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4 mins

Simplify Communication: Sound Expert Julian Treasure on How to Listen and Be Heard

Become an outstanding communicator, speaker, and listener with actionable advice from Julian Treasure’s interview on Simplify.
by Natallia Darozhkina | Dec 14 2017

Julian Treasure is a sound designer, a musician, and a public speaker—his TED talks have been viewed more than 40 million times!—and he’s also a master of what he calls the “silent skill”: listening. In this episode, Treasure talks to Caitlin about the 7 deadly sins of speaking, how your listening shapes who you are, and why certain cities sound so delicious to our ears.

“You hear everything, you listen only to certain things.”

— Julian Treasure

Our voices are powerful instruments we’ve never truly learned to use. An equally understudied matter is the art of listening, a silent skill which involves much more meaning-making—and character-creating—than just taking in noise. To be great communicators we need to learn to open our mouths with purpose and open our earlids with greater generosity.

In this episode of Simplify, sound design expert, TED talker extraordinaire, and listening virtuoso, Julian Treasure, shares the secrets of successful communication. He identifies some common mistakes in speaking that be making you hard to listen to and shares various techniques and simple exercises that can help anyone become a powerful speaker and conscious listener.

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Who’s Julian Treasure?

Julian Treasure

Julian Treasure is a sound evangelist and communication expert. He is also author of the books Sound Business and How To Be Heard. Julian is the chairman of The Sound Agency, an international audio branding consultancy advising worldwide businesses on how to design with sound, especially in public or branded spaces. He travels the world training people to listen better and create healthier sound. His five TED talks have about 50 million views and his latest talk, How to speak so that people want to listen, is one of the most watched TED talks of all time.

What’s Simplify?

Simplify is a podcast for anybody who’s taken a close look at their habits, their happiness, their relationships, or their health and thought “There’s got to be a better way to do this.” We talk to bestselling writers, productivity wizards, sex geniuses, and happiness experts to find it for you.

Simplify is made with love by Blinkist. Click here to try Blinkist free for 14 days with the voucher code: listen

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Talk to us!

This season, dear listeners, we are collecting your voices to add to the podcast!

Specifically, we’d love to hear how you would answer one of the questions we always ask our guests: “What have you discovered was much simpler or easier than you initially thought it was?”

Just record your answer with a voice memo app of your choice and then email it to us at [email protected]. We’re looking forward to listening to your responses, so stay tuned—you just might hear yourself on a future episode of Simplify!

If you want to say hi to Ben and Caitlin in the meantime, you can find them on Twitter: @bsto and @CaitlinSchiller.

Who made this?

Your hosts are Caitlin Schiller and Ben Schuman-Stoler.

Stellar research and production assistance by the outstanding Natallia Darozhkina.

Thanks to Nico Guiang for our awesome intro and outro music. Listen more on Soundcloud or check him out on Facebook.

Sound and editing by Ody Constantinou, whose real name is Otto.

Got links?

Julian Treasure’s Website
The Sound Agency
Julian’s TED Talk “How to speak so that people want to listen

Extra credit reading

If you enjoyed this episode and would like to dig deeper into all sorts of things about speaking and sound, check out this book list!

Read the transcript here!

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