The Art of Speaking
Our thoughts are the most powerful weapon and the way we express them makes a great difference. Sometimes we want to express ourselves through speaking our thoughts out but we either can’t do it properly or people don’t want to listen to us.
This blog post is a summary of Julian Treasure’s TED Talk-“How to speak so that people want to listen” dated June 27th 2014, mixed with some of my own opinions,
Julian started with explaining the seven deadly sins of speaking. These are the things that we can fall into but we to hold back from committing these sins. These are:
1. Gossip: Spilling the tea may sound like cool thing but it’s equally dangerous. “You never know if the person you were gossiping with may gossip with someone about you” said Julian.
2. Judging: People would never listen to someone who they know judges1.
3. Negativity: No one will ever listen to you if you have a negative point of view on life or other aspects of life.
4. Complaining: Julian explained this as “Viral misery”.
5. Excuses: People may not listen to you if you are a blame-thrower or someone who never take charge of their own situation.
6. Exaggeration: Overly exaggerating something might take the form of lying.
7. Dogmatism: The confusion of facts with opinions. It is absolutely wrong bombarding people with your personal and, biased opinions.
Julian proceeded with the 4 foundation on how to speak powerfully. He called them with the abbreviation “HAIL”:
Honesty: Be true, clear and straight about what you say.
Authenticity: Don’t pretend to be someone you’re not and stand in your own truth.
Integrity: Be what you say rather than being a hypocrite who doesn’t stick to their own words
Love: Wishing people well, this will also stop us from judging them.
There is a toolbox of our voice that we need to open to open the power in our voice, said Julian. This toolbox includes:
1. Register: Try to talk in your chesty voice to express power and authority in your voice. It the lower register of your voice.
2. Timbre: Research shows that we prefer voices that are Rich, Smooth and Warm. We can train our voice to speak this way,
3. Prosody: Stop being monotonous and avoid repetitive prosody which can make your statements sound like they are question, even if they not.
4. Pace: Speaking too fast isn’t good in any way so try to control your pace till the point it’s understandable and speak slowly when trying to emphasize. Silences can play a big role in bringing people’s attention
5. Pitch: Pitch can be used to highlight important part of a speech or to ask a question.
6. Volume: Pay attention to how loud or quiet you are while speaking to keep a balance between the two,
Julian described the toolbox of our voice as an engine that need warm-up to work properly. There’s a lot of warm exercises that Julian demonstrated in this TED talk. Julian concluded by saying how important it is to be a good listener while trying to be a good speaker.
It is believed that our voice have enough power to bring change in the society and we only need to activate this power by stopping ourselves from committing the 7 deadly sins of speaking and following Julian’s advices, If we will learn to voice our opinions, we may become able to create a better world for ourselves and for people around us. With this, I want to conclude this blog.
Thank You.
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