00:00:00
if you've got a boring voice you can do something about it it's possible Julian treasure the auth of how to be
00:00:07
heard your Ted Talk is the sixth most listened to Ted Talk of all time I've assembled seven deadly sins of speaking
00:00:14
here they are it's the most common mistake I see in business in relationships you're speaking to teams
00:00:19
you're trying to inspire people you're trying to lead people build relationships with people this is part
00:00:24
of your life and you've never paid any attention to it we teach reading and writing in schools we don't teach
00:00:30
speaking which is absolutely nuts we're much Keener to be heard than we are to
00:00:35
listen to others what's the biggest complaint in relationships he or she never listens to me our happiness and
00:00:41
our well-being are fundamentally affected by whether we master the skills of speaking and listening
00:00:47
how does one speak with authority in work in life in my relationships what advice can you give me people often say
00:00:53
to me I don't feel confident how can I engage with people and the answer is
00:00:58
before this conversation starts I've got a favor to ask from you 74 of people that watch this podcast frequently
00:01:04
haven't yet hit the Subscribe button and nine percent of people haven't yet hit the Bell to turn notifications on the
00:01:10
bigger this platform gets the bigger the guests get so if you could do me one favor if you've ever enjoyed this
00:01:15
podcast please hit the Subscribe button and turn notifications on without further Ado I'm Stephen Butler and this
00:01:22
is the Diary of a CEO I hope nobody's listening but if you are then please keep this yourself
00:01:29
foreign [Music]
00:01:36
you've had a pretty marvelous unique career and it's twisted and turned and
00:01:41
twisted and turned in a really fascinating way one in which I I don't imagine anyone could have really predicted ahead of time
00:01:49
what do I need to know about you and your earliest years to inform
00:01:56
the person listening to this of any context that ended up steering where you would end up in your life
00:02:04
I think I mean I was very fortunate to have a good education which I didn't use to the max perhaps
00:02:11
but I appreciated enormously but I think from
00:02:16
a young age I grew up with a confidence that all will be well
00:02:23
and that's I suppose you could sum that up in the word faith not talking about religious Faith
00:02:28
necessarily although I've been in and out of that in my life
00:02:33
but just a conviction that all will be well and I think that's an important thing
00:02:39
for I mean for entrepreneurs who tend to be the people who'll take the jump and say oh I think I'll get to
00:02:45
the other side whereas a lot of people would be standing there going you know what you do that
00:02:51
so when things have come along I've been
00:02:56
comfortable to go with the flow to to say well let's see where this goes I'm sure it'll be interesting
00:03:03
I read that your Ted Talk um on speaking and being heard I think
00:03:08
that's the one um is the sixth or seventh most listened to Ted Talk of all time which is
00:03:16
staggering because there are thousands and thousands of TED Talks I've done one nobody listened
00:03:21
um and so I was when I saw that I thought how much did that moment change your life if
00:03:27
at all um and can you just tell me about the decision to do that talk that day and how it came about
00:03:33
well it was the fifth actually of five talks I did um in a row five separate teds
00:03:41
uh Ted Global was in the UK and Oxford originally and the first one I did was about how
00:03:47
sound effects is the four effects of sound it's called uh looking back at that that's a very
00:03:53
younger Slimmer me on stage it's quite funny looking at it now um nobody's ever used sound before in a
00:03:59
TED talk like that so they were quite excited about it and then I got to do the next one was
00:04:06
about sound and health and then one about listening which is you know as you know kind of a religion for me and then
00:04:12
one about sound and the environment the way Architects designed for the eyes not the ears so I had those four
00:04:19
TED talks to kind of practice I suppose and become a master I suppose of doing a
00:04:25
TED Talk I mean it's it's a discipline you have 12 minutes or maybe even I
00:04:30
think my first one was six you can't gabble you can't cut turn cram
00:04:36
too much in you have to be very clear about the big idea the why would people be interested in this the what's the
00:04:43
journey I'm taking people on where am I moving them from to and
00:04:48
you need to know how to do it how to stand on that stage on that red dot and project it with confidence and clarity
00:04:56
and engage people in coming on that Journey with you so I suppose by the time I did that fifth one
00:05:03
I was more experts think in giving Ted Talks than most people would ever have a
00:05:08
chance to be because I'd done four before and that's unusual so certainly when I walked on stage I
00:05:14
felt quite good on that talk and and yeah I think I nailed it you know I I'd rehearsed a lot and you know we can talk
00:05:21
about the principles of public speaking and so forth which you know I've done a lot of work on
00:05:26
but I did a good job and the audience really responded there was a great feeling in the room
00:05:32
so when I walked off I felt that I'd actually you know done
00:05:37
that one Justice they didn't release it for a year and I thought oh maybe they didn't like
00:05:43
it you know but I do remember Bruno jassani who's one of the the guys who
00:05:48
kind of runs Ted in Edinburgh Castle bumped into me uh about three hours after I gave that talk
00:05:55
and he said hail and I thought ah okay well Bruno wasn't
00:06:00
there so obviously word is getting around that there's some good stuff in there and and held the acronym that you
00:06:08
delivered in that talk about how to to be a great public speaker um honesty authenticity integrity and
00:06:14
love correct um how did when that Ted Talk came out how did your life change
00:06:21
because I'm because I know how the algorithms work it takes some time for things to sort of pick up momentum but once they get going and the algorithm
00:06:27
says the watch time on this episode is very very good so we're going to just keep showing it to more and more people so it might have taken some time but how
00:06:33
did how did things change for you at that point and also your orientation personally and professionally yeah it took off quite quickly once it
00:06:41
came out um I had long since kind of got past watching the numbers every day you know
00:06:48
the first Ted Talk I did you know I was obsessive 10 000 people watch this you
00:06:53
know and and I'm sure everybody does a TED Talk start stuff like that um
00:06:59
but this one clearly was it was going ballistic quite quickly um it went up you know in a period of
00:07:06
months it was in the top 20 I think and yes it has changed my life
00:07:12
fundamentally really really powerfully because I have spent many many hours on planes
00:07:19
going all over the world delivering talks getting paid to deliver talks so my career kind of shifted from
00:07:27
running the sound agency an audio branding company in the UK which is you
00:07:32
know relatively small business and writing you know my first book Sound
00:07:38
business I then got the opportunity to write the second book which was off the back of
00:07:43
that Ted Talk I got the opportunity to travel the world meet people um give talks and spread the message which is the important thing to me
00:07:50
because as I say I'm a listening evangelist I I am passionate about persuading people to start listening
00:07:58
um so yeah it moved my career totally onto a different track
00:08:04
a track of public speaking of writing books of being a speaker and an author professionally
00:08:10
and in hindsight when you look at this the wild success I mean the TED Talks combined have over 100 million views now
00:08:17
right so that one particular talk I think it's about 40 million views on YouTube alone probably right I mean
00:08:22
Chris Anderson says because you've got ted.com so it's got however many million
00:08:27
on there I haven't looked recently but um then you add the YouTube views Chris says whatever it is on ted.com you need
00:08:34
to double it to get a reasonable estimate of the number of views embedded
00:08:39
podcasts and all that kind of thing across the internet so yeah way over 100 million I think which is mind-boggling
00:08:44
to me in hindsight as you look at the success of that the very very wild you know
00:08:50
completely unprecedented success of that particular video delivered in that way on that topic what has it taught you
00:08:57
about why people care so much about that video and the topic I think that a lot of people don't feel
00:09:04
heard in the world so that that talk was about getting your
00:09:09
message across how to how to speak so that people want to listen um and I think that's a need
00:09:17
and it's interesting isn't it you said the five times number is really interesting the talk on listening has
00:09:22
been seen by one-fifth as many people as the talk on speaking so we're much Keener to be heard than we are to listen
00:09:29
to others and there's an imbalance there which I think is endemic in modern society
00:09:36
why do we want to be hard um to make a difference to forge relationships to be validated
00:09:43
to mean something to somebody to feel right unfortunately which is a big human
00:09:49
need that I talk about quite a lot being right is quite a dangerous thing in the
00:09:55
world at the moment and a lot of people need to feel justified in that way to be right
00:10:00
what is it doing doing for us at our most Primal level to be to be heard or to be right what is it is it helping us
00:10:06
to belong in a TR in the tribe is it yeah tribe family human race and um you
00:10:13
know a reason for existing I suppose you know what am I doing here and if people are listening to me it gives me
00:10:18
significance that's certainly true so I think it's it is about validating
00:10:24
one's self I mean I'm big I'm a big fan of Eckhart Toller uh and his you know
00:10:30
theories about ego and I think a lot of it would chime with that you know the ego needs to be
00:10:36
massaged the ego needs to have affirmation and being listened to making a difference to people is part of that
00:10:43
but you know on a more altruistic level making a difference in the world you know you your life has affected millions
00:10:50
of people um my talks have hopefully you know cast a pebble into a pond and the ripples are
00:10:56
going out and lots more people I hope are listening as a result well that's good you know whether it makes me feel
00:11:01
good is another thing but it is actually a good thing in the world we were talking before we started um chatting
00:11:07
about the uh there's an irony to you coming here today and speaking because you've got a bit of a chest call yeah well yes a head cold which is in my
00:11:15
chest so my voice is pitched down I'd say two tones at the moment and it's a bit croaky you know it's frustrating as
00:11:22
well as a speaker because I love this instrument that we have you know the human voice is an
00:11:27
incredible instrument and it's an instrument we all play although most of us have never had any
00:11:33
training or spent any time learning how to use it really well well I have and
00:11:38
it's frustrating I'm now dealing with a slightly broken instrument it's funny because you know when I'm when my team
00:11:44
send me potential guests that you know want to come on the podcast and we've reached out to them to come on this podcast there's a couple of criteria I
00:11:50
look for and one of the most important one of the non-negotiables where we've had the most interesting smartest people
00:11:57
in the world is their ability to speak and and when I say speak I don't mean
00:12:03
you know how well they can you know how funny they are or things like that I literally mean if they're monotone we
00:12:09
can't have the conversation because I I I've no I've got no data to support this
00:12:14
but if someone is monotoning their delivery then I find it to be
00:12:20
hard to follow the story regardless absolutely you say that you say that the two most important things with speaking
00:12:25
are the content and then the delivery and that's what I'm actually getting to is like that delivery point
00:12:32
have you got any evidence to back up the importance of that or am I is this just in my head that I think the well it's
00:12:38
another thing I asked Chris Anderson who's got more experience of listening to speakers than probably anybody in the world because they do that all the time
00:12:43
at Ted and I said to him which is more important content or delivery
00:12:49
and his answer was answer was quite interesting he said well if I had to choose they're both important if I had
00:12:54
to choose its content because if somebody's delivering
00:13:00
earth-shattering content in a boring way I can really make an effort and listen
00:13:06
to them and it's worth it at the end whereas if somebody's delivering vapid nonsense in a brilliant way it's just
00:13:12
irritating actually so I I get that but I do think they're both important I mean it is a
00:13:18
shame if somebody's saying something incredibly important and they're not using what I call the vocal toolbox you
00:13:24
know there's all this stuff that we can deploy if we start paying attention to our voice you know if you've got a
00:13:30
boring voice you can do something about it it's possible get a vocal coach work on it you know
00:13:37
take up a breathing practice improve your posture just practice prosody prosody the intonation you know
00:13:44
really exaggerating it I'm a great fan of doing this it's the kind of thing that actors do singers do
00:13:51
and many times for example I've I've given talks where I've been looking at an audience of CEOs
00:13:57
hundreds or thousands of them and I say how many of you have to talk in public Forest of Hands goes up
00:14:05
how many of you have had formal vocal training three or four people I go what this is part of your life it's
00:14:12
an important part of you you're speaking to teams you're trying to inspire people you're trying to lead people you're
00:14:18
trying to communicate build response relationships with people you're trying to move you know mountains with your
00:14:27
voice and you've never paid any attention to it it's tragic you know we we teach
00:14:33
reading and writing in schools we don't teach speaking or listening which is
00:14:38
absolutely nuts it's funny because I when people ask me I always say that the most important skill you can learn is to sell because
00:14:45
you're selling all the time I'm selling right now I'm sorry I meet a girl in a bar I'm just going to sell to her to try and get her number I have a girlfriend I
00:14:51
wouldn't do that um I'm selling in business I'm selling to my teams I've been trying to inspire investors to join us it's con this
00:14:56
caught my life is full of the sales pitch whether I'm selling myself or an idea or a vision or whatever um but I've never really reflected on
00:15:02
the fact that the foundation of that selling is this instrument of course well actually even more than that below
00:15:08
that what's the most important part of the sales conversation listening
00:15:13
it's not the speaker it's the listening listening to understand the other person to go onto their Island to understand
00:15:19
what is it what's their pain Point what is it I can solve or help them with here because if you can't it's a waste of
00:15:26
time how many times have we all had that irritating sales conversation where somebody's trying to sell something we
00:15:32
don't at all need and because they're not listening so patter you know it can
00:15:37
be good but really well targeted talking to somebody to whom we have listened
00:15:44
respected and understand that's a different thing that's powerful what what would I have to do because
00:15:51
there's lots of people that are out listening to this podcast that start their own podcast and want to be a podcaster and many of them message me
00:15:57
and they want to come and sit here on this podcast one day what are the types of things um you would advise someone to do with
00:16:03
their voice to be a to be heard well treating your voice as a skill is
00:16:11
the first thing so becoming conscious that this is a skill it's not a natural capability just like listening is a
00:16:17
skill hearing is a capability listening is a skill so I very much talk about these two things as skills speaking and
00:16:23
listening are skills that we do not teach in school or university which is mad so we have to take it upon ourselves
00:16:30
because they matter you know they they affect our outcomes in life they affect I always say are happiness our
00:16:37
Effectiveness and our well-being are fundamentally affected by whether we
00:16:42
master the skills of speaking and listening so in terms of speaking
00:16:48
understanding there's a vocal toolbox is the first thing so things like breathing your voice is
00:16:54
just breath that's all it is breath moving across your vocal cords and in order to speak well it's very
00:17:02
good to develop a breathing practice maybe you do yoga maybe something else Jane my wonderful fiance has taught me a
00:17:09
breathing practice which is very very simple anybody can do it and it's called resonant breathing which is breathing in
00:17:16
through your nose and then out through your mouth like as if you're blowing
00:17:25
so you can hear it and you practice that and lengthen you count and lengthen the
00:17:31
in-breath and lengthen the out breath and also we ought to be breathing from our diaphragm from our stomach because
00:17:37
you know if you watch a baby breathing it's their stomach that goes up and down not not the chest
00:17:43
so just developing that I mean I wonder people listening to this podcast when's the last time you took a really deep
00:17:49
breath we tend to breathe you know just to a fraction of our lungs like a little
00:17:54
bird but with your voice it's very important to breathe deeply
00:17:59
and to get into that practice also a great cure for nerves you know if you come on stage and you're a little bit
00:18:05
like this hello everybody then a big deep breath will settle the voice right
00:18:11
down so it's a really powerful thing to do that breathing practice what is it doing then in terms of improving my
00:18:16
performance I've got the nerves part but in terms of my vocal cords or it gets you into it well what is it
00:18:22
Aristotle said Excellence is uh no we are what we do repeatedly so Excellence
00:18:28
is not an act it's habit so it gets you into the habit of
00:18:34
breathing better and deeper and you know when you're speaking in
00:18:39
public there's nothing wrong with taking a deep breath and filling your lungs actors do it all the time I mean a
00:18:45
singer can sing for the most enormously long note uh you know what's the world
00:18:50
record for static apnea 28 minutes something like that lying at the bottom
00:18:56
of a swimming pool on one breath you know and that static apnea then
00:19:02
you've got the the free divers there are things we can do with our lungs which are beyond the imagining virtually and
00:19:08
yet most of us just breathe a little tiny tiny breaths so it's good for you as well to exercise
00:19:14
your lungs to inflate them I I had unfortunately a few years ago
00:19:19
pulmonary embolism which is quite scary and it can kill you and that's blood clots going to the lung
00:19:26
they have to go through the heart to get to the lung so that you know that's where you can die
00:19:32
um and so my lungs are not as efficient as they were before that and it's made
00:19:38
me even more conscious of the importance of deep breathing of expanding the lung capacity
00:19:44
it's part of being healthy apart from anything else to have great lung capacity is that what exercise does yeah
00:19:49
kind of an advertently partly yeah absolutely releases all sorts of good the happy chemicals into your system as
00:19:57
well exercise but uh breathing is very very good for you generally and we don't
00:20:02
do enough of it so I've done my breathing exercises I'm I'm heading on to the Diary of a CEO podcast what else
00:20:07
would I would I have to um do to be heard from by The Listener what are the sort of tips or skills or
00:20:15
well I think variety just in general is a very important aspect of speaking
00:20:21
so you talked about people who are monotonic and that literally means One Tone so if I speak like this through the
00:20:27
whole podcast it would be extremely boring for people there's not a lot of intonation going on there I don't get
00:20:33
any emotional resonance speaking like that so it's it's just boring so
00:20:38
intonation the up and down of speaking is really important
00:20:44
it's also crucial to be sensitive to cultural differences in that for example
00:20:50
in scandalavia they have much restricted prosody or intonation compared to say
00:20:57
the Latin countries where you know people are like why is it very up and down like this at the whole time I'm
00:21:04
croaking here um I remember doing a talk in in Finland in The Amazing concert Center in
00:21:11
Helsinki which was designed by a brilliant architect called Toyota and is acoustically unbelievable and at the end
00:21:18
of my talk there was a little tiny Ripple of Applause and I thought ah bombed they didn't like it you know
00:21:25
they've been America it'd be whooping and hollering and whatever going on and I went down for a coffee and people came
00:21:30
up to me and said thank you that was the best talk we have had for some years that's fins for you they're very
00:21:36
taciturned quiet people they don't get very excited much so unless they've had a vodka perhaps
00:21:42
but you have to be adjusting to the prosody or president of the audience
00:21:48
you're speaking to what's prostitute president is both intonation so the up
00:21:54
and down delivery which is Route One for emotion it's it's absolutely crucial in speaking
00:22:00
and it's also the rhythm of your speaking the the gaps you leave and the emphasis you put on words so it's
00:22:08
understanding how to it's not just reading a script flat it's putting your personality into what you're saying and
00:22:15
that makes all the difference in the world so anybody who it's interesting I mean I have friends who run um voiceover
00:22:22
Studios and actors come in to read things TV commercials books and whatnot
00:22:29
some actors can read some can't it's not a skill that everybody
00:22:35
possesses to be able to read something or speak in an
00:22:40
interesting way that's not a script you learn and then you really really work on it and so forth just reading something
00:22:47
it's quite technical actually you have to get yourself out of the way
00:22:53
so yes working on your voice is um about variety it's about breathing it's
00:23:00
about being comfortable with silence for example not filling every tiny little Gap with
00:23:07
arms as you knows you know what I means verbal ticks so all of these things it's quite
00:23:14
important to record yourself listen back and start to take it as a skill and as
00:23:21
Mastery become your own coach effectively I mean I'm sure you watch
00:23:26
back your podcasts and there's always something to learn there's always something to look at and to say oh okay
00:23:32
I could have not done that or I could have said that better or whatever it might be and that's how we become
00:23:38
Masters and of course you can get a coach a vocal coach a singing coach a drama coach an acting coach a speaking
00:23:46
coach there are lots of them out there so anybody who's for example got restricted Timbre I mean
00:23:53
Timbre is the quality of your voice and we tend to like voices that we would describe in the way we would describe a
00:23:59
hot chocolate rich dark warm sweet smooth all of those words
00:24:05
if that's not you listening to this when you have a great voice but if it's if it's not if somebody's got a thin
00:24:12
squeaky voice or scratchy Voice or whatever it may be get a vocal coach it can be worked on these are things that
00:24:18
normally we're in a habit the way we speak is partly derived from our physical being
00:24:25
I mean we have a body there are resonant cavities we have vocal cords but it's
00:24:30
also how we use it and that's much more important anybody can learn to maximize their
00:24:36
voice and to make the most the most of it so that's about the instrument itself
00:24:41
and then how you play it what emotion you put into it whether you're conscious
00:24:47
you know the thing I love most about public speaking it's making me more conscious in that
00:24:54
moment than anywhere else standing on the stage you know I've I've talked to audiences of 11 000 people
00:25:02
there's a big Spotlight there's cameras on you you're standing on a stage 11 000 people are looking at you if you're not
00:25:08
conscious in that moment you've got a problem you know so every gesture every
00:25:13
moment of that is maximum consciousness of being me and and communicating with
00:25:22
those people so it's kind of like switching the light on to maximum intensity
00:25:27
and I really love that that that experience has colored the way I treat life in general now because you know
00:25:34
it's my my biggest passion is to become more and more conscious to grow a little every day to become
00:25:39
more conscious every day and speaking helps with that I've never really talked about it before
00:25:45
but we um we've deleted a few episodes of this podcast so don't worry this is a perfect episode but what will happen is
00:25:52
we've had a guest come and they might be honestly there's some cases where they are the biggest in the world in their industry and I can think of one
00:25:58
particular example where if I said the name of the guest that we had the episode we had deleted people would be
00:26:03
shocked because I believe they are one of the biggest stars in the world they have like 50 60 million followers online
00:26:10
um and then there's another individual I'll think about who if I said the name now everyone knows this person they're a legend in many respects
00:26:17
um but we deleted that episode as well and content is a factor but the other factor that really really does
00:26:23
and result in that decision is I I think it'll be really difficult to listen to
00:26:28
and I feel like I have this sense of responsibility on a Monday and a Thursday when we publish that even if they don't know the name our audience
00:26:35
will listen and we see that in the numbers if we publish a no-namer or a superstar we get the same amount of
00:26:41
Clicks in the opening 24 hours roughly because people are going I don't care I trust this team to put people out there
00:26:47
so I just wanted to really state that because there's I know there's a lot of people that want to come on this podcast there's a lot of like big CEOs that
00:26:53
contact us and one of the most important things in my decision criteria is
00:26:58
literally how engaging they are at speaking and from that I mean the instrument the delivery
00:27:03
um so I just don't think it's funny when you were talking I was thinking about individuals that have said no too big and they don't maybe I should give them
00:27:09
feedback but maybe that's not my place it's literally about delivery um so often so let's let's continue then
00:27:15
on the thread of of delivery you're talking about standing there speaking in front of 11 000 people on a stage one of
00:27:21
the things that I'm sure would stop most of us from even endeavoring to do such a thing is a lack of confidence
00:27:29
you've got almost a hundred thousand students online some something crazy like that that are all coming to do your
00:27:35
courses and to learn from you confidence must be one of the first conversations you you you have right to
00:27:41
get someone to be a great speaker yeah it's important although it's interesting to note that a lot of the
00:27:48
people who've given some of the best TED Talks like me are actually introverts I'm not
00:27:54
an extrovert it's not that natural for me to do these things
00:27:59
and it's also true of people like Susan Kane introvert you can stand on a stage
00:28:05
and you can overcome the fear which is part of growing as a human being I think
00:28:11
um doing things which are challenging and pushing through the barriers and doing it anyway so yes confidence is important I mean we
00:28:19
could have a long conversation about confidence because I was educated in a top Public School
00:28:26
and I think one of the things that top public schools in the UK do is to give
00:28:31
you an overbearing arrogance and um to make you absolutely convinced
00:28:36
that you know everything about everything and more than that the ability to sound convincing and to persuade people that
00:28:43
that is in fact the case and it's taken me decades to get over
00:28:48
that at actually to discover humility and to discover The Importance of Being
00:28:53
you know authentic about what I actually can do so yes I think
00:29:00
public speaking like anything else it's like riding a bike if you do it enough you become confident you know the first
00:29:06
time you or I drove a car our hands were welded to the wheel you know we were shaking with Terror now you drive a car
00:29:12
and you think about everything but driving you know so it's just falling off a log I've done enough speaking now
00:29:18
that's I do not get frightened anymore nervous
00:29:23
yes nervous is good nervous gives you the right chemicals to perform at your
00:29:28
Peak so I never want to lose contact with that and I think that's true of anybody only
00:29:35
a professional footballer before a game nerves will be there adrenaline it's it's taking you up to the next level
00:29:42
once you get bored with what you're doing should you be doing it that's a big question
00:29:47
but the confidence to do it comes from practice and that's what I always say to
00:29:54
people it's part of my course you know I talk about doing things just just doing
00:30:00
the thing speaking in public Toastmasters for example you know they're in every city in the world you
00:30:07
can go and join a Toastmasters chapter and and start speaking in front of people that's what they do and as you do
00:30:13
it you become more and more familiar with the what goes on and that you know it
00:30:19
isn't actually the end of the world nobody is actually going to stand up and and call you out for being a useless
00:30:25
numpty you know you know even if you forget your words you can actually say
00:30:30
I'm terribly sorry I've forgotten where I was and everybody I mean I've seen that happen at Ted okay people who rely on memory which is
00:30:37
a very very high risk strategy to me you know I always use slides but if you go
00:30:43
on stage and you've got a Memory Palace or a chain or one of those routes and you're like relying on that and you lose
00:30:49
the chain breaks and your cast adrift in an ocean of Terror I've seen it happen
00:30:56
and what happens when somebody goes red and starts shaking and says I'm so sorry I've completely forgotten what comes
00:31:03
next the audience start to applaud because they're on your side it's not the end of the world and actually that
00:31:09
can make a deeper relationship than being slick and perfect and and Brilliant at every moment I've seen
00:31:15
people who are overconfident over rehearsed where you know every one of
00:31:20
those gestures has been rehearsed a hundred times and it was there for the I mean there was a time at Ted when it was almost a Reger to cry in a TED Talk
00:31:28
and I remember saying there was a talk by uh you know an international Banker or something about economics who halfway
00:31:34
through talked about his fatherhood deceased and the tears came I thought please this is this is like being put in
00:31:42
by a coach who says you've got to connect emotionally and it was just incongruous really so
00:31:49
I think it's all about being yourself I mean that's the a of hail being authentic
00:31:55
uh being yourself is fine it's so much easier than trying to be somebody else and having the faith that if you are
00:32:03
yourself and you've got a good message that people will be with you on the journey and will be on your side that's
00:32:10
certainly the case that Ted people don't go to it's not a stand-up comedy night where people throw things and Heckle
00:32:16
it's a place where people expect to learn to be transported to be changed by
00:32:24
almost every talk so the talk does that they love you on the on the a point in hell I've come to
00:32:31
learn that I think humans are much better at spotting authenticity than we give them credit for big time I I think
00:32:39
so from our own perspective we think we can blag it and we we underestimate how
00:32:46
um how much the viewer or the person I'm trying to blag it to understands I'm not being authentic
00:32:52
like we think we're better much better actors than we actually are and it's funny the one of the things that's put this friend of mine for me at the moment
00:32:57
is about three weeks ago there was a CEO that went viral on LinkedIn because he
00:33:03
had fired multiple members of his team and then he had taken a photo of himself crying and uploaded it with like a
00:33:10
really like sorry caption like I'm so sorry today I had a really tough day I had to find members of my team and as
00:33:16
you look at that it just feels wrong it's almost hard to explain it but the I think your mind
00:33:22
goes well he would have had to cry a very unnatural thing to do mid crying is to pick up your phone and take a selfie
00:33:28
and then to go to social media so on that point of authenticity um is your suspicion the same that we
00:33:35
people are much better at spotting someone being inauthentic than we believe than we understand
00:33:40
I think so we live in a world where um social media and
00:33:47
um viral opinion spreading make it quite hard to be truly inauthentic I mean
00:33:53
there's a lot of companies a lot of individuals who do what's now called virtue signaling and people can spot that you know we can
00:34:00
we can catch the whiff of manipulative inauthentic stances that are trying to
00:34:07
put us across in um the most the best the most acceptable way whatever the
00:34:12
current you know meal is whatever the current um style is to be utterly acceptable and
00:34:19
socially right so to me this is again this is part of the human need to be right
00:34:25
and to be seen to be right which is huge problem in the world right now
00:34:32
I think I mean we're seeing silos all over the world the interventors have made this way way worse where you know
00:34:39
you go online and you say there you are I know I was right 10 000 people agree with me yeah but there's a million who don't but you don't go and ask them you
00:34:45
just go and find the people you agree with in order to validate your point of view and that is why we get these
00:34:51
extreme you know um conspiracy theory silos of people who have nutty views and
00:34:58
are persuading each other that they're right because they only talk to each other they don't go and
00:35:03
check you know kick the tires of the thing and check is there an alternative hypothesis here that would be perhaps
00:35:09
worth entertaining so I think that's a bit dangerous uh at the moment and it's all about this need to be right and of
00:35:16
course what's the easiest way for me to be right is to make you wrong if you're wrong I am writer
00:35:23
and that is a slippery slope that's a slippery slope of depersonalization of
00:35:28
dehumanization of um bias and and hatred and you know at
00:35:35
the bottom of that slope is the kind of the Isis answer to the world disagree with me I'll kill you
00:35:40
so that's a dangerous slope and the media have been contributing to that slope you know this all this outrage
00:35:47
addiction that we see in the world that's outrageous somebody's to blame somebody should be punished and that's
00:35:52
all me saying yeah somebody should be punished I'm right they're wrong so it's this kind of ego fire that we
00:35:59
have Building inside of us the desire to be the rightest person and to cancel everyone else that's absolutely Council
00:36:05
Council and make people wrong left right and Center be judgmental that's one of
00:36:10
the seven deadly sins I talked about in that in that Ted Talk is judgmentalism is is pointing the finger at people you
00:36:17
know the kind of parent whose son or daughter comes home and says I got 95 in the test and says what happened to the
00:36:23
other five you know this it's difficult to be around people who are that finger pointy
00:36:29
the other thing with with those with that a point inhale authenticity that I've come to learn actually from doing this podcast is um there's a real cost
00:36:36
mentally to being inauthentic for a long period of time and I see I see it time and time and time again when I sit here
00:36:42
with people who were forced to be in the media or who were first forced to not
00:36:48
forced but chose to play a role or a character in the public eye and then their identity became they kind of their
00:36:55
true authentic self became imprisoned by this public identity that they felt they had to keep up and then the midlife
00:37:00
crisis comes it's usually like 35 45 where they have some kind of burnout blowout they find themselves in the case
00:37:06
of one of my guests last week just coming home and crying every day and having no idea why they're crying because they'd spent a decade being
00:37:13
inauthentic in every interaction because they felt they had to sometimes to survive because of some early trauma
00:37:20
um and we don't talk about that enough that and I've you know I've learned it from doing this podcast myself as in the
00:37:26
most liberating thing for me ever is to sit here in my socks in my house saying
00:37:31
whatever I want for three hours and knowing that quite honestly if I tweeted it I'd get dragged it would get quite
00:37:37
retweeted people taken out of context and goes into different Echo Chambers and they all try and um find a way to get likes off what I've
00:37:44
said whereas I can sit here and say anything about pretty much anything in my most authentic self it's like a weight I get to lift every day
00:37:52
um and it's been so good for my mind but do you know what the biggest challenge is about being authentic
00:37:58
what's that was knowing who you actually are yeah good point so what are your
00:38:03
values Stephen it's a good question because because you know when people asked
00:38:09
I'm so scared of saying what I think people want to hear how do I know what my values are you write them
00:38:15
down you think about it what I would what I would write down I'm worried that what I would write down
00:38:22
are things that have been so deeply conditioned to be my values by Society well okay yeah that's worth challenging
00:38:28
isn't it so this is a great exercise I mean I strongly recommend everybody does this because not many people do you know
00:38:34
we just live our life in this kind of um bumping into things making that up as we go a long way if you have values that's
00:38:41
your moral compass if you have values that's that's you tending to Define who you are then you can be authentic what
00:38:48
is a value this sounds like a crazy thing for me to say but I want to be really clear like what is a value it's
00:38:53
something that you believe in that is um what they call in business a North star
00:38:58
for your life it's something that you will sacrifice to achieve so I carry
00:39:03
mine okay I've got four values which I made into an acronym because I have a terrible memory so I like acronyms the
00:39:10
acronym is flag so they are Faith and that is all will be well I'm not
00:39:15
talking about a religious faith I'm just talking about the sense that all will be well because to me if I have faith that
00:39:21
the future will be okay it gives me the courage to take things on try things and
00:39:27
find out you know it may be a disaster but if I get to the disaster I've had a nicer Journey than if I am always oh
00:39:35
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 journey and I've ended up a disaster
00:39:41
so I I prefer to go the way of it'll be okay oh it's not yeah but even then
00:39:47
it'll be okay to find a way yeah uh so Faith the L is love by which I mean thinking well of people
00:39:56
and there's a great practice that um a very wise old friend of mine gave me many many years ago which is amazing
00:40:03
um instead of walking around you know we're in London right now well I live in a much more remote place so you walking
00:40:09
around London you're always walking through people and we have this if we're
00:40:14
not careful we have this nasty voice in our head get out of my way you fatted yet and oh you're ugly and you're stupid
00:40:20
and you know this kind of nasty side of us which is doing a little monologue and being really judgmental and critical
00:40:26
about people instead of that it's cultivating habit of saying in the head not out loud bless
00:40:33
you not religiously again just bless you I wish you well I'll leave you get into
00:40:40
that habit of walking around going bless you person who just got in my way it is amazing the difference it makes to
00:40:48
your likeness of being it's like walking floating three inches above the ground you meet people's gaze
00:40:54
and you might even share a smile because you're not guilty about you or just thinking they're horrible
00:41:00
you know whereas you've got this nasty voice going on in your head all the time you don't look at people in case you catch their eye and they can see what
00:41:06
you were thinking so love in that way wishing people well
00:41:12
um and of course love for family and love for well love for life as well just being positive you know uh the a is
00:41:20
acceptance which is a really important thing to me and I tend to try and go
00:41:26
with the flow if an opportunity comes along I'll try that there's a reason that's come along so I'm not getting
00:41:32
into you know the secret or any of those things but I do tend to believe that things come to me for a reason
00:41:39
um you know whether it's God or the universe or whatever one wants to say I'm happy to go with the flow and to
00:41:45
accept also when things don't work you know I don't bang my head against a brick wall forever trying to make them
00:41:52
work okay that's not working we'll try something else so acceptance and also of people as they are that's really really
00:41:58
important we spend a lot of time disparaging people why are you like this why are you
00:42:05
doing this well that's the kind of tree that person is and you know you don't get angry at trees for being that kind of tree so
00:42:12
that is the kind of person that is in front of you except someone once said
00:42:17
something to you in the podcast which plays into that they said if if you had been through if you'd walked in their shoes and had
00:42:22
their experiences you'd be doing the exact same oh totally well let's come on to validation in a minute the and then
00:42:28
the G of um flag can I guess yes is it gratitude yes it totally is
00:42:36
um I you know I I don't like that catch phrase and attitude of gratitude but it is really important to me uh you know to
00:42:44
do a gratitude list when I'm feeling miserable when I'm feeling down you know I've got a cold yes but let's now look
00:42:50
at all the good things I've got in my life you know I have a loving partner I have two gorgeous little children I live an amazing orkney which is a joy every
00:42:57
day you know there are so many things to be grateful for and I've got some Financial Security I've got uh you know so much in life to
00:43:06
to be thankful for that way outweighs normally the the bad things now that's
00:43:12
not true for everybody you know if I were living in cursing at the moment for example or somewhere like that there
00:43:19
would be a lot more to be ungrateful for to be frightened about and so forth so
00:43:24
I'm not saying that in a kind of bland way but even in the worst places it's important to focus our attention on
00:43:33
the good things because a lot of this is about where you focus isn't it all the time reality is
00:43:39
huge it's all around us we don't perceive reality we have a map in our head
00:43:44
and it's up to us to select what it is that we pay attention to
00:43:50
so that's you know it's very much the same as as listening which is selecting certain things to pay attention to and
00:43:56
then making them mean something well it's the same with gratitude there's always something or usually
00:44:02
there's something you can focus on and say okay there's a thing I can be grateful for so that's it yeah Faith love acceptance
00:44:08
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 do recommend
00:44:15
to anybody listening to this if you've never written your values down think about it not the ones that you
00:44:21
think will be accepted by more people out there the ones that actually ring true in your heart what does your heart
00:44:28
tell you and then you've got a map uh you've got a you've got a root you've
00:44:34
got a direction in life which I think is incredibly important quick word from my
00:44:39
sponsor guys um these days as I'm sure a lot of you know flexibility matters more than ever before because the tectonic plates in
00:44:45
which we've built our businesses are changing overnight especially for SME business owners which is why I've
00:44:51
partnered with Vodafone business who have created a new flexible Business Solution for small to medium-sized businesses called Vodafone pulse connect
00:44:58
this package includes all of your keycom's tools like mobile broadband Cloud calling and collaboration and the
00:45:04
brilliant thing about it is you can change your package as your priorities shift adding and removing users and even
00:45:10
tailoring services to each employee so you only pay for what you need and that is so important when you're trying to
00:45:16
run an efficient business you can build your personalized package online with the digital configurator so you get one
00:45:21
simple package with one bill saving you time and saving you money so to find out more such Vodafone pulse connect terms
00:45:27
and conditions apply for a point about um if you were in their shoes you if you'd live their life you'd
00:45:34
be doing the validation yeah yeah what is this validation uh well it's part of active listening so you know if we talk
00:45:40
about listening um I talk about listening positions and one of those is active listening so
00:45:47
it's a place to listen from and inactive listening to me there are three stages so stage one is reflection
00:45:56
where I repeat exactly what you said without coloring it without making it
00:46:02
make sense in the way that I understand but I say something along the lines of okay what I just heard you say is which
00:46:09
can be a bit formulaic or you know so you said this or so are you saying this
00:46:15
so I'm checking that I actually got what you said I heard you it's amazing how we
00:46:20
don't very often do that so stage one is reflection
00:46:25
which is used in the therapeutic professions a great deal I hear you say this
00:46:32
stage two stages of being a great listener it's a very important form of
00:46:37
listening it's not appropriate all the time to be an active listening um because it's kind of a sledgehammer
00:46:43
to crack a nut in Social conversations for example you know if we were sitting
00:46:49
in a in a pub or a coffee house and I'm going what I heard you say Stephen is this well and then validation goes um
00:46:56
okay I understand it makes sense that you would feel that I totally get why you would think that's
00:47:01
true I disagree with you but I understand why you think that because then I'm thinking about your background
00:47:07
and your road to this conversation and we've come different roads to this conversation and you will have different
00:47:14
life experiences so validation is really important that's the empathy bit of active listening and
00:47:22
once I've reflected and validated then we're into stage three which is I
00:47:27
can contribute so as opposed to me invalidating yeah oh don't no that's nonsense to you why
00:47:34
would you think that you know we do so much in validating in the world of other people's positions and you can't sell to
00:47:41
somebody or persuade somebody if you invalidate them as a human being it's really important to validate
00:47:48
to show that you understand where that person is coming from even if you completely disagree then we can start to
00:47:54
put things together and make sense and move forward I'm thinking of every
00:48:00
romantic conflict I've ever had but also I you took me back to many client meetings where the client brings forth a
00:48:06
concern or a problem um and in that moment you even if you disagree you know you have to show
00:48:12
you've accepted their concern and then use that acceptance that place of
00:48:17
empathy to move them to another place of thinking but also you know obviously the most obvious
00:48:23
scenario people will think of is with their Partners when they're trying to do conflict resolution you know so what's
00:48:30
the biggest complaint in relationships he or she never listens to me and that's not just about hearing the
00:48:36
words it's about validating the other person or invalidating the other person and if we do that as a habit it can be
00:48:44
very damaging there's a thing actually uh called stress induced audio dysfunction s-i-a-d
00:48:52
which can afflict people when there's a noise that they are exposed to a great
00:48:58
deal and they don't like and they psychologically start to wipe it out
00:49:03
so for example my father in the later years of his life was deaf at the frequency of my mother's voice
00:49:10
and that's not uncommon in relationships where one partner is in the habit of
00:49:16
hectoring or nagging at the other partner and they
00:49:21
simply cease to be able to hear it because it's a noise they don't enjoy just like it you know it can happen to
00:49:29
people with industrial noise or irritating noises uh so it is really important not to be
00:49:35
invalidating somebody as a habit and we can easily fall into that habit and it's
00:49:41
so powerful in relationship to be validating people you know one of the
00:49:46
seven deadly sins I talk about in in that Ted Talk is negativity and that's a very strong habit that
00:49:54
people can fall into so you can audit that how often do I say the word no or not or can't anything negative like that
00:50:03
because if that's a habit that you fall into it tends to lead to invalidating other people a great deal I can't do
00:50:10
that I don't see why you'd think that you can't be serious you know and that's not a very nice way to behave with
00:50:17
people even if you don't agree even if they are being stupid I can see why you think that
00:50:23
now would you like an alternative perspective can I give you a different way of looking at it that might be useful to
00:50:30
you so you've said you know what you're doing is not worthless it's not stupid
00:50:36
but maybe there's another way and that's respectful I think everyone has the
00:50:42
experience of invalidating someone and them then repeating themselves and then
00:50:47
you invalidate them again and then they repeat themselves yeah that's called argumentation yeah well I know it well
00:50:53
because I think in my previous relationships I would it was funny because I think I was the problem I was
00:50:59
definitely the the one that was unwilling to allow them to feel heard it's the it's the joy of listening
00:51:06
actually um listening is at the heart of all good relationships to me and if you listen to
00:51:12
somebody I mean what was it Scott Peck said you cannot truly listen to another human being and do anything else at the
00:51:17
same time and I absolutely agree with that because it's so rare in this world now we're so
00:51:23
distracted um you know I I'm a big fan of near isle's book um indestructible yeah because we are so
00:51:31
prone to being distracted now I am listening to you now you're sending a text that's not listening that's doing something else so it's rare that we will
00:51:39
put everything down and do what you and I are doing right now which is look each other in the eye
00:51:44
you know when you look when you're listening I've got an acronym for this um in in the book in the courses and so
00:51:49
forth rasa Russia which is r-a-s-a and the r is receive and that means look at
00:51:57
the person who's speaking the dance of the eyes in in the west tends to be that
00:52:02
the person who's speaking looks around as I am now you know thinking about
00:52:08
other things and checks back in from time to time to see if the other person's still listening if you're with somebody who's speaking
00:52:16
and they look at you the whole time it can become a little bit intimidating I mean we're in a slightly unnatural
00:52:21
situation here so you know we're across a table from each other which is you know potentially conflicting
00:52:27
but we're you know really making an effort to communicate here so you know I'm looking at you quite a lot more than
00:52:33
I would if we were just you know in a street or um you know having a chat so that's rasa the r is receive which is
00:52:42
pay attention body language facing the person not feet pointing towards the
00:52:48
door which is always a good indication that somebody actually doesn't want to listen to you not doing anything else at
00:52:53
the same time the a uh is appreciate which is little
00:52:58
noises and head Bobs and gestures you know eyebrow raises Smiles oh really ah
00:53:06
those kind of things that oil the conversation the s is summarizing which is the word so and I
00:53:13
get very angry about the word so actually it's been totally debased in the modern world for
00:53:20
some reason it's become a habit for people to start every sentence with the word so so what's your name so I'm John
00:53:28
what you're John because I just asked you because so means therefore no you were John before and you're going to be
00:53:34
John afterwards the word so doesn't I've seen people come onto the Ted stage and say so no I don't know who you are I
00:53:41
don't know what you're going to say there is no before um it is debased a lot but it's such a
00:53:47
powerful word so we've all agreed this now we can move on to that or in the long Corridor of a
00:53:54
conversation so what I understood you just said is this is that right the old
00:53:59
repeating reflecting and so forth closing doors behind you in the corridor so you can move on and keep moving
00:54:05
forward so that's the S of rasa and the final a is ask asking questions at the beginning
00:54:12
during afterwards you know people often say to me I I don't feel confident people don't listen to me how can I
00:54:19
engage with people when they're speaking the answer is asking questions and if you're on a bit of territory that feels
00:54:26
unfamiliar or uncomfortable you can ask questions that form linking that's
00:54:31
really interesting Stephen you just said that How would how would that relate to this thing I know about so I can kind of bring the conversation
00:54:39
to home turf and start to feel I can contribute something so that's rasa and that really helps in
00:54:46
a conversation to direct listening and to and to make the conversation fruitful for both parties
00:54:53
so yes therefore one of the things you said that um
00:55:00
reminded me of another topic which I think is really important when we're talking about speaking which is how to
00:55:05
speak with with authority I think about all the people that are in boardrooms and that might be a little bit Junior in
00:55:11
an organization and that's struggling to be heard because they don't lack the The Authority that a title will give
00:55:17
them how does one speak with authority what advice can you give me to be a more authoritative speaker
00:55:22
um in in work in life my relationships wherever well let's steal the situation first where you're talking you you want to
00:55:29
speak to somebody who is a powerful figure or you consider them to be powerful
00:55:35
um I'm a great believer in agreements contracts in an informal way
00:55:41
Stephen do you have five minutes I've got something I really want you to listen to
00:55:46
well that puts you in a position you can either say yes or no if you say no that's fine I won't say it now when
00:55:53
would be a good time but I'll tell you a great experience I once had on a beach in India and this is
00:56:00
one of the best sales people I've ever met it was about a seven-year-old boy and he came up I was sitting on the
00:56:06
beach he came and said you want Coke and I said um you're trying to be British not right now thank you very
00:56:12
much okay when you want Coke oh uh well four o'clock at four o'clock
00:56:18
he was back here your Coke I love that it was brilliant so it taught me a lot about
00:56:25
um being authentic because I wasn't being was I no I don't want to buy a Coke from you
00:56:31
um and also about persistence and you know asking the right questions and and so forth so in the same way if I ask you
00:56:38
do you have five minutes and you don't I can park it and come back another time
00:56:43
because it wouldn't be the right time if you haven't got five minutes that's fine I can respect your time but from your
00:56:49
point of view yes okay I've got five minutes and you have just made a commitment to listen to me so I have a
00:56:55
right if I'm talking to you and you're off doing something else you know answering email or something Stephen you
00:57:01
said you had five minutes I do understand if you're busy when would be a better time so there's a kind of
00:57:08
obligation there for you to listen to me so that's one thing I think that's a
00:57:13
strategy that works very well if you're on a meeting and you don't feel you're the most
00:57:18
powerful person then again asking the meeting for permission is a good thing uh guys I have something that I think
00:57:25
really will contribute here would it be a good time now to say it to you all
00:57:31
it doesn't always work but I think if you're asking and people give you a
00:57:37
commitment then you have a contract and you have a Channel of communication that's been opened explicitly
00:57:43
one of the things you talked about there is that kid on the beach with the um Coca-Cola offering you a can of Coke
00:57:49
and how that kind of violates your a inhale the authenticity piece
00:57:57
um it also violates the honesty so
00:58:03
my question is is there a time when one should not be
00:58:08
honest well I think that the honesty needs to be tempered with love
00:58:15
so the answer is it's a filter which is the L inhale as well absolutely okay
00:58:21
I think that uh being dedicated to ruthless permanent uh always on honesty
00:58:26
is a pretty dangerous strategy in life because you'd be going around saying to people you look terrible today I really
00:58:33
don't like you what you just said was stupid you know it's not necessary to say those things to people depends on
00:58:39
what you want to achieve I don't think it's dishonest to withhold
00:58:45
judgment and a lot of the things I just said are opinions and it's very important to distinguish
00:58:52
between opinions and facts they're not the same thing and they're very often confused in the modern world so opinions
00:58:59
that's what I think what I believe what I judge fact it's Saturday matter of fact we're
00:59:06
not going to disagree about that we can disagree about my opinions and you know I often say I wish that we lived in a
00:59:13
society where perhaps people asked before giving opinion would you like my opinion on that no
00:59:19
I had such a good opinion all ready to go and you don't want it but we don't do
00:59:25
that do we we just proffer opinions and and a lot of the time we we confuse them with facts which leads to a lot of table
00:59:31
thumping I grew up in a family where there was that confusion there was a lot of argumentation and table thumping
00:59:37
because people had different opinions and didn't accept that they could possibly be challenged talking about
00:59:43
your parents talking about your mother no my father actually he was a my father was a massively confident and very
00:59:52
successful man in advertising he was you know he was known as Mr advertising um for some years in the 1960s
00:59:59
hugely confident and hugely expressed in that way but didn't Brook
01:00:07
disagreement very easily so disagreeing with him was quite difficult
01:00:12
and that was certainly my experience growing up that you had to be ready with chapter and verse and references if you
01:00:19
were going to challenge a point of view how did how did that shape you because I think a lot about how my parents you
01:00:25
know my mum was sounded a little bit like what you described earlier where shouted so much at my dad that I I
01:00:31
couldn't understand how he stopped reacting to the sound of the shouting as a young age I remember wanting them to
01:00:37
divorce because I didn't like shouting for six hours my dad would not really shout back but um that definitely has
01:00:44
shaped how I communicate now but how did it shape you that that environment well very similar I mean I think you know my
01:00:49
first response to conflict is exit it's the same strategy really and I
01:00:55
think probably a lot of uh quieter people who've had the experience of conflict growing up are pretty conflict
01:01:03
diverse and I think that's it's quite important to toughen up on that to a
01:01:09
degree because conflict exists all over the place I'm not talking about physical
01:01:14
conflict which of course we want to avoid at all at all times but uh um disagreement
01:01:20
or somebody being crossed with us or somebody being upset well sometimes
01:01:26
those are necessary in life and responding to those in inappropriate
01:01:33
ways can actually really damage relationships I mean I talk about four leeches which undermine communication
01:01:40
and the fourth of those is fixing fixing is it's not okay for somebody to
01:01:46
be upset around me don't be upset don't cry don't express emotion you know uh so
01:01:53
it's it's a kind of smothering of everything that goes on around
01:01:59
um I'll tell you a story about that my art told me um when her little sister
01:02:05
was due to be born with my grandparents there was great excitement they decorated the nursery uh the the the
01:02:12
room was made already came the day off her parents went to the hospital and she was beside herself with excitement aged
01:02:18
about six they returned no baby
01:02:23
never was a word said about the whole thing because they didn't want to upset her
01:02:28
and what she learned from that for the rest of her life was you can't trust people people don't tell you what's
01:02:34
going on you never know your people aren't straight you know there were a lot of bad lessons she learned out of
01:02:40
that lack of communication the child had been still born it was a tragedy they were upset but they didn't
01:02:47
share it with their daughter because they didn't want to upset her that's fixing and it can be enormously damaging in
01:02:52
relationships to behave in that way obviously one wants to be sensitive you
01:02:58
know you sit the child down you explain in little ways perhaps starting off with you know the baby's not coming and then
01:03:06
moving on to explain what happened as the child gets older um Jane and I had to survive uh having
01:03:12
uh a baby who could not survive and it was deeply traumatic for us
01:03:20
um and I'm very glad to say that with Holly we involved her every step of the way Holly was
01:03:25
uh what six at the time five I can't remember
01:03:30
um but we brought her in you know when um Little Lily was still born we brought
01:03:39
her in she met Lily we called Lily a name you know we did everything we possibly could and Holly still talks
01:03:45
about Lily she talks as if she can communicate with her she she accounts her as a member of the family so we
01:03:51
didn't fall into that trap of pretending nothing had happened and fixing sometimes people need to be upset you
01:03:58
know Holly was upset we were upset and it's authentic to be upset so I think being that averse to upset is
01:04:07
quite a dangerous thing in life it's funny because when you told that
01:04:13
story I was engrossed I was engrossed for a number of reasons that exact point there when you said
01:04:18
that I was engrossed and I've spoken a lot about the delivery itself of a point and a story but um not a lot about what
01:04:26
it takes to design the content in a way where you can engross somebody what advice would you give to someone
01:04:32
that is potentially you know presenting has a pitch coming up is going to do a podcast about how to deliver their thoughts in a
01:04:39
way which is engrossing as it relates to the content itself because I can I can Hazard a guess as to
01:04:44
why I was engrossed but well it's a story yes story we love stories storytelling is really really powerful I
01:04:50
mean what's the number one Ted Talk of all time it's a talk by Sir Ken Robinson sadly missed dead now but see a
01:04:56
wonderful man and at the heart of that talk is a little story he tells because
01:05:02
the thesis of the talk is that we're educating creativity out of children that's what his talk is saying and he
01:05:09
tells this story about a little girl who's drawing at the back of the class and she doesn't normally and the teacher goes to the back and says what are you
01:05:16
drawing and the little girl says I'm drawing a picture of God and the teacher says but nobody knows
01:05:21
what God looks like and the little girl says they will in a minute it's a classic story it takes 15 seconds
01:05:29
to tell it makes me laugh every time that is his whole Ted talk in a
01:05:34
beautiful encapsulating enchanting story storytelling is the best way to get any
01:05:41
talk across really if you can think of a a metaphor which matches what you're trying to
01:05:49
communicate to people in a captivating story where perhaps there's you know the classic elements of
01:05:55
a story there's a protagonist there's an antagonist there are challenges there's a journey there's a destination there's
01:06:01
help on the way from unexpected quarters obstacles to overcome you can do it in a
01:06:07
very short space of time you can do it as a personal story as I did in my TED talk about uh my mum's negativity you
01:06:15
know that's a true story that you know she was in hospital I took a paper in and I said oh look it's October the 1st
01:06:21
and she said I know isn't it Dreadful and I you know well if somebody's that negative
01:06:26
it's very difficult to be around them and that was a true story that I told so it's almost like uh you could have a
01:06:34
little storytelling niche in your talk you know I'm gonna can I tell you a story and everybody goes oh yes come on
01:06:40
SO storytelling is a massive massively powerful way there are books on this uh
01:06:46
if anybody wants to speak in a captivating way become a good Storyteller and it will really really help
01:06:51
but the other big part of it I always say is
01:06:56
understanding the listening you're speaking into say that again understanding the listening that you're
01:07:03
speaking into okay because we all have unique listening this is something it's the most common
01:07:10
mistake I see in business in relationships is people thinking everybody listens like I do
01:07:16
they don't our listening is unique your listening is as unique as your your irises your
01:07:21
fingerprints your voice print and so is mine and they're different so it's a huge mistake to assume other
01:07:29
people are going to receive this message the way I would receive it so it's a massively valuable tool if
01:07:36
you're speaking to one person or ten thousand doesn't matter to say what's the listening I'm speaking into
01:07:44
what's the listening I'm speaking into who is this person what's their listening where will it
01:07:51
have come from or who are these 10 000 people because in a big room you have a Gestalt listening
01:07:57
which changes over time you know that I've done talks immediately after lunch in what they
01:08:03
call the graveyard slot he's a Ted talker he can cope with that and everybody's a bit woozy the blood's all
01:08:09
gone to their guts they're a bit tired they're not very bright you know or there's the final slot in the day just
01:08:15
before people are leaving when they're all desperate to go and have a drink in the bar or something you know there are different listenings through the day
01:08:22
and different listenings from person to person so it's not a fixed thing and it's
01:08:27
important to be sensitive and actually do you know what I've discovered is all you have to do is ask
01:08:34
the question what's the listening and you become really good at spotting it I don't know
01:08:41
how it might be tiny body language cues it might be pheromones it might be
01:08:47
intuition whatever it is you will if you pay attention to it and you ask that
01:08:52
question consciously at least you're respecting the other person enough to say this person speaks really slowly so
01:09:00
I should probably slow my Pace down a little bit or this is a really really fast person
01:09:05
so let's be Buzzy here or you know they might have cultural or uh they might
01:09:11
have political views or something like that that you need to be sensitive to if you're trying to achieve something
01:09:18
the the point as well about about storytelling I was I was fascinated by it because it reminded me of um
01:09:25
my time at Social chain we bought the social media company um we never had us outbound sales team
01:09:31
our strategy was kind of there was maybe fourfolds but the two that are most pertinent what I'm to the point I'm making are personal branding and
01:09:38
speaking on stage so we grow our business from nothing to tens and tens and tens of millions in Revenue the
01:09:43
agency business the global business 600 700 million in Revenue never with an outbound sales team and the the sole
01:09:51
thesis which I don't think people ever realize who are trying to scale an agency is we just told really great
01:09:57
stories and the best way that I can demonstrate this is I remember my first
01:10:02
talk when I started social chain at maybe 21 years old and I was in London and I woke up on stage and I say
01:10:09
that's exactly why you were kicked out of school you're incapable of listening to anybody and you always think you know
01:10:15
a better way don't call me or the family until you go back to University and with that my mum hung up the phone
01:10:23
that's how I started all of my talks for about four years I'm trying to sell you social media advertising here and at the
01:10:29
end of this the presentation you would find out what happened with minor mum's relationship so it'd be this heart and it would say and me and my mum have
01:10:36
never had a better relationship and I genuinely you know of all the things we did as a business I genuinely believe
01:10:41
that I was speaking 50 weeks a year I was going to every corner of the world meeting every brand our biggest brands
01:10:47
like Coca-Cola they all came from hearing that exact talk with about my mum um
01:10:52
the conventional and the the normal thing to do is to bring information
01:10:58
I'll give you as much information as I can you see it in every slide deck every pitch deck but we all know from a human
01:11:04
level the best part of this conversation is going to be the stories yeah of course it's going to be engaging people
01:11:09
and causing them to be curious curiosity is absolutely fundamental in
01:11:15
listening now I talk about four C's of listening which are um compassion
01:11:22
for the other person for the audience whatever it might be commitment because
01:11:28
it takes time and effort to listen listening is work it's not just a
01:11:34
capability yes we have ears but we actually have to put things down focus and so forth Consciousness that you're
01:11:41
actually doing something now this is an action this is not something that goes on in the background
01:11:47
and curiosity and if you can engender those things in people especially the Curiosity which we get
01:11:54
with stories especially if you start a story and you don't finish it come on Stephen we want to know what
01:12:00
happens at the end yeah yeah so you then got the bit in the Middle where they're all going I really want to know what happened at the end and then you give
01:12:06
them the end at the at the end to satisfy them that is a brilliant way of engaging people
01:12:14
could listening to this and actually that's funny because I was actually reflecting on we I told you my
01:12:19
company in San Francisco has just raised a lot of money and I broke all the rules that I've just said it's just it's just
01:12:24
there's 10 slides of just information I mean it worked but I think it's funny because I actually thought I don't
01:12:30
actually care if it worked I would have liked to do it my way yeah you know well also because you're then kind of conforming to the the Norms out there
01:12:36
which is that's where everybody does stuff that's a deck you know I mean I hate that word deck anyway but you know
01:12:41
here here let me show have you got a good deck yeah but there's something in in the actual design of the deck that
01:12:48
says way more about you than the information ever will yeah and it's funny because this is genuinely what's going on in my head as he was talking
01:12:53
about storytelling is I was thinking about how I should have structured sorry for not listening but you just inspired me to to go from this tangent in my head
01:12:59
cool I was thinking about how much I should have started that deck as a story and that would have been so much more
01:13:05
gripping yeah um versus just like put your logo on the front and then you know you waffle into
01:13:10
like stats and figures I broke my own rule there and I'm kind of disappointed my own personal philosophy which I
01:13:15
consider to be the most important thing for not doing that it's a struggle for me as well I mean I'm writing a book right now about sound and what I'm
01:13:24
trying really hard to do is to get human stories into it you know but I have a
01:13:30
terrible memory and when I read great books by people I mean I I read you know
01:13:35
books by people who've written amazing books about all sorts of different subjects and what impresses me is they say on
01:13:41
March the 5th 1992 I had this conversation with this person who walked you know that way and did this thing and
01:13:48
said this thing and I think how how the do you remember with you I mean I have no idea what I was doing in 1992.
01:13:55
I don't remember my childhood so it is you know it's quite a big problem if like me you were kind of in a miasma of
01:14:02
I mean it's very good because I'm a great believer in be here now and living in the common in the in the the current moment living in this instant which is
01:14:09
all the life we ever have this instant the the future hasn't happened the past
01:14:14
has there's nothing we can do about either of them much at this instant
01:14:19
so being here now is really important to me but it's kind of become an excuse almost for me for getting everything I do too
01:14:27
imagine imagine how many I have the privilege of sitting here with the smartest people in the world who are giving me all these amazing things so
01:14:34
you're massively wise yeah you would think so but I sit here and I go oh my God flag I'm gonna write that down later
01:14:40
and then we get an hour and a half in and I'm just my it's like I've got this short-term memory yeah the thing I I
01:14:45
fall back on is I go the best stuff will stay with me because it will help me in such a deep emotional way that I won't
01:14:51
be able to forget so maybe I'm just absorbing the very best well maybe and also you do have the privilege of having
01:14:57
recorded it all in high quality video and audio so you can watch it back I don't always have the time to watch all
01:15:03
of them yeah but in the gym I try and make sure I listen to them What would life be like if we could watch back
01:15:08
everything that we've done all the conversations that we've had and learn from them blimey pretty scary yeah
01:15:16
I'd be a lot better as a of a human being me too I know I tend to see life it's it's a spiral staircase so the
01:15:23
important thing to me is to grow a little bit every day that's the important thing to learn something you
01:15:28
know even if it's how not to do something so you know when I meet people that
01:15:34
evidently are making a mistake or doing something wrong it's okay I learned not to do that doesn't work very well
01:15:40
why have you struggled to grow um but you have continually intended to
01:15:47
uh I would say uh in my nutrition more than anything else probably I am very
01:15:54
fortunate to live with Jane who is a four-time world champion martial artist a health and fitness expert I train with
01:16:01
her multiple times a week so you know I'm a 64 year old man who can easily
01:16:07
touch his toes and uh is you know my core strength and my flexibility are
01:16:12
amazing for somebody of my age but I still eat too much I really enjoy
01:16:17
food and unfortunately not always the right food I think that's again you know
01:16:23
that's something that comes from our upbringing from our childhood where food was very much a part of our family and
01:16:28
it was a reward and it was um you know my mother was a very very good cook as well so there was always too much of it
01:16:35
and it was like a trough with me and my brother sort of having huge helpings so
01:16:41
um I'm I I became acclimatized from a very young age to having huge helpings of not necessarily very healthy things
01:16:48
it's a tough one isn't it to adjust one's upbringing and relationship with
01:16:54
food in that way so kale is good really
01:16:59
okay I have to kind of really learn some of those things and get away from Habits
01:17:06
which have been with me for 60 years or more it's so deeply emotional though and that's what we don't really ever
01:17:12
appreciate we think it's just a a decision yes or no but it's actually such a deeply emotional thing all of
01:17:18
these things are yeah um deeply psychological so I actually I was funny I was talking to my friends about this the other day and I said I think if you
01:17:24
will because we're all trying to get in shape and we're working out together Etc um and my one of my friends was like
01:17:30
well I'm gonna go on a diet I was like the problem with that is it's not sustainable what you're doing there is you're you're depriving yourself you're
01:17:36
actually sacrificing something you want to do how do you get I said I think that the best way for all of us to get
01:17:41
healthier is actually to go see a therapist you know what you just said I absolutely resonate with because Jane's always
01:17:47
saying to me that many times with clients they come in and it's more of a therapy session than a physical workout because they're talking as they're doing
01:17:53
things and it's the talking that helps them more than perhaps the exercise or at least as much so you know I do get
01:18:00
that and and adjusting one's whole psyche to see things that were perceived
01:18:06
as treats in childhood as not really treats and things that were perceived as
01:18:12
punishments or um you know really negatively in charge of your Hail yeah exercise go for a run do something you
01:18:19
know these things are actually good for us and they're really important to do it's funny because there is a sound Associated to food yeah in the sense of
01:18:26
just a from a psychology or an emotional perspective you know sweets
01:18:32
it always sounds like that well the sweet rapper's crinkle for a reason oh yeah and so the crisp crisp packets are
01:18:39
crunchy for a reason uh because if you had crisp packets in soggy you know rubbery rubberized containers you
01:18:47
wouldn't think the crisps were going to be fresh or as nice so the sound of packaging certainly has a big effect on
01:18:53
the way we perceive taste I mean sound and taste are very Associated I've never heard broccoli said with excitement but
01:19:01
I've heard McDonald's and sweets yeah and Coke you know yeah but also from a marketing and branding perspective you
01:19:07
know Brands like Coca-Cola spend so much of their time trying to associate even
01:19:18
a bottle so sound has been used in advertising for many many years in a very profitable way I think the first
01:19:24
sound was Wheaties way back in about 1926 and it was a four-part barber shop
01:19:30
quartet who had a little song so have you tried Wheaties and it massively
01:19:36
revolutionized the sales of Wheaties and from that point on it's been huge and appetizing
01:19:42
it was only a few years ago that I got a ston to the term
01:19:47
audio branding and then I got really obsessed with it because obviously running a podcast people are listening
01:19:53
to our podcast every week it's in their ears there's certain sounds they're familiar with there's even certain sayings at the start the podcast where I
01:19:58
say I hope nobody's listening for you I'll keep this to yourself they've become accustomed to um what is what is it to have a good
01:20:05
audio brand and how does if because there's multiple CEOs and brand owners that are listening to this that have
01:20:10
never considered the fact that they have an audio brand as well how does one go about doing that is it important
01:20:18
well the first thing to say is that all businesses all organizations and all
01:20:23
brands are making sound already because I've had a conversation lots of times with marketing directors or CMOS
01:20:28
where I've said you know this is how powerful it is and they go oh maybe we should start doing some sound you
01:20:33
already are it's just not designed it's accidental it might be the sound of your delivery trucks pissing people off at
01:20:40
four o'clock in the morning might be the sound of your uh your on hold music or
01:20:45
your automated call handling system press one for this press two for that you know nine levels later you're still
01:20:51
going those kind of sounds can really be damaging and can lose unbelievable amounts of money for a
01:20:58
business I mean how many times have we slammed the phone down in frustration that one of those systems which is
01:21:03
designed by a technical person not a marketing person um which doesn't I mean older people
01:21:08
hate them and we have an aging demographic in every Western Country so
01:21:14
they're becoming less and less popular so sounds like those can be enormously
01:21:19
damaging the sound of your corporate reception the number of corporate receptions I've walked into where
01:21:24
they've got a TV been on the wall with news on and I remember you know when 9 11 happened I walked into the reception
01:21:31
of mechanics and in London they had big TV screens with burning skyscrapers on them
01:21:37
how are you expecting to have a good meeting when you inflict that kind of thing on people I suppose it's supposed
01:21:43
to say we're current and we're up to the minute and we're you know in tune with the world's events but news generally is
01:21:50
bad news I think it's unthinking yeah it is someone just said put something on there if you have a screen in reception
01:21:56
they have something playing about your company that's informative that engages people not you know news especially not
01:22:04
commercial news which may have ads from your competitors showing in your own reception so those kind of sounds I
01:22:11
think are very mindless there's a huge amount of mindlessness about sound we
01:22:16
design for the eyes largely and it's not that often that companies think about designing with the ears
01:22:22
so very often you have a company that spends masses of money on visuals whether it's a retailer you know like a
01:22:28
supermarket and doesn't think about the appalling sound of checkout beeps and
01:22:34
trolleys clashing and some awful tinned music coming across on tiny little
01:22:39
loudspeakers that were never designed to play music and so forth you know the cacophony that you and I have to go
01:22:45
through a lot of the time in life which is the result of people not designing what
01:22:50
brands do that well do sound well yeah generally well
01:22:56
I think that Airlines and airplane manufacturers and car manufacturers are
01:23:02
getting very good at it in terms of Designing the Sonic experience of using the airplane I mean there is an
01:23:09
unbelievable noise on the fuselage of an airplane traveling at 500 miles an hour and inside you don't hear it so the
01:23:15
design in there is very good and the same with cars these days most of them sound very good although there's a thing
01:23:22
with electric cars we have electric cars at slow speed they're very silent and it can be dangerous so you need a noise to
01:23:31
warn people the car is coming um and you know a lot of the time they make a nice chord or something like that
01:23:37
as they're moving through um brands that have great powerful Sonic
01:23:43
logos there are plenty of those you think of Intel for example down down
01:23:48
which is something you know if I say to people can you sing intol's logo lots of people can if I said to you can you draw
01:23:54
Intel's logo no not really squarish thing isn't it or something
01:24:00
that sound which was designed by a guy called Walter was our is worth hundreds
01:24:06
of millions of dollars to Intel and brand value and they have batteries of lawyers who
01:24:13
approve any tiny change to it because it's a it's a trademark for them and it's a really important one that's
01:24:19
consistency right because we've heard it so much yeah is there anything else other than consistency for people that are thinking about their sonic signature
01:24:25
and their content in their podcast in their brand videos whatever is the is there anything else other than just
01:24:30
making sure people hear it a lot yeah so well if you're going to hear it a lot it has to be not irritating as
01:24:36
well and there's there have been some pretty irritating Sonic logos but I mean if you think back we talked a moment ago
01:24:42
about the history of advertising and sound through advertising I can remember from my childhood so this is addressed
01:24:48
to your older listeners uh things like the fairy liquid jingle you know four hands that do dishes those kind of
01:24:54
things that was from 1965 or something and I still remember it right now so there there are things that can be
01:25:01
enormously iconic and Powerful uh from the the the Tony the Tiger there great
01:25:07
those kind of things which last for years and years and years there's been at least five Tonys saying that it's
01:25:13
gone on so long they've kind of all died off and been replaced um is there an emotion to even though
01:25:19
it's a jingle we talked about earlier how storytelling implants it into your brain in a way that information can't is
01:25:26
there a certain emotion to the sound or the jingle that is important big time because sound effects has four ways and
01:25:34
this is a conversation which is really interesting to me I mean it was my first Ted Talk it's not the most watched of of
01:25:41
the TED talks and it's something which is um the reaction I get from people is is
01:25:47
often the same it's well that's absolutely obvious but I never thought of it I've never been conscious of it
01:25:53
you know we're very very ocular in the Western World particularly and we're very oriented around the eyes there are
01:25:59
loads of Design Awards in the world they're all for how things look there's no Design Awards for how things sound it's it's bizarre architects
01:26:06
are all about how things look very often and they design things that sound awful and aren't fit for purpose because they
01:26:13
look great and that's all they care about so it is very important to become sensitive
01:26:18
sound changes your body physically so for example I could entrain your heartbeat if you go if I
01:26:25
drop you in a nightclub with pounding dance music at 140 beats a minute your heart rate will immediately increase or
01:26:31
if there's a sudden sound you got me yeah so your heart rate just
01:26:37
jumped because you had a shot of cortisol your fight flight hormone and noradrenaline and that gets you ready to
01:26:42
fight or flee so your heart rate your breathing your hormone secretions your
01:26:47
brain waves they all get changed by sound that's the first way sound changes your
01:26:53
feelings think of music it's the most obvious example but for me you know my favorite sound in the world is the sound
01:26:59
of rain on leaves outside the window Summer Rain on leaves outside the window well that's enormously calming to me
01:27:06
other people it might be gentle surf or something like that so sound can affect
01:27:11
our feelings bird song makes people feel secure because the birds have been here far
01:27:17
longer than we have and we've learned over hundreds of thousands of years so when the birds are happily tweeting
01:27:22
things are safe we're okay if they suddenly stop you need to be worried because Birds stop it there's a
01:27:29
big Predator like a lion okay then the Third Way sound effects is how
01:27:34
well you can think cognitively you know we are all completely used to the the
01:27:39
would you be quite I'm trying to think here especially people's conversations the most damaging sound of all it's
01:27:46
really difficult to think which is why we are one-third as productive in open
01:27:51
plan offices as we are in quiet working spaces one-third if we're trying to do knowledge working
01:27:58
you know manipulate words or numbers in our head and write for example so I have friends at the BBC
01:28:05
you know the BBC have gutted that entire building in Portland Place and it's now got a basement where they all sit
01:28:11
writing with it four floors of space above them and it drives them nuts if you're a
01:28:16
journalist trying to write a story and you're finding on a deadline and you've got people around you talking it is really difficult to concentrate
01:28:25
so that's uh in terms of cognition how well we can think is affected by noise
01:28:30
around us or sound around us um and finally sound changes our Behavior
01:28:35
it changes what you do and what I do every day there's a brilliant study actually which was done some Years Ago by some
01:28:41
academics they had a supermarket with two Gondola ends French wine on one German wine on the other one visually
01:28:49
identical and all they did was to alternate the music so day one you had a bit of French or accordion music day two
01:28:56
you had a bit of German kind of umpire music and they kept doing that for an extended period of time
01:29:02
on the French music days French wine outsold German wine by five bottles to one which may not be surprising it does
01:29:09
sell more in the world so okay we might expect that but
01:29:14
on the German music days German wine outsold French wine by three bottles to one
01:29:20
now that is a massive shift in behavior and that's not people coming in going ah German music therefore I shall buy a
01:29:27
bottle of German wine they were they weren't even aware of the music most of the people who were surveyed they hadn't
01:29:33
noticed so this is unconscious response to a sound situation that's how much
01:29:38
sound is changing our behavior all the time and so part of my message part of my my whole thrust and the difference I
01:29:46
want to make in the world is to get people listening consciously so that we start to become aware of the
01:29:52
ways in which sound is changing our bodies Our emotions our thinking and our
01:29:58
Behavior so we can start to take responsibility for the sound we consume and possibly even more importantly
01:30:05
responsibility for the sound we make with our voice and you know also willy-nilly inflicting
01:30:13
sound on other people possibly unkindly uh which very often happens also
01:30:18
everyone listening to this podcast you know and I even imagine the title that will work best when we do our a b tests will be about how to be a great speaker
01:30:25
we've talked about why that is why we all want to be heard more it gives us a sense of significance helps us to feel
01:30:31
valued which makes us part of the tribe and all of these things but you as as we said at this very start of this conversation you really are leading a a
01:30:38
crusade to get people to listen more why should that be the title of the podcast why is that potentially even more
01:30:45
important um to the world and if we all started to listen a bit more why would the world be
01:30:51
such a better place personally and globally because I think with conscious listening the result is always
01:30:57
understanding and that's what we need understanding in the world de phrase
01:31:04
conflict it means that people can co-exist side by side with people with whom they disagree and we've seen the
01:31:10
way that's not happening in the polarization of politics for example in America where it becomes
01:31:17
a hated thing for somebody to disagree with your views uh you know that we're seeing such polarization in so many
01:31:24
countries now and that's all about this thing of being right and not listening to other people not not trying to learn
01:31:30
anything but becoming more and more entrenched in a set of opinions which
01:31:38
you know they may be useful to you but is that true is that universally true
01:31:44
would you Brook any kind of antithesis to that any kind of counter
01:31:50
view any competing solutions to the world how can you grow if you are stuck
01:31:57
in a bunker and you're listening through a tiny little slit of an entrenched listening
01:32:03
position that I'm writing everybody else is wrong certainly on this issue so to me a passion for listening is
01:32:12
about coexisting with people I don't agree with I may not like but
01:32:18
they have a right to be here and they have a reason there's usually a good reason for what people think or what
01:32:23
people do often and you know I'm not saying pity the mass murderer and so forth
01:32:31
necessarily you know there'll be possibly reasons for that as well we certainly need to understand them to
01:32:36
stop it ever happening again so listening even to people like that I think there's things to learn I mean how
01:32:43
could you ever become like that and why would you ever behave like that so if we just dismiss people that we
01:32:50
don't approve of or people we don't like then we don't learn very much at all so I think listening is you know I said this
01:32:56
I did a tedx talk in Athens the Cradle of democracy and I went on stage and said listening is the sound of democracy
01:33:04
because without it it's very hard if I'm the minority
01:33:09
it's very hard to accept the majority view isn't it you're all wrong and I'm gonna fight well that is just a recipe
01:33:17
for recipe for Anarchy conflict War as we've seen whereas if I can say okay I can
01:33:23
understand why you all think that I'll try and change your opinion but you know I'm not de-personalizing you I'm
01:33:30
understanding that you're human beings you have a different view from me and I can see why you got to that view then I can grow you can grow we can
01:33:38
possibly come to some sort of synthesis thinking a lot about modern listening there and the tools we have to listen to
01:33:44
each other one of them being social media yeah one of the things that's so tempting to do for all of us which I've refrained about two years ago I made a
01:33:50
very conscious decision to to do this but I used to just unfollow people that
01:33:56
I didn't like what they said so like I I wouldn't follow Trump for example or like Nigel farage or like people that I
01:34:01
thought were just idiots who had ulterior motives whatever I would just unfollow them and what I'm the problem with that approach is I was as I saw
01:34:08
other Echo Chambers emerging online is that I wasn't progressing in any way I was as you've said it like I was
01:34:15
increasing the size of my information my exposure therefore my ability to have empathy or to understand people out that
01:34:21
didn't think like me so I did a I started following people who were who I
01:34:27
who made me feel uncomfortable it's the best way to describe it yeah well uncomfortable is a call for reassessment
01:34:33
isn't it yeah and that's really important but I do think social media has got a lot to answer for in the way
01:34:39
that it's been abused by people um with trolling and particularly with shaming there's a brilliant talk by um
01:34:47
John Ronson who's who's become a friend of mine over the years on social media shaming and if anybody hasn't seen that
01:34:52
I do recommend you watch it because it is truly chilling to recount how a mob
01:34:58
can beat somebody out of their job for what was originally quite an innocent
01:35:04
post so we now see this you know we see slurs being um unacceptable words being
01:35:11
labeled on top of people uh who find it difficult to defend themselves whether we're talking about racist or we're
01:35:18
talking about homophobe you know at the moment that person is labeled with that thing it's very hard to get the stain
01:35:24
off isn't it and then you get a mob who go on and start castigating the person without ever understanding what caused
01:35:31
this in the first place so I think we've got to be very careful about the way these things are used and
01:35:36
without listening to the person and what their views really are
01:35:42
it's all too easy to get into a kind of knee-jerk mob Lynch Mob kind of
01:35:48
mentality where we're being right it comes back to that again doesn't it and that person is wrong and must be
01:35:54
punished or shamed or canceled or whatever it may be so I think listening is really important and as you say to
01:36:01
people who make us feel uncomfortable well that's a warning sign that perhaps we need to reassess or analyze or what
01:36:07
is going on here why is this making me feel uncomfortable is it actually against my views or my values or is it
01:36:13
against my social conditioning and would my friends disapprove of me if I thought that that kind of thing I'd love to live
01:36:20
in a world where we um we all including myself we're much better at listening and also accepting ideas that made us
01:36:26
feel uncomfortable that's in part what I think we're trying to do here is to have conversations to see ideas Collide that
01:36:33
help to move the the world forward um and I only started thinking about that
01:36:39
the other day when we had a guest on called Africa Brook that maybe that's ultimately the the net benefit of this
01:36:44
is just Fearless conversations in a medium where no one's going to be edited or or cut down and manipulated that will
01:36:50
hopefully push the conversation forward and I'm not right and my guests are sometimes it's just all opinion
01:36:55
um we do have a closing tradition on this podcast where the previous guest asks a question for the next guest they
01:37:01
write it in the book Jack gets to see it I don't get to see it um until now so give me a second to read
01:37:07
it they don't know who they're writing it for and you will also be asked to do the same I have been dreading this moment
01:37:13
really why it's so funny that everyone gets really nervous now yeah and I'll just say you know everyone takes a long
01:37:18
time to answer but then they also take an even longer amount of time to think of a question to write okay
01:37:25
okay this person wrote see they've really given themselves away but
01:37:31
I have played sport for a living I've presented I've done acting
01:37:37
and I've sang songs but I would still love to do one more
01:37:42
thing with my life what's your one more thing
01:37:54
I think for me um I've resisted doing a lot of um
01:38:01
things that I know intellectually are really really good for me so I can probably crystallize that we
01:38:10
haven't in Scotland where I live we have a thing called Monroe's these are a set of Peaks
01:38:16
I think they're over 3000 feet or something like that I can't remember how big they are but they're
01:38:22
you know it's sizeable and um I saw an amazing story the other day
01:38:28
about an 83 year old man I think who has just completed climbing all of the
01:38:34
monroes there are a lot of monroes you're talking about more than a hundred and he's just completed that I mean
01:38:41
these are serious uh schleps you know and at his age he's just completed it was a wonderful
01:38:47
picture of all his friends with walking sticks forming a kind of um Corridor for him to walk through on
01:38:53
his final complete um I would love to take on doing at least
01:39:00
one Monroe a year as a walk Jen and I have just got into serious walking where we live in orkney
01:39:08
and we did Eight Mile Walk the other day and I was virtually crippled the following day I couldn't move so I'd
01:39:15
love to get to the stage where I get my body used to that kind of thing it is so beautiful to be out in the fresh air to
01:39:21
be in beautiful scenery to be exercising my body in that way to be losing weight to be becoming fitter I mean it's just
01:39:28
nothing but good from the whole thing and taking it on to do it up on Monroe that would be a serious challenge for me
01:39:34
so one a year for the rest of my life would be fantastic
01:39:40
amazing and I'm gonna find out if that happens so me and Jane are gonna stay in touch fair enough
01:39:48
um and maybe I'll come do a couple of the monroes with you because I've got increasingly um interested in like hiking we'd love it lately so do invite
01:39:54
me if you do end up doing it but um definitely thank you so much for your time today thank you Stephen you've given me so much from through your
01:40:00
content and the videos and especially the TED Talks you've made me it's one of those conversations that we've had today but also from watching your videos where
01:40:06
I start to reassess all of the as I describe it like the unthinking I've done with sound I just haven't thought
01:40:11
about it enough and it through this conversation I even thought about our little jingle at the start of the Diary of a CEO which we've always had since
01:40:18
episode one and to be honest I've never really thought about it it's just been there and it's and that kind of
01:40:23
reassessment because I completely agree with everything you've said about the importance of sound but if I agree then
01:40:28
why aren't my actions and my why isn't it such a high priority in the way that I'm thinking and
01:40:34
designing the things that I create so yeah and also everything you've said about
01:40:39
conflict resolution and relationships and the importance of that sound plays there it's such an important conversation one that I hope we can
01:40:45
continue long after this podcast but I just wanted to say thank you for your time today thank you for listening
01:40:50
that's a yeah it's a lovely way to end thank you for speaking and thank you for listening it means the world to me thank you thank you Stephen
01:40:56
I had a few words to say about one of my sponsors on this podcast my girlfriend came upstairs yesterday when I was
01:41:01
having a shower and she said to me that she tried the heel protein shake which lives on my fridge over there and she said it's amazing low calories you get
01:41:08
your 20 odd grams of protein you get your 26 vitamins and minerals and it's nutritionally complete in the protein
01:41:13
space there's lots of things but it's hard to find something that is nice especially when consumed just with water
01:41:19
and that is nutritionally complete and that has about 100 calories in total
01:41:24
while also giving you your 20 grams of protein if you haven't tried the heel
01:41:30
protein product do give it a try The Salted Caramel one if you put some ice cubes in it and you put it in a blender
01:41:36
and you try it is as good as pretty much any milkshake on the market just mixed
01:41:42
with water it's been a game changer for me because I'm trying to drop my calorie intake and I'm trying to be a little bit more healthy with my diet so this is
01:41:49
where heel fits in my life thank you heal for making a product that I actually like The Salted Caramel is my favorite I've got the banana one here
01:41:54
which is the one my girlfriend likes but for me salted caramel is the one
01:42:00
[Music]
01:42:12
thank you
01:42:17
[Music]