You have probably had many of these experiences yourself in offices that were designed purely for the eyes. Now that you know the importance of sound, you can take care to move to the most appropriate environment for the kind of work you want to do.
BEHAVIOURAL
Noise has been shown to make people less sociable, and less helpful to others. Loud, fast-paced music will affect the speed and driving style of a car. Powerful oratory can dramatically affect behaviour, inspiring teams to produce great work, converting people to religious faith, radically changing political and social landscapes or inciting mobs to violence. Roaring crowds can inspire sports teams to stellar performances. In martial arts, special words shouted with a strike increase focus and power. Soothing words, mantras and gentle sounds can induce peacefulness or even trance states.
This fourth effect of sound, changing human behaviour, is the most important one in the work of The Sound Agency, and we’ve proved its efficacy many times. One of the most dramatic examples was in the town of Lancaster, California, where the mayor, R. Rex Parris, wanted to generate positive vibes among downtown pedestrians in the town’s signature BLVD area, in order to enhance the city’s top priority – safety. We installed a soundscape incorporating birdsong, lapping water and carefully-chosen musical elements, all designed to entrain heart rates downwards and produce calming moods. The sound plays from more than 70 weatherproof loudspeakers along the BLVD. Shopkeepers and restaurant owners in the BLVD were delighted with the sound. More significantly, the Lancaster Sheriff noted a 15% drop in crime after installation, which generated global media interest including the front page of the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Daily News, the UK’s Daily Mail, KTLA and KQED radio and NBC Network News.
Research has consistently revealed that the tempo of a soundscape entrains the pace of our behaviour. Multiple studies have shown that fast-paced music causes people to walk faster, which has a significant effect in shops: if we speed up like that we generally spend less time and less money in a shop. The jolly, up-tempo music that most shops play may well be costing them money! We also chew and eat faster in high-tempo sound, so it’s no surprise that fast food restaurants usually play fast music to increase table turnaround.
We tend to move away from unpleasant sound if we can, albeit often unconsciously. If you draw a parallel with fragrance this becomes obvious: you would naturally avoid a bad smell, moving away if possible, and you might gravitate towards a wonderful fragrance. The same happens with sound. Unpleasant noise is the auditory equivalent of a bad odour, and it causes avoidance behaviours or, if we can’t get away, stress reactions. That’s why context is so important for communication, as we’ll see towards the end of this chapter and the next.
The circle
Most people I meet visualise spoken communication as a simple linear relationship between speaking and listening rather like this:
Somebody sends; somebody else receives. But is it really that simple?
Of course, the answer is no. First, we’re missing an important element. In the last few pages we’ve discovered that the sound around us directly affects all our significant outcomes in life, and that it forms a powerful context for all our speaking and listening. Sadly, this context is predominantly negative: all too often it damages our best efforts to communicate by drowning our signal in noise. Only rarely are we in a space that’s thoughtfully designed to help communication or listening, for example a concert hall or theatre.
So, because all our spoken communication exists in a context, we need a third element in our diagram:
That’s better, but it’s not right yet. We need to include one more aspect of communication that not many people appreciate – something that can be transformative if fully internalised.
Speaking and listening are not linear, but circular, they interact.
The way you listen affects the way I speak. And just as powerfully, the way I speak affects the way you listen. This is very far from one way traffic, and some of the most profound lessons you may learn on this journey derive from this one, powerful realisation. Let’s try the illustration again, this time with the circular relationship between speaking and listening.
This is the model that underpins the rest of this book. It shows how dynamic and interactive speaking and listening are, and explains why being heard paradoxically requires working on listening!
Let’s take a look at the power of skilful listening and speaking.
The power of listening
Listening may be a silent skill, but it has enormous power, as we’ll see in the next few pages. The quality of our listening affects our relationships, health, influence, productivity and growth, but in our ocular society we virtually ignore this crucial skill – which is why there’s a need for this book.
So, what is the power of listening?
LISTENING CREATES UNDERSTANDING
In 2014, I gave a TEDx talk in Athens (the cradle of democracy) and also at London’s Houses of Parliament entitled ‘The Sound of Democracy’. I started the talk by walking on stage and saying one word: “Listen!”. Silence fell in those 2 impressive theatres full of hundreds of people. After a while I said: “That is the wonderful sound of several hundred people consciously listening. It’s also The Sound of Democracy, because democracy depends on civilised disagreement – and that is only possible if we understand other people’s points of view, even if we disagree with them. Conscious listening always creates understanding.”
This is a crucial point, and one that is increasingly threatened in the world we are creating. Post-truth politics, fake news, selective web browsing that only confirms our preconceptions, attack journalism that constantly interrupts or mingles opinion with fact, sound bites, personal broadcasting on social media platforms, 140-character diplomacy… these are all undermining the quality of our listening and eroding our ability to coexist in peace even when we disagree. Not listening makes it possible to caricature, depersonalise and demonise people, and that is a long, dark, slippery slope that leads to horrors that we see all too often in totalitarian societies.
I passionately believe that listening is necessary for peace, and for civil society to exist. That alone is a good enough reason to teach listening in our schools, and to defend it as a crucial bastion of the free world. Politicians always meet for talks: I suspect it might be better if they met for listens instead.
After all, what use is free speech is nobody is listening?
LISTENING PROMOTES INTIMACY
Truly listening to someone requires all of your attention. Ask yourself now, when is the last time you truly listened to someone? This is a rare and most generous gift and one that, in our intense, connected, multimedia existence, we are becoming unwilling or even unable to give. What, stop checking my email, Twitter, Facebook and go offline? You may be familiar with FOMO – fear of missing out – which tempts us to live a multi-stream, always-on existence, checking email whilst lying in bed and not talking to our partner, or having conversations with one eye on a screen and the other on a phone. In that twilight world of semi-attention, listening is a tattered vestige of its full self.
Even before technology intervened, true listening was the exception, not the rule. I believe that there are literally billions of people on this planet who have never known what it is to be truly listened to, so scarce is that experience.
Intimacy requires honesty and deep knowledge of another,