speaker indeed, to inspire thousands to commit so much time and energy over many years to such a huge project.
Throughout human history, powerful speakers have inspired people to change their beliefs, create or destroy social systems, adopt personal lifestyles, follow religious or philosophical paths, take up arms and fight, form movements, work in teams – and build monuments. Innumerable great sporting performances have been triggered by an inspirational talk from a coach or captain.
If you want to make a difference in the world, you will most likely need to inspire others, and you may need to be a leader. Your voice is the most powerful tool you have for these things.
SPEAKING AND PERSUASION
Possibly the most famous and strongest form of vocal persuasion is hypnosis. You may have seen high-speed onstage hypnotism, where the hypnotist instantly induces trance states and the uses spoken suggestions to have people change their behaviour even after the trance ends. Strong suggestions made to the subconscious are not confined to the entertainment industry; hypnosis is now a widely acknowledged and relatively mainstream therapeutic tool, able (subject to an individual’s level of suggestibility) to reduce pain, help stop smoking and clear skin complaints, among other uses.
Persuasion in its widest context is critical in life. Many achievements are beyond the scope of one person acting alone, which means we very often need to persuade others to help us or join our team in order to achieve our goals.
The voice plays a key role in the process of persuasion – not only what we say but also how we say it. Some people struggle to have their voice heard, while others seem to carry natural authority. Stature and body language play a role, but the largest part of this authority derives from speaking, in which both content and delivery play their parts. We will cover both of these aspects of speaking intensively in this book with exercises and tips to help you gain power and authority in your speaking, allowing you to be more persuasive and achieve more of your goals by enrolling people in your passions.
SPEAKING AND HEALTH
If you’ve ever had the experience of not being listened to, not being able to make a dent in an argument, being disrespected, feeling invisible in a group, not being taken seriously, being talked over, being continually interrupted, or secretly crying out to be heard, then you know that the inability to express oneself clearly and powerfully is bad for you. It’s debilitating and frustrating to be ignored. It creates stress and anxiety if it continues or repeats in relationships – and it can eventually cause sickness or even violence. I suspect that at least some of the antisocial behaviour from young people in urban environments arises from this feeling of frustration: “Nobody’s listening to me, nobody cares, so why should I?”
If only we taught our children how to express themselves clearly and powerfully, how much less ill health, stress and violence would we see in the world?
SPEAKING STORIES
One of the most potent styles of speaking is storytelling. We all love a story: as soon as we hear the words, “Once upon a time…” our inner child wakes up; we metaphorically curl up and look forward to the wonders to come. For as long as language has existed, I’m willing to bet that people have told stories to share their day, keep alive the exploits of legendary heroes, pass on cultural traditions, or simply to soothe their children to sleep.
For many millennia, stories have been among the most powerful tools in the essential task of passing knowledge and history on from one generation to the next, or from one group to another. Writing has been available only for around 5 thousand years, so from the development of complex language (estimated at up to 100,000 years ago) all human knowledge was spread simply by speaking and listening. Throughout those many years, countless groups of humans have sat around fires at night listening with wonder and rapt attention to a local sage or storyteller pass on tales that carried wisdom from the past.
In some societies, this powerful oral tradition still exists. Indian classical music has no written form at all: all the complex, lengthy ragas are learned by rote, transmitted from guru to shishya by word of mouth and demonstration. The same applies in many surviving folk music cultures, including that of Orkney, my home, where it seems almost every child plays an instrument, but not many play from sheet music. Traditional folk music often encapsulates old stories in its lyrics, even if we don’t understand the references now; the same is true of many nursery rhymes. The indigenous peoples of Australia can safely navigate the vast expanses of the outback on ‘song lines’, paths that they follow by reciting the words of songs that list landmarks, waterholes and other way finders. Even in the text-obsessed West, there are still many professional storytellers plying their trade, and storytelling festivals exist in the US, UK, India, Dubai and many other countries. Stories still have power!
The problem
Speaking and listening are natural, fast, efficient, powerful, nuanced and rich ways to communicate, and yet we barely give them a thought; we certainly don’t generally teach them with the same devotion we award to reading, writing, mathematics or motor skills. Yes, we joyfully celebrate our child’s first words, but as soon as conversation is flowing we take it for granted – meanwhile, we have many milestones spread over years in reading, writing and mathematics (we call them exams) and in motor skills (from walking to riding a bike to driving a car to athletic or sporting achievements).
Wondering why this was so was the reason I got into the sound business in the first place: it seemed so clear to me that we were missing out on something really important by taking for granted listening and speaking. I have thought a lot about this and over the next few pages I will try to unpack the key forces that are working against the ears.
SPEAKING VERSUS WRITING
Speaking is ancient: expert opinion on the dawn of complex language varies from 60,000 to 100,000 years ago. Writing is much more recent, developing around 4,000 years ago. For most of human history, all knowledge has been handed down orally – but writing has sprinted past speaking in its short existence and it now dominates communication in our ocular world.
I absolutely accept the benefits of writing. It can be propagated, copied and published, and many of the world’s greatest revolutions in thought or belief result from this. It is fixed and can be referred to, as with a contract. It can be asynchronous, so I can email you while you sleep in another time zone and you can read my message the next day when you wake.
However, I do believe the pendulum has swung too far, which is why many organisations are now training people in listening and speaking skills – though mainly the second. It’s interesting to note that my TED talk on speaking has been viewed more than 3 times as many times as my TED talk on listening. We prioritise sending over receiving, just as we prioritise written communication over spoken.
I think there are several reasons for the dominance of the eyes over the ears in the modern world.
NOISE
The world is noisy, and getting noisier. Since the Industrial Revolution, we’ve been surrounding ourselves with mechanical, and now electronic, noises, some of them very loud indeed. Transport has always been noisy – the Romans had to introduce ordnances to control the clatter of carts in the streets of their capital 2 thousand years ago – but now we have pervasive jet engines and tyre noise to contend with. My friend Bernie Krause, the world’s most eminent nature sound recordist, relates that it once took 20 hours to get 15 minutes of usable recorded material. “Now it takes 200 hours,” he says.
Once we needed to listen carefully, because sound was meaningful: if you were sharing a cave with some bears or tigers, you’d better be listening carefully! Now most noise is meaningless, so we have developed the habit of suppressing it, and we move around
