as you know, this is what I think. This is a construct. This is a theory. It's a hypothesis. they're new into more of a scientific way of doing business. I mean, scientists are not wedded to hypotheses. People always think they are, but they're not. They love it if the facts, if the evidence comes along and disproves this hypothesis

because it means they can now try another one. They're all just hypotheses and opinions. They're just opinions. When the phrase speak your truth or I'm just speaking my truth and then the next sentence or two or paragraph is an opinion stated as a fact, what do you think about that? Well, sharing what you believe is wonderful. I think being honest, I mean, that's the H of Hale. Being honest about what you believe and what you stand for. Fantastic. Being clear that it's an opinion. double fantastic. You know, I think I said in that TED talk,

if I didn't, I said on stage when I'm talking about this, you know, wouldn't it be a wonderful world if we actually asked people's permission before giving opinions? Would you like my opinion on that? No. Or this is what I think, what I believe as of today.

Like my one issue with my truth and then an opinion, but I am supposed to accept it as a fact. And if I don't, that I'm the idiot, which I struggle to have conversations with people like that where their truth is just the fact. And that's that that's not right. That's not true. You know what I mean? So there is like the truth and I agree. But like my truth is a is kind of an odd, an odd thing to say if you're about to state an opinion as a fact. Yeah, indeed. And whatever your political beliefs,

Barack Obama said a great thing, which was, I will listen to you, especially if we disagree. Love that. Now, how many of us do that? Well, it's Lincoln too, right? Abraham Lincoln said, I don't like that man. I must get to know him more. Yeah. You know, and I think that's in the exact same line of, hmm, I wonder what it is. I need to investigate more. Now, that's the opposite, isn't it, of what we do on the internet, where we go out and get affirmation. There you are. I knew I was right thousands of people agree with me well yeah but millions don't and you're not checking with them you're just sitting with the little silo of people who absolutely agree with what you believe in that doesn't make it right yeah yeah i i'm with you i think it is it's so beneficial

to have if you can formulate this board of advisors where you know you're not necessarily aligned like you're you're aligned from an integrity perspective and honesty right but as far as like oh he views the world differently than me i know we differ there i want to have a conversation versus versus nigh i only can hang with the people who we are we are 100 percent think the exact same things okay you mentioned hail which is also an acronym hail is the four foundations that we can stand on if we want our speech to be powerful and make change in the world which as leaders we all do there's a reason 51 million people and counting have watched this speech. Hale stands for honesty, authenticity, integrity, and love.

We've covered honesty and love and a little bit of authenticity. But from a leadership perspective, now you gave this talk probably before this whole rise of authenticity now has, I think it's all over the place. From a leadership perspective, what is it about authenticity that is so important? Well, being yourself, I think, is crucial. And being known as yourself, I mean, intimacy is being known. And I'm not suggesting that you be best buddies with everybody who works for you. But being yourself in all situations gives people so much confidence. Because they can start to get to know how you're going to respond.

The whole thing of, you know, putting on some sort of act of being powerful or incandescent with rage in certain situations and then different in other. If you're volatile like that, it makes it very, very difficult for people to manage you. And, you know, any great boss to me is somebody who can be managed by the people who work for him or her. I don't mean manipulated. I mean that they can efficiently and effectively present things in ways that are going to be the most useful and productive.

to that person and that comes a lot from being authentic now you know not all of us are going to be authentically wonderful and you know i can tell you i'll give you a story about this when i sold my magazine business to a big american group the uk company was run by a guy who was known to be massively irascible and to brook no bad news at all. In fact, he would sack people who brought him bad news. He would, at the very least, tear them to pieces in front of other people. So it became impossible to deliver bad news to this guy. The result, people in this agency started claiming that they had won things they hadn't won, or that they hadn't lost things that they had in fact lost. The accounts for two or three years

ended up being largely fiction. That's how bad it got. And the effect on me was that the share price of the holding company got slashed as a result of the scandal when this all came out. Now that's all about somebody who was, I mean, maybe he was being authentically himself,

which is not a very nice person. But it was not a productive way to be. It was not allowing people to be authentically themselves. And that's the other side of the coin of authenticity, really. It's fine for me to be authentically myself. I need also to let other people be authentically themselves around me. Give me the bad news and be themselves, not have to psych themselves into a different persona

before they open the door and come into my office. That's not a great way to be with people. You mentioned tools as a learning leader. I love the element of your teachings that state. This can be learned when it comes to your voice. And this is something I think about a lot as somebody who uses their voice all the time, whether on stage or on a podcast or doing the audio reads of my books. I think the way you receive that materials is very important.

So I think about it a lot. Can you share about some of the tools and maybe even at the end of the tools section here, we can do the exercises really quick, you and me. Oh, well, you'll do it and I'll play along. But the tools, you talk about a registered, I'm going to pronounce this wrong, Timbra, pace, pitch, volume, and then maybe some of the exercises. Can you walk us through that real quick? I thought that part was really helpful.

Absolutely. Well, most, it's amazing. I mean, I stand on stage talking to CEOs quite a bit. And, you know, there's 2,000 CEOs. How many of you have to speak in public? Forest of hands goes up. How many of you have had formal vocal training? Three or four.

What? Is the voice not important to you? Does it not have a massive effect on your outcomes in life? If you're trying to inspire people, if you're trying to sell or persuade people, if you're trying to motivate people, it is absolutely critical. And that stuns me that a lot of CEOs

don't take this seriously. The voice is an amazing instrument that we all play. So I call it a vocal toolbox with all sorts of things we can do to improve our voice. Breathing? When's the last time you guys listening to this right now? When's the last time you took a deep, deep breath? Have a breathing practice. Your voice is just breath. That's the fuel. It is what your voice actually is. And if you don't breathe well, it's hard to speak well.

It's also a great antidote to nerves. Not that most seers would feel nerves because they speak in it. because they speak in public a lot. But some do. So breathing. Poster, very important. A great little tip for that is if you're standing on a stage or in front of people,

imagine a string attached to the top of your head and then automatically everything just dangles from the string. Your shoulders go down and back. You stand straight. It's nice and comfortable. It's loose. It's relaxed. That is a great thing to have in your mind

as you're speaking to people. And then for the voice itself, pitch and prosody are very important. You know, pitch can enormously change what you were saying. You would suddenly go up as well as pace, of course. So if you imagine a commentator on a horse race or something

is going to get moldy, man, man, man, so that automatically drives energy in the listener. So the way you speak affects how people listen to you very deeply. And then you've got things like timbre. which is the texture of your voice, the feel of your voice, if you like. We tend to like voices which you would describe

in the way you'd describe a hot chocolate, rich, dark, warm, smooth, sweet, for example. And if that's not you, you can work on it. Get a vocal coach. You know, Google somebody, voice coach, drama coach, speaking coach, singing coach, whatever it might be. Find somebody in your local area.

Try a few out. Find one you really like. Work with them. And they will give you the ability to project to the back of a room without a microphone and to sweeten your timbre and the other thing they may do which as a CEO is very important

is lower your voice because pitch is associated with importance it's kind of genetic big things like elephants have deeper voices than little things like mice so we tend to believe that depth is associated with power significance importance and so forth. So Margaret Thatcher, for example, the British Prime Minister had vocal training to lower her voice by two whole tones

because she believed it would have her taken more seriously. And if you want to practice that, a simple exercise for that is put your hand on your sternum, the chest bone, and speak to yourself, you know, say your name or something like that, and resonate your fingers until you can feel them almost buzzing. And that is you speaking in your chest register, which is you. where I am right now, as opposed to my head register, which would be up here, which is a lighter way of speaking from the throat or from the head or even from the nose. So you can resonate from different places. So those are some of the tools in the toolbox. I really do urge everybody to take this seriously because your voice determines your outcomes in life. You know, we teach reading and writing in schools. We do not teach speaking and listening. Why? This is mad. You know, speaking,

is much older, we've been using complex language for probably 100,000 years as a species. Writing only came along about 4,000 years ago, maybe 5. That's it. And yet, so much of what we do now involves typing, looking at screens and so forth. That is changing. Smart speakers adjust the thin edge of the wedge. We'll soon have voice input and output to everything that we're controlling. will be liberated from screens and typing, and the voice and listening will become more important again, which is something to think about if you're in marketing also. Can we do some of the exercises real quick?

Can you walk us through them? Yeah, vocal warm-ups. I mean, if you're going to do an important talk, then warm your voice up and get it at peak performance. So just the first one would be taking a very deep breath and sort of moaning it out. You can even raise your arms if you like. So breathe in and then

so a few of those will get your lungs ready. Then we've got the lips. So there's two for the lips. You can go bop, bop, bach, b like that. Bop, bop, b. That's a good one to start your lips getting awake. And then the other one is do what you did as a child if you were cold, which is...

That's it. And your lips will now be awake. The tongue, the other very important piece of equipment. So we do two for the tongue. There's a la which goes right from the back of your palate to the front of your mouth. Very exaggerated. These are press-ups for the tongue.

So la, la, la, la, la, la. Okay. And the other one is to roll an R, which took me months to learn. Not everybody can do it, but if you can do it, struggle yes well that you can learn because i used to be able to do that uh that's kind of like champagne for the tongue and the final one and this is the one i will do if i've only got time for one

or space for one i'll go into a bathroom or a quiet area somewhere and do this it's called the siren it's from the dramatic profession and uh it is to go we or like a sine wave where the we is the highest you can go and the or is the lowest now i have a slight cold at the moment so i may discover I've got discontinuities in my voice breaking points. So let's give it a go. You go we as you can hear I had some breaks at the low end in my voice which is because I have a head cold. So it's a very very good way of warming your voice up that one. Normally it will shift your voice down at least a tone before you go on stage and of course the other thing you can do. before you go on stage is a Amy Cuddy power pose from her TED talk, you know, just making your body

much bigger, the victory pose of arms in the air, it releases testosterone and makes you feel more powerful and more confident. The other, thank you for walking through those. The other really important element, I think from a leadership perspective, to see how somebody responds when you genuinely listen to them and they feel. heard and seen is everything. We all know that feeling or we have that boss in our mind that we worked for that just waited for us to stop talking before they could give us whatever they wanted to give us versus that friend or leader or person who genuinely listened to us all the

way till the end like the improv exercise where we did this. I brought this at one of my workshops. So I brought an improv expert in and the exercise was you have to listen all the way to the end and then try to repeat as much as of as possible as what that person said. And you can't do that without listening all the way to then, right? So you did a TED Talk on Five Ways to be a better listener because we spend about 60% of our communication time listening, but we, but we retain about 25% of that, which is a big problem. And if you could retain more or all of that, I would imagine you'd be a much, you'd be a better. friend, you'd be a better partner, you'd be a better boss, you'd be a better leader. I mean, I think it benefits in all ways. Can you share those five ways for us to be, I'm not asking you to do the TED talk again, but maybe five quick ways for us to be better

listeners? Well, first of all, it's the key thing here is to understand that listening is a skill. Hearing is a capability. People always conflate these two. They think listening's a capability. That's why we don't teach it at schools because it's just natural to listen. No, it isn't. Hearing is a capability. When you listen, you select certain things to pay attention to and then you ascribe meaning to them. So my definition of listening is making meaning from sound and that's volitional. It's a mental thing and it is totally different from hearing. It's a skill that you can practice a master and the first and biggest mistake that people make with listening is to assume everyone listens like I do.

I see that all over the place and that is fundamentally untrue. Ryan, your listening is unique. Everybody listening to this? Your listening is unique. Nobody listens like you do. And that's crucial to understand. The reason is that we listen through a set of filters,

the culture you're born into, the language you learn to speak, your values, attitudes, beliefs, intentions, expectations, emotions, assumptions, all these things are fashioning your listening and it changes through the day and it's different from person to person. An audience will have a kind of gestalt listening at this particular moment very different from you know 9 o'clock in the morning from 5 p.m. or just after lunch it changes dramatically. So there's a

great question to ask yourself and this is the biggest tip I can give anybody who wants to understand how to communicate, how to connect better with people is to understand this point that listening is unique and to ask yourself the question when you're speaking what's the listening I'm speaking into? You always speak into a listening and it's different even if it's the same person as it was yesterday it would be a different listening so you ask yourself that question over and over again and being sensitive to that I think that's the beginning of starting of becoming a better listener yourself. If you understand listening is a skill,

it takes effort. So becoming conscious that you're doing something. Listening is work, guys. That's the bad news. It is work. You know, they all tapping away on something in your hand. Oh, no, I am listening to you. No, you're sending a text. That's a different thing. We do a lot of partial listening in the world. I wonder when the last time you guys listening to this, I wonder when the last time is, you put everything down and gave somebody your 100% total undivided attention when they were speaking to you. Try that on somebody in your family. You probably get the response, what are you doing?

Because, you know, we're not used to this. We're used to this sort of secondhand half-baked bit of listening that we have to make do with most of the time. And it can be quite intimidating when somebody really, is listening to you. So the tips for listening in that TED talk. By the way, the TED Talk on listening has been viewed by about one fifth as many people as the TED talk on speaking. Now that is quite interesting to me because to me the crucial foundational skill in leadership in life is listening. If you want to be a great speaker, first you need to be a great listener. It does not go the other way around.

And, you know, many great orators have understood this point and so they're asking that question, what's the listening I'm speaking into? That's how you hit the bullse. You understand the people you're speaking to. What are their needs? What are their aspirations? What are the problems? What are they here for? What are their intentions?

And that way you can be a tremendously powerful speaker. But without the listening, it doesn't work so well. So some tips. reacquaint yourself with silence. Now that's dangerous in podcasting because that's called dead air on radio. So Ryan was getting nervous there for a moment. No, I wasn't.

I like it, man. I try to use it. I like it. On stage, I can stop for a minute and just stand there looking happy. People don't feel uncomfortable at all. They're probably thinking about what they're going to have for lunch or, oh, that's nice.

He stopped for a bit, you know, whatever it is. But, you know, if you don't look flustered, you don't need to be frightened of silence. And it's a great baseline. You can recalibrate your listening by giving yourself. You can't get silence and tranquility. Go into a quiet room just for a few minutes, a few times a day and reset. Who knows you might meet yourself there,

which is why some people don't like silence. So silence is a very good practice. Then I would say the other one I'd recommend, well, maybe two others I'll mention. One is listing positions. And that's the awareness that we listen from somewhere, metaphorically. And most people have a default listing position they've been in for years and years and years. It's like a concrete bunker.

You know, it's like seeing the world from a concrete bunker with a slit in it. You don't see that much. And it's the same with a listing position that's entrenched. Well, there's a door in the back of the bunker. You can exit and go somewhere else and get a completely different perspective. So for example, many, many business people would be locked into a position that I call critical listening, which is assessing, evaluating. Where's the benefit in this? Where's the value in this?

Is this useful? Is there profit in this or is there something good in this? Well, that's a very useful way to be in business, but you don't want to take it home, really. When you go home, you might want to move into empathic listening, where you are feeling somebody else's feelings going on to their island you know validating them you know i totally get why you feel like that not well yeah you don't really need to be upset about that it's not that bigger deal you know that's the more critical approach to somebody being upset as opposed to i totally see why you'd be upset about that i wouldn't be but i get why you are so that's that's an

example of listing positions um critical empathic there are plenty of listing positions you can make them up you can choose your own the important thing is to be conscious that when you're listening you're listening from somewhere and that you can change that and maybe find a more productive position to listen from in this conversation with this person and then the third exercise I would recommend is the one I call Rasa which is the Sanskrit word for juice but it stands in this context for it's another acronym because I can't remember things Receive, appreciate, summarize, ask.

So this is in conversation really, and it's how to be a much more productive listener in a conversation. Receive means give that person your attention. Look at them. It's amazing how much listening we do we do in the modern world without looking at somebody. Look at them. Have your body pointing towards them?

Not, you know, feet heading for the door or, you know, just edging away as they're speaking. And leaning forward, perhaps, if you're seated or whatever it might be, which shows attention. You know, lolling backwards tends to show that you're bored or disengaged. So, receive. And appreciate is the little noises and gestures that we make which oil the conversation. Oh, really? And little eyebrow raises and smiles and headbobbs and wiggles and all those kinds of things that we do in conversation with other people.

Summarize, this is the word so, which is a very important little word. And I am tempted to form some sort of society for the defense of the word so, because it's being abused mightily all over the world these days. So means, therefore. And I've had conversations with people, I go, what's your name? So I'm John. What, you're John because I asked you? Were you John before I asked you?

Will you be John after I asked you? I've seen people walk onto the TED stage and started to a TED talk with so what you haven't said anything yet i don't know who you are i don't know what you're going to talk about where's the logical flow here so means therefore and it's a really powerful word in conversation so what we've all agreed in this meeting is this now we can move on to that or in a conversation you can close doors in the corridor of the conversation behind you so what i understood is this is that what you mean yep okay well now what's next and you can actually move forward in something if you don't have a so person in a meeting

it can be very long what is it they say about meetings places where you take minutes and waste hours round and round and round so so there you go and then um the a is ask questions open-ended why what which where when how who which don't allow the answer yes or no and and It's a great way to forge relationship, even with people that one doesn't have a lot in common with. You know, they're talking about subatomic particle physics and I know nothing about it, so I might say something like,

well, so how does this relate to, you know, gravity, for example, which I do understand, or whatever it might be, or something, you know, a cup of coffee, something I do know something about, I can move the conversation into an area that I feel more comfortable with and we can establish some common ground and therefore move forward with some sort of synthesis.

So Rasa, it's very useful. You, in addition to this, you and I brought this up before we recorded because I was really curious about attributing a sound with a brand in the fact that I just love music. I love live music, I love going to shows. I am amazed in an awe at people who can create from nothing. sounds just beautiful. And so I've used the same intro and outro music to my podcast for a while. And I'm always out there searching for different music. And even with my podcast producer slash editor, I sent him some other music. I was like, let's change it up. Let's change it up. And he says,

why? You have to have a reason. I think he was right in telling me that. And given that this is a part of of what you do or your company does, a sound agency. I'm curious, and this is just pure spitballing here, outside of the rest of the conversation we had, what would it be like if I worked with you to re-create or create from scratch new music to go along with the brand of being a learning leader? I don't know if I have an ear for that or how that process works, but I'm absolutely fascinated by it. What would that process be like?

Well, audio branding is quite well established now. I started the sound agency in 2003, in fact, and so it's 20 years old, give or take. And still going strong. I am currently writing, as we talked about before we came, before you hit record, I'm currently writing a book all about sound and how it affects human beings and how we affect it. So I'm spending a bit less time in the sound agency, but it's still doing great work. Designing focused really largely on designing customer experience for the ears in spaces like shopping malls or entertainment centers or all sorts of places.

But a very big part of the work is understanding a brand and expressing it in sound, which normally will be a four-stage process. There's an audit to start with, which means listening to the brand and its competitors, you know, the sound they're actually making now, as something I've had to break to many marketing directors and CMOs over the years. You know, they say, oh, no, this is interesting. We should maybe do some sound next year. You're already doing sound.

It's just you haven't designed it. You haven't thought about it. It's accidental. And it's probably undermining all the millions or whatever you spend on visual. marketing. So, you know, almost every brand is making sound. It's just most of it is not very well designed. So there's an audit to start with and then questions like what sound could you make? What are the brand values? What's the architecture behind the brand, the values personality and, you know, all those kinds of things. And then how can we best

express that through sound? This is sound I'm talking about, not just music. Music's one form of sound. But if you think about, I don't know, Netflix. with the, you know, that's not music. It's a very powerful Sonic logo. And there are plenty of Sonic logos out there, which are not music, but which are very identifiable sounds that, you know, immediately mean the brand to you. So it's all sound. And then once we've done an audit, then we would move on to some creative work to develop

the appropriate sound or sounds. A Sonic logo tends to be three to five seconds. So you think of, you know, McDonald's. you can immediately in your head hear that whistle that's that's a sonic logo or Intel which was the original Sonic logo really done back in the early 90s so a classic iconic little sound that it like like any aspect of branding really it's a piece of data compression it's designed to give you a doorway into the brand it's not it can't possibly express the whole thing but it should be consistent with the brand values and express

some part of them at least. And I think your editor is right. Consistency is very important. I mean, you've been doing this podcast for a long time and a podcast is a rod for your back. You know, once you start, you really shouldn't stop.

And you've done 400 and some episodes, which is epic. Well, changing things with that kind of brand heritage should be done with great care. So that's something to think about because I think any great brand is all about consistency,

not just through time, but in space and in all the senses as well, for the eyes, for the ears, for the nose, if relevant, for the mouth, if relevant. So design, and then the third stage is deploy, which is to put the sound in where it needs to go. So, you know, for you, we might make a sonic logo, we might make some intro music or sound. sound there might be bumpers which would happen that your people could drop in through the conversation I don't know if you have sponsors to drop in ads and things like that people do so then you need little stings or bumpers that that work and it all needs the sound of a piece you know that it's been well

designed and the fourth stage is developed because just like any part of marketing you can't just do it and leave it forever it ossifies the world moves on so it does need to be tweaked Even Intel's powerful Sonic logo, which incidentally is worth hundreds of millions of dollars to them. I mean, how many of everybody listening to this? How many of you could draw Intel's logo? But I bet most of you could sing it. And it seriously is they've had it valued.

It's worth a great deal of their brand value, which is in the billions. And a company like yours create that for them? Yeah. Well, it was a guy called Walter was. actually I know him he was in California and he did the original sound for them and he was lucky because he was kind of first on the block so it goes one four one five in musical terms damn bam bam which is what Beethoven's ninth does it just takes a lot longer to do it you know most most music will kind of do that from the first to

the fourth and then the first to the fifth to resolve it and he was able to put that together and obviously it's it's a it's a mnemonic for Intel inside which was their brand at the time so he took that cadence Intel inside and made it into that so it wasn't us you know we've done plenty of things like that over the years I just I love the thought of being more intentional about that and I know consistency is important and people are really used to it to probably sets the tone for the conversation you're about to hear but there wasn't a lot of intention other than I just want some kind of exciting. I think the one I bought, I bought like a 20 of them, but the one that we ended up using is called like boxing MMA intro, you know, like it's exciting kind of, you know, and and I, but it was just, this seems like much more intentional. And I struggle because of this learning leader mentality, I think that I, the ethos I try to live by of always evolving, always improving, getting better, not being afraid to change, having an open mind. And I may misguided in some parts of what I do to say, hey, dude, just you got a good thing going.

Let that thing keep going. Consistency is important with the way people experience your show. But that's something like even my books and past things. I always want to update them. I always want to like, ah, I kind of change my mind. You know, and in some things, you have to kind of let it go. Absolutely. And I'm getting stuck, getting ossified in something.

That's not consistency. That's just being stuck. And you end up, you know, I mentioned Kodak earlier. Yeah. It'll never change. People will always need film. Yeah. Maybe not. So, yeah, getting stuck in something is, is not necessarily consistency. But I think, you know, and there are many, many great stories of brands which have reinvented themselves and gone on to great success, just as many, of course, have reinvented

themselves and fallen flat on their faces. So there is risk involved, but if it's well done, then I think you can, with some conviction, say the world has moved on in the last X years and reflecting that with this new look and feel or whatever it might be. Do you have time for one more? Sure. I, as I mentioned earlier, I love the sense of,

that I feel like you've been through a lot and you're a thoughtful and reflective person. Let's say you're speaking with somebody who's a bit earlier in their career, say they, like early to mid-20s. And they want to do great. They want to leave a positive mark on the world. They're not entirely sure what they want to do.

What are some general pieces of life slash career advice you'd give to that person? Well, I think the first thing would be listen. I mean, you talked earlier effectively about mentors. And some of the most successful people I know have been people who've been mentor gathering over their life. I mean, you don't end up with a board of 50 mentors. or something like that, and they can change as you move through phases in your life. But it's a great thing to get connections with a few people who know stuff

and probably have different perspectives to you that you can bounce things off. You know, I've been lucky enough to have that through my life in various contexts with various people who are not afraid to tell me I'm being an ass and, you know, completely stupid. and it's very very valuable. I have a friend called David Firth, who many years ago wrote a great book called The Corporate Jester, I think it was a corporate fool, which was about the idea of, you know, in the old courts,

then the king used to have a jester, a fool, who was allowed to take the piss out of the king. That was his job. I mean, I think probably quite a tightrope to walk a lot of the time. but the point of the thing was to give the king a perspective, you know, to give him some, or the queen, some sort of challenge. And I think challenge is really, really important. So surrounding yourself with people who know more than you do, learning from them, being challenged and listening to that as well, and taking it seriously, not necessarily, as I said, earlier being blown about by the wind, but certainly, you know, asking the question, is there

value in this? Have I been blinkered? Have I been fixed? Have I missed something here? Can I learn? But I think for me, I mean, if I look back to myself back then, I think the idea of all will be well is probably central in my life. And having the faith to try things. and to make choices which may involve risk, to accept the consequences, which is something a lot of people don't like very much. I choose this route, it is risky, it may go wrong, I accept the consequences either way.

Well, that's a kind of fair and honest stealing way to be, and if it does go wrong, you've learned something. And if it doesn't go wrong, maybe you've just hit that, you know, billion dollar idea, who knows. How much do you think your accent helps, especially with American audiences? It's a funny thing, isn't it, about the British accent? I love it. I mean, you're probably hearing a lot of it right now with the sad death of our queen

and all the TV coverage and the pomp and circumstance and the speechifying and so forth. I'm quite proud of Britain at the moment because I think we do a really good job with this kind of stuff. It's one of our best skills, really. And I always say to anti-monicists, of which there are plenty here, you know, you go elsewhere and ask people, would they like to have what we've got? And, you know, the vast majority of countries are quite envious of all of this stuff with the big hats and the red coats and the medals and the chapels and all the rest of it. It's undeniably impressive and nicely done. So I don't know. There's something about the British accent

that seems to be very popular in your country. And it may have something to do with the TED Talks success. I mean, that'd be an interesting survey, wouldn't it, to look at the top TED Talks and how many of them are Brits as opposed to Americans? I would tend to think probably the vast majority are Americans, but Ken Robinson, of course, isn't. So there we go.

Anyway, it was more of a funny comment, but I do love it. And it's a nice little nice bonus. But Julian, I so appreciate you and all that you've put out into the world. I would encourage people to just search Julian Treasure online. Look at all your TED Talks. There's a reason they've been viewed so many times, as well as your books. They're incredibly helpful and very thoughtful and well done. and there'll obviously be more from you coming in the future.

Is there a certain place you'd like to send people to learn more about you online? Well, there's julian treasure.com for anything about me, you know, speaking or books or all of that kind of stuff, my course and so forth. Or audio branding, that's the sound agency.com. So those two places, really. And I will be talking with you about that.

We'll see what happens. I don't know, but I am going to talk with you more about that because I'm at minimum curious. to explore more and see what happens. But I would love to continue our dialogue as we both progress. I really value the way that you think and view the world and certainly a way that you communicated to others.

Thank you, Ryan. It's been an absolute pleasure. I've enjoyed the conversation hugely. So thank you for having me. Thank you so much. What a delightful person to have a conversation with. This is yet another reminder of how cool it is to get to do this for a living. I was watching Julian's TED Talks about a week ago and emailed him and said, man, I am blown away by your work.

I would love to talk with you. And here we are, a week later having this deep, long-form conversation about a lot of life topics. I hope you enjoyed it. A few takeaways from my notes, his values. He's so firm on these, and you can tell he's done a ton of work, faith, love, acceptance, and gratitude. It's obvious that he has thought about these and is a very reflective person, and that comes across as being self-actualized and having a lot of comfort in his own skin. You can even watch his mannerisms if you check this one out on YouTube. YouTube.com slash Ryan Hawk.

I think you'll enjoy it that way as well. His posture, the way he approaches the world, his thoughtfulness is inspiring to me. And it's something that I'm striving for. I hope it is for you too. And then you can't judge and love at the same time. Being judgmental, to me at least, is the opposite of being curious. As Julian said, being judgmental comes from ego and from a darkness in the soul. I think we all should strive to be a little bit more curious.

and to be less judgmental. And listening is a skill. Hearing is a capability. Listening is making meaning from sound. You can practice this. You can master it. As leaders, we need to continue working on this skill to ensure the people we're leading know that they are heard and seen.

We could all picture that bad boss we had that looked at their phone or watched the TV while we were talking with him, we don't want to be that person. Let's be 100% present as a leader and engage with our people. Again, I hope you enjoyed this one as much as I did. If so, I'd love it if you would tell a friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Julian Treasure. I think he'll help you become a more effective leader.

And because you continue to do that, and you continue to write reviews and rate the show, hopefully five stars on Apple Podcast. You are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk you soon. Can't wait.