Today I heard an interesting TED Talk about speaking.

It's called "How to speak so that people want to listen" by Julian Treasure.

At first, I thought it was about how to influence people and win them over, say, in arguments.

Turns out it's actually a list about behaviour in conversation and neat tips on using your voice.

I found some points (especially in the first part) to be a tad obvious, yet I've really enjoyed the talk.

Hence, I've decided to summarize it in a few lines.

As always, any correction and feedback is more than welcome - thank you! 😀

The speaker first starts with a list of seven behaviours he deems one should steer clear of while talking.

They are: judging, complaining, negativity, gossiping, excuses, exaggeration and dogmatism.

I won't go through every point because I think most of them are self-explanatory.

"Exaggeration" means inflating the truth so much so, that it's almost perceived as a blatant lie.

"Dogmatism" is basically considering one's own opinion as the only truth.

He then moves on to the opposite, that is four positive attitudes to adopt during a conversation.

According to him one should always try to be:

- honest (but not too straightforward)

- authentic (be yourself)

- reliable (do what you say)

- always willing to wish the other person good

The second half brings up how we can train and warm up our voice to sound more impactful.

Julian goes through various characteristics of the human voice such as pitch, pace or silence.

For every one of them, he briefly explains why it matters to effectively convey our message and intentions.

We should, for example, try to lower the voice in the chest, speak slowly and use as few filler words as possible.

Finally, he shows people how to get their voices ready before a speech.

This routine can be used on every occasion, whether one has to speak in public or not.

He also makes the audience stand up and try every step for themselves, before saying goodbye.