To captivate others, you need to speak eloquently. Explore the life and speech lessons of Lord Byron to learn how to speak in a way that moves people. We’ll cover how to expand your vocabulary, be a magnetic speaker, and add a musical quality to your speech.

Transcript

Poetry is defined as literature that evokes a specific emotional response through language chosen and arranged for its meaning, sound, and rhythm. Poetry awakens the senses. Reading it and getting swept up in the stanzas made me think, what if there’s a way to bring some of this melody into everyday conversation? What if we can move others with our words the way poets do?

Today, I’m teaching how you can add beauty and power to your words to speak in a way that moves people. And we’re getting insights from one of the most famous or infamous British poets in history. 

Let’s get started. 

Meet Lord Byron 

When’s the last time someone’s words struck a chord within you. Went beyond the normal bounds of conversation and made you feel as though you were speaking about something deeper, larger, and more meaningful than you anticipated? Lord Byron spoke to a generation. His works set the London literature scene into a frenzy. And his immortal words move people to this day. 

Born in London in 1788, the son of a drunk father and cruel mother, George Gordon Noel Byron would grow up to become one of the most well-known poets of the Romantic Period. He produced poetry that captivated the public. He wooed women in England and abroad with devilishly good looks and a quick tongue. He flouted societal norms, entangling himself in a sequence of scandalous affairs.

His morals and life choices? Questionable. His ability to charm and move others with words? Undeniable. Byron was a master at painting pictures with words, stirring the soul. He evoked emotion from those that met him and read him. 

He produced hundreds of poems throughout his tumultuous and short life. These stood the test of time and are widely read today I’ll read you some in this episode so you can hear how beautifully he wrote. 

Byron and the romantic poets of his day captivated others with words. How can you do the same?  I did some research on Lord Byron and came up with 4 lessons to help you do just that. 

Let’s dive in.   

Lesson 1: Elevate your vocabulary

If we think of speech as a melody, then vocabulary would be the notes that we string together to bring it to life.  So in our analogy, Lord Byron would be a master composer. He wielded words with beauty and force and of course rhythm that great poetry has. Just listen to the first stanza of one of his most famous short poems called She Walks in Beauty:

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that’s best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes;

Thus mellowed to that tender light

Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

Lord Byron is considered one of the greatest British poets who along with Keats and Shelley, helped define the Romantic Era. He wrote poems on the power of nature, the enduring quality of art, and of course on love. These works often followed a dalliance with one of the women in his revolving door of tragic romantic interests. One of these interests Lady Caroline Lamb called Byron “mad, bad, and dangerous to know.” 

This may be true. But what Byron lacked in sexual restraint and morals he made up for in stunning poetry. 

Byron not only understood how to write well but he also understood the power of words and the ability they have to influence others. He wrote, 

But words are things, and a small drop of ink,

Falling, like dew, upon a thought produces

That which makes thousands, perhaps millions think.

He didn’t just write well. He also spoke well, navigating high society, and giving speeches in the House of Commons. And towards the end of his 36 years of life, acting as a military leader in the Greek war for independence. Suffice it to say, Byron was a master wordsmith. He read, wrote and spoke eloquently throughout his life. 

One tool that helped him do this so well was you guessed it his impressive vocabulary. Let’s get into how we can take a page from his book.

What does this mean for our efforts to speak in a way that captivates and moves others?

Let’s see if we can keep this music analogy going. Lackluster speech would be like the hits on the radio that they just keep playing on repeat. You hear them all the time, you can tune them out easily. This type of speech features hackneyed phrases, lots of filler words, nothing original or particularly exciting. 

Enhanced speech, on the other hand, using a well-developed vocabulary is like a perfecltly-composed symphony. It breaks through the humdrum. You want to hear more of it. It elevates you. People who speak well often use words that perfectly describe situations or feelings. This type of speech is captivating.  

This lesson is about expanding your repertoire of words so that you can effortlessly select the right ones as you speak. If you find yourself repeating the same adjectives or phrases (that’s cool, that’s pretty, that’s amazing) all the time, it’s a sign that your speech could benefit from some fresh new vocabulary. It will be an ongoing process. Byron didn’t become a master poet overnight. He had to read. He was influenced by the greats before him. Byron took in Alexander Pope and Edmund Spencer among others. This no doubt influenced him and his ability to write and speak with as one observer put it “picturesqueness and brilliant reflectiveness.”  

Word choice matters. The right ones can soothe tension, uplift someone, get your foot in the door. Oh, and level up your career. One study conducted by a research lab Johnson O’Conner looked at 39 manufacturing companies and found vocabulary was the single best predictor of an employee’s position with the company.

And the more you expand your vocabulary, the more adept you’ll become at expressing your thoughts. So this lesson is simple- surround yourself with well-spoken people. One of the most productive periods of Byron’s life took place in Switzerland where he spent time with Percey Shelly and Mary Shelly who would go on to write Frankenstein the og Fkstein.   

Spend time reading and listening to intellectuals. I’ll emphasize listening here because this can help tremendously when preparing to speak. Use podcasts as a way to “spend time” with people who are articulate and well-spoken. I like Conversations with Coleman ft. Coleman Hughes he’s well-spoken and often has intellectuals like researchers, professors, journalists, on the show so you get to hear articulate people formulaitng thoughts in real time. 

Oh another thing that’s helpful- copile your vocab in a running list. Either in a journal or on your phone. Let me grab mine and read you a few words that you can add to your lexicon. These are from Byron’s poems 

1. Inneffably: in a way that causes so much emotion, especially pleasure, that it cannot be described. 
2. Herculean: requiring great strength or effort.
3. Writhes: respond with great emotional or physical discomfort to
4. Buoyant: able to stay afloat or cheerful/optimsitic 

These are from Byron’s poems but I have more from other writers and speakers. I wrote them down because well they are powerful words they are words people dont use everyday. They are words that make you stop and listen. 

Often, we forget words that we don’t use. So I’ll sometimes add words that I know the meaning of but I seldom use and then when I go through my list, I have that nice reminder like hey this word exists and it could come in handy. 

So say you’ve been sharpening your skills adding to your lexicon. Now for the application.

What does this look like in conversation? 

Clearly communicating your thoughts. 

Being able to clearly articulate your ideas and thoughts is an invaluable skill in the workplace but also in social settings. Get rid of filler words and find synonyms for words you over use. Here;s a good and bad way to communicate at work. 

Okay option number 1 the bad. Youre presenting a strategy

I think that since there are um multiple groups we need to go after, it’s best to kind of follow a strategy that covers this at all levels. So, what I think would be best is to just um target users at different uh portions of the buyer journey. 

Here’s the leveled up version. 

It’s imperative that we address your target audience which is split into two main categories. For a fruitful campaign, I propose we take a multi-pronged approach that caters to users at different stages of the buyer journey. 

It’s cleaner its more powerful and it conveys confidence. We nixed the filler words. We added in words like multi-pronged and fruitful. We are showcasing the same plan but the second one sounds much more well-thought-out. 

This benefit of clearly communicating extends way beyond your 9-5. So practice it. 

You can also use your elevated vocabulary to 

Serve up superb compliments. 

Yes, who doesnt love a sweet little compliment? BUT we hear the same ones over and over. When you take the extra step to give a unique compliment, people remember this. I could have titled this little section giving nice compliments but instead, I said serve up superb compliments. Superb is is a word that stands out more than  “nice” that you hear everyday. Plus alliteration is pleasing to the ear serve up superb just sounds nice. 

So in conversation, practice giving genuine compliments that are unique. 

Tell someone they look exquisite instead of beautiful. Compliment the one who everyone calls funny by saying they are quick-witted or could rival Dave Chapelle or whatever comedian you like. Pick words that don’t get thrown around all the time and essay things you dont hear very often. 

I once heard a man say “In that dress, with your features, You’re like Helen of Troy, your face could launch a thousand ships.” That’s so much more memorable than the typical “you look beautiful” or “I love your outfit.”

Not only is it pleasant to the ear, but it’s memorable. 

This doesn’t mean you have to constantly use large words to impress others. It’s more about choosing the RIGHT word and saying something the person does not hear all the time. If you want to speak in a way that moves others, say things that stand out from the norm. Okay that’s lesson one elevate your vocabulary. 

Next, up let’s get into our feelings because lesson 2 is 

Lesson 2: Infuse Your Words with Emotion 

Mini history lesson: 

A hallmark of the artistic and intellectual movement known as the Romantic period was you guessed it an emphasis on strong emotion. This was a reaction to enlightenment before it which championed (and some say overemphasized) reason and downplayed emotion. The poets were not having that. They felt deeply, wrote and spoke, and lived with passion.  

Byron embodied the Romantic period. Intense emotion was a feature of not just his writings but also his life. He didn’t do lukewarm or half-hearted.

Here’s an expert from CHILDE HAROLD’S PILGRIMAGE where Byron writes 

“Admire, exult, despise, laugh, weep For here There is such matter for all feelings: Man! Thou pendulum betwixt a smile and tear.”

Um that’s beautiful. Also The next time you have mood swings, just tell someone you’re on a pendulum betwixt a smile and a tear. They can’t be mad. 

To me, there’s something moving and fitting about this focus on emotion. To feel is an integral part of what it means to be human and connect to each other. We feel a wide range of emotions. There’s liberation in feeling all the feels. Byron would have said that way more eloquently. 

What does this mean for speaking in a moving way?

It’s a universal truth from the days of Lord Byron until this year of our Lord 2023, no one wants to be in a boring conversation. What makes speaking to someone interesting? When I think of the most interesting/engaging people I’ve spoken with, they’ve all made me feel something. 

Think of the people you could listen to for hours. Pinpoint what it is about their speech that earns your undivided attention. Are they a captivating storyteller that piques your curiosity? Are they deeply intellectual, inspiring you to learn more and wrestle with difficult questions. Whatever the case, the common ground here is that the person has the power to elicit emotions from you. And you enjoy it. 

So this lesson is about understanding that the words you use can stir up different emotional states. You too can make someone feel inspired or pensive or overjoyed or enamored. If you talk about humdrum topics but with emotive words, it can feel like the most interesting conversation in the world. 

How do you do this? Focus on two things- word choice and tone. Also known as what you say and how you say it. Words have the ability to conjure up emotional states. So choose them with care. Maybe you want to calm someone down and create a sense of peace. You’ll speak in a measured tone, maybe with slow sentences. You can use words like smooth and harmony and agreement. This seems obvious but people do the opposite all the time. 

We find ourselves in an environment, for example a tense room with people in a disagreement and we mirror that in our tone and word choice. So being the opposite in those situations is essential to diffuse negative emotions and replace them with other more productive ones. 

Okay let’s get into some tips on how to be an emotive speaker. 

What does this look like in conversation? 

Speak with passion. 

Energy is infectious. If you want to move others, discuss topics/ideas that move you. People can sense when you’re deeply passionate about something. 

I had a history teacher freshman year of high school year who made me so excited for the next lesson. She would make these big theatrical narratives. When she spoke about the events, she would get excited, and gesture around, her emotion was palpable. When we did a lesson on Henry the 8th she walked us through each wife as if it was the juiciest piece of gossip we needed to hear. She sparked curiosity in me. 

Use vivid storytelling.

In writing, the principle is to show don’t tell. Don’t tell the reader the protagonist is a naive girl with no street smarts. Show them by depicting a scene where she willingly accepts a ride from a stranger. Well, when speaking, you can apply this show don’t tell principle too. 

Before launching into a story, give a little hook, set the scene. For example, when a friend asked about my recent trip to Hawaii. I said every family vacation involves at least one injury and this time I was the unlucky victim. 

He leans in, what happened? This draws the person in. Then instead of going straight into what happened, I set the scene. Im on a picturesque white beach on the coast of Kona. We hiked to a secluded area so it was calm and silent apart from the crashing of the waves. So Im walking on the shore.. And then I told him about the pain that followed. 

When you tell stories, you are the narrator. You are in control of the order that people get information in. So be an interesting one! And practice with friends and family so that you’re better when you talk to strangers. It’s okay if a stiry falls flat with friends and fam. 

Lesson 3: Add Rythm to Your Speech 

Think of what makes poetry magnetic. The symmetry, the repetition, the rhyme are all things we find beautiful. The best poetry is like music it has an irresistible rhythm. 

Lord Byron is undoubtedly a master because he was able to fit complex and moving ideas into the strict structure of poems. According to Poetry Foundation, he wrote in an array of poetry forms including verse narrative, ode, heroic couplets, and blank verse. 

He also wrote in Spenserain stanzas which consistied of eight iambic–pentameter lines and a final alexandrine. Whats an alexandrine? Let me ask the poetry foundation. It is a 12-syllable iambic line adapted from French heroic verse.

Hearing about the syllable counts and rhyme schemes may seem odd but they are what gives poems their rhythm. Great poets operated within those bounds and the result is words that take on a sort of musical quality. So how can we apply this to the conversation? 

What does this mean for moving others with our words?

This lesson is less literal than the preceding one. Don’t worry, I won’t tell you to go around counting the syllables you’re about to say. We’re extracting a lesson from the poets but adapting it to fit our practical purpose. And our purpose is to speak in a way that makes others want to listen. So, adding rhythm to our words is about speaking with intention and varying your cadence.

Speaking with intention. When Byron wrote poems, he had to select each word carefully. The syllable requirements and the rhyme scheme all constrained him so every word he chose had a purpose. Let’s apply this same lesson to our speech. We shouldn’t talk just for the sake of talking. When you feel you can add something of value to a dialogue, that’s when you should speak. 

When you’re the type of person who is selective about when you speak, others are more likely to listen. If you’re the type who dominates conversations, people can tune you out. 

Next up is cadence. Cadence refers to the inflection of your voice.  This one goes well with our music analogy because cadence is in essence the rhythm of your speech. Think of your pacing as you speak. If every sentence is the same length, delivered in the same tone, and with the same pacing, your listener is likely to find you tiresome/ monotonous. 

So vary your sentences. You might decide to deliver some long and detailed build-up sentences as you set the scene of a story. Then the action comes. The sentences are quick. You speak rapidly. See how the tone mirrors the emotion? 

What does this look like in conversation? 

Breaking your thoughts up into parts. 

Poets use stanzas. We can use breaths, and pauses to give intentional breaks in a conversion. For example, say you’re in an interview and they ask the ubiquitous tell me about your self question. You can break your answer into parts. 

First, you can talk about your starting point and how you got interested in the industry. Pause, breathe. Then cover one relevant roles and talk about one or two points that relate to the current job. Pause breathe. 

I was once speaking with a man who was enamored with space travel. Before finishing his story, he took a long pause, made eye contact and then said these were the first words they said when they landed on the moon. 

You might think pausing is odd at first but it actually conveys confidence when you’re able to sit with the 2 or 3 seconds of silence.

Recap: Have a central idea in mind when you speak. Deliver that and then pause. Let silence fall or other voices chime in. 

TIme for our last lesson. This one is great because you already have the materials to excel at this, you just need to put it into practice, You’ll understand once we dive in. 

Lesson 4: Draw on Your Life Experiences to Move Others

As a young man, Byron embarked on a grand tour through Portugal, Spain, Albania, Greece and more compiling his reflections on the pilgrimage. In a multi-part poem titled “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage’.When he published it in March of 1812, his country was enamored with it. He famously remarked, “I awoke one morning and found myself famous.”

What made this such a smashing success? The protagonist of the poem, based on Byron himself, put into words a feeling that an entire generation was experiencing. A biographer of Bryron wrote that the first two cantos “ express the melancholy and disillusionment felt by a generation weary of the wars of the post-Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras. In the poem,  Byron reflects upon the vanity of ambition, the transitory nature of pleasure, and the futility of the search for perfection.” 

So Brits just love melancholy writing? With this work, he captured a shared feeling and gave it a voice through vivid poetry. He struck a chord. People read it and felt understood, even swept up by it. Byron was the talk of the town after this poem released. Idk why I said released like he just dropped the hottest album of 1812 but you get the point.  It was a big hit.  

Anyways back to us. How can we use this to move others with our words? 

What does this mean for moving others with our words?

Well first, you’ll need to book a ticket to Portugal preferably for at least a week. Just kidding. You don’t actually need an insane travel story to connect with and move others. What’s more meaningful than telling someone you backpacked the Himalayas is telling someone about how a challenge you faced along the way made you feel. Why? Because while experiences are unique, deeper struggles are universal. 

So, to move someone, whether that is to inspire or to encourage or to make them feel understood, remember to discuss not just events or people but emotions attached to them. And like we discussed earlier, This focus on emotions was a key trait of Romantic poets of which Byron was a prominent one. 

This doesn’t mean you have to pour your traumas out to the nice guy who introduced himself to you and is now deeply regretting it. Rather, go one level deeper when speaking with someone.  Share the lesson you learned or the emotions you felt as the experience took place. 

This lesson is also a reminder to observe the world around you. Be observant. When you take a trip or attend an event or go out with a friend, be present. Engage all your senses. This is your life! Take it in!  Byron took in the people, noted differences between the reserved English society and the openness of the Greeks, and found himself enamored with the landscapes he saw on his travel. He was a keen observer of the world around him. This allowed him to write with precision and clarity to transport his readers. 

What does this look like in conversation? 

This looks like

You can do something similar in conversation. We don’t have to recite paragraphs. It’s more about speaking with clarity. When we think about transporting the listener, we want to make them get lost in the conversation.  So be descriptive as you tell a story, and weave in details you remember (From being your very observant self ) to help them feel like they are there as well. In order to draw on experiences later in conversations, be in the moment day to day. 

Sharing lessons learned from experience. 

Say for example someone asks How was rock climbing this weekend? You could say  It was good. Hadn’t been in months. Had a great time. Okay answer. Here’s how to level it up.  Instead, share an insight. It was good. It  was just what I needed. I realized that the pasts months, I’ve been filling my calendar with things that I only half cared about but felt pressure to attend. I’d wind up feeling drained instead of fulfilled. So I’m making an effort to do things that actually bring me joy. 

Maybe not everyone is into climbing or can ask you about it in detail. But surely everyone has experienced doing something because of social pressure and feeling unfulfilled by it. It’s a common feeling and sharing that experience is likely to remind someone of a similar one they had. It’s a way to speak to something deeper. 

Giving voice to what others are struggling with.

Like I said at the top of the podcast, words have power. They have the power to strike a chord in someone. Reflecting on your life experiences and then communicating about the underlying feelings and lessons you’ve learned___ opens the door for connection. Many people don’t do this because 

 1. Are afraid to voice a feeling out of the belief that they are the only one feeling it

 2. Are unable to put the feeling into words.

Perhaps you can be that person that voices the experience they relate to in a clear, coherent way. Using these lessons, you can share an experience that resonates with others just like Byron did. Okay, not just like him maybe dont do all the scandalous affairs and extracurriculars. But the captivating words part, do that. 

You have a unique perspective and I hope these lessons empower you to share it with confidence. 

There you have it. Four ways to speak beautifully and move others with your words. If you liked the episode, please give it a review. And subscribe to the show for more insights on leveling up your communication skills. Talk soon, conversation companions.