The Speaking Expert: How To Speak So Everyone Hears You! Julian Treasure
Julian Treasure (guest), Steven Bartlett (host)
In this episode of The Diary of a CEO, featuring Julian Treasure and Steven Bartlett, The Speaking Expert: How To Speak So Everyone Hears You! Julian Treasure explores speak So People Listen: Julian Treasure’s Blueprint For Impactful Communication Julian Treasure, famed TED speaker and author of *How To Be Heard*, explains why speaking and listening are learnable skills that profoundly shape our happiness, relationships, and professional success.
Speak So People Listen: Julian Treasure’s Blueprint For Impactful Communication
Julian Treasure, famed TED speaker and author of *How To Be Heard*, explains why speaking and listening are learnable skills that profoundly shape our happiness, relationships, and professional success.
He breaks down vocal technique (breathing, prosody, timbre), authority, confidence, storytelling, and the deeper psychology of being heard versus truly listening.
Treasure also explores values, authenticity, and the dangers of judgment, outrage, and echo chambers—arguing that conscious listening is essential for democracy and social cohesion.
The conversation blends highly practical tools (e.g. RASA, HAIL, vocal toolbox) with big-picture reflections on ego, ethics, social media, and how sound constantly influences our bodies, emotions, thinking, and behavior.
Key Takeaways
Treat Speaking As A Trainable Skill, Not A Fixed Trait
Most professionals rely on their voice daily yet have no formal training. ...
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Master Your ‘Vocal Toolbox’: Breathing, Variety, Prosody, Silence
Effective delivery rests on conscious control of breath and variety. ...
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Prioritize Listening: Use RASA To Make People Feel Truly Heard
Treasure’s RASA framework structures powerful listening: Receive (face them, give full attention), Appreciate (small verbal and non-verbal signals like ‘mm-hmm’, nods), Summarize (‘So what I’m hearing is…’) and Ask (curious, clarifying questions). ...
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Speak With Authority By Creating Clear Listening ‘Contracts’
Authority isn’t only about job title; it’s about how you frame attention. ...
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Anchor Communication In HAIL: Honesty, Authenticity, Integrity, Love
Treasure’s HAIL acronym defines ethical, effective speech: Honesty (truth, but tempered and not weaponized), Authenticity (being yourself, not a performance), Integrity (doing what you say; consistency over time), and Love (wishing others well, avoiding gratuitous harm). ...
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Design Content Around Story And The ‘Listening You’re Speaking Into’
Stories are the most potent way to hold attention and convey ideas because they activate curiosity and emotion. ...
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Recognize How Sound Constantly Shapes You—and Your Brand
Sound affects our physiology (heart rate, hormones), emotions (e. ...
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Notable Quotes
“If you've got a boring voice, you can do something about it. It's possible.”
— Julian Treasure
“We teach reading and writing in schools, we don't teach speaking or listening, which is absolutely nuts.”
— Julian Treasure
“Our happiness, our effectiveness and our wellbeing are fundamentally affected by whether we master the skills of speaking and listening.”
— Julian Treasure
“We're much keener to be heard than we are to listen to others.”
— Julian Treasure
“Listening is the sound of democracy.”
— Julian Treasure
Questions Answered in This Episode
You argue that we should tailor our message to ‘the listening’ we’re speaking into—how would you concretely prepare differently for a hostile audience versus a friendly, self-selected TED crowd?
Julian Treasure, famed TED speaker and author of *How To Be Heard*, explains why speaking and listening are learnable skills that profoundly shape our happiness, relationships, and professional success.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
In situations where someone is clearly using manipulative or bad-faith rhetoric, how do you reconcile HAIL’s ‘love’ and validation with the need to confront and possibly shut down harmful speech?
He breaks down vocal technique (breathing, prosody, timbre), authority, confidence, storytelling, and the deeper psychology of being heard versus truly listening.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
You cited that open-plan offices make us about one-third as productive for knowledge work because of noise; what would your ideal acoustic and communication design for a 21st-century office actually look like?
Treasure also explores values, authenticity, and the dangers of judgment, outrage, and echo chambers—arguing that conscious listening is essential for democracy and social cohesion.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Can you walk through, step by step, how you’d redesign the entire audio journey of a typical large company—from phone systems and receptions to product sounds and social content—using your audio-branding principles?
The conversation blends highly practical tools (e. ...
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You mentioned that values must be real enough that we’ll sacrifice for them; what’s an example of a decision you made in your career where you consciously chose in favor of FLAG and against short-term success or popularity?
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Transcript Preview
If you've got a boring voice, you can do something about it. (whoosh) It's possible. (music) Julian Treasure. The author of How To Be Heard.
Your TED Talk is the sixth most listened to TED Talk of all time.
I've assembled seven deadly sins of speaking. Here they are. (whoosh) It's the most common mistake I see in business, in relationships. You're speaking to teams, you're trying to inspire people, you're trying to lead people, build relationships with people. This is part of your life and you've never paid any attention to it. We teach reading and writing in schools, we don't teach speaking, which is absolutely nuts. (whoosh) We're much keener to be heard than we are to listen to others. What's the biggest complaint in relationships? "He or she never listens to me." (whoosh) Our happiness and our well-being are fundamentally affected by whether we master the skills of speaking and listening. (whoosh)
How does one speak with authority in work, in life, in my relationships? What advice can you give me? (whoosh)
People often say to me, "I don't feel confident. How can I engage with people?" (whoosh) And the answer is ... (whoosh)
Before this conversation starts, I've got a favor to ask from you. 74% of people that watch this podcast frequently haven't yet hit the subscribe button and 9% of people haven't yet hit the bell to turn notifications on. The bigger this platform gets, the bigger the guests get. So if you could do me one favor, if you've ever enjoyed this podcast, please hit the subscribe button and turn notifications on. Without further ado, I'm Steven Bartlett and this is The Diary of a CEO. I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself. (music) Julian, you've had, um, a pretty marvelous unique career and it's twisted and turned and twisted and turned in a really fascinating way, one in which I- I don't imagine anyone could have really predicted ahead of time. What do I need to know about you and your earliest years to inform the person listening to this of any context that ended up steering where you would end up in your life?
I think, I mean, I was very fortunate to have a good education, um, which I didn't use to the max perhaps, um, but I appreciated enormously. But I think from a young age, I grew up with a confidence that all will be well. And that's, I suppose you could sum that up in the word faith. Not talking about religious faith necessarily, although I've been in and out of that in my life, but just a conviction that all will be well. And I think that's an important thing for, I mean, for entrepreneurs who tend to be the people who'll take the jump and say, "I- I think I'll get to the other side."
Mm-hmm.
Whereas, a lot of people would be standing there going, "You know what? You do that."
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