How to Be Heard: Secrets for Powerful Speaking and Listening

"How to Be Heard" has the answers. This book is packed with tips and tools to help us transform our speaking and listening skills, backed up by fascinating theory and research about sound and language. It includes practical exercises to prepare us for big conversations and speeches, so that we can inspire, persuade and encourage others. It also highlights common public-speaking pitfalls and shows us how to avoid them.

So, who's this book for? "How to Be Heard" can help anyone who wants to become a better communicator, at work or at home, or on a big stage or small. Perhaps you have your sights set on sharing a big idea with the world via the TED platform. Maybe you want to shine at your next team meeting. Or perhaps you simply want to be a better partner or friend.

This book will be especially useful to anyone who has a fear of public speaking and wants to rein in those nerves, and to those who feel their words often fall on deaf ears. Leaders, managers, coaches, and anyone in sales will learn a lot from this book. Its tips are also relevant to whole organizations, as well as to individuals.

And, if you're wondering whether you're even going to need your speaking skills in the future, as technology advances, Treasure argues that voice communication is set to make a comeback. He says that we'll soon be having meaningful conversations with machines – and with our very own artificially intelligent assistants.

Julian Treasure is a renowned international speaker and author on sound, speaking and listening. He's delivered five TED Talks, which have been viewed around 50 million times. His talk on powerful speaking is in the top 10 TED Talks of all time. He's a former musician and songwriter, and the founder of The Sound Agency, a company that helps businesses incorporate sound into their branding to make a bigger impact and engage more customers. His clients include Google, Unilever, BP, and Ikea.

So, keep listening to hear how to avoid some common public-speaking traps, to learn to listen more consciously, and to hear how you can plan and deliver the perfect speech.

"How to Be Heard" begins with a fascinating insight into the importance of sound and how it affects our happiness, effectiveness and well-being. You're probably aware that unwelcome noise causes stress, and that pleasant music can lift our mood. Treasure explains why this is, looking at how sound travels through the body and brain, and why it alters our emotional state.

He also stresses the power of good listening at the start of the book. When we listen consciously to someone, rather than letting our minds wander, we connect on a deep level, which builds a sense of intimacy and encourages honesty. Listening well also enables us to persuade others, whether we're trying to sell to a client or calm down an angry toddler.

We'll come back to listening skills in a few minutes. But first, let's take a look at Treasure's tips for good verbal communication, starting with what not to do.

The author identifies four habits that suck the power out of our speaking and listening. He calls them the "four leeches" – an apt metaphor. He wants us to become aware of these leeches so we can change our behavior.

The first leech is our basic human desire to look good. If we're driven by a need to seem wiser, cooler or more experienced than others, this will get in the way of our communication. We won't listen and we might talk down to people. We might also fall into the trap of trying to compose the perfect response before the other person has finished speaking, a habit Treasure calls "speechwriting." When we do this, we can end up ignoring the other person's words entirely. This is a surefire way to undermine or demoralize someone.

If we want to look good, we might also engage in competitive speaking or one-upmanship. Here's an example: your colleague tells you proudly that he just landed a big contract. You instantly reply with a list of the big deals you brought in the previous month, stealing your colleague's thunder.

Our need to be right is the second leech, and it's closely connected to the first. This need drives us to make other people wrong, a behavior that can damage or even destroy relationships. Impatience and rudeness are hallmarks of this leech. We interrupt others to disagree with them, or to make our point before they finish theirs.

This changes the dynamics of relationships and can leave people feeling belittled or angry. Treasure's tip for those of us who are prone to interrupting is to take a big breath before we speak. This might be just enough time to notice the other person is still talking and to hold our tongue.

The third leech is people pleasing. If we want others to like us, we'll say yes when we mean no, and vice versa. It's natural to want to be liked or to feel a sense of belonging, but we'll come across as weak if we keep agreeing with everyone else. It's more powerful to be honest and real. To combat this leech, Treasure suggests thinking about our core values. What principles do we want to live by? What's important to us? Once we're clear on our values, it'll be easier to stand firm, rather than be blown around by other people's whims and needs.

The final leech is fixing. Our desire to fix things or people gets in the way of authentic conversation. Imagine your colleague is upset and comes to you to talk. Your instinct might be to offer solutions, but she just wants to air her feelings and be heard. It's easy to think we have other people's best interests at heart when we try to fix them, but sometimes, it's more about getting our own needs met.

We like the way Treasure outlines these blocks to honest, powerful conversation. He identifies the leeches, explores the habits and behaviors that relate to them, and then offers exercises to help us avoid common pitfalls and communicate more powerfully.

The author goes on to describe what he calls the "seven deadly sins of speaking." We don't have time to look at them all here, but they're well worth a read. They include complaining, making excuses, exaggerating, and lying. Again, Treasure offers practical exercises to overcome these habits, such as writing a gratitude list and taking stock of how honest we are over a period of time.

Let's return to listening now, and how we can do it consciously.

It's easy to assume that we all listen in the same way, but this isn't the case. We listen through a set of filters, which will be different depending on our life experience. We like the way Treasure compares our listening style to a bunker – a box with a small slit in it that only lets certain things in, while other things bounce off the surface. We only see our version of reality.

It's important to become aware of our filters, so we can see or hear the whole picture. Treasure presents a series of filters that might be affecting the way we listen: culture, language, values, attitudes, beliefs or assumptions, expectations, intentions, and emotions.

To get to know our filters, Treasure suggests we take out a pen and paper, write each filter at the top of the page, and then write freely about each one. We can write about how each filter affects our listening, how or why we acquired it, and how it helps or hinders us. This awareness will help us to notice when we're filtering what we hear, so we can listen more consciously.

This is just one of several useful exercises that Treasure includes in the book, to help us to be more mindful about our listening. He has specific tips for sales people, for leaders, and for organizations who want to create a listening culture. He even includes suggestions on how to listen to nature and to music, and how to experience silence. In a noisy world so focused on speaking and delivery, Treasure's suggestions on listening are powerful and thought-provoking.

Let's now turn to public speaking, something Treasure knows a fair bit about.

He offers several memory aids to help his advice stick. He writes in lists and uses a lot of acronyms. His tips for giving a powerful talk are built around the acronym HAIL. H stands for honesty; A is for authenticity; I stands for integrity; and L is for love.

Honesty covers telling the truth, but also speaking in plain language rather than riddles or jargon. Treasure suggests we avoid long sentences, euphemisms, and clichés; eliminate redundant words; and use active rather than passive verbs. This all seems sound advice.

Authenticity is about being true to ourselves, rather than playacting or trying to be someone we're not. We might be tempted to adopt a persona when we're speaking, but an audience will see through this. Integrity is just as important. We should mean what we say and stand by our statements.

And what's love got to do with it? We're not talking about romantic love here, but rather, a feeling of kindness toward others. When we speak to people, we should wish them well. We could leave them with a gift. We might inspire or delight them, bring them joy, or give them useful information. If we speak with love, it becomes less about us and our performance, and more about what the audience will take away. This is a great way to stay humble and to focus on our message.

After this advice on how to speak, Treasure offers some excellent tips on what to say. We especially like his discussion of intentions. Firstly, we need to be clear on what we want to achieve with our speech. What will success look and feel like?

Secondly, we should think about how we want our audience to feel and what we want them to think after our talk. Next, we need to put ourselves in the audience's shoes, and consider why they've come to our talk. We also need to get clear on our big idea. What am I trying to get across and why should the audience care?

Toward the end of the book, Treasure's advice gets even more practical. He explores the art of storytelling; the pros and cons of using speaking aids or props; the value of cue cards, slides, and flip charts; and the importance of rehearsing our speech. He also looks at posture, hand gestures, breath, pitch, pace, room setup, and warming up before a talk. These final chapters of "How to Be Heard" make a great reference manual for anyone who's about to take the stage.

Treasure is an expert in communication, but he also draws on the experience of his peers. He includes excerpts from interviews he's done with writers, filmmakers, musicians, neuroscientists, businesspeople, and accomplished speakers like Chris Anderson, the curator of TED Talks, who talks about what makes a great speech. Readers can access the full transcripts and audio recordings of these interviews, as well as other tools, on the book's website.

If we have any criticism of this book, it's that Treasure tries to cover too much ground, so some sections do feel a bit thin. We also think he overdoes the acronyms and lists. But if you're dipping in and out of the book, rather than reading it in one sitting, this won't be a problem – and you might be grateful for the memory aids.

Finally, the subtitle of this book refers to "Secrets for Powerful Speaking and Listening." We don't think Treasure's advice is groundbreaking. You may have heard a lot of it before, not least in the author's TED Talks. But this book still packs a punch. It's great to have so many tools in one place and there's a good mix of practical exercises and theory, delivered clearly and succinctly in plain language.

So, if you want to develop your speaking and listening skills and communicate more effectively, we highly recommend this book. "How to be Heard" by Julian Treasure is published by Mango Publishing Group.

That's the end of this episode of Book Insights. Thanks for listening.