217: Julian Treasure - Listening To Your Audience So You Speak With More Impact

Hey movers, it's Sally Koering Zimney with Be Moved.

Let's go create some talks that will move this world.

We're going to talk with amazing speakers, share tips, tricks, resources, and we are going to be moved so that our audience can be moved. This moved me. What is moving Well, hello movers and welcome back to This Moved Me. Oh my gosh, it's been a huge week over on Be Moved, which is the new company, the new brand. If you haven't yet checked out bemoved.com, I sincerely hope that you do because I'm so jazzed about making these changes and really upping the level of resource that Be Moved can be for you so that you can be a speaker that moves your audience. Oh my gosh, I've been having a lot of fun with all the play on words related to Be Moved. But of course, as we talked about last week, this podcast is not changing in all of the important ways. The name is staying the same and the heart and core of this work is not changing. That is part of actually why we changed the name. We wanted to be a little more spot-on with it, that at the heart and core of this work is about us as speakers being the kind of speaker that can move our audience.

That's the goal.

That's what it's all about. It's really not about doing it perfectly. And, you know, I love the Skills of Public Speaking but the heart of it is about something much deeper. And the magic of speaking comes when we can tune into this other side of speaking, which is all about connecting to our audience and being fully present, which is partly why I'm so jazzed about this week's episode with the amazing world-renowned Julian Treasure. And you all know exactly who I'm talking about when I say Julian Treasure. You have seen the TED Talks, I know that you have because millions of people have seen them. Julian Treasure's TED Talk, the latest one that he did, How to Speak So That People Will Listen, is one of the top 10 TED Talks of all time, my friends. All time. And so I am so thrilled that Julian has come back on the show. That's right, he was on the show years ago, and I'm so thrilled to have him back to continue this conversation all about connecting with our audience, because that is at the core of it, how we can be fully present and, and listen to what they are saying to us. Because as Julian explains, what they are telling us and all the ways that audiences speak to us affects, of course, how we speak and how we speak affects how they listen. This really powerful feedback loop. If you have been out front and adapted what you're doing based on the feedback that you are getting from your audience, you know what I'm talking about. And it's so important that we do that. We are not just showing up and doing our own shtick because that's the plan. That's not— not only is it not very interesting and not very effective, it does not serve and love the people who are there to hear from us. So it's a funny little backwards thing. We start by listening, and then we can really speak To be heard. Mm, love it. So excited to share with you this week's guest, Julian Treasure.

The relationship between speaking and listening, and this is something which I think is really fundamental that many people miss, is that the two things are powerfully related and dynamically related all the time. So, you know, if you want to be a great speaker, it's really useful to be a great listener as well. And listening affects speaking, speaking affects listening. So that's at the center of the book, really. And the book has gone really, really well. In fact, it won both of the major awards for best audio business book, the SOVAS Award and the Audie Award, which I was really honored by. I read it up here in Orkney in a little studio. I didn't want to get an actor to read it and pretend to be me. That would have felt kind of weird. So I wanted to read it myself. And so we spent some time on that. And it was amazing to have this little cottage industry production honored in that way at big awards ceremonies in Los Angeles and New York. So that was, that was delightful. The TED Talks have gone on, especially the one about speaking. And I think it's quite interesting that The TED Talk on speaking, which has got, I don't know, I think 40 million views or something now on TED.com, so that's like 80 million on the internet according to TED. It's got like 5 or 6 times as many views as the talk on listening, which I think is quite significant. You know, people are much more interested in how to project and how to speak and how to put stuff out there than how to listen, how to receive. The listening sense, I've become more and more focused on that really over the years. I think if there's one thing the world needs right now, it's listening. So the book, yes, has been huge. I've done an online course, 7.5 hours of everything I know about speaking and listening, which is up now. And that was a labor of love for pretty much the whole of last year, designing and delivering that in video and audio format. So those are the big changes, I guess, in the last few years. It's been a very exciting time, and I'm hoping that we're going to help people, more and more people around the world, to start listening. That's really become my, my, the thing I'm banging on about, the drum I'm banging, is listen.

So I think that's a really interesting shift that you're talking about. And it doesn't surprise me when you say that everybody's really focused on what they are putting out there. And of course, I work with speakers, and that's why people are listening to this podcast, because they want to get better at the communication that they are offering out into the world. And so that it's heard, that they can influence, they can lead. Beyond just their fear, like they want to grow their audience. But culturally, I think there's a really interesting tension and dynamic there. Can you say a little bit more about how listening can improve our speaking when we finally do get up to speak? What is that feedback loop that you're talking about? Between listening and speaking.

People love to be listened to, and generally what you'll find is if you listen to people in conversation, they're much happier and they will listen to you, so your sending is much more effective. So that's, you know, a natural way that anybody can understand that speaking and listening affect each other. The way you listen affects the way I speak. The way I speak affects the way you listen. And the way you speak affects the way I speak, and the way you listen affects the way I listen. It's interrelated all the time. So, you know, if you're speaking to somebody who's very, very quick and you happen to be a very slow-paced person, that is going to be a problem. And you need to be sensitive to this in order to be able to vary the way you speak. Now, I talk about this as speaking into a listening. Everybody listens in a different way. Each of us has a unique listening which is set by the filters that we accrete as we grow up, you know, the language that we learn, the culture that we're born into, from family to nationality, whatever it may be, the values, attitudes, beliefs that we gather along the way. Some we discard, some we take on board. Our emotions, intentions, our expectations in any given situation, the assumptions we have about what people think of us and how people work and how the world works. You know, all these things color our listening. So listening is selecting some things to pay attention to and then making them mean something. And we all do that in a different way. Mm-hmm. So it's a grave mistake and a very, very common one to assume everybody listens like I do.

Mm-hmm.

And that's at the root of a lot of miscommunication, a lot of speaking which just misses the target altogether. If you start to ask yourself the question, what's the listening? That is how you hit the target. And this is just as true if you're standing on stage in front of thousands of people as it is if you are in, you know, making a presentation in a room of 6 people or talking one-to-one. You can ask yourself, just get into the habit of asking yourself that question. What's the listening? What's the listening I'm speaking into? If it's one person, It's quite easy to assess that because you've got verbal and physical cues coming back. You may know something about them pretty quickly. If you listen to them, you'll understand more about the way they operate. Are they fast or slow? Are they lively? Are they laid back? Are they formal? Are they informal? You can make terrible mistakes with somebody who prefers to be called Mr. Smith by going right in and saying, "So, John." People get offended. You get that all the time with inept salespeople. Who simply don't listen. Any great salesperson will tell you the most important part of a sales conversation is the listening, not the speaking. It's how you understand people, it's how you find out what their needs are and how you can solve their problems. So standing on a stage or standing in front of a room full of people, you have a Gestalt listening. It's a compound of all of the listenings they've brought to this room. Changes over time, all our listenings change over time. Just after lunch, I often get put into what they call the graveyard slot after lunch because people know I'm reasonably good at this and they think, well, he can go there. Well, that's the time, of course, any speaker knows when all the blood has gone to the gut. It's a sort of sleepy, not quite there audience. So that's a listening you need to be aware of, and as a result, you need to raise your energy level and engage them more to keep them alert and awake and You know, not let them drift off. So it may be fine to be a speaker with, I don't know, a repetitive cadence, which is quite mesmeric. You know, you say the same thing every time and every sentence goes like this and you keep doing this right through your presentation. Eventually people will go to sleep because, you know, any kind of repetition like that is hypnotic, it's mesmeric, it will put people into a light trance. So the graveyard slot is one where it's very important to know that's the listening I'm speaking into and I am going to vary more. I'll use more volume, I'll use more prosody or prosody, I'll intone in different ways, I'll move, I'll do something exciting, you know, I might have props, I'll do something, I'll ask them questions, I'll talk to individuals, you know, that kind of thing to engage them and keep them on the edge of their seats a little bit more. So that's the relationship. Really between speaking and listening. And that's the key question to ask. What's the listening I'm speaking into?

I love that. And I think what's interesting to me is what's underneath that is a real compassion and empathy and sort of an openness to what's really happening in the room. And that is, I was doing a course last week about audience and how to be in tune with your audience and how to take that feedback that you're getting and take all the information in about where they're at, who they are, how they're feeling, what they're thinking, and to try and really put your feelers out to them. And I think that's kind of what you're talking about. But this, that it's on us, the onus is on us as speakers to first get a sense from where they're at and just lean into them and all that love and compassion that we have for them to begin with them. Is that what you're saying?

Absolutely, yes. I've got, in the book and the course, I talk about the 4 C's of effective listening, which are consciousness, actually being aware that you're doing something, commitment, that is to say, I'm not going to do anything else while I listen to you. It's all so common that, you know, we're going, "Oh no, I am listening to you." No, you're sending a text. That's not listening. Curiosity, which is a really wonderful way to listen to people. I might learn something here. You know, what's new? What could I learn? As opposed to the arrogant, you know, "Oh yeah, I've heard all this before." Which is a, you know, it's a very cancerous thing in relationships to think that you know what somebody's going to say before they open their mouth. So there's a great trick you can do in relationships, a lovely practice, which is to listen to your partner as if for the first time. You say, "I'm going to try and do that, get back to where, you know, I first found you, let you surprise me." And then the fourth C is compassion, and that is exactly what you're talking about. It's really feeling for the other people. So I talk in the TED Talk about speaking. I gave the Foundations, I think, of powerful speaking is HAIL: honesty, authenticity, integrity, and love. And you mentioned that word, and it's really important. I mean, when you're on stage, it's not about you, it's about a gift that you're giving to people, and it's about trying to make sure the ball gets over the net, that the message is received. And that is not going to happen if you simply get up and do the same thing ritualistically every single time. So I would always try and find out about the audience before I go to an event, you know, when I'm engaged to do a talk, I'll learn as much as I can about them. What are their problems? What are their aspirations? What are their particular— what turns them on? What are they excited about? What's in their world? Why is my message going to be relevant to them in more than just a general way? And that tends to help enormously because you can start to talk about specific examples of your general thing, whatever it is that you're teaching people or inspiring people with. So yes, absolutely, compassion, love, giving, and you can't do that effectively if you don't understand people.

Yeah, there's a level of EQ involved in speaking and listening well, and I don't think people assume that. I think they're really thinking about it like, here's what I know, here's everything that I have poured into this, and it's just this I'm giving to you, giving to you, giving to you, and really forgetting that it really has to start with who they are, where they're at. And that sort of love and compassion, um, changes from hour to hour and day to day and room to room, how the room's feeling, what happened before you. It makes a huge difference in terms of where people are at. And there's a spidey sense to it that I think you can develop, but it takes time and experience, and it takes a level of humility, I think, and, and a willingness to let go of your plan just enough that you can be so present with what's happening.

Absolutely. That's crucial. You know, one of the reasons I love speaking in public is because it's of all the times I can think of in my life, it's the time when I'm probably most present, most fully conscious. Every gesture, every movement, you know, there are hundreds of people looking at you. I did one last year for 10,000 people. Well, that's a lot of eyeballs, and they're all focused on me, and I therefore need to be so conscious of what I'm doing. It's not the time to go to sleep. Also, you talked about understanding. I mean, conscious listening to me is always the doorway to understanding. It's what we need more of in the world. As I said at the beginning, you know, we are unfortunately experiencing politics in my country, in your country, all over the world now where it's not about listening, it's about shouting and caricaturing and not understanding people almost deliberately. It's about adversarial relationships, polarization. It's making people wrong. You know, there are two big human addictions which I've seen speakers get into and which people get into a lot, which really undermine the power of communication and also just our ability to relate as human beings. The first one is looking good. We all like to look good. But if you come on stage and it's about you looking good, that is not a powerful place to speak from. It's shallow. People can sense it, that's your motivation, if you're just looking for adulation, approval, approbation. It's not an effective source to speak from. And in relationships, it gives rise to all sorts of unfortunate behaviors. You know, the "I know" type behavior. Do you know people who are like that? I know. Professionally unimpressible, because it's like losing face to be impressed and not to know something. Well, I mean, that's not sensible. If you know everything, what are you going to learn? Nothing. So I think humility, which you mentioned earlier, is a really important aspect of being a learning, growing, effective human being. And the other big addiction which people can get into which happens on stage from time to time when people get into sort of polemic, is being right. Now that, unfortunately, is just a global addiction at the moment, and the easiest way for me to be right is to make you wrong. So that's what we see in the media. We see everybody getting addicted to outrage. You know, "This is disgusting, disgraceful, somebody's to blame, somebody must be punished," because of course if they're wrong it makes me right. Higher. I elevate myself. I feel better about myself. And again, being on stage and, you know, giving it to people like this, that doesn't go down too well because opinions are just opinions. They're not facts. There's a big confusion between those two things. That was one of the 7 deadly sins of speaking that I talked about in that TED Talk. And it's unpleasant if you get somebody standing on stage and regaling you with their opinions as if they were facts in a very powerful, overbearing way. So, yeah, looking good, being right, need to watch out for those two. Actually, for the book, I asked, because the book deals with listening and it deals with designing great content and delivering it well. So there's the way that you say it as well as what you say, those two important things. And I interviewed Chris Anderson, the head of TED, for the book, and I was able to ask Chris which he thought was more important: great delivery or great content. And he said, of course, they're both important, but if forced to choose, he would always go for content. Because if somebody's delivering earth-shattering or inspiring information in a very boring way, you're kind of work through it and get through it with them, but you get something of value. Whereas if somebody is delivering vapid nonsense, but in a brilliantly presented style, that's just irritating. So I think content probably does win, and that's again thinking about before you go on stage, thinking about what's the listening, what do these people need, how can I understand them, and then listening with every fiber of your being as you're on stage to the feedback you're getting visually, just the sense of the room. And I was going to— there's an acronym I use in the course. There's a whole chapter on public speaking at the end of the course, and the acronym that I've created for going on stage is B.E.S.S., which stands for 4 key things to help you to deliver well. B is breathe, which is the greatest antidote to, you know, if you're a little bit nervous and your voice is doing this, a big deep breath really settles you down. And also breath, of course, is the fuel for the voice. You need breath in order to speak. So go on stage, big deep breath as you're walking on. The E is expand, and that is expand your awareness into peripheral vision so that you can see the whole room all at once. And there's an easy way to learn that. You just put your hands up here by the side of your face and wiggle your fingers and move them back. And that then means that you can see the whole room. You don't have to be on stage doing this, just practice before you go on, and then you'll get good at getting yourself into that. As opposed to foveal vision, where you're focusing on one person at a time, which I always think is quite intimidating for the people you're looking at, especially since most people end up with a habit of looking at one person, and that person starts to get really uncomfortable. That happens so many times. So that's the E. The S is stance. So I have, um, a way of standing which involves two visualizations. One is a string attached to the top of my head, so everything's naturally vertically stacked and loose and hanging and all, you know, vertical above each other bit and symmetrical. And the other one is roots going from my feet into the ground so that that keeps me stable and grounded and stops me from doing little dance of death walks or anything like that, which again, it's so distracting. I've seen speakers who walk round and round in circles or who walk from here to two paces away and then back again and then back again and then back again. And you know, you end up thinking, is he gonna— oh yeah, there he goes. Just gets distracting. Um, so the S is stance, and the final S is smile. You know, hello, I'm happy to be here. A little smile, and people tend to smile back, and it, you know, breaks the ice and forms a relationship immediately. So that's B.E.S.

Oh, I love that. That's great. When you said expand, what I thought you were going to say— I love the peripheral vision idea because just opening up our awareness of the room, and people do tend to favor one side over the other and don't realize it until somebody points it out to them. So just expanding is great. But what I thought you were going to talk about was this expansive sense of self that when we step on stage, Many people, what I end up working with them about is, is trying to just take up a little more space. That we tend to be, to be people who are crouched small, um, you know, our posture's terrible. And you, you talk about that in Stance, just lifting up through the top of the head and feeling really grounded and strong. So I love that. I think it has two meanings. When you, you know, open, expand your point of view, you can't— you then also open up your shoulders a little bit more and take up just a little more space, which I think is really important, you know. Especially women tend to be small, and, and metaphorically and physically, I'm like, take up a little more space. You got this.

Yeah, absolutely. I think the breathing helps that because the moment you breathe, you tend to bring yourself up. And the visualization helps because you're standing tall. Um, certainly, I mean, I'm a big fan of, you know, Amy Cuddy's power poses, um, which of course you don't do on stage, but you do just before you go on stage. Um, those are very good things. And, and it's definitely, you know, it's not a great look to be hunched like this when you're speaking. You need to be open, definitely, and confident. Although, you know, you don't want to move away from your natural being. I mean, heil is authentic, and that means being yourself. So if you're a quiet person, you can be quiet. Not everybody has to stand kind of artificially mighty posture. I think it's very important to be yourself. It's the easiest person to be. It takes a lot less effort and it's far more authentic and people chime with it. They understand that that's who you are. So, and they will be with it, you know. It's just like, you know, in the course I talk a lot about silence and the importance of silence and becoming comfortable with it. And you can get away on stage with the longest, longest gaps of not saying anything. Most people are terrified of that and they gabble or use um and er and fillers and so forth. But, you know, I go on stage and I talk, and then I can just stop. Nobody's uncomfortable. Everybody's sitting there. They're all, you know, oh, he'll be here, he'll talk again. Or they're thinking, I wonder what I might have for lunch, or, oh, that's a nice bit of silence. You know, it's not an unpleasant event. I mean, I've seen speakers whose system is memory. Now, that's— good luck to you if that's what you do. I can't do that. I do not have the memory to memorize an hour. So I use slides. The slides act as my cue cards, if you like, and then I speak. I, you know, I speak extemporaneously. I jazz around the slides. Well, I've seen some great talkers. I can think of Alain de Botton's first TED Talk was, you know, Brilliant. 20 minutes of genius philosophy, no cards, no notes, no nothing, just him talking. Absolutely brilliant. But I've also seen plenty of people who have that going on, they've memorized a thing, and the link breaks. And that's the problem. If the link breaks, you're cast adrift and you then are in trouble. And then you get the sort of going red, sweating, you know, getting very flustered. I've seen that happen quite a few times, even at TED. And typically what happens then is the audience start to clap. They're with you. This is not, you know, open mic night stand-up comedians who are going to get heckled. This is people who are there to listen and want to engage. And I've seen it so many times, the audience start to clap. All you have to do if that happens to you, and this is a tip, I mean, I've had it happen to me where things have broken or whatever. You simply communicate to the audience, you simply say, "Ladies and gentlemen, I'm so sorry, I have completely forgotten what I'm going to be talking about next. Would you bear with me for a moment while I just consult my notes and get back on track?" You know, humility. Again, I made a mistake, something's gone wrong, bear with me, I'll sort it out and we'll get back. It's not the biggest problem in the world, but that is actually probably the thing that most people fear and the reason so many people have got a terror of public speaking. Speaking is that they'll make a mistake like that.

And just calmly handling it and being honest about what's happening, then it's an empathy moment because they have been there. How many of us have had a moment like that? And when you can stay present in that moment, invite people into it in some way, sometimes with a joke or just being clear about what's happening, asking for a moment, then they're cheering you on as you move forward. Then it's about bravery, then it's about determination, then it's something that we've all experienced together rather than it being something that alienates them.

I also remember a TED Talk, and I can't remember who gave it, McGonigal, I think she was called, you know, game software being good for people, which I didn't agree with, but hey. However, what happened at TED, and you wouldn't know this from TED.com, is she started the talk and everything broke. And she had to stop, you know, it was like all of the electrics went off. They brought her back the next day and she did it again. And the audience had seen the first half of it already, but they were so with her because she was brave enough to come back and she'd had to overcome this adversity and so forth. So, you know, it really does work that if you're able to be with people and just be honest and say, I'm so embarrassed, I'm standing in front of— you know, acknowledge the situation because they're all having that empathy. Oh my God, thank God it's not me. And you say, I'm so embarrassed, I'm standing in front of 500 people and I've forgotten what I'm supposed to be saying. It's never happened to me before. Or, you know, this happens every time. Whatever it is, if you build that empathy and you're straight— the A of HAIL is honesty, and that is so important. Pretending stuff really doesn't work very well. You know, that kind of inauthentic or obfuscating, using big words to impress people, pretending something hasn't happened. It just makes people feel a bit uncomfortable.

Well, it's the same thing with your silence. I mean, I think part of the reason you can do that is you are very comfortable in the silence. And so they're taking cues from you and like, oh, he's got this. He's, he's still running the ship. He's got the con, I call it. He's got the controls.

So they feel safe.

Safe in that. As soon as you start feeling uncomfortable, the speaker starts feeling uncomfortable with anything that's happening, it's— you can see the squirmies starting to happen in the audience because they're like, oh, they don't have control of this ship. Where are we going? What's happening?

Yeah, definitely, definitely. You need to know what you're doing and be comfortable with it. And, you know, it's important to prepare, I mean, to have planned Plan B's, obviously, because if you're using technology, technology can break. And, you know, can you be the person who, when the power goes off, can stand on stage and shout a great presentation and save the day? There are lots of examples of memorable occasions where people have saved the day like that. And there's a great one from the UK. Many years ago at Wimbledon, it rained on finals day, men's finals day. Which is, you know, where it's supposed to be the biggest thing in Wimbledon. And it rained for a long time, and there was a British pop singer called Cliff Richard at Wimbledon who British people loved a great deal at that time, and they all knew lots of his songs. So he stood up and started leading the whole audience at Wimbledon Centre Court in some of his famous songs. Now, Everybody remembers that who knows about Wimbledon and is British, certainly, probably around the world too. I don't remember which final it was, but I remember that. So, you know, this kind of ability— there was a time I was at TED in Oxford, TED Global in Oxford, and the power went down to the whole Oxford Playhouse. And what happened? There happened to be an opera singer in the audience. Well, this is TED, and she got up and did some amazing opera. There was also a poet in the audience who got up and declaimed some of his or her poetry. There was a comedian in the audience who got up and did some comedy, and everybody was, you know, enormously positive about those people who'd saved the day. So I think it is a really good idea, if you're going to stand in front of people, to have a Plan B, or to think about what could happen if the ultimate disaster strikes. If the power goes, if the screen goes, if the sound goes, if you lose your aids, whatever they might be. How are you going to be able to get over that? Can you extemporize? Can you busk it? It's a very good thing to be able to do. Mhm.

Well, Julian, we are at the time where I'd love to hear from you a "this moved me" moment. So of of course, as speakers and leaders, in order to move our audience, we ourselves have to be in tune with what is moving us.

And so I'd love to hear from you.

What is something that has moved you recently and why? What was it that moved you?

Well, actually, uh, the biggest thing that I can think of in recent times is not about speaking at all. It's about kind of listening with all fibers of the being. Up here in Orkney and off the north coast of Scotland, we occasionally get amazing skies. This is an island, so you can see for a long way. And last week we went out with the dogs at sunset, which is only 3:45 in the winter here. So we get very short days in the winter. And I've never seen a sky like it in my life. It was awesome in the proper sense of the word. I'm always castigating Americans about their abuse of that word. Trainers can't be awesome. I'm sorry. A sunset, however, definitely can be awesome. It was awe-inspiring. It connected me with my insignificance as a human being, but at the same time, my connection with the universe and um, with just beauty. Nature is a big source to me of, you know, my spiritual connection. And that was, you know, almost to the point of tears. It was wonderfully, wonderfully moving. So I think it's really important to listen in every way, really, as you go about. I mean, I'm— it's sad to think that there were thousands of people up here in Orkney who were inside at that time and missed it altogether. Or perhaps even walking around and didn't look at it. You know, it's very easy to go through life half asleep and not listening, not perceiving everything. But if you get active, you know, conscious listening— and now I'm talking about with your ears and your eyes and every organ and sense that you've got— then life becomes so much richer, and there's so much to enjoy and so much that we miss if we go into that kind of sleepwalking existence. So that reminded me of that.

Love it.

That sounds like a moving moment. My "this moved me" moment comes from this book, The Book of Awakening. So Mark Nepo, N-E-P-O, wrote it. It's several years old. So It's a daily meditation, and of course, it's January, so I'm, like, back into trying to find a morning routine that fuels me, that helps me feel grounded and connected to the universe as a whole, and not just the busy mind. I have 3 kids, and they're in high school, middle school, elementary school. I mean, life is especially crazy. So I have been reading every morning, and this morning I read it and thought, "Oh, this is going to have to be my 'this moved me' moment," because it's just lovely. So I wanted to share it with you. So January 9th, that is today. For eventually when this podcast comes out, it will not be January 9th, but as we're recording, it's January 9th, and the topic is called "Life in the Tank." And he tells a little story. He says, "It was a curious thing. Robert had filled the bathtub and put the fish in the tub so he could clean their tank. After he'd scrubbed the film from the small walls of their make-believe deep, he went to retrieve them. He was astonished to find that though they had the entire tub to swim in, They were huddled in a small area the size of their tank. There was nothing containing them, nothing holding them back. Why wouldn't they dart about freely? What had life in the tank done to their natural ability to swim? This quiet yet stark moment stayed with us both for a long time. We couldn't help but see those little fish going nowhere but into themselves. We now had a life-in-the-tank lens on the world and wondered daily, in what ways are we like them? In what ways do we go nowhere but into ourselves? In what ways do we shrink our world so as not to feel the press of our own self-imposed captivity? Life in the tank made me think of how we're raised at home and in school. It made me think of being told that certain jobs are not acceptable, —that certain jobs are out of reach, of being schooled to live in a certain way, of being trained to think that only practical things are possible, of being warned over and over that life outside the tank of our values is risky and dangerous. I began to see just how much we were taught as children to fear life outside the tank. As a father, Robert began to question if he was preparing his Children for life in the tank or life in an uncontainable world. So I thought that was really powerful, beautiful.

It certainly is, and it absolutely chimes with my whole understanding of listening filters, you know, the filters that we get set, values being one of those, which really, you know, they mean that we're perceiving the world a lot of the time through like a slit in a bunker. And there's a door in the back of the bunker. You can go outside and walk about and try different places, and that's really exciting to do. So that's exactly what that is all about, getting out of the box.

Yeah, just reminding ourselves that it is an uncontainable world and there's so much we don't know. And how do we push ourselves beyond the self-imposed boundaries that we have created for ourselves? 2020, baby! Well, Jillian, this has been really fun. It's so good to see you again, to talk to you, to connect again. Your course sounds amazing. I have not yet taken it, but where can people find out about this course? And I'm sure they know about you, everybody has watched your TED Talks, but where But where can they find out more about this course?

Okay, well, the ways to follow up and get more if you're interested in, first of all, the book, you can get it in all the usual places. It's called How to Be Heard. Secondly, my website, juliantreasure.com, and if people go there and sign up with their email, then we send them 5 listening exercises, little videos I've made free of charge. Which are quite nice. They're the 5 exercises I really believe help with conscious listening. Then the course itself, which as I say is 9 chapters, 7.5 hours of material, including a whole chapter on public speaking, as well as stuff about listening and stuff about how to design great content and how to deliver well, you know, the vocal toolbox in great detail. That TED Talk I gave on speaking was What's it, 12 minutes or 15 minutes long? This is 7.5 hours, rather more detailed. It's everything I know about the whole subject, really. You can find that at www.speaklistenb.com, and I believe it's currently on at a 50% discount, so it's quite a good time to go there and check it out. If you're a professional speaker, I think that's an investment that's really worth making. Absolutely. Speaking is important in your life, in your business.

Well, what I love and appreciate about your work is that, yes, it's, it's in tune with speaking in the traditional sense of public speaking, but it's also about how to be connected with other human beings in the everyday. And I feel like how we started this conversation was that the culture has changed a lot. And so bringing us more in tune with each other, I think, is needed just in the day-to-day world of life. So in that sense, it's powerful whether or not it affects your public speaking.

More understanding, more connection. That's what it's all about. More presence and consciousness. So, um, well, thank you so much for having me again.

It's been a delight. Yes. Well, thank you and we'll connect soon.

All right, movers. Thanks so much for joining me on this week's episode with Julian Treasure. Julian, thank you so much for joining me once again on the show. It is a true privilege to have your guidance and insight with us, and thank you. Thank you so much for what you are offering to all of the movers out there. And movers, I am here one more time to nudge you to go check out the new website, bemoved.com. Let me know what you think. I want to hear your feedback. Is there something that we're missing? Is there something you'd love to see? I want to hear from you, and there's lots of ways that you can out to me, find me over on Instagram @bemovedspeaking. Send me a little message, reach out to me, you know, on all of the interweb places, Facebook and, you know, you know all of the places and you can find me.

I would love to hear from you.

Check it out, send me a little note, and we will see you next week with another really awesome interview with David Scott, and he wrote Fanocracy. And oh, such good stuff in this episode, not just about being a speaker, but about how we can build our audiences.

Mm, we're not just gonna move them, we're gonna build them, and I'm personally super jazzed about it.

So I'm looking forward to that. See you next week, my movers. This moved me.