The video explores the immense influence of our voice as it is the most powerful tool for communication, capable of expressing love or inciting conflict. Despite its potential, many individuals find themselves unheard and misunderstood when they speak. The speaker highlights this disconnect and introduces seven ‘sins’ of speaking—Gossip, judging, Negativity, complaining, making excuses, embroidery or exaggeration, and Dogmatism—which should be avoided to revitalize our vocal influence.

Furthermore, the speaker suggests four foundational pillars to enable powerful and effective communication: honesty, Authenticity, Integrity, and love. By embracing these 'HAIL' principles, individuals can communicate more genuinely and resonantly, fostering better connections. Additionally, the speaker encourages leveraging the variety of tools available in our vocal toolbox such as register, Timbre, Prosody, pace, pitch, and volume to augment the impact of our speech.

Main takeaways from the video:

Please remember to turn on the CC button to view the subtitles.

Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. Gossip [ˈɡɒsɪp] - (n.) - Idle conversation about the affairs of others, typically involving details that are not confirmed as true.

First, Gossip. Speaking ill of somebody who's not present, not a nice habit.

2. Judging [ˈdʒʌdʒɪŋ] - (v.) - Forming an opinion or conclusion about someone or something.

Second, judging. We know people who are like this in conversation.

3. Negativity [ˌnɛɡəˈtɪvɪti] - (n.) - The expression of criticism or pessimism about something.

Third, Negativity. You can fall into this.

4. Dogmatism [ˈdɔːɡməˌtɪzəm] - (n.) - The tendency to lay down principles as incontrovertibly true, without consideration of evidence or the opinions of others.

And finally, Dogmatism, the confusion of facts with opinions.

5. Authenticity [ɔːˈθɛntɪsɪti] - (n.) - The quality of being genuine or true to one's own personality, spirit, or character.

The a is Authenticity. Just being yourself.

6. Integrity [ɪnˈtɛɡrɪti] - (n.) - The quality of being honest and having strong moral principles.

The I is Integrity, being your word, actually doing what you say.

7. Prosody [ˈprɒsədi] - (n.) - The patterns of rhythm and sound used in poetry and speech.

Then Prosody. I love Prosody.

8. Timbre [ˈtæmbər] - (n.) - The quality or color of a musical sound or voice as distinct from its pitch and intensity.

And we have Timbre. It's the way your voice feels.

9. Pitch [pɪtʃ] - (n.) - The degree of highness or lowness of a tone.

Of course, pitch often goes along with pace to indicate arousal.

10. Consuming [kənˈsuːmɪŋ] - (v.) - Eating, drinking, or ingesting something.

What would the world be like if we were creating sound consciously and consuming sound consciously?

Harnessing the Power of Your Mission Statement

The human voice. It's the instrument we all play. It's the most powerful sound in the world. Probably. It's the only one that can start a war or say, I love you. And yet many people have the experience that when they speak, people don't listen to them. Why is that? How can we speak powerfully? To make change in the world? What I'd like to suggest, there are a number of habits that we need to move away from. I've assembled for your pleasure here, seven deadly sins of speaking. I'm not pretending this is an exhaustive list, but these seven, I think, are pretty large habits that we can all fall into.

First, Gossip. Speaking ill of somebody who's not present, not a nice habit. And we know perfectly well the person gossiping five minutes later will be gossiping about us. Second, judging. We know people who are like this in conversation, and it's very hard to listen to somebody if you know that you're being judged and found wanting at the same time.

Third, Negativity. You can fall into this. My mother, in the last years of her life, became very, very negative. And it's hard to listen. I remember one day I said to her, it's October 1 today. And she said, I know, isn't it dreadful? It's hard to listen when somebody's that negative. And another form of Negativity, complaining. Well, this is the national art of the UK. It's our national sport. We complain about the weather, about sport, about politics, about everything. But actually, complaining is viral misery. It's not spreading sunshine and lightness in the world.

Excuses. We've all met this guy, maybe we've all been this guy. Some people have a blame thrower. They just pass it on to everybody else and don't take responsibility for their actions. And again, hard to listen to somebody who's being like that. Penultimate. The six of the seven embroidery. Exaggeration. It demeans our language, actually. Sometimes, for example, if I see something that really is awesome, what do I call it? And then, of course, this exaggeration becomes lying. Out and out lying. And we don't want to listen to people we know are lying to us. And finally, Dogmatism, the confusion of facts with opinions. When those two things get conflated, you're listening into the wind. Somebody is bombarding you with their opinions as if they were true. It's difficult to listen to that.

So here they are. Seven deadly sins of speaking. These are things I think we need to avoid. But is there a positive way to think about this? Yes, there is I'd like to suggest that there are four really powerful cornerstones, foundations that we can stand on if we want our speech to be powerful and to make change in the world.

Fortunately, these things spell a word. The word is hail, and it has a great definition as well. I'm not talking about the stuff that falls from the sky and hits you on the head of. I'm talking about this definition to greet or acclaim enthusiastically, which is, I think, how our words will be received if we stand on these four things.

So what do they stand for? See if you can guess. The h. Honesty, of course, being true in what you say, being straight and clear. The a is Authenticity. Just being yourself. A friend of mine described it as standing in your own truth, which I think is a lovely way to put it. The I is Integrity, being your word, actually doing what you say, and being somebody people can trust. And the l is love. I don't mean romantic love, but I do mean wishing people well for two reasons.

First of all, I think absolute honesty may not be what we want. I mean, my goodness, you look ugly this morning. Perhaps that's not necessary. Tempered with love, of course, honesty is a great thing. But also, if you're really wishing somebody well, it's very hard to judge them. At the same time, I'm not even sure you can do those two things simultaneously.

So, hail also. Now that's what you say. And it's like the old song, it is what you say, it's also the way that you say it. You have an amazing toolbox. This instrument is incredible, and yet this is a toolbox that very few people have ever opened. I'd like to have a little rummage in there with you. Now just pull a few tools out that you might like to take away and play with, which will increase the power of your speaking.

Register, for example. Now falsetto register may not be very useful most of the time, but there's a register in between. I'm not going to get very technical about this for any of you who are voice coaches. You can locate your voice, however, so if I talk up here in my nose, you can hear the difference. If I go down here in my throat, which is where most of us speak from most of the time. But if you want weight, you need to go down here to the chest. You hear the difference. We vote for politicians with lower voices, it's true, because we associate depth with power and with authority.

Let's register. And we have Timbre. It's the way your voice feels. Again, the research shows that we prefer voices which are rich, smooth, warm, like hot chocolate. Well, if that's not you, that's not the end of the world, because you can train, go get a voice coach. And there are amazing things you can do with breathing, with posture, and with exercises to improve the Timbre of your voice.

Then Prosody. I love Prosody. This is the sing song, the metalanguage that we use in order to impart meaning. It's root one for meaning in conversation. People who speak all on one note are really quite hard to listen to if they don't have any Prosody at all. That's where the word monotonic comes from. Or monotonous monotone. Also, we have repetitive Prosody now coming in where every sentence ends as if it were a question. When it's actually not a question, it's a statement.

And if you repeat that one over and over, it's actually restricting your ability to communicate through Prosody, which I think is a shame. So let's try and break that habit. Pace. I can get very, very excited by saying something really, really quickly, or I can slow right down to emphasize. And at the end of that, of course, is our old friend silence. There's nothing wrong with a bit of silence in a talk, is there? We don't have to fill it with ums, and AHS can be very powerful.

Of course, pitch often goes along with pace to indicate arousal, but you can do it just with pitch. Where did you leave my keys? Where did you leave my keys? It's a slightly different meaning in those two deliveries. And finally, volume. I can get really excited by using volume. Sorry about that if I startled anybody. Or I can have you really pay attention by getting very quiet.

Some people broadcast the whole time. Try not to do that. That's called sodcasting, imposing your sound on people around you carelessly and inconsiderately. Not nice. Of course, where this all comes into play most of all is when you've got something really important to do. It might be standing on a stage like this and giving a talk to people. It might be proposing marriage, asking for a raise, a wedding, speech, whatever it is, if it's really important, you owe it to yourself to look at this toolbox and the engine that it's going to work on.

And no engine works well without being warmed up. Warm up your voice. Actually, let me show you how to do that. Would you all like to stand up for a moment? I'm going to show you the six vocal warm up exercises that I do before every talk I ever do. Anytime you're going to talk to anybody important, do these first.

Arms up. Deep breath in. And sigh out like that one more time. Ah, very good. Now we're going to warm up our lips and we're going to go, bo bo, very good. And now, just like when you were a kid, now your lips should be coming alive. We're going to do the tongue next with exaggerated la la la.

Beautiful. You're getting really good at this. And then roll an rhino. That's like champagne for the tongue. Finally. And if I can only do one. The pros call this the siren. It's really good. It starts with we and goes to. Or the we is high. The or is low. So you go wee.

Fantastic. Give yourselves a round of applause. Take a c. Thank you. Next time you speak, do those in advance. Now, let me just put this in context to close. This is a serious point here. This is where we are now, right? We speak not very well into people who simply aren't listening in an environment that's all about noise and bad acoustics.

I have talked about that on this stage in different phases. What would the world be like if we were speaking powerfully to people who were listening consciously in environments which were actually fit for purpose? Or to make that a bit larger? What would the world be like if we were creating sound consciously and consuming sound consciously and designing all our environments consciously for sound? That would be a world that does sound beautiful and one where understanding would be the norm. And that is an idea worth spreading. Thank you.

Communication, Education, Motivation, Inspiration, Philosophy, Public Speaking