David Tyler Is The Master Communicator

Matt Cundill  0:01  
You may also like a show about the things you may also like things like David Tyler, the master communicator. David Tyler has been communicating publicly since the early 90s. He enrolled into Concordia University's communications program way back when, and he has not looked back. There was radio, and later he became one of North America's leading voice talents, including various roles for network television. See

David Tyler  0:33  
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Joe, weekday mornings at six Eastern on MSNBC,

Matt Cundill  1:35  
culminating as the voice for CTV News in Canada. David is also my voiceover coach. He's mentored me over the last 10 years, helping me transition from an announcery radio voice to something more conversational, more toned down, and more concise. David has now launched a podcast called The Master communicator, and he's also got a book called Connect, a field guide for Master communicators. That's a book that's going to strengthen your ability to connect with your audience. David Tyler joins me from his studio just north of Montreal.

David Tyler  2:13  
I did my first voiceover gig when I was I think I was 19 years old, back in 1984 what has voiceover taught me about communication. There's more to communicating than just words. That's the simplest way to say it. There's more to communicating than just the sharing of words. In fact, the way that I paused probably says more than the words that I've that I've actually said.

Matt Cundill  2:37  
So what does a pause mean? Because it's powerful, and some of the best comedy comes from pausing. And, you know, we pause for effect, and so often we want to rush and keep talking, and then what happens is, there's a lot of ums and ahs. So what does a pause represent?

David Tyler  2:52  
Well, do you have a musical background? I can't remember, in music, you know, playing? Yeah.

Matt Cundill  2:58  
Well, music director, I did play saxophone and clarinet for a little bit, so I'll give myself a little credit.

David Tyler  3:05  
So I've been playing music since I was eight years old. My first instrument was trumpet. I can read and write music, and I forget who it was that said it. They said that music happens between the notes. It's kind of similar what I just said a minute ago about the words, communication is not about the words. Like music is not about the notes. Music actually happens between the notes, between the pauses. A friend of ours, Nick Michaels, who was a Montrealer who passed away. He was living in Florida for, I don't know, about 30 years, but he always talked about, you know, voiceover in terms of commercials or things where you're where you're selling, if you don't leave a pause, your audience becomes a victim of the message. But when you leave a pause, you invite the listener to participate in the message, and by participating in the message, it becomes more ingrained. You're communicating better. So it's those short pauses. I found this interesting anecdote Larry King. We all know Larry King. And Larry King once said that the best interview he ever did was with Marlon Brando, where Brando barely spoke. He just let the silence hang, and Brando filled it with gold. Of course, it's, you know, that's Marlon Brando. The thing is that most of us can't handle silence, but if you embrace the silence, you're going to be amazed at what people reveal. And you do that very well, Matt, I've been listening to your your interviews.

Matt Cundill  4:39  
I've actually listened to a few other interviews, just going back, and I thought, Oh, maybe I should just insert some silence, just for a little more effect. But it really does make me think about how uncomfortable we can be with silence, four people in a car together, nobody's saying anything, and everybody sort of left wondering, what does this silence really. Represent. Tell me why this is so important, and why you need to communicate with people about its importance. How to communicate properly, you know, with hand gestures and intonation, and it's just, it's more than just the words. Why do we need to learn this?

David Tyler  5:19  
I believe that. I don't mean to get to, you know, philosophical, but we can create a better world by becoming better communicators. And what I'd noticed with the internet, I remember, you know, in the 90s when they talked about the internet and email and all that, and I was like, Oh, this is, this is a great opportunity to connect with people around the world easily, just like that. But the truth is, is that the technology hasn't made us better communicators, but it's accentuated how bad of communicators we are in text, in speaking with people verbally, it's also showed us that different cultures speak differently. There's hand gestures that I won't do, but there's hand gestures that I might accidentally do that will hurt somebody's feelings, if you know what I mean. But I think that in order to create a better world, a very simple thing that we can all do is, and it doesn't cost anything, is to focus on becoming better communicators

Matt Cundill  6:16  
when you're speaking, and let's say you haven't, you don't have anything written or necessarily prepared, but we're having a conversation right now, how do we sort of look at word economy and using the right words and saying shorter, more concise sentences, rather than going off on long spiels to explain ourselves?

David Tyler  6:36  
Yeah, I think, I think brevities is something that's pretty important. Back in the 90s, you and I were working in Montreal back in the 90s, and I was working with a station called with mix 96 and Pat holiday came in as our program director, and he cut our brakes down to 15 seconds. And I was like, How can you do that? That's impossible. You know, we got a promo, and it's a long sheet like this, how can, how are we going to be able to cut it down? But Pat was able to coach me specifically, and I'm sure it coached the other announcers at the station on how to be able to do that. But of course, that takes written word. It takes writing it down. I mean, one of the exercises, here's one of the exercises we did, and one of the things that I do when I'm coaching people, one on one, talk about whatever it is that you're talking about for 60 seconds. Now take that video or that audio that you've recorded and write every single word, every single um, etc, down and now look at it again and decide what words, what ums and ahs don't need to be there, and cross them out. And a lot of the times you can cut out half of the half of the words. But the trouble, the trouble is being able to do that on the fly. And that takes time, and it takes it takes practice to be able to do that. You know, becoming a better communicator isn't something that happens overnight and you never actually achieve the status of master communicator. It's something that that you can only strive to do you've practiced you fail, and you know, eventually you get better.

Matt Cundill  8:07  
Yeah. So that's a great technique that you just sort of pointed out, where you can do your talking first and then you can look at the words after. And in this day and age, you no longer need to sit down and write it all out, because you can just have it transcribed. And when you do see your words and you see your voice and how it comes out, then you can massage it. I think a lot of that is about PrEP. And you and I have spent enough time in radio to know what show prep is. As a performer, I know you don't go into the studio and read the script for the first time. When you're behind the microphone in the studio, you're practicing. So speak a little bit about preparation, because it's the one thing that I noticed that people really lack and struggle before they get up in front of anybody, or before they get behind the microphone.

David Tyler  8:52  
Prep is important to prep is important in radio or in any kind of broadcasting, because you're you're on camera, you're on you're on mic, so you you better be ready to get ready for for this interview, I pulled together a bunch of notes just like that Larry King anecdote. I thought that that was pretty cool, so I said, Okay, I'll bring that to the conversation with Matt. I probably spent about an hour maybe, maybe an hour and a half. Preparation is very important. One of my one on one on one clients, one of my one on one business clients, was having difficulty being put on the spot to give a speech, not a speech, but, you know, a five minute pet talk. Or, you know, at a wedding, if you have to stand up and give a speech suddenly, at the last minute. And I taught him this, this technique that I started doing using my iPhone, or whatever apparatus you you happen to have, you could take a note, and I created a specific note called storytelling. And at the end of the day, I would take five minutes thinking back on my day and something interesting that had happened, and I write a sentence, maybe two sentences. Purposes of what it was and what it mean, what was the moral of that? And that's it. And I put it away. And every day I try, every day I try to put in a new one of those anecdotal stories. And at the end of the month, or whatever you've got, you should have, you know, 25 or 30 really good stories that you could just pull out of the air. One of my mentors, Rob braid. You know, Rob has that talent to be able to do that, and that's kind of what inspired me to say. How can I do that? And came up with this idea of marking down these little notes every time Rob would stand up, he had something really interesting to say. And I thought that was amazing. So that's a way that you can prep for those impromptu talks and come across as being a master communicator.

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Matt Cundill  11:09  
when I read your book, I thought to myself, who needs this? And then I thought, well, I need this for one because I don't know 100% of anything, so I always find that, okay, I do need Oh, I Oh, gestures, oh, facial expressions, oh, intonation. So these are all reminders for me. And then I thought, you know who really could use this? And that's Gen Z. And nothing against Gen Z. I've got three of them, and they had to deal with COVID. They've been on tick tock, and they get into the workplace now at the age of 25 and they could be asked a task such as, could you pick up the phone and call this client and have them address this issue? And the look of sheer terror in some of these people to pick up the phone and to make the call, and I've never made a call before. It's incredible. Just you know, how things have changed, and how much need there is for another generation to really, you know, pick up on this form of communication.

David Tyler  12:09  
When I was putting the idea of the book together, I said, Okay, it's going to be a book for young professionals. And I did one of those Google searches, and I said, What is a young professional? And you're going to be shocked, because a young professionals is a white collar worker between the ages of 21 and 49 so technically, you and I are, we're old professionals. I guess we've aged out, but up to up to 49 years old. So if you saw in the beginning, the dedication is to my two sons, who are both 20 somethings, and I kind of geared it towards them. But I did not, I didn't forget about the 35 to, you know, 49 year olds when talking about the book. And it's not really, you know, it's not really a book I wanted, I mean, just like the podcast, which is less than 10 minutes each episode, right? I wanted to keep the book short. I think was 100 and was 113 pages, even a place to take notes in the back. But I wanted it to be brief, and I wanted it to come across not as a book or a novel, but I wanted it to be seen as a field guide. In fact, that's what it's called, A Field Guide for Master communicators. And at the end of each one of the chapters, there is because, you know, we're all in a hurry, right? There's the key takeaway of each chapter, which you can literally read in a couple of seconds, and then to help you become that master communicator, I've got five tips for each one of the chapters. Can I read the takeaway from the first chapter? Certainly can. So this is takeaway from chapter number one from my book called Connect. This is the chapters called the power of communication. True communication isn't just about transferring information, it's about transformation. Every conversation holds the potential to change perspectives, inspire action or deepen a relationship. Approach each interaction with this in mind, and you'll find that effective communication isn't just a skill, but a powerful force for positive change. And change is good, and this is something that, well, they my kids got this in their Christmas talking, too, but, but it's something that Gen Z and anybody really can can get some use of. And even if you are an old professional like you and me, it's good to read it and get a tune up, I guess.

Matt Cundill  14:22  
Yeah, so the last words were the ones that I took away there, and that's the writing for positive change. And quite often I write and it's not really for positive change. It's really sort of about formulating an argument, and it's about, you know, trying to beat down, or it's trying to, trying to coerce a change of opinion, and I have to go back and make it positive, and then I probably have to do it a second time. And I don't know why I default to that. It's probably the broadcast era that I grew up in, of the 90s where, you know, it was fast, aggressive and quick, and A versus B and that sort of thing. But in this day and age, you know. To write persuasively. I think working from the positive is that's my big takeaway from what you just said,

David Tyler  15:05  
Exactly, exactly. I just got back from a trip to Jamaica, and I don't know about you, but when you get out of your you know your usual routine, etc, and stop rushing and working, you start to get kind of well I do anyway. Start getting I get kind of philosophical, and I wrote down a few things, and I shot videos, actually, while I was down there. I'm putting them up now on YouTube and on Facebook. But one is, particularly, we're talking about, I talk about the beach, the shore, the shoreline, and how the the water and the beach commune with each other. And the question is, when you're communing you and I or you and whomever Are you meeting to shape or to erode? It's really philosophical. You could find it on my David Hunter Facebook if you wanted to tell me about over communication, over communication. Sorry, am I? Am I doing that? No, not at all.

Matt Cundill  16:01  
It is a chapter in your book, and I'm not here to get you to unpack every single chapter, because there's so much. But you know, over communication, we've seen, you know, companies go down because of it. We've seen speeches bomb because of it. We have podcasts that are too long. So what is over communication? How do we identify it, and how do we get away from it?

David Tyler  16:23  
Over communication, when, when people's eyes start to glaze over, when people start becoming distracted, that's a pretty key sign that you are over communicating. How to get away from it. Man, I wrote that chapter like last August, so I can't remember what exactly

Matt Cundill  16:41  
well. I mean, I would suggest that it comes down to writing, right? And prep? No

David Tyler  16:45  
writing and prep? Yes. I mean, it depends on the situation, right? If you're having a one on one conversation with somebody, if you pull somebody into your office and you're having a conversation, that's that's different than preparing to be, you know, interviewed on the TV or to give a speech, you know, to 10,000 people. You don't necessarily prepare to have a one on one conversation, but you have to have those thoughts always working in the back of your mind.

Matt Cundill  17:08  
Tell me about and you touched on it earlier, and you just mentioned you went to Jamaica. Tell me about communicating in front of other cultures. I'm not looking for the hacks and the traps, but I just want to be conscious of

David Tyler  17:20  
it like I was talking about earlier, there's hand gestures that I didn't even realize that was an insult. Is it in England, what we would perceive as the peace sign? Doesn't mean the peace sign. I think it's important to I don't know anything about the Japanese culture. For example, I took a history of Japan course in university. But when you go into a culture like that, you need to find what the traps are. You just talk to somebody before you go and listen to them. What is it that could go wrong? You know what

Matt Cundill  17:50  
I mean? I love the fact that you've kept the book short and concise, like we should be doing most of our communication. David, I love the fact that you're, by the way, a mentor to many people in voiceover like myself and many others who are going to be coming up and continuing their career. So thank you for doing that, and congratulations on the release of the book.

David Tyler  18:08  
Thank you very much. Thank you. You've got a podcast.

Matt Cundill  18:12  
Tell me how and why you decided to use podcasts to whether it's promote the book or communicate further about the master communicator?

David Tyler  18:22  
Well, I have another podcast. I had another podcast, and I have to go back, and I found one of the episodes. I only did four episodes from 2009 and it was called David Tyler unleashed. I had just unvoluntarily left radio. The kind of radio that I did was not necessarily what you guys were doing over at show. It was it was about entertainment. It was about bits. It was about not necessarily comedy, but being entertaining. And I said, Hey, I could do that. I could do a podcast. This, this new fangled thing, this podcasting thing. So I started taking all of my bits and putting them into this half hour show with some interviews and things like that. And it was impossible to keep up, which is why I only did four episodes. But then, as I was listening to Mitch Joel's podcast, for example, I said, Well, you know, I could just do a kind of an interview thing, but I didn't get back to the to the podcasting until probably, or thinking about it anyways, it was probably the middle of COVID When I said, You know what? Let me take my message of communication to the stage and start teaching non voice actors about communication and the importance of becoming a master communicator. So I prepared a few of those talks and started giving them, but then I said, Hey, wouldn't it be cool if I went back to this idea of podcasting, but giving just small, bite sized classes, like master classes, to kind of promote the speaking business, but the podcast is taking off. And I said, Okay, well, let me, let me do a book two in terms of podcasting itself, I think it's today, not 2009 but today, it's a very viable way to connect an idea with an author. Hands, David, thanks

Matt Cundill  20:01  
so much for taking the time to be on the show here today, and thank you for your mentorship and everything that you do for the voiceover community and the upcoming voiceover talent that are coming into the business. My pleasure. Thank you, Matt. My thanks to David Tyler for joining me. He can be reached through his website. Davidtyler speaks.com all the connection points are on the episode page at You may also like.net make him the voice of your podcast, radio station, corporate video, whatever you got. This episode was produced by Evan serminsky and edited by Taylor MacLean, and it's built with love by everyone at the sound off media company. I.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai