A Final Dissection Of Julian Treasure’s HAIL Tools – Part 2

hey there it’s David H Lawrence the 17th
and in this video I’m gonna wrap up sort
of this deep dive into one of my
favorite TEDTalks by Julian treasure
actually one of my favorite TEDTalks of
all time there been plenty of them but
this one really stands out and it’s
really meaningful to people in our
business and that’s why I really wanted
to dive deep into it and see what he
talks about in this TED talk from 2013
how to speak so people want to listen
how he dives deep into things that
actually have meaning for us as
professionals so we talked about the
seven deadly sins things to not do when
you’re talking what a good conversation
and a good use of your voice looks like
with the Heil acronym and we looked at
the beginning of a list of things to
look at about your voice facets of your
voice that you can improve upon that you
can change that you can alter or that
you can just basically except to make
your conversations better and I want to
wrap up that list and there’s a bonus in
his TED talk if you haven’t seen it yet
there’s a bonus in it that I’ll tell you
about towards the end but the last four
things that he talks about our pace
silence pitch and volume and pace is
something that our society has made
difficult for us because we live in a
society especially in the world of
performance where things move so quickly
we sometimes tend to feel that if we
don’t talk fast we don’t get our points
across we don’t get things in we’re
never gonna be heard and the truth of
the matter is that just makes making
pace and the next item on his list
silence all that much more powerful
right so if you can slow down if you’re
telling things really quickly but you
can actually slow down and do so
purposefully and mindfully the other
person has to give you more attention
they won’t resent it either they’ll be
like oh he’s making it easy for us and
again the application in the world of
professionalism the world
professional voice-over is that for art
forms like audio books documentary
narration specialty narration IVR
slowing down your pace and using pace is
paramount people don’t know what’s
coming and so if you slow your pace down
they have a better chance at potentially
understanding everything that you’re
saying so pace is huge and akin to that
is the use of silence it’s those moments
when people are silent that call our
attention that dragged us into the
conversation that make us lean forward
just to make sure that the person isn’t
having a medical event you know that’s
sometimes how it feels you know when
people are just talking and talking
talking then all of a sudden they stop
talking to make a point all of a sudden
you lean forward you go what happened
wait wait what and we fight against the
notion when we use silence of connector
words or vocalization bridges I think he
calls them filler words there’s a number
of different phrases for it but things
like um and like and you know and so and
and okay and could you understand oh
right
you know that kind of stuff or you know
that kind of stuff that’s a vocalization
bridge when you use silence that helps
you get rid of all those things and
that’s one of the things that I get a
lot from clients who come to me and say
look I want to speak on stage and I want
to make sure that I get off these
crutches these vocalization bridge
crutches one of the things that I think
I may have mentioned this in a video
earlier one of the things that’s really
bothering me these days about
politicians is a crutch they’re using
and it’s the word look they’ll be
talking talking talking they’ll say half
a sentence and then they’ll they’ll get
another thought and instead of saying to
you hey I’m interrupting the sentence
that I’ve said because I got another
thought they’ll say look and that gives
them that moment to
then reposition the statement and the
phrase and the sentence so they can
continue with a new thought the problem
is look is an accusatory word it’s like
you’re saying look friend look bud look
woman look I’m not looking to get into a
fight here but look right that word has
a charge around it that silence would
work a lot better for if they just
paused you know if they’re in the middle
of talking in the current presidential
race or in the middle of talking about
gun control or or the homeless or
whatever and instead of saying we have a
population of homeless people that
measures it look we have to do something
about instead of that finish the thought
pause use silence we have to do
something about that we have a homeless
population of over 6 million we have to
do something about that it’s much more
effective and much less accusatory then
the last two are pitch and volume and he
talks about pitch in a way that is
really useful for people in
conversations that you could be whiny or
you could not be whiny and for us we
have the ability to choose our pitch and
as we teach in the audio book classes
and in the narration classes to a degree
when you’re doing dialogue conversation
back and forth choosing a pitch that is
appropriate to gender appropriate to age
choosing a pitch that is appropriate to
the story for sure if you don’t choose
pitch appropriately you can again slide
into that that prosody area that raw
prosody area and that raw monotone area
where pitch starts to be almost
non-existent in terms of variance and so
your story becomes less interesting and
the conversation becomes less
interesting for us the story that we’re
telling in our audition or in our
performance becomes less interesting and
less competitive with other people who
have a better
on pitch and then finally volume you
know for those of you that come out of
radio you know and I know because I came
out of radio one of the biggest hurdles
we have to cross is this idea that we
have to raise our voice all the time
that we have to be enthusiastic all the
time and be loud you know radio people
tend not to do well on camera until they
can break that that problem that they
have with volume all being the same you
have to use volume so that people can
gain knowledge in the change that you’re
making in the story if you’re really
really loud that can be mistaken for
boisterous it can be mistaken for
excited it can be mistaken for angry it
could be any one of those things but it
could be mistaken for any one of those
things as well and so you need to
provide contrast when you speak to
somebody when you do an audition when
you even when you’re doing documentary
narration which tends to be fairly a
fairly narrow envelope in other words
loud too soft at a very narrow envelope
you’re not seeing an awful lot of of
changes they’re really dramatic changes
like you would be with reciting lines in
a scene but you still have those really
awesome famous famous narrators like my
buddy Peter Coyote who use volume all
the time and they use all the other
tools that he’s talked about pitch he’ll
be talking up here and then to make a
point he’ll come down here and lower his
voice lower his volume not just his
pitch and his register but his volume
and get real smooth on everything it
happens it happens all the time
comedians use it all the time as well
they’ll say something under their breath
which is hysterical and it helps launch
them it’s kind of like riding skipping
stones across the water it’ll launch
them into another bit right so there’s
all these uses for this so the one bonus
that I want to share with you is if you
watch Julian’s talk and we give you a
link for it below this if you watch
Julian’s talk he walks you through his
warm-up exercises so for those of you
that have asked me what’s your warm-up
exercises and I’ve said
I don’t have any watch this video watch
Julian treasures TED talk how to speak
so people want to listen he has four or
five of them that he leads the audience
through that he’s talking in front of
you can do it right along with him if it
works for you fantastic so thank you for
bearing with me I just really needed to
get this out I thought all of the things
that he had to say were so powerful
not just for why he said it which was to
help everyday people have better
conversations but also for us you know
we’re pros we should know these things
but sometimes we need to be reminded
tell me what your big takeaway was from
this series of videos are from this
video in particular leave me a comment
below this video let me know what thing
you went oh oh yeah let me know okay if
you want to be on my list I’d love to
have you there’s a box at the bottom of
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on the list and if you join that you’ll
find out when the next video comes out
we’re gonna switch gears in the next one
I promise I’m David H Lawrence the
seventeenth thank you so much for
watching and I will talk to you tomorrow.