Deep Listening - Impact beyond words - Oscar Trimboli: Recent Episodes
Oscar Trimboli
The world is a noisy place where you fight to be heard every day. Despite the fact that we have been taught at home and at school how to speak, none of us has had any training in how to listen. Multiple academic studies have shown that between 50% and 55% of your working day is spent listening, yet only 2% of people have been trained in how to listen.
We feel frustrated, isolated and confused because we aren't heard.
As a speaker, it takes absolutely no training to notice when someone isn't listening - they're distracted, they interrupt or drift away as you talk.
Yet the opposite is also true, without any training in how to listen we struggle to stay connected with the speaker and the discussion.
This results in unproductive workplaces where people fight to be heard and need to repeat themselves constantly, send emails to confirm what they said and then have follow-up meetings to ensure what was said was actually heard by those in the meeting. It's a downward spiral that drains energy from every conversation and reduces the productivity of organisations.
This podcast is about creating practical tips and techniques to improve your daily listening.
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Claire Pedrick, Shaney Crawford and Oscar Trimboli explore the nuances and dynamics of workplace listening, including the importance of presence, flexibility, and curiosity.
Key insights include:
- Listening is about creating shared meaning, not just exchanging information. Meaning only emerges in a collaborative space.
- Second languages and their musicality can provide insights into how we communicate and connect.
- Effective listening requires letting go of preconceptions and being willing to have your mind changed.
- Observing and sensing beyond just hearing is a critical aspect of workplace listening that is often overlooked.
- The process of noticing HOW people listen can be as enlightening as the content being discussed.
A masterclass of the art and science of workplace listening, with valuable lessons for anyone seeking to improve their communication skills.
- Audio Format - S4 Episode 21: How to Listen with Oscar Trimboli Wednesday, May 01, 2024 - The Coaching Inn from 3D Coaching
- Video Format - S4 Episode 21: How to Listen with Oscar Trimboli Wednesday, May 01, 2024 - The Coaching Inn from 3D Coaching
- Podcast Episode 127: how to listen to what emerges in between - Part I of III
- Podcast Episode 128: how to listen to what emerges in between - Part II of III
- Podcast Episode 129: how to listen to what emerges in between - Part III of III
- S3 Episode 06: Listening - with Kathryn Mannix
- how to listen – fundamentals – workplace edition
In the previous episode 127, Claire Pedrick and I discussed listening through many dimensions, including the role of pause and silence, the influence of the backstory and its impact on workplace change.
Now we are at Part Two of Three, you're about to hear is the reflections from 16 different listeners who initially emailed Claire with their feedback and were open enough to agree to record their perspectives.
Some were recorded on audio, and some were video.
I invite you to notice what these 16 listeners heard that was similar and different to you.
What I loved exploring was listening to the wide variety of adjectives and verbs.
They used to describe their insights, how they explained what they saw, and their thoughtful reflections about HOW it was said and WHAT was said.
- Audio Format - S4 Episode 21: How to Listen with Oscar Trimboli Wednesday May 01, 2024 - The Coaching Inn from 3D Coaching
- Video Format - S4 Episode 21: How to Listen with Oscar Trimboli Wednesday May 01, 2024 - The Coaching Inn from 3D Coaching
- how to listen – fundamentals – workplace edition
What emerges in between?
This episode is an 'experiment' between Claire Pedrick and Oscar Trimboli as a result of an introduction by Shaney Crawford from Japan.
They explore the role of second languages, the value of silence, and the importance of understanding the past.
What does a group listening audit sound and look like?
The experiment will continue for the next few episodes as they see what emerges in between episodes.
Audio Format - S4 Episode 21: How to Listen with Oscar Trimboli Wednesday May 01, 2024 - The Coaching Inn from 3D Coaching
Video Format - S4 Episode 21: How to Listen with Oscar Trimboli Wednesday May 01, 2024 - The Coaching Inn from 3D Coaching
how to listen – fundamentals – workplace edition
This episode delves into the critical role of listening, particularly in the context of debates and the competitive advantage provided to participants.
Sasan Kisravi explains the significance of preparation in debate, especially when preparing both sides of the argument.
When preparing both sides of an argument, you can discover and anticipate the counterpoints that will help you discover multiple approaches to the same issue.
The concept of "competitive listening" is emphasized, and it is important to understand an opponent's argument and analyze its impact on the judge and audience.
Note-taking is a crucial tool for effective listening, but there is a difference between traditional note-taking and a more strategic approach. The latter involves creating a visual map of arguments, identifying key points, and tracking the flow of the discussion.
This method allows listeners to maintain focus, identify unaddressed points, and ultimately gain a clearer understanding of the debate.
The conversation also touches on the psychological aspects of listening, highlighting the importance of motivation and purpose.
By understanding the nuances of effective listening, individuals can improve their communication skills, build stronger relationships, and achieve greater success at work.
- Listening is a competitive advantage: Effective Listening is crucial for success in debates and workplace communication.
- Preparation is key: Understanding both sides of an argument and anticipating counterpoints is essential for effective listening and responding.
- Note-taking is a strategic tool: Creating visual maps of arguments helps maintain focus, identify key points, and analyze the flow of the discussion.
www.listening.com
Where to start? Start here
How to listen like a High Court Judge with Justice Michael Kirby
Listen like World Memory Champion Dr Boris Konrad
Brooklyn Debate League
01:38:00 - The complete Munk Debate - Mainstream Media featuring Douglas Murray, Matt Taibbi, Malcolm Gladwell, Michelle Goldberg November 30, 2022
00:47:36 The original Phuskin Industries Revisionist History Podcast Episode - Malcolm goes to debate school – complete audio episode April 13, 2023
00:10:10 Douglas Murray on Malcolm Gladwell: "I Still Don't Feel Pity"
The importance of listening at Level II, which is three-dimensional
- hear,
- see,
- and sense
Noticing nonverbal cues and their congruence with their words is a vital skill toward becoming a deeper listener.
While these cues can be informative, it's crucial to interpret them accurately and consider the context.
During this episode we explore noticing
- the face,
- posture
- and breathing
As we delve into the world of nonverbal cues, we are guided by Susan Constantine, Robin Dreeke, Michael Grinder and Andre Agassi. These four perspectives will create a deeper understanding by noticing, baseline and interpreting a range of non-verbals
Finally, Agassi shares a secret about decoding Boris Becker's non-verbal signals which led to an eight-match winning streak in the 1990s.
066: Listening to body language with Susan Constantine
077: The secrets of listening like a spy with Robin Dreeke
085: Hidden Secrets of how to Listen for non-verbals with Michael Grinder
Insights from 33,519 people about what gets in their way of listening and practical tips about what will imrpove your listening.
An update on the fourth generation www.listeningquiz.com including;
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- aggregate listening profiles for more than 10 people
- cross-industry benchmarking
- administration features to track progress of completion
- volume discounts for organizations
- volume discounts for accredited consultants
Where to start? Start here
Podcast Episodes Categorized by the Five Levels of Listening
Podcast Episodes Categorized By Korn Ferry Leadership Architect™ Competencies
Podcast Episode 046: Listen to your audience like SXSW
How to speak so my audience will listen Danish Dhamani
How to effectively listen to someone who is suicidal Kevin Briggs
Zoom fatigue and exhaustion - how it negatively impacts women more with Dr Anna Carolina Muller Queiroz
One move ahead, how to listen like a chess grandmaster - Scott Sandland
the hidden value in your contact center and how to listen at scale with Authenticx’s Amy Brown
Learn how to listen with the patience of a neuroscientist Dr Alison J. Barker
Supercommunicators How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection
This episode of Deep Listening Impact Beyond Words explores the art of listening in diplomatic cross-cultural meetings, drawing insights from British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly's discussion with Cindy Yu on The Spectator's Chinese Whisper Podcast.
Key takeaways:
- Focus on non-verbal cues: Ambassador Cleverly emphasizes that what people don't say, their body language, note-taking, and response delays are often more revealing than their spoken words. This applies not just to high-stakes diplomacy but also to everyday workplace meetings.
- Team listening: Effective listening involves individual attentiveness and collaboration within your team.
- The power of silence: Pay attention to pauses in the conversation. Their length, frequency, and placement can signal reflection, emphasis, cultural differences, or the weight of potential responses.
- Longitudinal listening: Notice subtle changes in language, body language, and overall tone over time during extended negotiations or repeated meetings.
Actionable insights:
- Reflect on your listening habits: How much attention do you pay to non-verbal cues?
- Practice team listening: Discuss group observations and interpretations after meetings to gain a more comprehensive understanding.
- Refine your pause awareness: Observe how others use pauses and experiment with your own pausing to enhance meaning and impact.
By applying these insights from diplomatic listening to your own workplace interactions, you can improve communication, build trust, and navigate complex situations more effectively.
Additional Resources
"Does China Care What Britain Thinks?" from The Spectator's Chinese Whisper Podcast hosted by Cindy Yu.
"Ambassadors: Thinking About Diplomacy From Machiavelli To Modern Times" by Robert Cooper.
Nicole Lowenbraun and Maegan Stephens, authors of the book "Adaptive Listening: How to Cultivate Trust and Traction at Work," explain the impact of adapting your listening in the a corporate workplace.
They introduce the SAID listening model, which stands for Support, Advance, Immerse, and Discern, each representing a specific listening style and goal. They emphasize that everyone has a unique listening style and good intentions but may not always meet the speaker's needs.
Nicole, a content director, and executive speaker coach, highlights the necessity of adapting your listening style based on the speaker's requirements. Maegan, a senior director of communication services, shares her experiences in coaching executives and the challenges of listening and providing feedback tailored to executive leaders.
They delve into their three-year journey of writing the book, emphasizing the need for detailed, actionable steps and memorable models for effective communication.
They discuss the complexities of discernment in the workplace and offer insights into guiding others to listen effectively and seek the right type of listening in different situations.
S A I D
Support
Advance
Immerse
Discern
As a bonus, listen to Nicole, Maegan, and Oscar debrief on the process of listening during the recording of this discussion.
Authenticx CEO and Founder, Amy Brown, discusses the power of listening at scale in the contact center industry. She shares her personal experiences and how they shaped her understanding of the importance of listening to patients and customers.
Brown emphasizes the need for organizations to listen to the authentic voice of the customer in order to drive positive healthcare outcomes. She also highlights the barriers to effectively utilizing conversational data and the ethical considerations of AI technology.
Brown provides insights into how Authenticx's platform helps organizations unlock valuable insights and drive innovation through listening. She concludes by offering three key questions that organizations should ask when evaluating suppliers of systems for listening at scale.
Amy Bown
Authenticx
Authenticx's Eddy Effect
how to listen – the most comprehensive book about listening in the workplace – visual edition – print & digital version
how to listen - visual edition - the back story
Oscar Trimboli interviews Jamie Woolf and Heidi Rosenfelder, former employees of Pixar Animation Studios and founders of CreativityPartners, discussing the importance of listening in building connections and fostering innovation.
Woolf and Rosenfelder emphasize the need to slow down the questioning process and ask better, more meaningful questions.
They highlight the role of playback, curiosity, and emotional awareness in effective listening.
We've got three copies of the book, Creativity, Inc, a behind the scenes story about creativity by the founder at Pixar, Ed Catmull. https://www.amazon.com/Creativity-Inc-Overcoming-Unseen-Inspiration/dp/0812993012
Email podcast@oscartrimboli.com with the subject Pixar and your reflections on this discussion between Jamie, Heidi and myself.
The conversation touches on creating a safe and inclusive environment for all voices to be heard, as well as the impact of power dynamics on listening.
Learn about advanced listening techniques including
- The playback
- Slowing down the process
- The importance of plussing
- The role of the environment
- Power dynamics
Inside Pixar
To celebrate the first anniversary of how to listen: discover the hidden key to better communication, the most comprehensive and awarded book about listening in the workplace, we have created a visual summary of the book. Each of the eight chapters is distilled into an illustration from each key concept within that chapter. This video is an interview with Rebecca Lazenby, the illustrator of visual summary. We discuss the process of listening before, during and after the project of creating the visual summary. If you would like to watch - visit https://youtu.be/iKYMwnK8VNk?si=W_znu7YGNDirENFT
Dr. Krishna Naineni works as a general practitioner in England. He's a member of the Royal College of General Practitioners and is a faculty at Brighton and Sussex Medical School. He's passionate about listening education, research, and practice. He's delivered structured and evidence-based listening education programs in the UK and in India to hundreds of healthcare professionals with practical strategies and the knowledge needed to enhance the way they engage with their patients through their listening practice. He has co-founded Glocal Academy, which has been instrumental in delivering custom-made clinical communication skills training programs to healthcare professionals and organizations across India and the United Kingdom. The academy delivered its first ever clinical communication skills training program in 2015 to healthcare professionals in India. He enjoys a long distance running and he hates cooking, but he loves eating food. During this discussion, Dr. Naineni change my mind about the impact of the environment in which you listen , education and your mindset, particularly in healthcare, but equally in workplaces all around the world.
While you're listening today, reflect on the question about what does your physical or virtual environment contribute or detract from the effectiveness of your listening?
I'd love to hear your answers, and for the first five people who send an email to podcast@oscartrimboli.com with a subject line Environment with an answer to these questions:
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How does this conversation increase your awareness about the impact of your environment?
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How does this play out in face-to-face environments?
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How does it play out in virtual environments,
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and what change will you make as a result of listening to this conversation?
We'll send you a paperback copy of the award-winning book, how to Listen: discover the hidden key to better communication, the most comprehensive book about listening in the workplace, and we'll send it in the post for you.
What's the cost of not listening?
Matt Abrahams is a leading expert in the field of communications. He's a lecturer in organizational behavior at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business.
He teaches a very popular class in strategic communication and effective virtual presenting.
He's so good, he's even won the school's alumni teaching award. Matt also co-teaches improvisational speaking in Stanford's Continuing Studies program.
To relax and rejuvenate, Matt enjoys hiking with his wife, watching sport with his kids, hang out with his friends, and continually being humbled in the Karate Dojo.
In Matt's new book, Think Faster, Talk Smarter, an important contribution to the field of communication in the workplace, he takes the time to unpack the role of listening in communication.
He highlights this in one chapter, yet there's a thread throughout the entire book about the importance of listening to the audience. The book provides really tangible and actionable tips and techniques to help you as the speaker succeed for the majority of times speaking spontaneously.
Matt provides science-based strategies for managing your anxiety, responding to the mood of the room, making content concise, relevant, compelling and memorable. He draws on his own stories, he draws on stories from his clients and his students. He offers ways to navigate Q&A sessions, successful job interviews, providing feedback, even making small talk and persuading others while handling those impromptu moments at work.
I've read his book a few times and Matt's punchy 20-minute podcast Think Fast, Talk Smart, has been in my podcast feed since 2020.
I strongly recommend Think Faster, Talk Smarter because Matt deals with the issues about communication in the workplace that I think are the crucial ones, not the planned presentation, the spontaneous speaking moments. I'm listening to you.
If you'd like to be one of the first five people to receive a copy of Matt's book, Think Faster, Talk Smarter, send an email podcast at oscar trimboli dot com with the Subject, Smarter, and answer these three questions.
- What did you learn from Matt?
- What did you learn from our conversation?
- And what will you do differently as a result of listening to today's episode?
Listen to how well Matt listens and spontaneously answers when I throw him a curveball question at the end of our discussion.
Matt, what's the cost of not listening?
Chapter 02 - Listening starts before the conversation commences It’s a beautiful autumn day, and Tina, a busy working mom, is in her car on the way to pick up her three-year old daughter from daycare. It’s a twenty-five-minute drive from Tina’s work to the daycare center, and Tina is finalizing a work call with Fatima while driving.
Tina had expected the call to take ten minutes. Unfortunately, the conversation is longer than expected and ends up taking the entire distance. She parks her car and continues the discussion with Fatima while she walks.
When she reaches the front gate of the daycare center, she takes another ten minutes to finish the call. Eventually, she hangs up and goes through the doorway to collect her daughter.
Although Tina has disconnected the phone call, she still hasn’t disconnected her mind from the issues and actions covered in the discussion—so much so that even at the door to the center she is still ruminating on Fatima’s questions.
Tina’s daughter is excited to see her mom; she runs and gives her a hug, bursting to tell her about her day. Her daughter launches into a wonderful story about adventures, friends, and the most specific details about castles, bridges, and rivers.
Showing her daughter how interested she is, Tina asks her lots of questions.
“Who was that?”
“What did you do next?”
“What did you like about that?”
As Tina puts her daughter into the car seat, her daughter announces,
“Mummy, why are you bumping my words?”
If her daughter was an adult, she would have said,
“Stop interrupting, please!”
Tina’s enthusiasm for her daughter’s story is what everyone wants to experience when they are talking, right?
Show interest, ask relevant questions, and pay attention.
Yet her daughter experienced someone who was constantly interrupting her.
Tina’s daughter wanted to tell her story—entirely, completely, and without interruption. She tried to tell the story from start to finish without questions, reactions, or solutions.
Tina’s questions created a disjointed conversation.
Perhaps you’ve had this experience on either side of the conversation. Many people think that listening is about questioning. When your mind is absent or wandering, these questions appear random to the speaker rather than something that expands the conversation.
Aimless and arbitrary questions waste the speaker’s time and diminish the relationship.
Tina thought she was listening. As they drive off, her mind divides very quickly as more issues from Fatima’s call come to mind. The monkey in her mind is winging from branch to branch, between the present, past, and future.
Her discussion with her daughter is interrupted by the phone ringing—it is Fatima again, and Tina has a decision to make about whether to answer the call or focus on her daughter.
Whether it’s a phone call or our next meeting, our divided attention is one of the first barriers to listening. No matter how strongly you intend to bring your attention and focus to a conversation, listening commences before you arrive at the discussion.
Do you relate most to Tina or her daughter? Listening commences before the conversation, what routines and rituals do you use to bring your attention and presence to the upcoming discussion?
If you would like to more, I invite you to explore you can find the book via this link
Kathryn Mannix has spent her medical career working with people who have incurable advanced illnesses.
Starting in cancer care and changing career to become a pioneer of the new discipline of palliative medicine, she's worked with teams in hospices, hospitals, and in patients' own homes to deliver palliative care, optimizing quality of life even as death is approaching.
Kathryn has worked with many thousands of dying people and has found their ability to deal with illness and death both fascinating and inspirational.
She believes that a better public awareness about what happens as we die would reduce fear and enable people to discuss their hopes and plans with the people that matter to them.
Her account of how people live while they're dying, in her book, With the End in Mind, was published to Universal acclaim and was shortlisted for the Wellcome Prize.
Kathryn's next book, Listen: How to Find the Words for Tender Conversations, starts with a potent story about her early career encounter with Mrs. de Souza.
I encourage you to listen to this discussion more than once.
Kathryn's listening, it's well class and the way she explains listening is compelling. I have five copies of Kathryn's book to share.
If you email podcast@Oscartrimboli.com with the subject "Tender" and your reflections of this conversation.
You could reflect on the story of Mrs. de Souza.
You might reflect on Dorothy and her listening, or how you think about dancing and listening, the difference between doing and being listening, the impact of listening via video versus face-to-face. This is such a rich and nuanced experience.
Kathryn completely changed the way I think about listening.
G'day, it's Oscar. This is an excerpt from How To Listen, the most comprehensive book about listening in the workplace. It's from Chapter One of the audiobook. The audiobook format is fascinating, it's different, it's distinct and I hope that I've honored Trena's request to make it an impactful audiobook.
Imagine the cost of not listening in your workplace is someone's life, improving the quality of their life, extending their life. This is the life-changing work that is the focus of B Corp certified life sciences recruitment and search consultancy - RBW Consulting spanning Boston, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, North Carolina, and San Diego.
Their work covers everything from computational biology, product development, engineering, regulatory affairs, and everything in between, across pharmaceutical and life sciences industries.
Continuing with our behind-the-scenes season of speaking to people who are using Deep Listening, we listen to Emma and Michelle about their focus on Human Intelligence.
First, a little backstory and a shout-out to Stuart from Stirred Health who reached out to me in September of 2021 with this message.
"Hi, Oscar. I'm interested in discussing a collaboration/partnership on behalf of our client. We are keen to hear more about how Deep Listening could help us out and our client. I'm based in the UK."
I was then introduced to their chief commercial officer, Emma and their learning and development director Michelle.
What I love about working with RBW is the ripple effect of doing one thing consistently well.
We discussed this very thoroughly in the co-design process, which was ultimately foundational into integrating Deep Listening into their Human Intelligence strategy.
What you'll hear next is a discussion between Emma, Michelle, and myself about the impact of listening in the life sciences.
Listen out for the story about
- how to consistently shorten meetings and build rapport
- how to listen beyond the CV
- the importance of the productive question rather than any question
- the question every candidate should be asking during an interview
Listen for free
Today I'll explore before, during, and after a workshop.
This is a workshop I had with Sophie, who you'll hear from shortly and her peers. Then we did the same workshop with Sophie's team.
People regularly say, "Oscar, how can you listen after the conversation?"
This can take many forms.
It could be right at the end of a workshop where you ask a question or a poll roughly in the last 15% of the workshop.
You want to catch it in enough time that you can discuss it so you can hear what's being heard by the participants. So if the workshop's one hour, you should be asking this question between the 45-minute mark and the 50-minute mark.
Here's some of the questions I ask,
- what's one thing that changed your mind about listening today?
- what's one thing you'll implement based on what you heard today?
The first question is typically in shorter workshops, and the second question is typically in longer workshops.
Post-workshop, you can also run a survey or you can deconstruct the magical impact that a workshop has in a 25-minute debrief.
I do this within 14 days of the workshop.
What you don't know about me is I'm really disciplined and rigorous about post-workshop debriefs.
In fact, I'm talking about that before people even book in a workshop. I'm signaling to them that there will be a debrief. I signal to them in the workshop, that is something we'll discuss in the debrief. And this is crucial to create a space and place, to create a container where the host of the meeting, or a significant executive sponsor can unpack the learning that they had, that the group had.
I want to ensure that the host reflects on their own experience in the workshop and not just the workshop itself.
What you'll hear from Sophie shortly is her post-workshop experience and how ideas landed so powerfully because the workshop was so experiential, it was very hands-on.
I want hosts also to reflect on the participant experience, individuals, as well as a group.
I want to listen to what participants actually heard, rather than what I said.
I want to listen to what participants didn't hear, couldn't hear, or I didn't communicate effectively enough that it was useful for them.
Finally, I want to understand what was productive for the audience so I can distill that and crisp that up for next time to ensure that if it's landed with one group, it's highly likely to land with another group.
This is part of the craft of facilitating a workshop from a listening orientation, you want to hear what the group heard, what's landing, and what's not.
When you pick that up and use it next time, it's like somebody who's a woodworker, who's moving from chisel to sandpaper to varnish.
Sophie's been very gracious, she's allowed me to record this conversation to help you listen to what a debrief sounds like. Here are some of the excerpts from the discussion with Sophie.
Could you take a photo of yourself with the book and email it to podcast@oscartrimboli.com with the Subject Line “Cover”?
I’ve set up a registration page for all these events so you can register for the rest of the year if you visit https://www.oscartrimboli.com/communityofpractice/
If you would like to provide feedback on the development of this course, you can visit https://www.oscartrimboli.com/coursefeedback
Please send an email to podcast@oscartrimboli.com with the Subject Line “Book Club“, and a recommendation for a book you would like the group to explore.
We’d love to add yours, send to podcast@oscartrimboli.com with the Subject Line “Hello World”
Send an email to podcast@oscartrimboli.com and put in the Subject Line “Interview” if you’d like to be interviewed for the Deep Listening Podcast from the perspective of the Deep Listening Ambassador.
If you’re interested in going deeper, then send me an email podcast@oscartrimboli.com with the Subject Line “Deeper” and what you took away from this next conversation.
Bryan Adams is the CEO and founder of Ph.Creative, recognized as one of the leading employer brand agencies in the world with clients such as Apple, American Airlines, , and Blizzard Entertainment.
Bryan is author of Give & Get Employer Branding: Repel the Many and Compel the Few with Impact, Purpose and Belonging https://giveandget.net/
He is global employer brand expert and his creative, unconventional and even controversial methodologies are said to regularly change the way people think about employer branding and Employee Value Proposition (EVP)
I love Bryan’s three Cs – culture, career catalyst and citizenship
https://www.ph-creative.com/
Listen for free
In this episode of Deep Listening – Impact beyond words, we listen to Jenni Field, an international business communications strategist.
Jenni helps organisations to get teams to work together better and review how operations can work more effectively.
Jenni worked as a Communications Director for a global pharmaceutical business and Global Head of Communications for a FTSE 250 hospitality business.
It is this experience that contributed to the development of The Field Model™ and her book, Influential Internal Communication
Learn the difference between what an executive says and means when they say value.
How do you think about the frequency of listening and communicating your actions will be as an organisation?
If you would like a copy of Jenni’s book Influential Internal Communication: Streamline Your Corporate Communication to Drive Efficiency and Engagement
We are gifting 3 copies of the book, send an email to podcast at oscar trimboli dot com with the subject line The Field Model and what you took from this episode into your workplace.
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Deep Listening Ambassadors 2023
The purpose of the Deep Listening Ambassadors Community is to create 100 Million Deep Listeners in the workplace.
- Be a listening role model in your community, not a perfect listener
- Being better than the last conversation
- Create a connection to useful listening resources
- Support other Deep Listening Ambassadors around the world
The Deep Listening Ambassadors meet regularly across three time zones to understand, learn, and support each other to improve their listening.
Background
Born in December 2019, the Deep Listening Ambassador Community was named through a listening process. We asked people who wanted more information about listening if they would like a place to practice and improve their listening.
Through a survey of 426 people, they voted, and the community agreed to call themselves Deep Listening Ambassadors.
The community has
- grown 2,448 members across 19 countries
- explored how to bring Deep Listening into their workplace
- discussed how to make progress with their workplace listening during 93 online workshops across 3 time zones
- made connections with other Ambassadors
- provided feedback on how to listen – the book including title, structure, stories, and weekly exercises
- prototyped how to listen – an online course – including feedback about assessments, course structures, and pricing.
- Requested and provided input into a Deep Listening Accreditation
The group has grown organically, and with 2,448 people who have joined the community, I wanted to invite you to let me know how you would like to shape the Ambassador community in the next 12 months.
If you would like to have your say in the future of the community, I invite you to complete this 5 minute survey.
As a thank you for your time and commitment to the community and the process of listening, I will post a paperback copy of how to listen - discover the hidden key to better communication - the most comprehensive book about listening in the workplace to you, just for completing the survey.
The survey must be completed on Midnight February 15, 2023 United States Pacific Time
For everyone who completes the quiz will go into a draw. One person will be randomly drawn from the group, and they will be the winner of a bonus prize.
Bonus Prize
You will receive 10 copies of the book and a 45-minute listening online workshop for up to 20 people in your workplace. If you work for yourself, I will run this workshop for one of your clients or suppliers for up to 20 people.
This workshop will need to be completed by June 30, 2023.
www.oscartrimboli.com/feedback
Four Habits That Derail Listening, with Oscar Trimboli (episode 500)
Dave's Interview interview notes in PDF format (free membership required)
Listening to you - a summary of your survey feedback and actions
- More Q&A episodes
- Shorter episodes
- Live episodes
Actions
- Once a month continue with expert listener interviews
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G’day it’s Oscar, and I am in the middle of my listening season
The difference between surveying and listening is taking action
Based on your previous feedback, we have made the following changes to the Deep Listening podcast content and format
- Created the Deep Listening Ambassador Community of Practice
- Created the ultimate guide to listening during a video conference zoom edition
- Interviews + short tips and technique episodes including
- How to listen when you want to solve
- How to listen for actions during meetings
- How to listen in planning meetings
- Note-taking during the meeting
- Created YouTube videos as another way to find, search and access the podcast
- Shared Listener's questions and answers during podcast episodes
www.oscartrimboli.com/survey is the always-on listening tool to catch what you think about the podcast
Every episode of the podcast is available on 18 platforms including Amazon Alexa, Spotify, and YouTube which are just 3 of the 18 platforms which are available to listeners in 186 countries and territories globally
Each episode includes a transcript that has been created and reviewed by a human.
As a thank you when you complete the survey, you will go into the draw which will be drawn randomly on November 24, 2022, at 12:00noon Australian Eastern Daylight Saving Time.
1st prize - 10 paperback copies of how to listen - discover the hidden key to better communication - the most comprehensive book about listening in the workplace + a complimentary 45-minute webinar for you and 9 of your work colleagues about how to listen in the workplace
Oscar Trimboli: The sophisticated and paradoxical power of deciding if and when to listen. G'day, It's Oscar, and today we have a question from a Deep Listening Ambassador in Japan.
Shaney: Hi Oscar. This is Shaney from Tsukuba Ibaraki, Japan, and my question is about listening as a leader.
Do you have any suggestions about how to continue to listen deeply as a leader when you tend to receive comments, suggestions, and ideas from so many people all day every day.
It can be quite surprising for people who are new to leadership positions to realize just how much time leaders spend listening to people and how tiring it can be when the fourth or the eighth person in a day asks you if you have a minute and then launches into a rant or a criticism or a suggestion of how to improve something.
Listening is so very important to leadership, but it can also be really, really hard to listen to comments and suggestions all day long, especially because you feel a personal obligation to fix the problems that people bring to you.
Oscar Trimboli: Thanks, Shaney. This is a wonderful paradoxical and universal question independent of organization, culture, location, or country.
My favorite kind of question, if you like Shaney, have a question about listening in the workplace, email podcast@oscartrimboli.com
This question, it's a question about choice and timing.
It could be about when to listen and when NOT to listen.
It's also a question about attention and your listening batteries.
When it comes to your listening batteries throughout the day, you need to check and notice what's your battery level right now is a green, yellow, red.
You need to check what color your listening battery is before you start listening.
Something I learned from James Clear in episode 67, advice is often context dependent.
Shaney, I'm going to avoid giving you advice here as James points out questions can help you navigate beyond the context.
Let's listen to how James explained it.
James Clear: And one of the women that as a reader of mine and I talked to as I was working on the book, she lost a lot of weight, and she had this really great question that she carried around with her.
Questions are often more useful than advice in the sense that advice is very context dependent.
It's like, "Oh, it works in this situation, but what if you find yourself in a different situation now it doesn't apply as much."
And the question that she carried around with her was what would a healthy person do?
And so she could go from context to context and sort of have that question to reinforce the identity.
That's actually in many ways, more useful than having a good workout program or a good diet plan because that you can only do once. But no matter where you're at, you can ask what would a healthy person do?
Oscar Trimboli: Shaney, I'll share with you four types of questions, four categories of questions for groups of questions that have helped my other clients.
It's important to understand that the question you are asked is very, very common and it's amplified when you're in a leadership role.
The categories of the four questions are what, when, how, and who.
Let's start with WHAT.
- What would make this a good conversation?
- What would make this a great conversation?
- What would make this an effective conversation?
- What do you want from this conversation?
In the book, how to listen, we cover off the use of this question throughout the book, creating a listening compass for you and the other participants.
It's a great way to hack the conversation to make it much shorter for you and for them.
The reason we want to ask a WHAT question right up front is you want to understand the context for them and for you, because shortly I'm going to invite you to make a choice about when you should think about answering this question, Shaney.
So let's move to WHEN
- Here's a group of questions to think about.
- When is the best time to discuss this with you?
- When is the best time for us to discuss it?
And finally, although I'd love to discuss it right now and listen to you, I don't think I can effectively listen to what you want to achieve in this conversation. Can we discuss this at another time?
Professor Cal Newport is very particular about the value he places on his time. And rather than dealing with each individual and their specific question, request feedback experiment, he encourages each of his students or peers to attend a regular weekly meeting. In that meeting, everybody can bring their request or their question along.
He does this for three very specific reasons.
-
he has a defined time and more importantly, a defined process for dealing with these random rants, as you call them, Shaney, or the feedback or any of the other issues he's dealing with. He's placing them in space, time, and context where he can arrive with his listening batteries fully charged.
-
he creates the environment where others can participate. Others can listen to the range of questions that Professor Newport is asked, as well as listening to the way he thinks about answering these questions.
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he thinks about his time being multiplied in a group context with many of the participants either self-solving when hearing others' answers, resolving their question with other participants, helping them in doing so. Newport is building a culture of mutual support. He's making himself independent of the process, and ultimately Newport explains how he would approach thinking about the issue rather than his recommendation to the other person or group about how to solve the issue.
Shaney, one of the things I invite you to think about is if you feel like you need to fix, give them a simple framework to think it through rather than giving them an answer.
In adopting this approach, Newport creates a sustainable listening process ensuring his listening batteries are fully charged before arriving at this regular meeting, whether it's face to face or virtual.
Shaney, back in episode 61, when I discussed this issue with Professor Stefan Van der Stigchel from Utrecht University, he's written multiple books on the importance of attention.
He reflected on his more direct approach when students or peers approached him with a question.
Stefan Van der Stigchel: People come into my room when I'm on my work quite often to ask me questions or to talk about a certain experiment.
And of course, when you're in your working environment, they're things are not always positive, right?
What I've tried to learn is that communicate to, if people enter my room to say, this is not the right moment. I cannot listen to you. My mind is not open, my working memory is full, I'm worrying about something.
And I've started to realize that people actually appreciate that if you say it in the past, there are too many occasions in which I was claiming to be listening and they ask me questions and I just noticed my mind is somewhere else.
My mind wandering about the meeting before, and then I simply have to admit that I have no idea what they're talking about. And that's quite embarrassing and it's frustrating what I've learned from my peers that there are people who can acknowledge that they can acknowledge if somebody walks into the room, ask them a scientific question, please, not now.
It's good to have a culture and in a work environment when you can admit that although I might be looking at you right now, I am honestly not listening. And this is not due to you.
You're very interesting and you're probably a very interesting question. But what's happening to me right now is that my mind is wandering, and I'm not ready to receive your information.
Again, my environment, people have to learn that's a possibility and that they can come back at a later time, but it's not something personal.
Previously what happened to me is that I was sort of almost afraid to tell the other person because I was afraid that they were going to take it personally, right? That you are not interesting to me. And I try to make sure that it's not about them, but it's simply that the current situation is for some reason not appropriate.
Oscar Trimboli: Shaney, when thinking about the WHEN of listening, the most generous thing, the most sustainable outcome for you, and the person asking the question, the rant, the person wanting to bounce something off you.
The most generous thing I think you can do is NOT listen.
When you're listening, batteries are drained when they're moving from yellow to red or from red to black.
It doesn't help them, you or the organization you lead by listening, transactionally, listening superficially, bouncing between level one and maybe level two, listening for symptoms rather than moving between level two, three and four and listening for systemic implications.
Listening is a skill, it's a practice, it's a process and ultimately a way to impact systemic change in a sustainable way for the organization you'd lead.
As I mentioned earlier on, Shaney, the question you pose is a universal leadership issue. It's a common question my clients ask me.
This is an interview with Katie Burke, who is the leader of people and culture at HubSpot, an organization where she's responsible for 6,000 employees globally.
In this interview with Shane Metcalf, Chief People Officer for 15Five an employee engagement software company from June 21, it was called Reviving the Art of Listening with HubSpot's Katie Burke.
Listen carefully as Katie describes how she manages her energy to make a bigger impact with her listening.
Notice how she conserves her listening batteries and shares the difficult and draining parts of listening with other leaders and members of her team.
Katie Burke: In my own journey on this front, I think a few things that have really worked for me, I got some really tough feedback my first few years as CPO that I was distracted and I was, and it was because I was trying to be everywhere at once and be all things to all people.
And so the biggest tack for listening that I know is I say NO to almost everything, including I don't get a ton of energy from doing one-on-one coffee chats with people.
I've just learned over the years. I feel like I'm saying the same thing over and over again. And also just I got emotionally worn down. It was just tiring. And so I don't do our new hire welcome as a group anymore because it just felt a little tiring. And then I don't do a ton of coffee chats both internally and externally.
And the reason I don't do that is not because I don't enjoy doing that occasionally, it was because it was starting to really interfere with my ability to listen and be a great leader for my team.
Great listening actually starts with being intentional around what you say no to. So you can be present for the people in your org and be the best leader possible when you're there.
Shane Metcalf: It's so interesting around our own energy management, our own state is going to dictate are we able to listen?
Especially HR is often the punching bag in an organization because HR people, we are the recipient of so much feedback, positive and negative, humans get flooded with emotion.
When we're in a fight or flight state, there's a physiological change that happens in our ears and we actually stop listening.
What I'm hearing from you is you needed to set boundaries and create the experience for you to do work that energizes you so that you could actually listen.
Katie Burke: I personally think there should be much more discussion for CHROs, for HR business partners, for anyone who bears the emotional breadth of an organization, of talking about how I think people talk a lot about self-care and break and rest.
Those are all great, but don't get to the core fix. And I think what I had to learn is I have to actually just be really disciplined around my schedule because it creates space for me to do the things that I know make me a better listener. And for me, that's getting outside once a day, getting my run in the morning. I'm a much better person, leader, manager, you name it. If I get outside and get a workout in.
And then the other thing is just being intentional around what gives you energy and being honest about that. I grew up very much a people pleaser.
It was a really hard habit for me to break, and I don't think people love that. It's my habit. I've had to get really comfortable with the fact that it is the only thing that allows me to keep listening, to HubSpotters and being a good leader for my team.
Shane Metcalf: It's a worthwhile process for all of us to check in.
Am I actually in a state where I can listen?
Because I've gone through this, I've gone through periods where I'm like, I don't want to hear any more feedback.
I'm sick of it.
People just complain.
We're never going to make people happy.
I'm in the pretty negative state and then I have no receptivity to actually listen to what my people are saying and anything they say will probably be viewed through that lens of I don't want to hear it.
Katie Burke: Agreed. I've also just had to say no.
There are times when I think taking a meeting does you want to listen to someone. If you're not, there is actually a bad use of both of your time.
And so one of the things I've said to some people is. Hey, I'm actually not in a great spot to really have the conversation I think we need to have, and so I need to wait until tomorrow.
I need to wait until I'm in a better spot or I think someone on my team is better suited to have this conversation given that they can really understand and empathize where you are because I think when people are in an acute state, they need someone to listen to them a 100%.
I need to be honest if you're not there.
The other thing is just that's where I come back to you're not going to make everyone happy.
I used to hold myself to a really high bar. I wanted to think that everyone who, if we had a tough meeting to listen to people that everyone would leave saying like, "Wow, our people operations team is great."
What I've started doing is now leaving those meetings where the goal is just to make people feel heard, not to make them feel better, just to make them feel heard.
That takes some of the pressure off because the other thing is I'm a bias for action person. I tend to lean into how do we solve things? It takes the pressure off to solve it because my only job there is to be present to what they're feeling.
Oscar Trimboli: Shaney, the most impactful, sustainable, and generous listening could be when you choose NOT to listen in that moment, reacting and trying to fight the urge to fix, kind of showing up like the shrewd listening villa from our listening quiz, becoming conscious that your ego wants to fix, solve, and answer.
It's great in the moment, but it doesn't drive systemic change.
Create a phrase that works for you.
The four A's at this point, ask, acknowledge, assess, and agree.
- Ask what would make this a good conversation or outcome?
- Acknowledge their point and issue or even question, or problem
- Assess when is the most effective time for a sustainable, impactful discussion?
- Agree, when or who to meet with to progress it.
Shaney, we've covered the what and when.
I just want to quickly talk to you about how and who.
These additional categories of questions are really useful when the conversation happens.
First, let's talk about HOW.
- How would you like to discuss it?
- How will we allocate our time exploring the past and the future?
- How long have you been thinking about this?
- How will we know if we've made progress?
Let's move on to the WHO
- Who else noticed this issue originally?
- Who else does it impact? and
- Who needs to be involved in discussing or resolving it?
Shaney, to make this very practical, very pragmatic, and actionable for you.
My go-to question for the random rant, the curious question, or the feisty feedback,
What would make this a good conversation for you?
They will either tell you they want to have a rant with no outcome, or they may request you to be their thinking partner, or more likely than not, they'll try and put the problem-solving monkey back on your back.
At this point, Shaney, notice the pattern in their questions three or more of the same kinds of questions.
You're probably dealing with a systemic issue, and I speculate you probably can't solve it alone, or at least in the pair that are discussing the problem.
Define an allocated time on a regular basis for you to triage all of these kinds of discussions into one context where your listening batteries are fully charged.
As Katie mentioned, sometimes people just want you to hear them out rather than fix, especially when you don't have the listening batteries available to listen and fix in the moment.
Finally, every conversation doesn't and can't be a process of deep listening.
You can't always deeply listen.
You need to be flexible and adjust accordingly in the situation.
Sometimes just being present and allowing them to be heard will be enough.
This makes your listening light and easy and it doesn't drain your listening batteries.
A quick reminder, your role as a listener is not to comprehend everything the speaker says.
It's your role to help the speaker better understand what and how they're thinking about an issue and ultimately help them to understand what they mean and where they want to progress.
Shaney, thanks for the brilliant question.
G'day. It's Oscar.
This podcast episode is an experiment in a few parts and one of the things that's happened in between the time Shaney sent me the question, I recorded the responses that I sent it back to her in draft format to ask her for a few reflections.
I gave her four questions to ponder. Shaney listened to what I sent her and shared it with her team, and I've asked her to reflect on four questions. Also, in between that time I have been completely flat on my back with a virus for seven days, so my voice is probably sounding a little different.
What you'll hear next is Shaney reflecting back on the questions I posed to her.
Let me know what was most helpful in what I've explored.
Shaney:
I don't need to fix, solve, or answer anything when I'm listening to people.
I just need to make sure that people are heard.
When I played it for my team, they really reacted positively to the concept of a listening battery and also to the idea that not every conversation can or should be a process of deep listening.
Oscar Trimboli:
- Which one of these will you experiment with?
- Which one will be easy for you to implement? and
- What will be sustainable in the context in which you leave?
Shaney: I will definitely be trying to remember not to go into conversations with the intent to solve anything. This will be very hard for me as I have a lifetime habit of doing just that.
I think that this is very important and as a leader, I really need to try to help the people that I'm talking to find ways to solve their own problems instead of trying to solve them for them.
People take more ownership of decisions and outcomes when they come to their own conclusions, so I'd like to learn more about how I can suppress my urge to fix things.
I need to do a better job of listening to ensure that my colleagues are heard and that they're supported in finding solutions that work for themselves in their own context rather than just me giving advice to them that may or may not work because I may or may not have fully accounted for the context that they're working in.
In my team, we talked about how saying no can be quite difficult in our context as one of our goals is to be approachable and available to the students, parents, and staff members at our school.
We talked about how we can conserve our batteries by acknowledging the person and their query and actively deciding whether or not this is the best time to have the conversation.
We think that can work well with students and parents, but we're still not sure how to say no in a compassionate way that doesn't make our colleagues feel like they're being ignored or rebuffed when they approach us to talk about something that may be, for example, personal or professional.
The when is difficult for us.
It's pretty difficult for some of my colleagues to have control over when their conversations happen with their colleagues. They can set appointments for students and parents, but conversations with colleagues happen all the time.
Two of the colleagues that were in the meeting with me have an office that is in a rather public area, so people walk by and talk to them all the time, and that can be really tiring and they can often get involved in conversations about both professional topics and personal topics, and they mentioned that it can be tiring to switch back and forth between the professional and the personal conversations.
We decided as a team that we might experiment with having a set time in our meetings where our colleagues can bring up the professional issues that have come up through the week.
This could be one way to say, not now kindly, at least when the issue is professional, by acknowledging the issue and saying, let's talk about it at the next meeting.
What would be easy to implement?
It would be relatively easy to implement the idea of having a pre-conversation with the person we're speaking with to determine what would make the conversation a success.
It could even happen during or after the conversation, or it could be something that we try to remember to ask ourselves as we enter into various conversations throughout the day,
And finally, what would be sustainable in the context that we lead?
In my context, it's sustainable for me to become more conscious of how my ego is reacting to whatever is being said and to remember to have an awareness of both the state of my listening batteries and that I can choose not to listen deeply at that moment if that is the more considerate and humane response because my batteries are particularly low at that moment.
Oscar, I can't believe you made an entire podcast for me and my question.
I loved every second of it. I sincerely feel that all of it was useful and productive.
You really listened to my question.
You heard it and you understood the heart behind the words.
Oscar Trimboli: If you like Shaney, have a question about listening in the workplace or you'd like me to pose a few questions or reflections or framework rather than just answering your question, podcast@oscartrimboli.com.
And if you don't have a question yet, you learn something from the question Shaney posed today and possibly hers or her team's reflection, email me podcast@oscartrimboli.com
Let me know what was useful in this episode, the format, the interaction, the questions rather than the answers, and what possibly is transferable and useful into your workplace.
I'm Oscar Trimboli and along with the Deep Listening Ambassadors, we're on a quest to create a 100 million Deep Listeners in the workplace and you've given us the greatest gift of all.
You've listened to us.
Thanks for listening.
Shaney : Hi Oscar, it's taken a while, but over the past couple of days, I've been able to catch myself in conversations and work on directing my listening
The first step -- self-awareness is so hard, but so crucial as you can't take any other steps until you're actually aware that you're in a situation where you need to test out your new conscious listening paradigm.
In at least three conversations over the past two days, I've been able to get to that level of self-awareness that allows me to pause and remind myself not to try to solve any problems for anyone else, and instead try to ask myself what would make this conversation a success.
This is revolutionary, the whole flavor of conversations changes.
I'm able to relax and actually listen to the person if I don't have to feel the pressure of solving anything.
Conversations are also shorter because people feel heard more quickly and are okay with moving on, so I'm ever so grateful to you and your podcast for opening up my eyes to this whole new world.
G’day it’s Oscar, and I am in the middle of my listening season
The difference between surveying and listening is taking action
Based on your previous feedback, we have made the following changes to the Deep Listening podcast content and format
- Created the Deep Listening Ambassador Community of Practice
- Created the ultimate guide to listening during a video conference zoom edition
- Interviews + short tips and technique episodes including
- How to listen when you want to solve
- How to listen for actions during meetings
- How to listen in planning meetings
- Note-taking during the meeting
- Created YouTube videos as another way to find, search and access the podcast
- Shared Listener's questions and answers during podcast episodes
www.oscartrimboli.com/survey is the always-on listening tool to catch what you think about the podcast
Every episode of the podcast is available on 18 platforms including Amazon Alexa, Spotify, and YouTube which are just 3 of the 18 platforms which are available to listeners in 186 countries and territories globally
Each episode includes a transcript that has been created and reviewed by a human.
As a thank you when you complete the survey, you will go into the draw which will be drawn randomly on November 24, 2022, at 12:00noon Australian Eastern Daylight Saving Time.
1st prize - 10 paperback copies of how to listen - discover the hidden key to better communication - the most comprehensive book about listening in the workplace + a complimentary 45-minute webinar for you and 9 of your work colleagues about how to listen in the workplace
2nd prize - 10 paperback copies of how to listen - discover the hidden key to better communication - the most comprehensive book about listening in the workplace
3rd prize - 2 paperback copies of how to listen - discover the hidden key to better communication - the most comprehensive book about listening in the workplace
A quick reminder, oscartrimboli.com/survey to shape the future of your Deep Listening podcast and go into the draw to win one of three prizes
Thanks for listening
Aubrey Blanche:
Always ask how it could be more equitable.
This is really core to the practice in what I teach. My theory of change is called equitable design, and it's really based in these beliefs that every decision, every action, or for every event, experience, program, system, product can either create greater or less equity. And I believe that the most powerful thing each of us can do is do the next slightly more right thing.
Oscar Trimboli:
Deep listening, impact beyond words.
Good day. I'm Oscar Trimboli and this is the Apple award-winning podcast, Deep Listening, designed to move you from a distracted listener to a deep and impactful leader. Did you know you spend 55% of your day listening, yet only 2% of people have ever been taught how? In each episode we explore the five levels of listening. Communication is 50% speaking and 50% listening. Yet, as a leader, you are taught only the importance of communication from the perspective of how to speak. It's critical you start to build some muscles for the next phase in how to listen. The cost of not listening, it's confusion, it's conflict, it's projects running over schedule. It's lost customers, it's great employees that leave before they want to. When you implement the strategies, the tips and tactics that you'll hear, you'll get four hours a week back in your schedule. I wonder what you could do with an extra four hours or a week.
Aubrey Blanche is a math nerd and an empath who helps organizations build equitable processes, products and experiences. Her work combines an empathetic and intersectional approach with social scientific methods to create meaningful and sustainable change
From fair talent processes and bias resistant product design to equitable algorithmic design and communication strategy. She helps organizations to think holistically about evolving to meet the needs of a rapidly diversifying and globalizing world.
Aubrey and I explore listening for differences, practical steps you can implement in your organization to listen for the data of performance and equity while being conscious of change over time.
That's the performance implication of listening for velocity.
Aubrey changed my mind about my choice of where to spend my time in our deep listening quest and the consequences of choosing who and where I place my attention.
Let's listen to Aubrey.
What's the cost of not listening?
Aubrey Blanche:
In the worst case scenarios, it's that you do actual harm to another person.
In the work that I do, I'm so often talking to people, working with people, trying to support people who are very different from me.
If I'm not able to listen deeply, there is a big chance that I contribute to them still not feeling heard. I work with marginalized people who are often unheard in the world, and so I can do harm by exacerbating that. Or if I'm not listening deeply, I can develop a solution that doesn't actually meet the need that's being articulated and could actually be harmful in some way.
Listening is the first thing that we do when we want to support other people, when you scale it out, really, it's how we build a better world when we listen and we build a worse world when we don't.
Oscar Trimboli:
Jennifer, a retired primary school teacher is a stay at home mom and her son, Christopher at the age of three, comes home from school. Jennifer says to Christopher, "What did you learn at school today, honey?" He said, "Mommy, mommy, I'm so excited. I learned the three is half of eight." Now Jennifer's a little confused. And as a former primary school teacher says, "Could you say that again, honey?" And he said, "Yeah, mommy, I learned that three is half of eight."
Well, Jennifer puts her hands in her face and kind of shakes her head and she goes to the cupboard and she gets eight M&Ms out of the cupboard and lines them up on the kitchen table.
She puts four M&M soldiers in one line and four M&M soldiers in another.
She picks Christopher up and puts him on the kitchen table and says, "Honey, how many M&M soldiers in this row?"
And he goes, "One, two, three, four, Mommy." And she goes, "How many on the other side?" He goes, "Mum, I don't need to count, there's four. They're all facing each other."
And she says, "You see, honey, three is not half of eight, four is half of eight."
With that, Christopher jumped off the table, went and grabbed a piece of paper, drew the figure eight, altered it in half, tore it in half vertically and showed it to his mum and said, "Mommy, see three is half of eight."
In that moment in time, Jennifer realized that her son was neuro-diverse, non-neuro-typical.
I'm curious, Aubrey, as you hear that story and you are in workplaces where people are obsessed with telling everybody else that four is half of eight and they're wrong because of their culture, their background, their professional experience, what do you take from the story?
Aubrey Blanche:
I love that story. I think in math a lot of times, and I was like, "Oh, she's thinking in arithmetic and he's thinking in geometry almost, right? And shapes."
In so many organizations, there's this homogenization that happens and I come from the tech industry where innovation is the thing, and often when you start from the premise that you don't know anything, you're actually able to better see that there's an assumption that like, "Oh, you're speaking in arithmetics, that four is half of eight," but Christopher didn't say that.
He didn't say how.
And so I see it as there was an assumption that led to a misunderstanding or I guess to put it in your language, an assumption that led to an inability to hear, an inability to listen.
When I approach something like that, because I try, and I say try because I am certainly imperfect and fail at this at times, but if I hear something that's surprising or that doesn't align with my experience or what I know, the first thing I try to say is, "Can you tell me more about that?"
Because what I've found is when I just ask someone for more but don't put constraints on what more means, they will take me down the path that they came from and it's usually not one I would've found or walked on my own.
And often when you open it up for someone to continue sharing with you, you get that context. And so you have that realization that in the situation is, "Oh three is half of eight. How amazing."
And I think that's true of neuro-diverse people in general, but maybe a spicy idea.
I'm starting to believe that there's no such thing as neuro-diversity. Not that there aren't people with different ways of thinking, but it seems like every day there's someone new that I meet that identifies as neuro-diverse to the point where I'm like, "I think we might all just be different, and we might have been living in this collected delusion that there was something called neuro-typically in the first place."
Speaking as someone who is neuro-diverse herself, I'm bipolar type one. Yeah, I really believe that we should start with the assumption that other people have lived and walked different paths and have entirely different ways of thinking and perceiving than we do. And if that is the first and only assumption that we make, I think we hear better, we listen better, but we also learn more and grow more as people.
Oscar Trimboli:
One of the phrases I loved hearing from another conversation you had is "diversify your inputs".
For me, the way I make that practical is on the weekend when I'm gardening and mowing the lawn, I am listening to podcasts from presenters that I absolutely fiercely disagree with.
And for me it's a really humbling process that I've been doing for seven years now to make sure that I'm diversifying my inputs.
What advice would you give for leaders out there to diversify their inputs in the workplace and outside so they can start to build muscles where they're listening not just for similarities, four is half of eight, but also to listen for difference where three is half of eight and zero is half of eight as well?
Aubrey Blanche:
I think for me in my line of work, this might not be surprising, but I would start because difference can mean a lot of things.
Some of the most impactful and important listening that we do is across lines of difference that have to do with privilege.
When I think about I'm someone who has a big combination of privileged and marginalized identities, and I have absolutely learned the most when I have thought.
As an example, I grew up in a middle, upper middle class household. And so for me, listening across that line of privilege, listening to someone who grew up poor or working class, I have learned more about the world and about humanity from thoughtfully and intentionally creating space in my listening diet for those types of perspectives.
The advice that I would give to folks if you're non-disabled, listen to disabled experiences. If you're a man, listen to the experiences of people from marginalized genders. If you're a white listen to people of color.
I am a very funny mix of identities. I'm white assumed, but I'm Latina and mixed race, but so I have this weird experience of both being a white person and being a non-white person in the American context.
I was in a program in graduate school, so I pursued a PhD that I didn't finish, and I was putting on a program called Enhancing Diversity and Graduate Education, and it was for Black and Latinx students in the social sciences, and I was very intimidated to be in this room.
You have to understand the people I was with were just so intellectually impressive. I did not feel like I had much to say in that room, but it was in that room listening to the experiences of the Black students in particular who experience a level of racism that I will never personally understand, that I began to actually understand racism as a system and as a social concept rather than as an individual problem because...
So growing up for me, I had been teased by kids at school who would slam my locker and tell me, "Oh, you're the Mexican and that's why we do this."
But I always thought that was an Aubrey problem. And listening to these incredibly brilliant students talk about the racism that they were facing on a daily basis, who I knew didn't deserve it because no one would deserve to be treated the way that they were describing, I not only learned to have more empathy and understanding for the ways that I could show up as an ally of people from that experience, but I actually more deeply understood my own life experience as well.
And it was through that I began to articulate the ways that I belonged in my community and the ways that I felt upon in my community.
If I had been talking in that whole meeting, I never would've heard those things that are now in the work I do. Probably some of the most fundamental things I've ever learned in terms of how they animate my work and my theory of change.
I was a little late to my racial consciousness, but it came from listening to people who are more marginalized than me and it opened up my eyes to the way the world truly is, which personally inspired me to say, "Well, if it is this way, they built it this way. We can build it different if we make different choices."
Oscar Trimboli:
As the Mathpath, managers in workplaces can intersect with volumes of data around performance of their organization, of their people, the intersection of those two, how does a manager listen to the data and turn it into insights and the information and action?
How do they prioritize this tsumani of information that they have at their fingertips today so that they can make progress on listening to difference in a way that's actionable?
Aubrey Blanche:
They call me the Mathpath, which is a bit of a Mathpath, which is a bit of a portmanteau of math nerd and empath, and it was something that someone actually coined for me after listening to me for quite a while and specifically listening to me articulate this challenge I was having where I didn't know how to sum up my approach to doing my work.
So it's very much based in academic science and mathematics and it's very analytical and rigorous in that way, but also very much grounded in this belief in the dignity and the value of individual people's stories. I want to use quantitative information but not get lost in it because I am a big believer that is N=1 stories are just as important and powerful and someone's like, "Oh, you're a Mathpath."
My brain exploded because I said, "Oh, that's what I've been trying to say."
When I think about, or the managers that I'm coaching is like, "How do managers take a little bit of that energy and build it into what their version of that looks like?"
I always say, "Look at quantitative data as suggestions that show you where to look for, or you might say, show you where to listen."
One of the challenges that pops up in equity work all the time is you're dealing with what we call small n-sized data. So the fact is we're dealing with marginalized people who are often underrepresented. And so we don't always get the statistical power that we want to get this certainty that we crave out of data. What I always coach managers and my clients is that even if the data isn't statistically significant, it's directional and it tells you where to look deeper.
I always encourage managers to look at women of colors' experience first because if there's some kind of dysfunction happening in your organization, it's going to impact them first.
They're the canaries in the coalmine.
If something isn't working for Black women in your organization, it's objectively a problem that it's impacting them the worst. And so prioritize their experiences and their quality of experience and creating space for their stories. And that's a way that you can solve these broader problems by prioritizing that experience.
And it's a little bit backwards from the order of operations that people usually do, but I can tell you that it works.
2020, when I started at CultureAmp, I came in and I said, "We're going to focus on Black women."
And the response was, "Well, why don't we focus on women? It's a much bigger category."
And I said, "I hear you and no. And the reason we're going to focus on Black women is because their experiences will tell us the actual quality of experience at the organization, and if we improve their experiences, everyone else's experience will improve as well.
But if we don't focus on them, they will be left behind and we won't be keeping the commitments that we're making to equity."
And what we've seen, it's been, at CultureAmp is over the last two and a half years, we've seen an increase in overall gender representation at the company to the point where the majority of our VPs and executives are now women, including some women of color and the other side of the coin, it shows you where to listen, how do you listen?
And I think there's a couple of skills that create the space that allow people to feel safe enough to give stories for you to listen to because especially if you're in a position of power or you're coming from an identity that's majoritarian, there's not a lot of reason that someone might trust you or feel safe enough with you to tell you their story.
The first thing that you do is you state your intention.
So when I'm in a one-on-one conversation with someone and I perceive where I know that they're across that line of marginalization for me.
I say, "Hey, I want you to know it's really important to me that I create a safe environment for you to be open and honest with me, but I don't expect you to trust me. I expect that I have to earn that trust, but I want you to know that that's my goal."
The second piece is articulate for your ignorance.
So I always say, "I don't know your experience and I don't want to presume to, but I'm grateful to you for sharing it with me so that you could help me with some of my blind spots if you are willing."
And I think that those two things build a lot of safety that may have really brought me a level of storytelling and authentic experience that I just never would've been blessed to be able to hear otherwise.
Oscar Trimboli:
We contrast the absolute values in these reports, these data sets, that values are displayed at a point in time, and one of the things that you've pointed out is the value of relativity, and it... some of the relativities that my clients aren't conscious of, I'll sit in meetings which are, I'll use their language, I call them the pre-calibration meetings.
These are meetings designed to allocate a fixed pool of compensation in a defined way to a group of people, and they have a group of heuristics to allocate bonuses.
And often I'll ask them a series of questions about the pace of change over time rather than the point in time in which they're making a decision.
Some people refer to this as the velocity of progress of an individual.
Aubrey, what I'm curious about is what advice do you give leaders when they look at the data over time rather than just at a point in time?
Aubrey Blanche:
Oh, so good. And you said one of my favorite words, which is velocity, gets me thinking in physics and the dynamism of the systems.
I agree with you that having that longitudinal data or that data over time is just more valuable. I hear in those pre-calibration meetings having been worked with or looked at dozens of organizations, is it's always like, "What's the potential of this person?"
So that's kind of the natural question, and that's really what you're rewarding. It's this future belief.
And what the data would tell us is that past performance is the single greatest predictor of future performance.
But one thing, the data often hides, longitudinal data gives you a clearer picture of past performance because one data point doesn't tell you a lot. A very specific example of this with CultureAmp is that in the of summer 2020, a lot of our Black employees were genuinely struggling, as you can imagine, just a horrific time.
Asking them to get on a call and sell software or process expense reports was probably not their highest priority. And if we had taken a snapshot of many of their "performance" at that time, it would not have reflected their full body of work.
It would've reflected the severe community trauma that they were being impacted by. And so for us, our way of, we think of it as like correcting the data, was that we actually released updated performance standards so that employees that were impacted by significant community trauma, certainly meaning protests and movement for racial justice of COVID-19, our "performance standards" were about articulating your needs to your manager, setting appropriate boundaries, seeking support to deal with that, including and up to taking additional time off.
We changed the way the data was measured and collected to make sure that it reflected what we believed was performance in those moments, but we also were able to use previous performance reviews as a way to inform what's the average performance of this person, knowing that there's some contextual things happening in this point in time that might not be representative of their long term trajectory
The other thing, I think he asked a great question about what the data hides, and the thing that data often doesn't tell us is the distance traveled.
I'm adopted. I was born into a family that had many challenges, so low income, substance abuse disorder, mental health challenges, a lack of money.
And I was adopted by a family that didn't have those challenges, but I have dear people in my life who were born into similar situations and didn't have random luck of... basically the randomized controlled experiment of getting with family
And so that's distance traveled. The person I'm thinking of is probably equally as successful as I am in terms of career on paper.
The data wouldn't show you that they have probably worked significantly harder than I have to get there because I got a bunch of help that I'm grateful for, but I didn't necessarily earn.
And so I think that's one thing that we always need to be considering when they're reading this data is, do we know this person well enough to add our context of their distance traveled to achieve what they're achieving? And we can know sociology, we can know history to make some educated guesses.
Nothing is a substitute for knowing a person and being able to get to know their distance traveled.
That to me speaks to the velocity piece, which is someone who was born in the same circumstance as me and were standing at the same point now, the fact is they have greater velocity than I do and nothing against me, but I would bet on them over me if I were a betting lady.
Oscar Trimboli:
CultureAmp's on a massive quest to change workplaces for the better.
What advice would you provide to us in the deep listening community in our quest to impact a hundred million deep listeners in the workplace?
Aubrey Blanche:
Always ask how it could be more equitable. This is really core to the practice in what I teach.
My theory of change is called Equitable Design, and it's really based in this belief that every decision, every action, therefore every event, experience, program, system, product can either create greater or less equity. And I believe that the most powerful thing each of us can do is do the next slightly more right thing.
I get a lot of requests for career coaching conversations with people junior in their career, and a lot of these requests come from people in my network whose kids are interested in HR or tech.
And I like to say yes to them because I love the opportunity to mentor and support the next generation in how they're coming up, it's so important.
But I have a rule. I always ask for the email intro and then I will write back and I will say, "I am so excited to get to meet you and support you on your career journey. I will be happy to schedule once you identify a classmate or colleague of yours who doesn't have the privilege of having a connected parent who I can also provide career mentorship to."
And so I'm not saying no to that person, but I'm modeling to them and I'm pointing out that the reason they have access to me is because of privilege and I'm asking them to share that privilege.
And selfishly, it means that I get to meet more incredibly interesting, brilliant, talented people who maybe I can offer a bit of advice to.
I have found the number of people who have written back to me in even the parents who have said, "Oh my gosh, this is so interesting. I'm going to do this now."
And you think of how many people get a little more advice and a little more help than they wouldn't have otherwise.
It doesn't always have to be this enormous thing, but if each of us could do something that's just a titch more equitable or titch more fair than it was before, I think that this community with the reach that they have would change the entire world.
Oscar Trimboli:
What's the question I should have asked?
Aubrey Blanche:
What's the worst thing that you've done when you didn't listen properly?
Oscar Trimboli:
And?
Aubrey Blanche:
Mm-hmm. I created a workplace in which someone felt there was no one to advocate for them. And it was a situation in which I had a new coworker and they told me about an experience. They had been traveling to visit other team members, and the team member had said something super derogatory to them. And it was one of those things where the team member was not being intentionally malicious, but it was absolutely not okay what they had said.
And the first thing out of my mouth was, "I'm sure they didn't mean it that way." And I'm horrified. I'm so embarrassed by the way that I behaved because what I did was I minimized her feeling. I didn't create space for the harm and the sadness and the pain that she experienced in that moment, and she ended up leaving the team less than a year later. I look back and I think if I had actually heard, if I had taken the time to really hear her experience, I would've responded differently. I probably would've acted differently.
And I don't know if that would've been a different outcome for her. I can't guarantee that, but I think I can guarantee that her experience would've been better than the one that I created in that moment.
Oscar Trimboli:
Aubrey changed my mind about how to listen to and for difference whilst reinforcing the importance of listening for the unsaid.
When I said, "What's the question I should have asked?" I noticed a substantial change in Aubrey's tone and her pacing while explaining how the Mathpath learned so much from saying, "I'm sure they didn't mean it that way."
Aubrey had the courage to tell this story, and it got me thinking, "How many times have I thought it without saying it, I'm sure they didn't mean it."
It's made me more conscious in conversations now, it's one of the elements of the dramatic listening villain.
You can take the quiz at www.listeningquiz.com to discover which one is your primary listening barrier.
When you move your listening orientation exclusively from attempting to make sense of what they say and adjusting it slightly to an orientation where as a listener you have the curiosity to explore, "How can I, as the listener, help the speaker make sense of what they think, mean, and ultimately where they want to explore?"
When you become conscious that the listener helps the speaker change the way they express their thoughts, you'll start to have an impact beyond words.
Aubrey was generous enough to share a reflection about what changed during our conversation, and Aubrey will take to her next conversation.
She'll explain this at the very end of the episode. I
'm Oscar Trimboli and along with the Deep Listening ambassadors, we're on a quest to create a hundred million deep listeners in the workplace, and you have given us the greatest gift of all. You've listened to us.
Thanks for listening.
I'm curious what you've noticed about my listening.
Aubrey Blanche:
I appreciate it, and I want to take this with me, the beautiful pauses that you put in the conversation.
To me it looked like digestion of thoughts and ideas, and so I want to take that with me. It feels like a gift.
G'day - I'm Oscar Trimboli, and this is the Apple award-winning podcast, Deep Listening: Impact Beyond Words.
Good listeners focus on what's said and deep listeners notice what's not said.
Each episode is designed to help you learn from hundreds of the world's most diverse workplace listening professionals, including
anthropologists, air traffic controllers, acoustic engineers and actors,
- behavioral scientists and business executives,
- community organizers, conductors, deaf and blind leaders,
- foreign language interpreters and body language experts,
- judges, journalists,
- market researchers, medical professionals, memory champions, military leaders, movie makers and musicians.
- You'll learn from neurotypical and neurodiverse listeners, as well as neuroscientists and negotiators, palliative care nurses and suicide counsellors.
Whether you're in pairs, teams, groups or listening across systems, whether you're face to face, on the phone or via video conference, you'll learn the art and science of listening and understand the importance of the neuroscience and these three critical numbers:
125, 400 and 900.
You'll also learn three is half of eight, zero is half of eight, and four is half of eight when you listen across the five levels of listening, conscious of the four most common barriers that get in your way.
Each episode will provide you with practical, pragmatic and actionable techniques to reduce the number of meetings you attend and shorten the meetings you participate in.
The Deep Listening Podcast is the most comprehensive resource for workplace listeners. Along with the deep listening ambassadors, we're on a quest to create a hundred million deep listeners in the workplace one conversation at a time.
The Ultimate Guide for Listening on a Video Conference, Host Edition
This episode is the last of three in a series about how to listen as host during a video conference. If you haven't had a chance to listen to the overview, Episode 101, it outlines three things:
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sequence before, during and after the meeting.
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the role. Are you the host or the participant? And
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the meeting size, intimate, interactive or broadcast.
In episode 101, we dived deeply into sequence, how to think about before, during and after the video conference.
In part two, episode 102, we explore your role as the host as well as a participant.
Like all the episodes, you can revisit them based on their episode number.
This one would be www.oscartrimboli.com/podcast/103
And the first episode in this series would be 101, and the second, 102.
If you haven't done so already, I strongly recommend you listen to these episodes in sequence starting at 101, 102 and then this one, 103.
You can listen to 101 at www.oscartrimboli.com/podcast/101
In this episode, the final in the series, we explore listening and hosting tips based on meeting size.
There are three meeting sizes.
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The first one, the intimate meeting, you, maybe one or two others. It might be a catch up meeting with a peer. It might be a meeting with your manager. It might even be a job interview. A quick reminder, intimate meetings refer to the number of participants in the meeting, not the content being discussed.
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Meeting size number two, interactive.
You as the host are part of the Zoom meeting, which has between three and 15 people. Typically, it's a regular meeting. It's a team meeting. It's a work in progress meeting. It could be a group meeting. It could be an executive or an ex-co meeting. It could be a board meeting. It could be a kickoff meeting. These meetings have a deliberate purpose, agenda and one or many hosts and one or many agenda items.
- Meeting three, this is the broadcast meeting. These meetings typically involve over 20 people, and some people say the opportunity for engagement is limited.
In the 105 pages of The Ultimate Guide to Listening in a Video Conference, www.oscartrimboli.com/videoconference the primary navigational orientation is by meeting size.
The first question you need to ask yourself is what type of meeting, and then you can use the navigation inside the document to move you around really quickly.
If you visit oscartrimboli.com/videoconference, there's a 17-page preview guide.
In the preview guide, this outlines the welcome, the introduction, who is this guide for and who is it not for?
There's an explanation about how to use the guide, including the three key pages of navigational guidance. These are organized by the meeting size.
Each meeting, intimate, interactive or broadcast, is organized into a three by three grid.
Across the top from left to right, the context of the meeting, these three boxes, independent of the meeting, represent the host perspective, the participants' perspective and the meeting's outcome.
From left to right, it goes host, participant, outcome.
From top to bottom, it represents before, during and after the meeting.
In each of these nine boxes, there's a hyperlink which will take you directly to the explanation of each term with actions, questions, techniques and tips to make you a great listening host.
For the broadcast meeting, these boxes focus the host as follows:
Before, ask three questions of the group to understand their current mindset. During, acknowledge the themes in response to your initial three questions. After, announce what was heard during the broadcast and when you communicate the actions accordingly.
Before we jump into the guide, let's listen to Hugh Forrest, who serves as the chief programming officer for South by Southwest, held annually in Austin, Texas.
This event brings together more than 70,000 industry creatives from across the United States and around the world. And I have to say I'm very excited that in 2023, South by Southwest comes to my hometown of Sydney and looking forward to catching up with Hugh.
Next, Hugh will explain how South by Southwest prepare for thousands of broadcast presentations.
Hugh Forrest: We spend what I'd like to say is an inordinate amount of time reading through user feedback from the previous year. There are many good reasons for doing that. You learn about the event from a completely different perspective than you had as an organizer. There are often things that you learned that were great that you had no knowledge of. There are often things that you learned that didn't go so well that you had no knowledge of, and that just reading this feedback gives you a much better perspective and much fuller perspective and much more nuanced perspective of what was good and what needs improvement.
That process of reading feedback, of digesting feedback, of trying to understand feedback, of listening to what your users and what your community is saying can be mentally, emotionally, spiritually exhausting. It's often not easy reading sharp criticisms of what you've done, particularly if you think you've done something incredibly great, but I think you try to have a generally positive attitude here and understand it's all part of the learning process and helps you get better and throughout the most harsh criticisms and throughout the highest praise and the whatever objective truth is somewhere in the middle, but again, helps you do that by reading this feedback.
So we'll spend six weeks reading feedback, trying to analyze that feedback, try to put that into some general themes and even more specific themes. And then by about late May, early June, we're beginning to plan for the next year. And one of the big pieces in terms of planning for the next year is this South by Southwest Panel Picker interface that we've been using for approximately a decade. This is an interface where anyone in the community, which basically means that anyone with a web connection can enter a speaking proposal. It allows us to listen to what the community wants to get new ideas and new speakers into the event. We'll get somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,000 total ideas, speaking proposals for South by Southwest, of which hopefully about a thousand of those will be accepted to the event. The other 4,000 are also, again, very, very useful in terms of trying to discern what our community wants to hear, what our community wants to learn about that our community is much more focused on learning the latest technologies.
This Panel Picker system is ultimately a way for us to communicate with our audience, for us to learn from our audience, for us to listen to our audience, and I think it's one of the many things that has helped us continue to improve present event.
Oscar Trimboli: Whether you're preparing for 70, 700, 7,000 or 70,000 as Hugh has just explained, when it comes to the broadcast format, the majority of effort is actually in the preparation.
Let's jump to the guide now and understand how to prepare to listen before you commence the process of putting the content together for the broadcast meeting.
If you were to click on the link for the host in the guide right now before the broadcast meeting, this is what you'd read.
Before the meeting, many techniques available during intimate and interactive meetings are available in the broadcast meeting as well in the broadcast meeting.
Especially the ability to ask participants questions before the broadcast, during the registration process.
These questions signal that you want to listen. You want to make the session interactive. You want to signal to the audience that you want them to be part of the presentation.
Whatever you collect before the meeting, please make sure you summarize and integrate the themes from registration into the content of your broadcast.
This is where your effort will be.
It will be in collection, categorization, summarization and ultimately, presentation back to the group.
Be conscious that your questions in advance will influence and impact you, the participants, the group and the outcome.
For the broadcast meeting, balance your questions and responses between open questions and questions that force the participants to rate or rank a value that you can deconstruct later on for the audience.
In the guide, we provide a link on how to customize your meeting or webinar registration. If you are doing this via a Zoom meeting, the setting can be found via meeting, new meeting, and you want to check registration required. Make sure that check box is checked to on. When you do, make sure you hit save because it's a two-step process.
Then scroll down to the very end of that webpage and you will see a section called registration. You will have a new selection field called registration options.
Here, select edit. Then you'll be offered questions in a range of mandatory fields like first name, last name, country, city, etc., and you'll be asked questions and comments. That's right at the bottom. Make sure you check that on and set it as a required field. Now, make sure you hit safe again. It's really critical to hit save.
These custom questions, you can tailor them for the audience as part of the registration process, and now when they register for the event, they will be offered a mandatory question to complete.
Remember, you don't need to use Zoom tools to collect this information, yet it creates a strong incentive for the audience if they answer the questions as part of the registration process.
It's just simply a better experience for them as well.
In the guide, we also provide a link to the full information about how to set up these questions as part of the registration process if you're using a Zoom webinar.
Next, consider what and how you'll ask for information.
If you're requesting a response as a comment to this question,
how clear is our strategy?
This will allow people to type in a few words, a few sentences to describe this.
This creates nuance.
This creates texture.
This creates really useful verbatims that emerge from the patterns of user responses.
Now, that's a very different level of engagement and care if you ask participants the identical question, yet they can only choose from one of these five, so the question might be,
our strategy is clear, and then the options you may offer them, strongly agree, disagree, neither disagree or agree, agree or strongly agree. Those five options will fit nicely into a chart, a pie graph.
They will provide very clear numeric insights for the room. What it lacks then is the richness of the insights from the verbatim.
Now, if we use the first question alone just with comments, this will require more effort on your part in preparation.
The second, it'll take you about 30 seconds to graph that information.
Now, neither is right or wrong and what I recommend that where possible, use both approaches to collect some numeric information and some information that's open comments as well.
No matter how you choose to listen and ask questions in advance of the broadcast, please make sure you summarize them into themes and ideally into your response in your action plan in the first third of your broadcast.
Now, an assumption many people make is that you need to present the broadcast live.
Yet, if you use these techniques, you can prerecord the broadcast as well.
There is no reason that you can't think about given the outcome of this meeting, should my content be prerecorded or should it be presented live?
I don't think a lot of leaders think about the trade off in live versus prerecorded. When is either appropriate is an important question to ask.
Now, back to the questions. Balance your questions between open and defined responses.
Here are five examples.
- What is one question you'd like to ask the presenter about the topic?
- What is one barrier to achieving the outcome?
- What is one resource you must have to achieve the outcome?
- Which one of our competitors can we learn the most from and why?
- And finally, what is one thing our customers are consistently asking us for that we aren't providing?
Now, the focus on one is designed to prioritize the responses from the audience.
In question four, which one of our competitors can we learn the most from and why?
This question allows not only the competitor to be named, a value, but why allows us to get more nuanced. So make sure you balance them and use your judgement about whether you're using prioritization questions or open ended questions.
Next, you want to think about the participant's perspective.
Depending on the audience size, I recommend you create subsets of perspectives from the audience's responses to your questions, rather than treating every result exactly the same.
If the audience is more than 30 people, you should be breaking down the presentation into multiple groups.
It might be by age or tenure or location or profession, maybe by department or seniority.
Collecting this information in big, big groups, hundreds and hundreds of people will allow you to prerecord broadcasts that are tailored specifically to audience subsets.
Now, not all organizations will have the ability to create registrations like that, but when we've used this, it's been really potent form of listening for the broadcast.
For live audiences, it means you'll be tailoring parts of the presentation as well.
Examples of this could include tailoring your communication based on the departments in an organization setting.
It might sound like this.
"This is what we heard from finance and this is what we'll do as a result for finance employees. We heard something slightly different from engineering. They need us to be doing this, and it'll take us a little bit longer, possibly the next three months."
Another context could be based on the tenure of the employees, how long they've been working for your organization.
Your content could sound like,
"We notice employees with a tenure beyond a decade have these three key issues, whereas employees that have been with the organization for only two years have these immediate priorities."
Providing these insights based on the group information collected creates a perspective not just for you as the presenter, it creates perspective for everybody in the audience to realize that their perspective is not unique, and other areas, groups or departments have slightly different requirements.
This also sets them up for success in helping them achieve their outcomes as well because they are listening not only for their departments but also the needs of other departments, other projects, other tenure groups.
This unifies the perspective of each person and integrates them across the organization.
The final context could be if you are presenting to a completely unknown audience, you might need to find content and context criteria to integrate it in.
Examples of how I've used this,
"although customer care team spent more time talking with the customers than executives, executives spend more time talking about the importance of customers."
Another approach I used in a presentation was
"although finance spends time discussing cost control, they are the highest paid employees in the organization. "
The contrast of both of these creates deep engagement, and in both cases, it set the chat on fire.
Finally, thinking about the outcome. Think about your themes, your groups and cohorts defined by playing back participant issues and ensure that these themes are amplified in the first third of the broadcast, and sprinkle this content throughout the middle and final third of your presentation, and this will maintain the audience's engagement.
I just want to share some of my perspective when I define this checklist with the organizations I speak to, to broadcast with.
We go through a checklist typically a week to two weeks out. This is typically administrative setup.
- Who is the host?
- What is the introduction?
- How will the handovers work?
- Is there a moderator?
- These kinds of questions.
One thing that consistently surprises me though is my request to have closed captions activated before the meeting commences.
Not everybody in the audience's first language will be the language I'm speaking in.
Activating live transcription or closed caption is a simple way to assist people where the broadcast language is not their first language.
If people get distracted during the broadcast, they can quickly return to the discussion by catching up through closed captions because it's typically delayed between three and seven seconds.
Please keep in mind that the participants can activate or deactivate the closed captioning themselves, but they can only do that if it's turned on in the administrative settings of Zoom.
This covers off the first part, the before part of a broadcast section from the guide.
There are seven pages dedicated to the broadcast meeting. We have just covered off the first three pages, the before section of the guide as it relates to the broadcast meeting.
Whether you're a beginner, intermediate or a Zoom master host, the 105-page Ultimate Guide to Listening in a Zoom Conference has many more tips and techniques for you.
The difference between hearing and listening is action.
If you would like to access the guide, visit www.oscartrimboli.com/videoconference.
There you'll be able to see the preview of the guide, 17 pages or the 105-page guide.
I'm Oscar Trimboli, and along with the Deep Listening Ambassador community, we're on a quest to create 100 million deep listeners in the workplace one conversation at a time.
And you've given us the greatest gift of all today. You've listened to us.
Thanks for listening.
The Ultimate Guide for Listening on a Video Conference – Host Edition Part II of III
G'day, I'm Oscar Trimboli and this is the Apple award winning podcast, Deep Listening, Impact Beyond Words.
Good listeners focus on what's said and deep listeners notice what's not said.
Each episode is designed to help you learn from hundreds of the world's most diverse workplace listening professionals, including anthropologists, air traffic controllers, acoustic engineers and actors, behavioral scientists and business executives, community organizers, conductors, deaf and blind leaders, foreign language interpreters and body language experts, judges, journalists, market researchers, medical professionals, memory champions, military leaders, movie makers, and musicians.
You'll learn from neurotypical and neuro diverse listeners as well as neuroscientists and negotiators, palliative care nurses and suicide counsellors.
Whether you're in pairs, teams, groups, or listening across systems, whether you're face to face, on the phone, or via video conference, you'll learn the art and science of listening and understand the importance of the neuroscience
and these three critical numbers.
125,
400
and 900.
You'll also learn three is half of eight, zero is half of eight, and four is half of eight, when you listen across the five levels of listening, conscious of the foremost common barriers that get in your way.
Each episode will provide you with practical, pragmatic, and actionable techniques to reduce the number of meetings you attend and shorten the meetings you participate in.
The Deep Listening Podcast is the most comprehensive resource for workplace listeners.
Along with the Deep Listening Ambassadors, we're on a quest to create 100 million deep listeners in the workplace, one conversation at a time.
How to listen on a video conference, a host perspective.
This episode is part of three in a series about how to listen in the context of a video conference.
If you haven't had a chance to listen to the overview episode, episode 101, which outlines three distinct ways to approach a meeting through
- sequence before, during, and after the video conference.
- The second, your role, host or participant,
- and the third is the size of the meeting, intimate, interactive, and broadcast.
During episode 101, we did a deep dive into sequence. We explored before, during, and after the video conference. If you'd like to learn more, visit www.OscarTrimboli.com/podcast/101.
The difference between hearing and listening is action, and the difference between reading and impact is action too.
It was great to hear the impact the guide has already made for others. Let's listen to three people who took the time to send me a message to explain the impact of the ultimate guide on how to listen to a video conference.
Lena: Kia ora, Oscar, this is Lena from New Zealand. I wanted to thank you for a great suggestion I heard in the latest podcast on the Ultimate Guide to Hide My Own Video.
I started doing it and I'm definitely tired and exhausted after a day spent catching up with various people.
This was so life changing for me that I started sharing this step with others. Thank you.
Jeff: Hi, Oscar. This is Jeff from St. Paul, Minnesota.
I wanted to share with you what's changed in my approach to listening after reading and implementing the tips you provided in the Ultimate Guide to Listening in a Video Conference.
First, you highlight that in a video conference, an attendee can only listen continuously for 12 seconds. That particular stat surprised me and it led me to think more about how you've actually modelled this particular change throughout meetings of the Deep Listening Ambassador community to keep us engaged. You changed which camera's showing you, you changed all video to all slides. You asked questions which can be looking for vocal responses, but sometimes you ask us to reply to your questions simply in chat.
Which actually reminds me of my second application from the book. When a group meeting grows in size, consider seeking feedback during the meeting via chat.
I seriously don't think many people consider this very often. It can help prevent collisions of multiple people trying to answer at the same time while it also gives the speaker a chance to highlight and ask more questions based on an interesting response from the audience. It gets people involved who might find it easier to type their thoughts rather than vocalising them. It also gives the host a chance to reinforce responses to important material from the meeting.
And thirdly, I think about the speed at which most of us want to absorb and make changes that improve the impact of our listening in meetings that we host. The amount of time you recommend rolling out these changes from the book, it surprised me as well.
I know there are small things we can do and probably should do in the very next meeting we perform, but I also think that some people are looking for an overnight change in becoming a better host. Encouraging them to take more time and make these bigger changes is going to seem counterintuitive, but it's probably good advice when making longer term changes.
Some subtle updates can help us not shock our audience.
Natasha: Hello, Oscar. It's Natasha from San Antonio, Texas. I wanted to share the impact of implementing some of the tips and techniques from The Ultimate Guide to Listening in a Video Conference.
Some of the things I have been implementing are around preparation for when I facilitate workshops. I have a little sticky note on the side of my computer screen that says participants, and then under that it says, thinking, feeling, doing, and I've been making sure the agenda and objectives are all clear in advance.
I've noticed that I get a lot more interaction throughout the session and my introverted teammates have reached out and said they really appreciate it. I've been making sure I can see as many participants as possible at once, and this has allowed me to see when people do the little unmute to speak, but then someone else jumps in before that person has started, so then I can circle back to them so they feel seen and heard.
Overall, I've noticed three main things since I've brought this awareness and listening to my sessions.
First, more interaction in the actual sessions. I think people feel empowered before and during and then they feel seen during, so they are speaking a lot more, which is great for a lot of reasons. We have so many great minds and when they share more, we get more ideas and more insights.
Second, more people are staying after to continue the conversation with me and with each other. This has been really great and has helped our teammates connect across business units.
Finally, more folks reach out in appreciation. While it's nice to be appreciated, the bigger thing here is that people are finding a deeper value in those sessions.
Oscar Trimboli : Three great distinct perspectives from members of our Deep Listening Ambassador community. Thank you for sharing them, Lena, Jeff and Natasha. If you'd like to access the guide, visit ww.oscartrimboli.com/videoconference
Today we're going to discuss the difference between listening as the host and as a participant.
The Ultimate Guide to Listening in a Video Conference is the Host Edition, and it is designed to provide for the perspective of the host. And while there are many host specific tips and techniques, as Lena pointed out, a tip as simple as hide my own video that she mentioned are just as useful when you are in the role of a participant.
Today, my recommendation for you as a host is, I'm going to outline a number of host and participant specific techniques. Please just pick one tip or one technique and apply it and practise it for at least 10 meetings until you try the next one.
To ensure you do that, I've provided the tips in sequence with the most basic to the most advanced all the way throughout our conversation today.
When you are successful at implementing these tips and techniques, you want to build a muscle that's sustainable in the way you develop these techniques. You want to be subtle about them too. You don't want to create a disjointed experience if you are used to working with the same group of people. The size of these changes are very small, and my wish for you is that your audience doesn't notice how small it is as they're coming along on the journey with you.
These techniques are specific to help you as the host to listen, and equally to help the participants listen to each other. A good meeting host will get the active speaker to be listened to, but a great meeting host will have everybody listening to each other.
As Jeff mentioned in his reflection, when he was part of the Deep Listening Ambassador Community, he didn't even realize I was using some of these techniques until he read about them in the guide.
We'll categorize today's tips into three distinct ways.
- The first one is if you are new to hosting a Zoom meeting, if you are new to a role as a host in a Zoom meeting versus a participant,
- The next is, look, you're a regular host of meetings. Maybe it's team meetings and you want to take your host listening orientation to the next level.
- The third way is, if you spend the majority of your time as the host rather than a participant. If you'd consider yourself an advanced user of Zoom, that is, 80% of your meetings are as host rather than participant, then we'll provide tips specifically for you as well.
- Let's start by thinking about Zoom meetings if you are not an experienced host. These three tips I would recommend, choose the first one and work your way up. Make sure that you think about building these techniques and I provided the simplest one first and then build on top of that.
If your role has recently adjusted to being a Zoom host, I would recommend just practizing this technique in smaller meetings, in the intimate meeting with one or two other participants.
First, before the meeting, check with the other participant or participants what they want to achieve from the meeting. You can do that with an email, a phone call, a text message, a Slack message or WhatsApp message.
Next, at the beginning of the meeting, if they've responded, just confirm and say, look, when I ask you what the purpose of the meeting is, just ask them if it's changed. Because sometimes between the time we schedule a meeting and the time we have the meeting, we want to be listening for different things.
Now, I can hear a lot of people saying, yeah, Oscar, but what if people don't respond to my message?
What if they don't reply?
That's okay. In the very first part of the meeting, I would be very specific and say, the first 5% of the meeting.
Ask this question, what would make this a great meeting?
Don't ask, what would make this a great meeting for you? Because that gives an invitation of people to be really, really selfish and they don't answer the opposite question.
The opposite question is really simple.
What would make it a great meeting for you as the host?
So when they tell you what will make it a great meeting for them, use that as a compass setting for the meeting. Then every 25% of the meeting, you can check in with them to make sure that you are on track to the purpose of the great meeting for them.
This is both a process and a setting for you and for the other person. It shows you listened before the meeting started, at the beginning of the meeting, and all the way throughout, to the purpose of the meeting, not just for you but for them as well.
Although this might sound really simple to do, it will require you to develop an orientation about the what and the how of the meeting, the content as well as the process.
This will move your attention away from yourself and them towards a third position. The third position, that's the announced outcome of the meeting.
What would make this a great meeting?
Keep practising this during intimate meetings, at least for 10 meetings, until it feels like it's second nature for you and for the perspective of your attention.
By the way, if you are a participant in a meeting rather than the host, and if your host isn't clear about the purpose of the meeting or the process about decision making or prioritization in the meeting, take a moment yourself as a participant in the first 5% of the allocated time and ask the host,
What would make this a great meeting?
This will get them to pause and you, without the formal title of the host, can ensure every 25% of the meeting that it stays on track.
By the way, our deep listening research, it highlights that when a host or a participant asks this question, what will make this a great meeting, only 28% of participants ask the host the same question.
So about a third of participants will ask the host the exact opposite question.
The other part of the research that's important is when you are asked this question, either before the meeting or at the beginning of the meeting, and you check every 25% of the meeting, respondents said, meetings are completed in less than the originally scheduled time. Isn't that a wonderful thing to get some time back in your day?
Next, if you're slightly more experienced as a meeting host, possibly you are someone who regularly hosts a team meeting, a project meeting, a work in progress meeting, some kind of interactive meeting where there's three to 20 people present, move your orientation from, how do I get the participants to listen to the active speaker to how do I get the participants to listen to each other?
As Jeff mentioned earlier on, humans have very short attention spans and they get distracted very easily. On a video conference, you can listen continuously for 12 seconds.
And equally, participants can maintain continuous attention on a topic, on a context, for between eight and 10 minutes.
If you're discussing a topic, you can hold someone's attention in that range eight to 10 minutes. As the host, how can you change the context or the format of the meeting every 10 minutes?
And this is something Jeff mentioned earlier on in his feedback that he noticed that I did that during the Deep Listening Ambassador community meeting.
This has got to do with more than having multiple speakers presenting. This has got more to do than just changing the active speaker. It's got to do with moving the mindset of the participants from listening to the active speaker to listen to each other.
Here are the three tips I'd recommend for you to help to change the perspective, the attention of the participants, to ensure that they're not only listening to the speaker, but they're also listening to other participants.
- Number one, use the reaction buttons in Zoom.
- Number two, use the chat.
- And number three, look at the polls.
A lot of people say they lose body language and other nonverbal signals, which makes listening harder. One way around this is to ask for nonverbal feedback via the reaction buttons. It helps you to listen to the energy while the rest of the group can notice the energy of their fellow participants as well.
The reaction buttons, there's a vast range of them. There's not only thumbs up and thumbs down and various other signals. There's a range of emoticons that people can use there. Don't underestimate the power of that to communicate the level and energy of the group.
Next, let's talk about the chat. Use the chat to discuss what and how when you're having a discussion.
Questions you might like to pose include,
- who else do we need to consider?
- where would you like to focus the remaining time?
- wow should we decide?
Whenever you're asking these questions, keep them as short as possible. Less than eight words makes the question neutral. And that's not to say that a neutral question is good or bad. It may be appropriate in the situation. I see a lot of time working with my clients, they have convoluted questions that not only confuses the audience, it requires clarification.
Non-biased questions, typically less than eight words.
You can also use chat to explore metaphorical or emotional ideas. You could ask people,
- what colour does this feel like?
- what drink does this feel like?
- what food does it feel like?
- what book does it feel like?
- what movie is it like?
They can describe abstract topics that you've just covered off where the group isn't clear on an outcome because the idea's evolving.
Simply asking, what colour is it now, compared to what colour is it at the end of an agenda item, you might notice that the colour changes or it remains the same.
It doesn't matter. It's just a signal to nonverbal feedback.
Whether you use chat or reactions, this requires limited to little preparation for you as a host.
Poll slides, they require a little bit more planning or a little bit more effort to create. When you use poll slides, use that when making decisions or creating priority.
Some example questions that can help focus the participant is,
- what's your number one priority?
- how should we allocate these resources?
- which group requires the most support?
Again, in terms of building and sustaining this listening orientation, focus first on increasing your consistency and effectiveness with reaction buttons, then move up to chat, and then finally, you can explore the polls.
At this intermediate level, all the techniques are helping you as the host to listen, and all these tips are transparent for each participant.
They'll be able to notice not only you as the host and how you are listening, but they'll be able to listen to where the rest of the group is, where the other participants are in the workshop, in the meeting, or the video conference.
This last group of techniques is for experienced Zoom hosts.
Are you hosting more than 80% of the meetings that you attend? Then I'd call you an advanced Zoom host.
These techniques are designed to listen to the audience before a broadcast meeting. It will help you adjust content accordingly, and it will help you to display to the audience that you've listened to them.
Whenever you are speaking to an audience of 50 or more people in broadcast mode, you can use these powerful techniques to change the listening dynamic for you and the participants.
A lot of my clients are surprised how much listening you can do beforehand. That has a massive impact on the engagement during a broadcast meeting.
If you are doing a broadcast meeting, I would recommend utilizing the registration features, either in Zoom meetings or Zoom webinars.
Each product allows you to pose questions for the participants on registration.
These questions could include,
- what's one thing you'd like to improve?
- what's one thing you'd like to ask the presenter?
- what's one thing you would like to learn?
All these questions are deliberately designed to be open ended.
Equally, they're designed to be easily collected, collated, sorted, and displayed to the audience in an anonymous way in the first 10% of the broadcast.
It shows to the audience you heard and you listened to them. Displaying the anonymized results increases audience engagement at the start of a presentation as they search for self-interest.
They're looking for their responses in your presentation.
Equally, it not only helps them selfishly to find themselves in the content, it also helps them understand where the rest of the audience is.
Break down these responses into easy to digest components. It may be basic, intermediate, advanced. It may be before, during, and after. It may be small, medium, large. It may be inexperienced, experienced, and master.
When you break down the responses and provide signposts while you answer them throughout the presentation, it automatically signals to the group, ah, they're listening to me.
When you answer the questions throughout your presentation, make sure your signpost that you are answering some of the really common questions the group asked during registration processes.
This technique creates a completely different level of engagement and experience for the audience.
It makes it memorable.
Meeting hosts are often shocked how much engagement this simple technique drives when you present their own content back to them.
There you have it. Whether you're a beginner, intermediate, or advanced, the 105 page Ultimate Guide to Listening in a Zoom Conference is full of techniques like this for you.
Whether you're a host or a participant, as Lena mentioned earlier on, you'll get enormous value out of the guide. To find out more information, visit www.oscartrimboli.com/videoconference.
I'm Oscar Trimboli and along with the Deep Listening Ambassador community, we're on a quest to create 100 million deep listeners in the world, one conversation at a time.
And you've given us the greatest gift of all.
You've listened to us.
Thanks for listening.
The Ultimate Guide for Listening on a Video Conference – Host Edition
Being a Meeting Host is a unique responsibility. You are expected to create an environment where every participant is engaged and contributing throughout the Video Conference.
As the Host, you are accountable for maximizing the impact of participants, the agenda, and the meeting outcome while juggling with limited connectivity, fragmented attention spans, and participants who might be holding back what they think because of the meeting format.
If your video meetings are
- disjointed
- disengaged
- full of debate, with limited decisions and action
- repetitive
- run over time
Over 100 pages, the guide provides specific tips and techniques
The Ultimate Guide to Listening in a Video Conference is a comprehensive outline for three meeting formats
- 2 to 3 people – intimate meetings
- 3 to 10 people – interactive meetings
- 20 + people – broadcast meetings
- before, during and after the meeting
Topics include
- The science of listening and video conferencing including the 5 elements of video fatigue.
- The opportunity created by video conferencing
- The Five Levels of Listening in a video environment
- How to effectively navigate the three dimensions of video conference listening – the host, participants and the outcome
- Techniques to reset the attention of the participants including proven tips and techniques for maintaining the energy, and decision making capacity of the participants.
https://www.oscartrimboli.com/product/the-ultimate-guide-to-listening-in-a-video-conference/?EP101
David, it was great to speak to you on the phone and I hope that my referral to Joey helps you progress your question around the auditory processing issues that you encounter and how that shows up really differently in one-on-one conversations and how shows up in group discussions for you when you move from tuned-in to really fuzzy auditory processing in groups
Listening is a simultaneous equation between the speaker and the listener.
When auditory processing issues are present, make the implicit explicit.
Communicate about what effective communication means for you.
One of my past managers, Tony, role modeled this well.
He had an issue with his left ear and he would explain his hearing difficulty to every group meeting he would participate in when he knew somebody new was in the meeting.
I discussed this with Tony on a long-haul flight across the Pacific, and he didn't enjoy repeating it, but he said to me, "It's better than creating the impression that you're ignoring people."
And I've seen this myself working with an executive team and people were saying that the leader in the room, "She's ignoring us Oscar. She's always looking down at the ground when we're speaking."
In that moment, I invited the leader to explain, she said to the group,
"I concentrate much better on what you're saying when I'm not visually distracted, I'm not ignoring you, I'm focusing all my efforts on making sure I'm hearing everything that you're saying."
And that moment you could hear a very audible sigh in the room from every participant.
It was a breakthrough moment that happens if you communicate about how you communicate.
We over-read body language and this is a perfect example of not asking that question
Thanks to Rane who commented with her question? How can we encourage people to listen instead of concentrating on their comeback?
Listening is a simultaneous equation and we give great listening that becomes an example for others to learn and improve from.
Rane, I promise you a full deconstruction of how I'd approach a conversation where everybody's busy, reloading their arguments rather than, listening.
It makes listening really light and easy to sustain.
And my listening batteries, aren't drained by the intensity of juggling multiple layers in the conversation yesterday.
Marc asked Oscar, "I've got questions about the questions and Marc asked, would you share the questions?"
I'm delighted to share, these are the questions, and we'll be sharing all these questions with everyone, that's the purpose of this listening challenge to share these questions with everybody out there. So thanks for your engagement there.
Please keep the comments and the questions coming..
Today's listening question, this question comes from Kerrie.
She asks Oscar;
"What I struggle with in my listening is listening to the whole problem or the whole conversation, because you know, all I'm thinking about is how do I solve it?
I think this is a problem.
I don't help the speaker solve their own problems and this creates extra effort for me.
Typically, I jump in and give an answer, which Kerrie says exactly doesn't help me or them. "
Kerrie, here's my invitation for you
- Ask this question at the beginning of the conversation. This will take the weight off your superhero-solving capacity.
What would make this a great conversation for you?
Or
What outcome would you like to achieve at the end of our conversation?
They might not want a solution. They might just want to thinking partner. They might just want to express an idea.
Extroverts love to think by speaking, we don't give them the opportunity to do that. Allow them to express their thinking verbally, rather than jumping in to try and fix the issue.
When you agree the outcome of the conversation, you can use that as a navigational setting, like a compass setting and that'll help you progress and check-in.
And ask yourself this question, Kerrie, given that compass setting, rather than solving the problem, ask yourself this question,
Does what I'm about to ask them next progress, the agreed outcome of the conversation?
When you get that really bursting to solve, just PAUSE and ask yourself "thinking about the purpose we agreed at the beginning is this aligned?"
- This is often skipped and ignored step. Do so at your peril!
At the start of the conversation ask them,
What have you already explored or thought about in regard to this issue?
You might be shocked they may have come up with many more alternatives that you haven't considered because you're hearing it for the first time. Now your role here is to help them expose all the thinking that I've done and you may help them to consider how do I prioritize this approach, or maybe between the two of you or in a group you can combine elements of different parts of the solution or something may simply emerge through the process of having a conversation.
- You need to orientate your problem solving compass.
Are you solving a symptom or are you addressing a cause?
Is what you're about to propose transactional or transformational, and which serves the agreed purpose of the conversation?
If you come back and always check in with, is this serving the agreed purpose of the conversation, then you'll make great progress
Kerrie this will make your listening much lighter. Your problem-solving passion won't go away, but you will bring different approaches that they possibly haven't considered.
I'm curious if you've taken the www.listeningquiz.com Kerrie?
If you like, Kerrie have got a question about listening in the workplace, just email podcast@oscartrimboli.com that's podcast@oscartrimboli.com
Thanks for listening.
G'day, It's Oscar Trimboli
I've set myself a little challenge and I was wondering if you might be able to assist.
Over the time I've been working with people around their listening, whether it's the deep listening quiz, the 90 day challenge, our webinars, our workshops, people who've bought the book or the playing cards or people who are interacting with our deep listening online masterclass for managers - questions, keep coming up about listening.
I've realized that by writing down all these questions over time, I'm well over a thousand questions.
Now don't worry., they fall into themes and I've set myself a challenge to answer these questions between now and the end of the year.
I'll be posting regularly here with my reply, to the questions that people are asking.
These questions come in the context of one on one conversations, , around group conversations, how to have effective listening face to faces. , as well as how to do it on video conferencing.
There's also a number of questions that come about, not just which levels are people listening at.
How do you listen through the context of different cultures?
How do you listen through the context of conflict?
How do you listen through the lens of complexity?
How do you listen to it through the lens of collaboration?
When people say to me, Oscar, , this listening is, very specialized.
I've come to realize this impacts people across many professions, whether that's sales, whether that's technology, whether that's human resources, whether that's manufacturing, whether that's engineering, whether that's leading an organization.
Listening has a pretty big impact on all of those.
So here's how you can help with this challenge. If you've got a question about listening.
Just put it in an email podcast@oscartrimboli.com that's podcast@oscartrimboli.com and.
I might even come back and clarify that with you, but I will definitely answer it.
How to listen in meetings for actions. This question comes from Sophie and she says, Oscar, what I struggle with the most when it comes to listening is turning what I hear into appropriate actions.
Well, thanks Sophie.
Three things for you to consider is
1 who takes the notes in the meeting.
2., how do you define what was actually agreed?
3, what would be different, if the agreed action was actually taken
Now Sophie,, I sense you might be asking the question in the context of a group meeting,
in a group meeting, gained the agreement from the host. if you're not the host at the very beginning of the meeting. Who's taking the notes.
If you are the host, then explain to the group how actions will be captured during the meeting.
It's really critical for this process to be exposed right at the beginning of the conversation.
Now, by the way, Sophie, if you're in a discussion with just one other person, just agree with them as part of the dialog, who's going to take that action.
Now in a group meeting, the second element of actions is to confirm what was actually agreed.
This is the biggest misstep I see people taking. And as a result, it's a common area where when you come back, on the follow up for this meeting, a lot of people are confused because they delivered what they thought they heard rather than what the group agreed to.
So when it comes to agreeing to the action, when it's delegated to the person responsible in the meeting.
And by the way, you can only delegate to the person in the meeting.
You can't delegate an action to someone outside the meeting.
You can delegate it to somebody else or explain it to the person outside the meeting, but again, a critical thing when it comes to group actions is you can only delegate it to the person who was listening to the context.
Now you need to ask the person that's delegated to, to verbally confirm what they're agreeing to not by saying yes or no, I agree to that, but to confirm what they actually heard and to confirm the specific action they're going to take now, when this happens, it surfaces any misunderstanding really, really quickly.
It does so in the moment, rather than after the fact when it's way too late and there's wasted effort on everybody's part.,
Finally, we're appropriate ask what would be different as a result of taking this action, particularly in a group meeting, this helps people to understand the value of what they've decided and helps the group to prioritize its important.
So Sophie, thanks for the question, and a quick reminder, remember who is taking the action in a group meeting ensure during the meeting, what is agreed is verbalized, and then finally, what will be different as a result of taking this action?
If you are like Sophie and got a question about workplace listening, just put it in an email podcast@oscartrimboli.com that's podcast@oscartrimboli.com .
I'm Oscar Trimboli and along with the Deep Listening Ambassadors, we're on a quest to create a hundred million deep listeners in the world.
And you've given us the greatest gift of all.
You've listened to us.
Thanks for listening.
Today is going to be a little different - some adjustments.
In Episode 100 - you'll get to deconstruct how I listen to the guests. I've interviewed over the past 100 episodes.
If time allows after the interview has formally concluded, I have a simple and consistent habit where I ask the guests, just one question -
What did you notice about my listening?
Now, this is a Level Four listening technique.
It's designed as a way for me to make incremental improvements in each conversation.
When I hear what people notice in the way I listen, I am making some very simple notes in my mind, that's a very important listening signal, make sure I continue to do it the next time.
Occasionally people will highlight things that surprise me. They highlight things that wow, I didn't realize that was a listening signal for the person speaking.
It's critical to understand that when you listen deeply, gently, thoroughly, carefully, you will change the way the speaker communicates.
Not just what they say, not just what they think, but also what they make of the conversation, what it means for them.
What can you expect today?
You'll hear reflections of 11 people and their perspectives on how I was listening to them. You'll notice some very, very consistent themes. And yet you'll notice some subtle variations as well.
You'll hear from six females, five males from deaf and blind people you'll hear from people whose first language is English and you'll hear from people whose home language isn't English.
You'll hear from authors, musicians, professors, former military leaders, researchers, psychotherapists, and a range of many others. As you listen to them, deconstruct my listening, please keep these points in mind. This is just the way I listen. My listening context is very specific.
Listening is situational. It's relational and contextual.
The way I listen during an interview is with a listening orientation for the audience, for you. There are many questions I would love to ask the people that I interview yet, they're only appropriate for me. They're not going to help you and I play with this duality while I'm listening.
How do I stay in the moment long enough - not to listen, but to listen on behalf of you.
In chapter one of the upcoming book - how to listen and at the end of every chapter in the book, we have a series of three invitations, they're practices that we invite the reader or the audiobook listener to explore, we invite them to explore something to practice because we recommend that you read the book one chapter per week while practicing a technique during that week.
So at the end of chapter one, we pose these three invitations and.
- Who's the best listener, you know, and what's one thing they do well?
- When was the last time somebody fully and deeply listened to you? and what did they do well during that conversation?
- When you think about that conversation where you were deeply listen to, how did you think speak and feel differently as a result?
I'm delighted to be engaging with a range of the Deep Listening Ambassador community as they provide Advanced Reader Copy feedback on this and Bailey was kind enough to send me a photo of the exercise that I just mentioned from chapter one of the book where she very thoughtfully, thoroughly and deeply considered those three invitations, and came to some interesting insights, all of her own.
It gives me a lot of joy to be celebrating episode 100 with you and I want to thank you
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I am delighted to introduce Christopher Mills, a psychotherapist, a family consultant, a supervisor, and a trainer. Christopher began his work alongside family lawyers, helping them to develop skills to help them collaborate across divorce teams.
In 2009, he made "Deadlock to dialogue". It was a film, an unrehearsed role-play combining the skills of mediation and psychotherapy when working with separating couples. His interest in mediation around childcare disputes led him to write "The complete guide to divorced parenting", a strong advocate of the need for lawyers to receive more support in their work with family trauma.
He became the UK's first professional to offer specific regular supervision for family lawyers and QCs.
About six months ago, I was lucky enough to work with this community in Australia as well. And they bear a huge burden when they act on behalf of their clients in these cases. Deep listening podcast listeners have asked if I could do an episode on how to listen in conflict through the lens of relationships.
Are you listening to the content or the context?
Are you discussing the system and process or details?
If you've got a question about workplace listening, send me an email podcast@oscartrimboli.com
One move ahead, how to listen like a chess grandmaster - Scott Sandland
Scott Sandlin is the CEO and founder of Cyrano - a software company that helps corporations and people to listen better.
Scott is one of the youngest ever hypnotherapists. Now, he focuses his time and effort on building a company about empathy and strategic linguistics.
Previously, Scott was director and CEO of a mental health clinic supporting issues including teen-suicide.
He's been published in Psychology Today and Forbes Entrepreneur magazine. He has presented at the United nations AI global conference for good.
Scott explains how single and multiple conversations are as strategic as a game of chess. Each word has a different value and a different way it can move during a conversation, with each of those moves providing you with more strategic options in your conversation.
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Applications have just opened for the Deep Listening Leaders Academy
This is your chance to enhance your workplace listening skills through the personal support of five to six other workplace listeners
If you'd like to discover more email
podcast@oscartrimboli.com
SUBJECT Deep Listening Leader Academy
Retired Naval Commander Peter Scott has the 35 years' experience in leading specialist teams in complex and demanding underwater environments. Joining the Navy as a 17-year-old midshipman, he rose through the ranks over three decades to become the head of the Navy's elite submarine arm.
During that journey, Peter survived and led others through fires at sea, floods and explosions. A veteran of multiple special operations with the submarine arm, Peter's service included Iraq, the Persian Gulf, and Afghanistan.
With Peter, we'll explore the role, not only of a submarine commander, but the role of a sonar operator as well, or their official title, acoustic warfare analyst.
We get to go behind the scenes, in one of the world's most complex and demanding a listening environments, and notice how professional acoustic warfare analysts listen.
Finally, Peter explains what it's like to command a submarine that you crash under the water and the importance of listening to your intuition as a leader.
Military Academy is the United States oldest continuously occupied military post since 1778.
Today it's home to over 5,000 personnel and has the responsibility for training the next generation of military leaders in the United States. Natasha Orslene served in the United States Army for 11 years and worked in their leadership development program for most of her career, culminating in serving in the United States Military Academy at West Point.
There she was able to observe some of the best leaders in the academy and notice how they listened. Not just to how they listened when lives were on the line, also how they listened in moments of groups meetings where a wide variety of opinions needed to be sought.
Together we explore the evolution of military training from volunteerism all the way through to modern professional soldiers, and what the impact is for leaders and their listening.
We look at the role of modern cyber warfare because it amplifies the importance of listening as the soldier themselves become the weapon system, the software between their ears is what will challenge the adversary. Natasha explores with me the role of listening in moments of cyber interaction as well as how you need to listen across your teams and your adversary simultaneously to ensure that you can maximize the impact of that software or what's in between your ears while you're sitting behind a computer.
Appendix J
9-LINE MEDEVAC REQUEST
Request Medical Evacuation
Conditions: Given a casualty requiring medical evacuation and a patient pickup site, request medical evacuation. Necessary equipment and materials: Operational communications
equipment, medical evacuation (MEDEVAC) request format, a standard scale military map, a grid coordinate scale, and unit signal operation instructions (SOI).
Standards: Transmit a MEDEVAC request and provide all necessary MEDEVAC request information within 25 seconds.
- Determine the grid coordinates for the pickup site.
- Obtain radio frequency, call sign, and suffix.
- Obtain the number of patients and precedence.
- Determine the type of special equipment required.
- Determine the number and type of patients.
- Determine the security of the pickup site.
- Determine how the pickup site will be marked.
- Determine patient nationality and status.
- Obtain pickup site NBC contamination information normally obtained from the senior person or medic.
https://api.army.mil/e2/c/downloads/355651.pdf
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Simon Greer is the founder of Bridging The Gap and the host of Courageous Conversations at the Nantucket Project in the United States. He's known as a social entrepreneur and has spent the last 30 years on the front lines of the most contentious social change and struggles.
Do you struggle to listen when you're in disagreement? How do you hold your presence, maintain your focus, when everything the other person says is the opposite of what you've come to believe? Do you get so angry that you lose track of your argument and theirs?
Today's episode may be able to help you explore how to listen when you disagree and the difference between arguing for truth or arguing for victory.
Zoom Fatigue is a well-documented phenomenon. It is more draining and depleting for women than men. There is a Zoom Exhaustion & Fatigue Scale (ZEF Scale) you can take the survey via https://vhil.stanford.edu/zef/
Dr. Anna Queiroz is a post-doctoral researcher at the Virtual Human Interaction Lab and at the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. Written in collaboration with Fauville, Luo, Beilesnon and Hancock - 'Nonverbal Mechanisms Predict Zoom Fatigue and Explain Why Women Experience Higher Levels than Men'.
During this discussion with Anna, we explore the impact of fatigue while listening on a video conference. It's important to understand that Zoom fatigue and exhaustion has of five different elements. They are emotional, motivational, visual, social, and general fatigue.
We explore the techniques you can use as a host and guest to improve the quality of the video conference - what to do before, during, and after the video conference to reduce exhaustion and fatigue.
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Zoom Exhaustion & Fatigue Scale - https://stanfordvr.com/pubs/2021/zoom-exhaustion-fatigue-scale/
Stanford researchers identify four causes for ‘Zoom fatigue’ and their simple fixes https://news.stanford.edu/2021/02/23/four-causes-zoom-fatigue-solutions/
Zoom Exhaustion & Fatigue Scale - https://stanfordvr.com/pubs/2021/zoom-exhaustion-fatigue-scale/
Stanford researchers identify four causes for ‘Zoom fatigue’ and their simple fixes https://news.stanford.edu/2021/02/23/four-causes-zoom-fatigue-solutions/
https://www.oscartrimboli.com/podcast/088/ Podcast Episode 088: How to listen in a video meeting with Professor Sheryl Brahnam, from Missouri State University.
https://www.oscartrimboli.com/videoconference - The ultimate guide to listening during a video conference
Heather Morris is most well known for being the author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, which has sold over 8 million copies since its first publication in 2018. The story, is a story of beauty and hope and it's based on years of interviews by Heather Morris and the interviews she conducted with real-life Holocaust survivors and Lale, The Tattooist of Auschwitz.
The Three Sisters is the next book in the series, an astonishing story about a promise to stay together, an unbreakable bond, and a fierce will to survive.
” People have been telling stories long before they've been writing them down. That storytelling is literally what makes the world go round, it is what connects us, not only with our friends and family, but with the past, and also with the future. I'm all about storytelling and to be able to tell your stories, you've got to listen to them in the first place. The two are intrinsically entwined.”.
The irony for me is that to help everyone become better listeners, I had to become better at telling stories. For many of us sharing our own stories is as uncomfortable as listening to someone else's story. So, what am I taking away from Heather's conversation today? I need to tell more stories. I need to be comfortable telling stories about myself, about my family, about others.
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Sergeant Kevin Briggs is an international crisis management and suicide prevention expert. His Ted Talk – “The bridge between suicide and life” has been viewed over 6 million times. Kevin is a retired California highway patrol Sergeant. He has spent many years patrolling the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, where he witnessed many individuals clinging to life by a thread, people who had lost hope and could see no way out.
Through his compassion, gentle voice, eye contact, and his ability to listen, encourage them not to go over the rails of the bridge or come back to solid ground and start a new chapter in their life. His nickname is the Guardian Angel of the Golden Gate Bridge.
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email podcast@oscartrimboli.com with the SUBJECT Compass if you would like to provide feedback on a key concept in the next book
Michael Bungay Stanier is at the forefront of shaping how organisations around the world make being coach-like an essential leadership competency.
His book The Coaching Habit is the best-selling coaching book of this century, with nearly a million copies sold and thousands of five-star reviews on Amazon.
In 2019, he was named the #1 thought leader in coaching. Michael was the first Canadian Coach of the Year, has been named a Global Coaching Guru since 2014 and was a Rhodes Scholar.
Michael founded Box of Crayons, a learning and development company that helps organisations transform from advice-driven to curiosity-led.
Learn more at www.BoxOfCrayons.com
Michael is a compelling speaker and facilitator, combining practicality, humour, and an unprecedented degree of engagement with the audience.
He’s spoken on stages and screens around the world in front of crowds ranging from ten to ten thousand. His TEDx talk
is called How to tame your Advice Monster.
What I love about this discussion is Michael’s energy, enthusiasm and capacity as speak to be clear and cut-through –
When I think of Michael, I think of one of the worlds true blue flame thinkers – what is a blue flame thinker
The blue flame is the hottest and more potent part of the flame it can burn through steel with its clarity and focus
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Danish Dhamani is co-founder and CEO of Orai, a public speaking app that has helped over 300 hundred thousand people speak more clearly and confidently with AI feedback. a TEDx speaker coach he is uniquely placed to understand what the audience is listening to and for when you speak because his company Orai has analyzed over 2 million speeches uploaded to the Orai application to improve their speaking
I loved spending time with Danish as he has spent over 5 years analysis the difference be good and compelling speakers.
Listen carefully as Danish explains the impact of categories of speaking impact
- filler words
- energy
- tone
- volume
- vocal clarity
- Enunciation
-
Facial Expressions
During our discussion, listen carefully for the seven categories during our discussion.
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Today we will be discussing with Professor Sheryl Brahnam, from Missouri State University. Sheryl has focussed her research on the role of embodied conversational agents, computer abuse, critical theory, and virtual reality psychotherapy. In 2010 she became interested in how technology is changing the way we listen to each other which is why when the New York Times wrote an article called “why Zoom is terrible” they reached out to Sheryl for her decades long expertise in the role of technology and listening.
This discussion is full of practical tips in getting the most from video conferences in the workplace especially how to use your face relative to your webcam to help reduce unintended interruption
Sheryl explains that how video conferences can be the equivalent of junk food in the communications before most people aren’t aware of the ingredients for a video conference and how they are re-constituted.
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Today I'm really lucky. I'm joined by two people, Jennie and Chris and today we're going to explore the topic of listening and autism, a topic. I have no knowledge in and today I'm really excited to learn and listen to Jennie and Chris. It's a unique opportunity because they have generously provided a talk at public conventions on this very topic. And I feel really privileged to explore a world I know nothing about. And yet in my last three weeks of research on this topic, it's opened up a wonderful perspective for me about listening for similarities, listening for differences, and being conscious of your own listening and how that influences others.
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How to Resolve Conflict and Boost Productivity through Deep Listening with Oscar Trimboli
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Today’s masterclass is all about learning to listen to someone’s voice.
If you have taken the listening quiz and you are either the interrupting or lost listener – today’s discussion is all about how to listen to the range in the speakers voice.
It will help you understand when you feel the urge to interrupt – take a moment longer to listen to where the speakers voice is coming from in their body.
Perhaps you’ve read about him in The Washington Post, or heard him speak on Radio. If not there, then you’ve likely seen Eric Arceneaux on YouTube, where his viral singing technique videos have generated over 30million views. A world-renowned vocal coach, breathwork specialist, and recording artist, Eric Arceneaux has developed a reputation for transforming and saving voices.
Whether you need to prepare for a musical or the FIFA Football world cup – professionals call Eric to help them reach their vocal potential
What I love about this interview is the range and nuance Eric has for explaining how voice and song are created by humans.
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How To Listen: The Most Underrated Leadership Hack In the 21st Century with Oscar Trimboli
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Michael Grinder has over 40 years of experience training thousands of groups. Known as the pioneer of nonverbal communication, Michael helps executives and educators assess people more accurately and connect with others more deeply.
Two well-known experts personally trained Michael in the field of communication: Carl Rogers, the father of humanistic psychology, and Michael’s brother, Dr. John Grinder, co-founder of Neuro-Linguistic Programming.
Over his career, Michael has written 14 books, which have been translated into 7 languages.
The book that caught my attention is The Elusive Obvious the science of non-verbal communication.
It outlines Four distinct patterns – visual, auditory, kinaesthetic and breathing.
Together with explore these patterns of expression in and storing information.
We cover the role of subjects and objects in discussions through the lens of points of focus.
Michael and I start off discussing the ways people process and store communications.
Malala Yousafzai discusses the importance of education in diffusing terrorism & empowering women. http://www.cc.com/video-clips/a335nz/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-malala-yousafzai
Dalton Sherman Keynote speech https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZcYxuircxw
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In 2020, you provided your feedback via our annual survey
This is a summary of the survey and what will be different in 2021
If you would like to share your perspective podcast@oscartrimboli.com
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Juliana Tafur is an award-winning trilingual filmmaker, producer and director. She owns Orkidea Films and Story Powerhouse, which are devoted to the development and execution of compelling TV and film projects, including LIST(e)N - a feature length documentary which highlights our common humanity amidst the growing polarization in the U.S.A
During this discussion Juliana and I explore that listening is the willingness to have your mind changed.
Juliana’s 90 minute documentary Listen, where two people with different perspectives on abortion, guns and immigration are brought together to listen to each other.
Listen carefully as Juliana describes in very careful and thoughtful detail how people show up when they are willing to listen and when they are not.
Do you think you interrupt a lot when you listen, most people don’t think they interrupt – yet speakers say it’s the most frustrating thing about listeners – listen carefully when Juliana describes what interrupting shows up in listening.
Finally, great listening environments can be defined – Juliana skilfully and elegantly creates an environment where people can be open to listening
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email your listening struggles during video conferences?
send them to podcast@oscartrimboli.com
if you would like early access to the episode email podcast@oscartrimboli.com with the subject Early Access
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Marc Brackett is the Founder and Director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence a Professor in the Child Study Center of Yale University.
He is the lead developer of RULER, an evidence-based approach to social and emotional learning that has been adopted by nearly 2,000 pre-K through high schools across the United States and in other countries. He is developed a companion application called Mood Meter which I’ve been using since preparing for this interview
As a researcher for over 20 years, Marc has focused on the role of emotions and emotional intelligence in learning, decision making, creativity, relationships, health, and performance. He has published 125 scholarly articles and received numerous awards
Most recently he published Permission to Feel: Unlocking the Power of Emotions to Help Our Kids, Ourselves, and Our Society Thrive
Marc mission is to educate the world about the value of emotions and the skills associated with using them wisely. “I want everyone to become an emotion scientist”, he says. “We need to be curious explorers of our own and others’ emotions so they can help us achieve our goals and improve our lives.” and then they are carefully listening to then support people in understanding what they might be feeling based on what the speaker shared.
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Daniel has learned to “see” using a form of echolocation. He clicks his tongue and sends out flashes of sound that bounce off surfaces in the environment and return to him, helping him to construct an understanding of the space around him. In a rousing talk, Kish shows how this works – and asks us all to let go of our fear of the dark unknown.
His 2015 talk at TED Global has been viewed millions of times
Daniel and I did this interview at the end of a sunny California summer day and he asked me if it was ok to do this interview while he took his afternoon walk – he also did the interview via video so it was great to get to know Daniel’s cat and neighbourhood.
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Chase Hughes is THE leading military and intelligence behaviour expert creating the most advanced behaviour skills courses and tactics available worldwide:
He is the author of the worldwide #1 bestselling book on advanced persuasion, influence and behaviour profiling.
Chase teaches elite groups, government agencies and police in behaviour science skills including behaviour profiling, nonverbal analysis, deception detection, interrogation, and advanced behavioural investigation.
Listen carefully, when Chase discovers that despite over 150 interviews, I ask the question that no one else asks and the only question that MATTERS.
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Garth Paine is a composer, scholar and acoustic ecologist. He crosses art-science boundaries with his community embedded work on environmental listening and creative place-making in addition to his environmental musical works and performances. His research drives toward new approaches to acoustic ecology and the exploration of sound as our lived context including the application of virtual reality health
Garth's current research centres around the Listen Project, on acoustic ecology project that focuses on field recording and community building. He co-directs the Acoustic Ecology Lab at Arizona State University.
He will explain passive listening, active listening, and directed listening AND How Deep Listening nearly cost him, his life
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Mona Thompson is an improv performer, teacher, and creative facilitator. She has performed and taught in Norway, Finland, the Netherlands, the United States as well as at Stanford and Harvard, MIT and Stanford.
She has co-founded Collective Capital, a change and innovation consultancy that helps organisations become more curious, generous, and resilient using tools from improv and design thinking.
Mona is a master of listening beyond the words, beyond the facts and listening to emotions and listening for inferences.
Listening for emotions isn’t something most of us have been taught.
Listening for emotions is another part of listening.
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Jenny Taylor is passionate about conscious connection between our breathing and our productivity.
A member of the international breathwork foundation, Jenny is an expert teacher and education on the connection between better breathing and a more productive and fulfilled life.
Jenny explains the connection between breathing and listening and takes the time to create simple practical exercises that you can do each day to improve your breathing.
Jenny reinforces many of the stories and theories from our discussion with James Nestor in Episode 74 Unlock the ancient secrets between listening and breathing.
In this very practical discussion Jenny helps me make sense of a big part of my teenage years and the impact of breathing on me.
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Today we get the opportunity to listen to a retired FBI Special Agent and Chief of the Counterintelligence Behavioural Analysis Program. Robin has taken his life's work of recruiting spies and broken the art of leadership and relationship building. Robin has crafted his Code of Trust for quick results and maximum success.
Author of Sizing People Up: A Veteran FBI Agent's User Manual for Behavior Prediction and It’s not all about Me
My favourite story about Robin’s life as a marine and what that taught him about how he wasn’t listening and the consequences on a bombing range.
Lets listen to Robin
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In this episode I listen to Tracey and Mark -the co-founders of TRUTHPLANE – one of the most compelling global organisations in the field of business communication.
Tracey advises the world’s top companies and individuals on their biggest questions around communication and body language. Mark Bowden has been voted the #1 Body Language Professional in the world for two years running
Tracey and Mark highlight the importance of the host, the chair of the meeting or your role as a participant in the meeting exploring Level Four – Listening FOR their UNSAID
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G’day and Thank you so much for supporting the Apple Awards Winning Podcast "Deep Listening "
We'd love it if you could take 7 minutes to let us know how we can bring you the best possible content for the next 70 episodes.
www.oscartrimboli.com/2020survey
Since 2017, The Apple Award-Winning Podcast “Deep Listening – Impact beyond words” is the global resource for people who want to improve their listening in the workplace.
When the deep listening podcast is published, all I know about YOU is the date, time and country the podcast was downloaded.
I want to get to you better, how did we meet? What do you struggle with when it comes to your listening? What’s been the most useful tip you have applied are just some of the things I want to know to make this podcast better for you
I know the difference between hearing and listening is taking action.
I will be implementing what you ask for
www.oscartrimboli.com/2020survey
Our promise is by implementing the tips and techniques from the podcast, you will get 4 hours a week back in your work schedule.
What could you do with an extra 4 hours per week?
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Author, thinker, researcher and a reputation for asking massively difficult questions oh and occasional comedian David Clutterbuck is one of the earliest pioneers of coaching and mentoring.
David shares what makes a powerful question, and the importance of being an impatient listener
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We breathe 25,000 times a day, but we've lost the ability to breathe correctly. Learn what went wrong, how we fix it, and the enormous difference it makes.
James Nestor is an award-winning author, who has written for The New York Times, NPR, Scientific American and many more. James has spent the last few years exploring and performing studies on breathing: it's million-year-old history and how it affects our lives today.
You may have heard Oscar Trimboli say, "the deeper you breathe, the deeper you listen." Hear their conversation and discover how breathing and listening are inextricably linked.
Learn the difference between mouth breathing and nose breathing. Find out what the deal is with 'focussing on your breath', and how it's the key to listening to yourself.
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How do you listen when time is critical? What do medical staff actually listen for?
Associate Professor Ginger Locke shares the art and science of how medics think and perform.
Learn from her experience in training doctors about empathy, curiosity and the dangers of seeking efficiency.
Discover the difference between what doctors say and what patients hear, and how deep listening can make the difference between life and death.
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How do you listen in such a way that the speaker better understands themselves?
Leadership expert and author, Jennifer Garvey Berger, gives a masterclass in how to listen at Level 5: listening for meaning.
Jennifer shares her experiences of shaping conversations through listening, diving deeper than the content of what's being said and revealing what has given rise to the dialogue in the first place.
Learn the four ways people listen differently.
Learn why everyone you listen to is the most interesting person in the world.
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Paul Nadeau is a highly decorated former police detective, hostage negotiator and international peacekeeper.
He shares the story of how a terrorist saved his life, and why the cost of not listening can be fatal.
Learn how to ask the right questions and build rapport. Paul says that at the core, hostage negotiation and crisis negotiation is listening. Opening a space for them to speak and making people feel heard.
Learn how Paul was able to truly connect with a man who terrified his other police colleagues.
By asking people to speak and really listening - Paul has learnt that people are more like us than they are different.
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Dame Evelyn Glennie is on a quest to teach the world to listen, to themselves and to each other.
Evelyn is an internationally renowned percussionist, remarkably despite being deaf since age 12. She shares the story of an encouraging music teacher, who suggested she remove her hearing aids to listen better.
Learn about Evelyn's ability to listen with the whole body, and hear her expert insights on conductors and acoustics.
Oscar and Evelyn speak about listening to silence the unsaid, and even a silent piece of music.
Evelyn advocates that everyone, regardless of background or circumstance can listen.
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Which listening villain are you? Once you know, you can’t forget it.
86% of people think they are an above average listener.
So rather than thinking about how to listen better, it can be more helpful to notice what bad listening looks like.
Meet the Four Villains of Listening: Dramatic, Interrupting, Lost and Shrewd.
Each of these villains embodies particular bad habits we fall into, which completely derail our listening.
Learn about the ways the villains show up, and tips to combat them.
Once you know your listening villains, you know what’s getting in your way to becoming a deep listener.
Tune in to this episode, and take the Listening Quiz at listeningquiz.com
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How do employee surveys get in the way of listening?
How do you listen in face-to-face situations and at scale, to hundreds or thousands of employees?
Oscar speaks with Geoff Ho, a renowned director and behavioural scientist. Geoff has worked in Google's People Analytics team and is now at Rogers, where he helps shape the management strategies for more than 26,000 employees. His award-winning research is used by governments and organisations around the world.
How do you listen to what's unsaid, by analysing data?
How do you make sure you listen to large groups of people without bias?
Learn how to conduct a listening tour that actually works, how to design effective focus groups, and how Google listened to its employees and gave them a pay rise.
Geoff maps the process of listening to your employees onto the Five Levels of Listening.
Learn how to become a Deep Listener at scale.
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How do you create and sustain a good listening habit?
James Clear is a world-leading thinker and New York Times Bestselling author in the field of habits and behaviour change. 10 million people per year visit James Clear's website and newsletters, and his book Atomic Habits has sold over 1.5 million copies around the world.
James sits down with Oscar to speak about the intersection of habits and listening. Learn about what a habit is made of, and how they work. Listen as James Clear shares how to adopt an identity of a listener with the simple question: 'What would a good listener do?'
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Imagine if you had spent your life studying the silent messages you see when somebody is speaking. Susan Constantine is a world authority on interpreting body language and detecting deception.
Susan has worked with the US department of defence, federal court judges, law enforcement agencies and many corporations. Author of 'The Complete Idiot's Guide to Body Language' and upcoming book, 'No Bull' - how to tell if someone is lying in seven seconds.
Susan shares the common fallacies of reading body language, and why listening is contextual. Learn about the micro-expressions people exhibit, and why they're important in courtrooms. Hear about how Susan's deep knowledge in this field is being built into technology.
Learn how to listen beyond the words, and gain an understanding of a speakers' body language.
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Do you struggle with your memory when you are listening? Our research says, that your memory is one of the top five reasons why people struggle with their listening. Rather than listening, you are trying to remember the name of the speaker or what they just explained.
Dr Boris Konrad is well qualified to discuss this topic as a neuroscientist and a four-time Guinness World Record holder and an eight-time world champion in memory. You will learn practical tips to improve our memory while you listen.
Boris demystifies the relationship between your mind and it stores what’s being communicated. He shares the techniques he uses to recall the order of an entire deck of cards and how he never forgets someone’s name, even when he hasn’t met the person yet.
Learn how to take notes in the most effective way to retain information, and how to use visual images in your mind to store and recall when you are listening.
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What does a world champion sniper, a 6 year old boy and a Swedish pig have in common?
In this episode we listen carefully to Christina Bengtsson, who has a TED Talk and book on the Art of Focus.
What is focus or lack of focus? What should you do when you notice your attention is distracted or exhausted? What is the of breathing for focus and listening?
Learn what to do with internal and external distractions, how to use them as a springboard back to focus. Discover what you can use as your 'autumn leaf'.
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Can you listen while you're asleep? Why do we wake up when someone calls our name? And what exactly is the cocktail party problem?
In this episode, Oscar speaks with Dr Thomas Andrillon about listening and sleep. Thomas is a research fellow at Monash University, an expert on the brain during sleep.
Hear about what the brain can process while we sleep, and what it can teach us for our waking hours. Learn how the brain can listen to multiple things at once, and switch our attention between them when it matters.
Learn Thomas's tips to remove distractions, before they even become distracting! Finally, can we make decisions, or even learn while we sleep? Tune in to find out.
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We are listening role models for our kids. If our children don’t listen to us, we may need to begin with listening to ourselves.
In this episode, Oscar speaks with global parenting expert, Justin Coulson. Father to 6 daughters, TED talk speaker and author of 6 books. Justin answers the question, ‘How do I get my kids to listen?’
A great way to begin an engaged conversation is to start with observation. You can learn about listening by noticing. Learn the importance of eye contact, eye level and how this honours the relationship whilst expressing the desire to communicate.
Justin explains that parents may have to stop what we’re doing because we miss opportunities to connect with our kids if we never stop.
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How good is your multi-tasking? Is it a skill you try to work on?
On this episode of Deep Listening, Prof. Stefan van der Stigchel explains what happens when you multi-task, and why it might not actually exist at all.
An expert in attention, Stefan shares how to write notes to best retain information and continue listening. He explains what your working memory is, and how distraction cuts your performance in half.
Learn how to really pay attention when listening, and how to prepare your environment to minimise distraction.
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If you would like early access to the Listening Villain quiz, visit www.listeningquiz.com
In less than 20 questions you will get access to the questionaire and more importantly what to do about it
Dr Romie Mushtaq, M.D., ABIHM, is a neurologist whose expertise in Western medicine and Eastern wisdom helps people resolve stress-based illnesses, achieve peak performance, and harness the power of mindful leadership.
Dr Romie's discussion with Oscar is a masterclass in Level One Listening - Listening to Yourself. She shares about the role of distraction, breathing and ego in your ability to listen effectively.
Dr Romie draws a map from your ears all the way through the different parts of the brain, to help you understand what the journey is like to move from hearing to listening.
How do you leave your ego at the door to better listen?
Why to breath deeply for 3 minutes, and what to do if you don't have 3 minutes?
Learn the answers to these questions and more in this episode with Dr Romie Mushtaq.
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Level Five listening is listening for meaning. It's the difference between listening to the speaker, and listening forthe speaker.
Recreational listening is listening to the speaker - just the words that they're saying. But when you're listening for meaning, you help the speaker to make sense of what they're really thinking.
The meaning goes beyond the present conversation, and into the future. What are the consequences?
In this episode, Oscar and Nell unlock how to listen for meaning for both individuals and for groups. Learn how to listen for the capital letters, and from real life examples and audience questions.
Join us on the final step of the journey, to becoming a Deep Listener.
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Listening for the unsaid is Level Four listening.
It's the ultimate ninja move of a Deep Listener and it sounds counterintuitive.
It's moving your orientation away from what's in it for you, but toward the speaker. Help the speaker understand what they're saying and thinking.
Learn how to listen to silence like it's another word in the conversation. Learn how to navigate the labels of 'introvert' and 'extrovert'. Learn how to interpret body language.
Tune in and take your listening to this new level; the next step on the journey to becoming a Deep Listener.
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Listening for the context is Level Three listening.
Context is all about the backstory. It can be the difference between a productive conversation and a frustrating, circular discussion that goes nowhere.
Deep Listening is three dimensional: your context, their context and the context of the conversation.
In this episode, learn the cost of ignoring context, and how it cost a quarter of a million lives in July 1945. Hear stories about the difference that listening for context makes in the office.
Learn from Oscar and Nell how to unlock the context and take the next step on your journey to becoming a Deep Listening.
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Listening to the content is Level Two listening. But it's more than just the words being said. It's important to understand that what you hear, see and sense together make up listening for the content.
Only 2% of us have been taught how to listen, but all of us know when we're not being listened to.
"I'm explaining the same thing over and over again."
"They're just nodding and saying hmm."
Do you know how to listen tone and pauses? How about body language? In this episode, Oscar and Nell unpack how to really listen to the content of what someone is saying.
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In this episode, Oscar and Nell dig into the data on listening with help from researcher Heidi Martin.
1,410 participants were surveyed on listening, and Heidi shares insights both big and small from crunching the numbers.
What are our biggest barriers to listening to others?
What effect do timing and location have on our ability to listen deeply?
How do we better prepare to listen?
Tune in to this episode to find out in what ways this impactful research can help you become a Deep Listener.
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Oscar Trimboli and Nell Norman-Nott explain about noticing when you are distracted. How to notice it and what to do about it.
The difference between a distracted listener and a Deep Listener isn’t that a Deep Listener is never distracted.
A Deep Listener notices when they are distracted and tools and techniques to get back in the dialogue.
In this episode, we provide some tips to dance with distraction.
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Listening to yourself is Level One listening. It's the proper preparation, the good ingredients in the recipe of how to listen well to others.
In this first deep dive episode into the Five Levels of Listening, Oscar and Nell explore what listening to yourself actually means and why it's the first challenging step that most people struggle with.
How do we unclutter our minds, be present in the situation and prepare ourselves to listen? Learn the ingredients: who, where, how and when.
Tune in for the practical tips for each level and discover where you are at on the journey to Deep Listening.
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Listen: to yourself, for the content, for the context, to the unsaid, to meaning. These are the Five Levels of Listening.
In this episode Oscar and Nell go through each of the five levels, explaining how they work individually, and as a whole, and how to move from one to the next.
Hear real stories about each level, how it fits together in the research, and flashbacks from previous podcast interviews.
Listen out for the practical tips for each level and discover where you are at on the journey to Deep Listening.
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Interviewer becomes interviewee - Oscar Trimboli speaks with Kelly Irving to share the story behind Deep Listening.
How did we get here? Oscar shares about his listening through school and early work, how listening helped people understanding others' perspectives. Through his work as an executive coach, Oscar can empower others by letting them feel listened to.
Learn about listening superheroes, challenges Oscar faces with listening, and about his vision for one hundred million listeners around the world.
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Previously we have heard from listening experts around the world: air traffic controllers, high court judges, suicide counsellors, deaf interpreters and so many more.
In this episode you may notice things are a little different.
Beginning with this episode, the Deep Listening Podcast Series is evolving.
The consistent feedback from 50 episodes is that you want to hear more from Oscar about how to join the listening jigsaw puzzle together.
We'll be doing a deep dive on the five levels of listening and joining us will be our new co-host, Nell Norman-Nott.
The focus will be on practical and impactful tips, to help you grow as a listener.
And don't worry, we'll still be doing great interviews unique listening experts including military snipers to talk about focus, body language experts to help you listen to non-verbal language, neuroscientists to help you understand the role of listening and memory.
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Dr Bronwyn King is a radiation oncologist and the founder of Tobacco Free Portfolios. Dr King works in countries all around the world to help financial institutions divest from tobacco companies - saving millions of lives.
Bronwyn has worked to treat hundreds of people with cancer. She shares the pivotal story when she realised her own money was invested in tobacco companies that caused the diseases and were killing her patients. 19,000 people die of tobacco-related diseases daily, and Dr King is bridging the world of health and finance to do something about it. A moment of deep listening triggered this revelation for Bronwyn.
By engaging leaders of funds, banks, insurers and other financial institutions, Dr Bronwyn King advocates for the divestment of tobacco companies. She has had her success through meaningful face-to-face interactions, diving head-first into the language of finance.
Bronwyn's inspiring story shows the power of listening to create a massive impact - addressing the largest health issue in the world today.
**Tune in to Learn**
- How listening can help us to break out of silos
- Why the most valuable interactions are after the meeting ends
- How listening brings hope where there was none
- How to remove your money from tobacco investments
- How to make an impact beyond words
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Chris Voss is a global corporate negotiation expert; a former FBI hostage negotiator, CEO of the Black Swan Group and author of the national best-seller: "Never Split The Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It". His company specialises in solving business communication problems, using hostage negotiation solutions.
Chris says the cost of not listening in the corporate world amounts to 70% of opportunities missed.
Chris points out the 'Yes addiction' our society has in its communication, intent on extracting a yes from the other person in the conversation. The single biggest force in decision making is avoiding a loss or rejection, not to accomplish again - simply considering the phrasing of a question can make for more productive conversation.
Chris shares dramatic stories of how listening between the lines saved the day in dangerous negotiations. His bite-sized pieces of wisdom based on years of experience are truly valuable.
**Tune in to Learn**
- How observational statements get speakers to say more than questions
- How control of conversations can work like judo
- How to summarise another person's perspective
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Corine Jansen is a Listening Practitioner in the Netherlands, who strives to make a real difference in the health care system by listening.
Corine’s method focuses on listening and speaking as a human being, to another human being, disregarding all roles of doctor, patient or nurse. Dealing with the topics and issues usually unaddressed in the health care setting brings healing, by helping people be whole again - more than a set of diagnoses.
Chief Listening Officer since 2010, her focus on listening is being used in six hospitals throughout the Netherlands.
Everyone has a story - practitioners as well as patients, and listening to everyone saves mistakes being made, and money being wasted. Corine shares her own experience with illness and how not being listened to perpetuated her time being unwell.
Corine has an inspirational commitment to listening and to the value of human centered care.
Tune in to Learn * How to clear your mind completely to listen * How to use silence practically to listen effectively * How to choose to be present in the moment.
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Hugh Forrest serves as Chief Programming Officer for South by Southwest (SXSW). Held annually in Austin, Texas, this event brings together more than 70,000 industry creatives from across the United States, around the world.
These creatives are inspired by nine days of panels, presentations, brainstorming, networking, deal-making, socializing, creating, innovating, and fun. The worlds of film, gaming, music, comedy, science and technology collide at SXSW. Year on year, the conference consistently draws big names as keynote speakers, and creates hundreds of millions of dollars of economic impact.
Hugh is responsible for listening to the feedback of 50,000 people - the attendees of each year's event - and distilling 5,000 ideas into 10 days of action. SXSW places enormous value on listening to the event attendees, sponsors, staff and the community as a whole. Hugh says without this, you lose your relevancy.
Over the course of six weeks, each year Hugh and his team sift through feedback. It gives a fuller picture of the event, as an organiser there are things that didn't go well that you had no idea about. It can be exhausting, especially when the criticisms are sharp. But it is this which helps you get better.
SXSW has a unique voting system to facilitate interaction with the community, the panel picker ensures that anyone with an internet connection can submit a speaking proposal. It also allows users to voting on topics, giving Hugh an idea of what people are really interested in.
It's not just learning and listening from the audience that is crucial - Hugh and his team initiate a dialogue with those who've provided feedback - replying to emails, having a coffee with their attendees. Some of the best advocates for the conference previously had a complaint, but were addressed by Hugh's team and made positive.
[Tweet "This bottom line, which we're so focused on, is listening to your customers. The more you listen, the more you learn - Hugh Forrest"]
Tune in to Learn * How to listen well in a dialogue over email * How Hugh and his team analyse survey responses * How SXSW 'predict' the future to keep the conference at the cutting edge
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A vote of thanks for helping to spread the word to create 100 million Deep Listeners in the world
We were award one of the Top 20 Apple Podcasts of 2018
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Danielle Ofri, MD, PhD, is a physician at Bellevue Hospital, the oldest public hospital in the USA, and a faculty member of New York University School of Medicine. She writes about medicine and the doctor-patient connection for the New York Times, Slate Magazine, and other publications. Danielle is co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Bellevue Literary Review, the first literary journal to arise from a medical setting. She is the author of a collection of books about the world of medicine. Her most recent book is, "What Patients Say, What Doctors Hear."
Danielle highlights just how vital good communication is in the world of medicine. The great majority of malpractice lawsuits stem from miscommunication, far more so than actual errors in clinical practice. This is communication between doctors but importantly, between doctors and their patients.
There is an enormous cost of not listening in medicine. Danielle shares one particular study in which an extra twenty minutes spent between doctor and patient prior to a surgical procedure went on to save those patients from an additional three days in hospital, and reduced the amount of opioid painkillers they required. Leaving aside the health outcomes, the financial impact illustrated by this study is substantial.
Before a patient consultation, Danielle makes sure she has read up on all the relevant notes and charts. In this way she can listen undistracted while they talk, focused and looking at the patient, not looking at charts or a computer screen.
Danielle's research finds that doctors tend to interrupt their patients within eight to ten seconds of their speaking. She also notes that if left uninterrupted, patients will only speak for a minute to ninety seconds - a length of time Danielle thinks we can all aim to listen for!
Dedicate a minute to undistracted, 'full frontal listening', and the speaker will give you the information they want to share and that you need. Danielle thinks of it as an investment in the future relationship.
Danielle shares a story of her father's experience in hospital, and how accompanying him gave Danielle a patient's perspective on things. It's very easy for a doctor who sees many patients every day to not listen deeply in each and every interaction, because there are so many. For the patient, however, this time is precious.
**Tune in to Learn**
- How to get around technology, to listen undistracted
- Why Danielle asks her patients "how much do you want to know?"
- How listening to a patient reduces anxiety
- How Danielle is teaching new doctors to listen
- About listening to the unsaid for life-threatening issues
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Avraham (Avi) Kluger is a professor of Organisational Behaviour at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the first born of parents who both survived the Holocaust. His award-winning research into the role of feedback in the workplace piqued his interest in the world of listening. In his journey of discovering listening, Avi underwent a dramatic personal change - realising that being properly listened to gives you the space to become your authentic self.
Avi is currently conducting a meta-analysis that examines over 900 previously observed effects of listening. He is distilling the existing body of research, which often focussed on narrow, disparate fields, to uncover the big picture of the impact of listening.
You don't need to be a psychologist to improve the wellbeing of people around you. Avi explains that good listeners help the mental health of speakers - reducing depression and anxiety and increasing a sense of meaning in life.
Listening can, in fact, change somebody's opinion. If you are being well listened to, you will engage with both or more sides of an argument. Whereas if you are being poorly listened to, you will likely double down on one point of view. Avi shares a story of a student who cheated attendance to his classes. Good listening made him realise his own fault in the situation.
Avi also explains that the culture in Israel can be very argumentative and not respectful of listening, demonstrated by a high rate of interruption. This also means, however, that the core of what a person is saying is interrogated, rather than attacking the person themselves.
Before entering the conversation, make the decision to be invested in the other person. Avi says that good listening flows from this single intention.
"A listener shapes, very strongly, the quality of the talking of the other person" - Avi Kluger
Tune in to Learn * Why if you want to really listen, you need to be willing to change * About the ratio of talking to listening across languages * The difference between a nice voice and the true voice * Why good listeners are better performers in education and at work * Try to name the emotion of the speaker to break a repetitive conversation
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Holly Ransom is chief executive of Emergent, a consultancy which specialises in marketing to millennials, a director of Port Adelaide Football Club and a trustee of The Prince's Charities Australia. Holly co-chaired the 2014 Y20 Youth Summit.
Holly explains how to listen to what matters to Millennials, and why young people are missing out by leaving the wisdom of the older generations untapped. Holly shares on how to listen across cultures, both around the world and back home: how can properly listening improve the lives of indigenous Australians?
Holly shares the experience of interviewing President Barack Obama. She illustrates the importance that he places on listening, how he made it a habit of his leadership, so that every decision he made was informed by as many different perspectives as possible.
Listening makes good intentions actually effective. Holly tells the story of a trip she took in Africa, where a perfectly functional well for drawing water wasn't being used by the local population. They would instead walk longer and further to another well, taking much needed time away. The well, though functional, had been built in a location of 'bad spirits'. Holly expresses that listening to people could have avoided this, it's an example of how listening can make the difference between good intentions and good outcomes.
Tune in to Learn * How to view a different culture without imposing your own views * The important nuances required for proper dialogue to take place * How to engage Millennials with goal-oriented steps * How to listen to all people great and small * How a high-school exercise impacted Holly's listening for years to come
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Jennifer Brandel began her career in journalism in the early 2000s, reporting for numerous outlets including The New York Times and Vice, picking up awards along the way. In 2011 she founded the groundbreaking audience first series, Curious City at WBEZ in Chicago. Her company, Hearken, was awarded a spot in Matter.vc's accelerator and took home the prize for "Best Bootstrap Company" at SXSW 2016. Jennifer was awarded the 2016 Media Changemaker Prize from the Center for Collaborative Journalism and named one of 30 world-changing women in conscious business.
Andrew Haeg is a veteran journalist and entrepreneur, correspondent for The Economist, founder of the mobile engagement platform GroundSource and co-founder of the Public Insight Network at American Public Media. He has focussed his career on using technology to help newsrooms better listen to their audiences and communities. As a result of this, he aims to make their journalism more reflective of and responsive to the people they serve.
Andrew and Jennifer share their individual experiences as journalists who have come to learn the importance of deep listening. Andrew describes it as the difference between transactional listening and building connections. Rather than listening to take stories from sources, establishing real connections with people allows you to tell the stories of those who would otherwise be uninclined or unable to.
Jennifer speaks to her training which preferenced efficiency and distribution over actual journalism. She was instructed to write stories before going out into the field, then finding quotes to back it up - confirming what she already knew, not discovering new things. This provides minimal ability to tell stories accurately, in fact, Jennifer attributes this way of working to a broken state of journalism globally. Are the stories essentially false, if they're confirming biases? Jennifer chose instead to take longer writing her stories, so she could listen deeper, even if it meant taking on other work to make ends meet.
It's a harder way of working, Andrew describes, to listen properly. However, doing so creates richer stories, and connects communities of people to themselves and others, in a way that journalism based on transactional listening does not.
Tune in to Learn * How hungry people are to talk with journalists when they listen deeply * How to collect feedback beyond a simple survey * How to listen to the full person * How listening ensures relevancy * How to cultivate a deeply engaged audience * How listening can be healing
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Bettina Turnbull provides a unique perspective on listening - with expertise in both linguistics and audiology. Bettina has worked in research at the National Acoustic Laboratories, working directly with hearing impaired patients and as a teacher of Audiometry. She has spent the last 5 years introducing hearing care professionals to a client-centered, and more recently, a family-centered approach, which requires an understanding of both the difficulties a hearing loss poses to the ability to listen and the skill to be a good listener.
Bettina shares the story of a visually impaired teacher, who caused her to think about the importance of listening. He wouldn't use a stick, or be assisted by a guide dog, but instead clicked his fingers and listened, to gauge his surroundings.
Bettina's education in linguistics taught her to listen first in order to create, in particular, listening to different sounds. She is multi-lingual, and must listen intently when listening across languages.
As an audiologist, Bettina has strategies to provide the best opportunities for clear speaking and listening: slowing down one's speech, facing people straight on, and situating in a location that is well lit. We can be reluctant to admit we're not listening well, meaning steps aren't taken to remedy it.
Tune in to Learn * Why you might ask a speaker to slow down * The difference between hearing and listening * How to listen for grammar * How the ear works - how, biologically, we listen
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With a doctorate in sociocultural and medical anthropology, and a degree in visual design, Michelle Barry has spent the past 20 years pioneering new ways to engage people by understanding the nuances of human behavior, emotions and how to effectively translate culture.
Michelle explains the importance of context for listening, creating the right environment and making the speaker feel comfortable. She begins by drawing the connection between listening and food, why it helps establish contextual cues that direct both the speaker and listener, without them knowing.
Michelle talks about the importance of listening in business environments, where it can combat an otherwise exclusive focus on decision-making. The best results often come from the ability to be comfortable with the uncomfortable, leaving a pause longer than normal and asking the unspoken questions. Similarly, Michelle emphasises that turning off recorders and cameras – giving a speaker the freedom to retract and retry what they have to say – is crucial.
A lesson learned the hard way, Michelle tells the story of a potential client that she misunderstood by not listening deeply, instead being too caught up in the possible outcome of the work.
Tune in to Learn * Why pizzas are round rather than square * That if you can't relate to a person, there's a good chance you can't listen to them * The importance of context and culture in listening * The four level listening pathway
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Liz Gross leads the team at Campus Sonar, an agency which empowers colleges and universities to find and analyze relevant conversation, learning and engaging with them. She calls it social listening.
The cost of not listening has led to public distrust of these institutions in the USA, and this distrust fundamentally undercuts tertiary education's mission of access to learning. It also carries a financial cost in slowed enrollments, and legal fees.
Liz speaks about the importance of listening in a crisis situation. It's these moments when trust will be lost the fastest and will cost the most to repair, but good listening can mitigate these.
Whilst it's tempting for Liz and her agency to bring new clients onboard as quickly as possible, she has found that taking the time to listen to potential customers leads to better outcome to both her and the client.
Campus Sonar reveals that there's often a disconnect between owned and earned conversations about a college. Clients need to get on board with the conversations that are already happening, alongside looking for results of their own campaigns.
Listen to hear about the example of Spring Hill College, and why 'family' was such a topic of discussion. Spring Hill College were able to embrace this and make it a key part of the college's identity; engaging everyone from parents, prospective and current students, to alumni decades out from graduation.
Tune in to Learn * Cost of not listening is financial, legal and reputation * How to go from purpose-driven listening at work, to listening without an agenda * How listening to your audience makes speaking to them more effective
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Allan Parker is a Behavioural Scientist and the Managing Director of Peak Performance Development Pty Ltd, a Sydney based consultancy company. His areas of expertise include negotiation, organisational change, and dispute Management. His clients have included Microsoft, AMP, BNP Paribas, Macquarie Bank, NSW Bar Association, the OECD and United Nations. He is the co-author of the best-selling book 'Switch on Your Brain' and author of 'The Negotiator's Toolkit', among others.
Allan Parker shares his insights on listening from his unique perspective of behavioural science. He speaks not only about listening with your ears but with your brain, with your gut, your breathing, nervous system and more.
When you are listening, Allan suggests ‘hitting the pause button’ on the conversation, and taking the time to check with the speaker that what you have heard is correct. It is easy to misinterpret what someone is saying, perhaps due to context or words with multiple meanings. Do you need to ask the speaker to repeat what they have said? Listening for meaning, and not just to the words is so important.
The consequences of not listening are serious, says Allan, and our own chatter inside our brain needs to be quietened in order to listen correctly. He explains how focusing on our peripheral vision can turn down the volume of this internal chatter.
How can we show a speaker that we’re listening? Nodding is a confirmation that we’re tuned in. Facial expressions such as eyebrow raises, and eye movement shows that we’re truly thinking about what we’re hearing. Undisturbed features, on the other hand, may indicate that we’re not actually taking much onboard, engaging in ‘pretend listening’.
Tune in to Learn * The different ways we process information while listening - are you an audial or visual thinker? * How we bring our own bias to the conversation by 'feeling' too early * Why to wait for one full breath before you ask a question * Why the fewer words the better, to eliminate bias * How to be present, in 'this three seconds'
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The Honourable Michael Kirby is an international jurist, educator and former judge on the High Court of Australia. He has undertaken many international activities for the United Nations, the OECD and the Global Fund Against AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. His recent international activities have included chairing the UN Commission of Inquiry on DPRK (North Korea). He is an Honorary Professor at 12 Australian and overseas universities and has been awarded prizes such as the Australian Human Rights Medal.
Very few people have formal training in listening, despite its importance. Michael Kirby is no exception, speaking with Oscar for the podcast is the very first time he has ever discussed the role of listening in his work as a judge on the High Court of Australia.
Michael Kirby begins by speaking about the value of his early family conversations and the gifts of communication that. he gained at that young age. His mother specifically modeled good listening skills. His father read to him often, he remembers specifically Grimm’s Fairy Tales, with moral lessons such as not being greedy or too big for your boots. Michael Kirby inherited his father’s storytelling voice from eagerly listening to him.
Success in student politics at university was due in part to Michael Kirby’s ability to listen to others’ concerns and desires and to act on them. He gained their respect and support by listening intently in order to respond. He posits that perhaps politics is left wanting because people are not listening.
Michael Kirby devised a form of note taking in tree diagrams, with the major and minor points displayed hierarchically. In this way, the whole picture can be gleaned from a glance, and the context isn’t overlooked. He makes clear that context is crucial for meaning. A day in the courts for a judge requires sustained attention to detail. Concentration is key for the whole day, listening and processing the case.
Tune in to Learn * Why to start your day early, before distractions begin * Why being 'present' isn't enough to listen well * How to focus the mind to listen for long periods of time * How to make decisions after listening * About Michael Kirby's work with the United Nations and North Korean refugees
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Lise Barry is an expert meditator and helps to resolve complex and frustrating disputes in society and in the workplace. You will learn how to create a listening process that is neutral and productive for all those involved in a dispute where they feel no one is listening to them.
Lise is a Senior Lecturer and Director of Learning and Teaching at Macquarie Law School and came to the law from a
background working in mediation and Youth Justice Conferencing. As a nationally accredited mediator working with the NSW
Attorney General’s Department, Lise mediates disputes ranging from neighborhood and family law disputes through to commercial
and workplace disputes.
Lise is also a member of the NSW Guardian Ad Litem panel, representing people who lack the capacity to
instruct a solicitor or to represent themselves in NSW Courts and Tribunals. Lise currently teaches courses in Legal Ethics and
Alternative Dispute Resolution. As a foundational co-convenor of the Australian Research Network on Law and Ageing (ARNLA),Lise collaborates with colleagues around Australia contributing to research on legal issues of concern to older Australians. Lise is also a member of EMAN – ‘Elder Mediation Australasian Network’.
Lise stresses the importance of creating a neutral, listening environment for every mediation session for conflict resolution. Lise is not the judge and does not make decisions for the two parties, but moderates the conflict. She allows for them to break down their rehearsed stories and built up anger and work something out between themselves. Lise is process focussed, not outcome focussed.
A lawyer’s client may have already decided what resolution they want and it may mean they go to court unnecessarily. Lise explains how a lawyer needs to listen to the client, to get to know the problem first, before just coming up with a solution.
Tune in to Learn * Why you may need to feel listened to, before you can listen to someone else * How to uncover the underlying issue, not just deal with the present conflict * The importance of preparation to listen for long periods of time * How to prepare a space that is conducive to listening * How listening can bring release from entrenched conflict
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Frank Schneider is the CEO of artificial intelligence listening company, Speakeasy AI, whose mission and technology is based upon the premise of listening to understand, not merely respond.
He was born and raised in Philadelphia, a city where listening is equal parts human empathy and survival, Frank spent the bulk of his 22 professional years in roles where active listening is of paramount importance.
Frank has taught elementary, middle and high school and worked with adult 'English as a second language' students fleeing war-torn countries, and teens who were court adjudicated. He has coached basketball players and sales reps, counselled convicted felons, teachers and corporate teams in conflict resolution and peer mediation.
Frank explains the history of listening software, in typed conversations between humans and chatbots. Now we’re speaking vocally to artificial intelligence, famously to assistants like Alexa and Google Home. However, your voice is still transcribed word for word and sent into very similar algorithms to those that powered chatbots. This is listening to transcribe, not listening for meaning or understanding.
Advanced listening AI, that Frank works with, attempts to understand what we're saying from the moment we say hello. Real listening examines the type of language that's being used and also incorporates context. In this way, it should be accurate, helpful and effective at large scale.
Frank also talks about why listening is pivotal to being a basketball coach. No matter how you coach, you’re not playing the game, so you need to listen to your team to get on-the-field knowledge about what’s happening. The players have something to say, so in order to give the best advice, guidance and direction, you need to have their input onboard.
Tune in to Learn
- How software listens differently to humans, but what we can learn ourselves
- Why listening is important for serving others
- Why groups can solve their own problems when they are in a listening environment
- How comedic impressions can provide valuable insight
- The power of software to listen to thousands of conversations simultaneously
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Graham Bodie is a listening educator and consultant. He teaches on the topic of listening at university, conducts research and writes publications. Graham is also a coach and consultant in listening to the business world. He co-authored ‘The Sourcebook of Listening Research’.
Graham’s credits his father for some of his listening skills. In conversations, he might not say a lot, but in his silent listening drank everything in and then said something insightful.
He points out that we interrupt more than we think we do. It’s understandable, as we want to get what we have to say heard. It means, however, that we end up listening to respond rather than to understand.
We should be aiming to listen 80% of the time whilst speaking only 20%.
We need to practice not interrupting, as well as practicing listening. Allay the fear in your mind that someone is going to speak all day and waste your time - they won’t!
Tune in to Learn * The six questions you need to ask and answer before you interrupt someone * How you think about your listening is like you think about your driving * Listening for 'relational meaning' and the intent of the speaker * Admit and acknowledge how you feel and move on to what you should be doing * Behavioural and verbal cues to help a speaker feel listened to * Why we need to change our attitude toward silence * The value of asking prompting question such as 'What else?'
Links and Resources: Graham Bodie's website
Graham Twitter
Graham LinkedIn
Book: The Sourcebook of Listening Research
Quotes:
"Listen 80% of the time, speak only 20% - Graham
"A speaker won't speak for very long unless a listener indicates interest, attention and permission to continue. - Graham"
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Improv is about listening and responding. It’s paying attention to what’s going on around you and responding to it. Improv focuses on affirmation and elevation.
Jen Brown is a world-class improv performer and teacher. Being in theatre and improv, Jen was trained to listen. Being a good actor is being a good listener.
She teaches improv to professionals to improve their listening, communication, connection, and creative skills.
Jen shares what she thinks are the four points needed to be present to move forward with everyday listening:
- Who you are
- Where you are
- How you feel
- What you want
If something is not moving forward in improv, or life, then you are probably missing one of these four things.
Listening is a skill we underestimate. Choose to be present and listen actively, don’t be thinking about your next move.
Tune in to Learn
- Jen’s role models and how they were able to zone in on conversations
- Jen’s stories about her first improv audition and teaching session
- Tips and techniques to clear your mind and be present with what’s in front of you
- Admit and acknowledge how you feel and move on to what you should be doing
- Stories about trying something different and how there’s no success or failure
- Listening for progress and gifts
- Listening for the “want” has a big impact, but paying attention to feelings and emotions is just as vital
- Every way we positively and negatively interact is tapped into listening
Links and Resources:
Jen's TedXTalk
Jen on Twitter
Jen on LinkedIn
The Engaging Educator
Book: Improv(e): Using Improv to Find Your Voice, Style, and Self
Oscar Trimboli’s books
Quotes:
I want to strive to be so intentional and connective when I am listening and attending to people. - Jen
Hearing happens. Listening is a choice. - Jen
Want to create a big impact? Subscribe to the Deep Listening podcast and never miss an episode.
If you have any suggestions, questions or recommendations for people to interview for podcast please email podcast@oscartrimboli.com.
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Leaders’ operating rhythms or schedules rarely make time to just sit and listen to their employees. By listening, it aligns leaders with employees to increase the bottom line. It makes all the difference in the world.
A team listening environment correlates with financial performance and employee satisfaction, productivity, and retention.
Michelle K. Johnston, a university professor in the United States, is an expert in leadership communication. She makes the connection between leaders listening and the positive impact on financial performance.
She describes the importance of pausing and silence to understand what you are thinking, and the continuous effort to learn from and listen to your staff. People want to know they are being heard and that their thoughts become part of the leadership team’s action plan.
Michelle explains the role of engagement surveys and the differences between qualitative and quantitative feedback.
Tune in to Learn
- Educational role models who influenced and taught Michelle how to listen
- How your teammates make you feel matters
- Become comfortable with silence and pauses; be patient and reassuring
- Team Listening Environment (TLE) Scale and financial performance
- Employees who felt listened to, valued, and understood had higher financial performance
- Tell Me/Listening Tour: Learn what’s keeping employees from high performance, making money, etc.
- Listen to employees and make meaningful connections, have someone else take notes and collect data
- Employees feeling heard in the moment and subsequently
- Go back to the beginning to be self-aware and know how to listen and tell stories
- Provide opportunities and exercises to find and create meaningful connections
- Elephant in the Room: What’s not being said; create a safe environment and make a difference
- Quantitative Feedback: Been there, done that. Nothing changes.
- Qualitative feedback should be utilized and makes a difference.
Links and Resources:
Michelle Johnston
Larry Barker
Quotes:
What I have found, it’s the qualitative feedback that makes all the difference in the world. - Michelle
It’s ok to pause and to be comfortable with silence and collecting your thoughts. - Michelle
Want to create a big impact? Subscribe to the Deep Listening podcast and never miss an episode.
If you have any suggestions, questions or recommendations for people to interview for podcast please email podcast@oscartrimboli.com.
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Listening is a like a muscle that needs to get flexed. Otherwise, it loses power and is no longer a habit. Slow down, and take the time to listen.
Listen to people, and let them be who they are. Listen as a form of respect, and ask questions to know someone’s motivations and who they are.
Learning to listen changed how Kathy LeMay handles fundraising to fulfill missions that create social change. Rather than pitching and asking for money, she embraces radical listening.
For over 25 years, Kathy has been an internationally-recognized public speaker, philanthropic advisor, global social change fundraiser and published author whose purpose-driven life centers on lifting up the voices, stories, leadership and influence of the world's unseen social change warriors and freedom fighters.
Listening and not speaking has helped Kathy to raise about $175 million for causes she represents.
Tune in to Learn
- Kathy’s stepfather’s role as a listener and how he helped others by showing up
- Kathy went to rape genocide camps in Bosnia to listen and do social change
- Money raised is the outcome of passion
- Everyone has a story different than what they appear to be
- Learn to listen to people’s stories and respect where they are coming from
- Success is seeking to understand
- When was the last time someone really listened to you?
- Establish trust and have someone’s best interests at heart
- Listening can be awkward and uncomfortable; interrupting is enthusiasm
- The more successful you are, the more you should be talking - not true
- Less anxiety makes you a better listener; have less stress in business leadership
- Put others first and create something that serves their needs
- Redefining what success looks like
- Don’t make assumptions: Kathy’s first visit to the Four Seasons for fundraising
- Getting glimpses of lives in worlds that you don’t understand
- Listen for what is unsaid and grief
- What you do makes a difference and changes lives
- Talking about vulnerabilities is not a liability, but shows you care
- There’s a reason why people support something and why it is meaningful to them
Links and Resources:
Kathy LeMay
Chris Grumm
Quotes:
“Listening is a muscle the needs to get flexed.”- Kathy
“Less anxiety makes you a better listener.” - Kathy
Want to create a big impact? Subscribe to the Deep Listening podcast and never miss an episode.
If you have any suggestions, questions or recommendations for people to interview for podcast please email podcast@oscartrimboli.com.
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Did you vote in the last presidential election? Did your candidate of choice win or lose? Were you surprised? Rather than listening to people, the media listened to the polls. The cost of not listening can make you become very disconnected from things that affect you and others on a daily basis. Not listening has an impact on lives because people feel unheard.
Today’s guest is Hillary Frey, director of editorial strategy at HuffPost. She is challenging you to talk to someone and ask them a question, then actually take a moment and listen to their answer.
It’s easy to make a gesture toward listening and caring. So, slow down and get past checking the box by asking a question, just to be considerate. It takes effort and practice, but becomes easier. Hear what is being said. Listening offers inspiration and bonding.
Tune in to Learn
- Huffington Post did a Listen to America tour to interview people about the last presidential election and to teach young journalists how to listen deeply and without judgement to stories.
- Hillary shares her journey to becoming a news editor. She enjoys listening to her reporters report stories. The best reporters ask the fewest questions, but they ask the right questions.
- Hillary’s passion is listening because everybody has a story. You can find yourself moved and engaged by a story you didn’t know existed.
- On the tour, HuffPost did not go in with an idea about what to ask, but made interviews as open-ended as possible to get people to share their stories.
- The bus tour was an opportunity that would help HuffPost talk directly to people and approach journalism differently than it had been done in the past.
- People wanted to talk about serious topics and issues that are deeply personal to them, such as education and health care.
- People were eager to share their stories and opinions. They had something to say.
- The tour was open to the public, but HuffPost also wanted to meet with specific communities, including the deaf and poor.
- HuffPost workers approached interviews in their own way. Some would ask, “What’s on your mind today?” Or, “Why are you here?”
- Interviews were brief to be able to talk to as many people as possible. About 1,500 recorded interviews were conducted.
- Consistent patterns from the interviews were people’s gratitude for being heard.
- Where you go is critical to listen to specific people and communities.
- Experiencing empathy and understanding makes for better journalists and reporters, and being a better person.
- As a result of the tour, HuffPost gave young journalists with little experience in the field to do reporting and look for great stories.
- HuffPost wants to make sure to continue interviewing and getting stories from various communities to cover the country better and differently.
- There are stories happening across the country that are of national importance but are missed because of the way media works.
- Our interactions with each other, especially at work, are usually superficial and a formality. Pull the threads of the conversation for it to be meaningful.
- Create a daily life where your force yourself to listen to people. It changes from being work to being a privilege.
Links and Resources:
Hillary Frey
Huffington Post
Quotes:
“It’s so easy to make the gesture towards listening and caring.” Hillary Frey
“The best reporters ask the fewest questions, but they ask the right questions.” Hillary Frey
“You can find yourself just so moved and engaged by a story you didn’t even know existed.” Hillary Frey
Want to create a big impact? Subscribe to the Deep Listening podcast and never miss an episode.
If you have any suggestions, questions or recommendations for people to interview for podcast please email podcast@oscartrimboli.com.
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When you are told that “you have cancer,” your mind just goes blank. Vanessa Oshima had this experience when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Vanessa’s doctor started to systematically go through what she needed to communicate. She had moved on to fixing things, but Vanessa was still stuck on the word “cancer” and not believing it, so she stopped listening.
Vanessa, president and founder of Heart Data, describes what it was like to be diagnosed with cancer and what that meant for her as a patient. Having cancer is a physical, emotional, and social journey that affects not only the patient, but their family, friends, colleagues - a whole community.
Also, from living in Japan, Vanessa explains how the Japanese listen differently than Westerners. She found that Westerners are too quick to rush and not listen to what is said and what is not said. The Japanese culture focuses on judgement and filters that impede great listening.
Market research lets companies listen to customers every day. But do they choose to listen?
Tune in to Learn
- Vanessa describes the aspects of her physical, emotional, and social journey. Not being able to do what she used to do. She was holding on too tight to pre-cancer life and not understanding that life would be different now.
- While Vanessa was stunned at the news of having cancer, luckily her husband was with her and was able to take notes on what her doctor was saying about it.
- Vanessa learned that when delivering tough news, rather than being very dry, it should be done in a very thoughtful and empathetic way.
- When you need to communicate something but don’t stop to make sure the listener (person or audience) is hearing you, then that becomes ineffective communication. You’re talking, but they are not listening.
- To do things differently and prepare a listener for tough news is first asking them about their mindset. Find out what’s important to the listener. Give them time to grasp what is happening and how they want to proceed.
- Gauge what is said but also what is not said to help someone deal with difficult news.
- In market research, it’s important to acknowledge patterns and people’s comments to let the listener know that they have been heard. React to a reaction.
- Communication is not just words. But how often are we actually watching and listening? Not enough.
- The Japanese culture is very zen and considerate. With the Japanese, you need to listen to what is unsaid and pick up information through actions, such as when they take in a breath of air. They are aware of their surroundings and details, which allows them to listen.
- Westerners who travel to Japan should not take everything at face value. In Japan, there is much more context and meaning. Take time to learn and listen to the cultural context.
- Avoid judging others. Vanessa had her own definition of equality and thought Japanese women were not being treated equally and that was discrimination. However, after conducting research, she discovered that was not true. The Japanese define equality differently. You can fail to listen because you have biases.
- Companies often invest a lot of money into listening consumers. But how well do they listen? Companies track what they want to know about, but not necessarily what the consumer wants to tell them. Also, too much data is tracked, so not all of it is used.
- The market research industry is evolving to understand what companies need to listen for. Consumers are making information available to companies every day - if they choose to listen to it.
- Listen to every complaint to figure out what you need to do - that is market research. Everybody should be a researcher and use data. There are techniques to listen for the right things and find the signal, not the noise.
- Market research is listening to your consumers, creating data around your consumers, and understanding your consumers.
- There is so much data available. We need to understand how to use and listen to it.
- While at Coca-Cola, Vanessa taught people how to listen and ask questions to make sure they were good listeners. She used the stream of consciousness technique - just letting a person talk. They remember things that were important, and you ask them about what they said.
- Don’t ask “Why” because it makes people have to defend their point of view. It is more inviting to say, “I want to understand” rather than “I don’t understand.” Make market research inviting and engaging.
- Sometimes, consumers cannot communicate what they want to say.
Links and Resources:
Vanessa Oshima on LinkedIn
Quotes:
When you are giving tough news, that level of conversation has to be very thoughtful. - Vanessa
Everybody says communication is not just words, and they are so right. - Vanessa
Want to create a big impact? Subscribe to the Deep Listening podcast and never miss an episode.
If you have any suggestions, questions or recommendations for people to interview for podcast please email podcast@oscartrimboli.com.
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In low context, “No” means no. “Yes” means yes. I say what I mean, and I mean what I say. I get to the point, and I am direct. High-context is less clear. Contextual is not only about what is said but how it is said....the tone, pitch, facial expressions, etc.
It is important to know your own culture before you can understand someone else’s culture. Today’s guest is Tom Verghese, a cross-cultural consultant. Tom expresses the importance of listening for meaning, what’s unsaid, and use of silence.
We live in a globalized world, yet we spend very little time reflecting on our own culture. So, most of us are unable to articulate our own cultural values. To be a culturally intelligent leader, it is critical to understand your own cultural values.
How can you close a deal by listening to another culture? In this episode, Tom describes how things work across cultures. He is committed to greater understanding across cultures.
Tune in to Learn
- Tom addresses differences between cultures, such as when scheduling meetings. People can listen carefully to what’s being discussed, rather than spending all their time paying attention to the clock.
- In some cultures, it is difficult for people to challenge, speak up, have an opinion...unless they are asked or invited to do so.
- How do you move forward into the senior level of the glass ceiling? It’s not about your education or how hard you worked, it is about the unsaid.
- It’s about whether people you meet with will trust you, if you will know what to do and use during formal dinners - unspoken things.
- How do we learn that? Seek sponsorship, guidance, and coaching to learn the rules of the games when it comes to different cultures.
- It can be as simple as how to shake hands. When Tom first came to Australia to sell encyclopedias door-to-door, he sold nothing. His manager taught him how to properly shake hands there for people to view him as trustworthy, sincere, and reliable - that all comes from a handshake.
- However, coming from Malasia, Tom had been giving a gentle handshake. There was a clash, and he was giving the wrong impressions.
- Handshakes and eye contact are non-verbal forms of communication that matter in different cultures.
- There are differences in high vs. low-context communication styles. It is not just about what is said, but non-verbal communication, as well. The message is not in what is said, but what is not being said.
- Silence comes into play because there are a lot more gaps when determining when to respond and what to listen for. In Western culture, there are social cues. For example, one person speaks and the other person pauses. In other cultures, there is overlap where people speak at the same time and on top of each other.
- A gap of silence demonstrates a level of respect. This can be very challenging for some people.
- Went Tom and a client went to Korea for a meeting in the banking industry, his client found it difficult to not over-talk. He found it a lot easier to talk about what to do in different cultures, than to actually do what you are supposed to do in the moment.
- This experience helped Tom to improve his coaching techniques by having clients ask a question and then perform a physical movement as a way to keep quiet - become comfortable in the silence.
- Watch and listen for indicators that typically go over your head. Make sure to ask follow-up questions to move toward action.
- Years ago, it was about cross-cultural effectiveness: how to deal with different cultures. Now, the focus is on cultural intelligence - how to deal with people from different cultural backgrounds. For example, someone may look Chinese, but they were raised in America, studied in Spain, and married someone from Norway.
- It comes down to deep listening - how do I listen for the message behind the words?
- How do you start a meeting that is conscious of all cultures present? Establish agreements, ground rules, and a belief system. For example, agree on a specific time standard, ie. British, India, etc.
- If you work with language interpreters, Tom’s advice is to speak less.
- Be careful. Jokes are very difficult to translate across different cultures.
- The person who breaks the rules is the person who does n, which creates angst.
- Different cultures treat conflict differently. Conflict involves different points of agreement and view. When dealing with someone who has a different view, disagree gently and in ways that maintain relationships.
- Be interested in the other and what they are saying. Everyone has a story. Listen to that story.
Links and Resources:
Cultural Synergies
Cultural Synergies LinkedIn
Quotes:
It’s all of the things that’s the unsaid, which is really around organizational culture. - Tom
Sometimes the message is not in what’s being said, but what’s not being said. - Tom
Want to create a big impact? Subscribe to the Deep Listening podcast and never miss an episode.
If you have any suggestions, questions or recommendations for people to interview for podcast please email podcast@oscartrimboli.com.
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Designers understand the importance of drawing, but what about note taking to visually capture ideas, experiences, and information? What really matters in a conversation? Mike Rohde shares how sketchnoting has changed his life. Listening is at the heart of what he learned about it. By listening, Mike is able to form an analysis of what he is hearing to visually draw it. He makes an impact beyond words.
Mike is a user experience designer, author, and creator of a listening language called, Sketchnoting. He comes from a long line of listeners, including his father and mother. From them, Mike learned the value of observing, asking questions, awareness of others, and additional listening skills. Also, a few of his teachers and others at college, including jazz radio disc jockey Howard Austin, helped guide his career.
Howard could be tough but understanding. He made Mike strive for quality standards. For example, during college, Mike became passionate about a project for Howard where he researched Leica cameras because he was fascinated by photography. He produced an audio/visual slideshow featuring handmade illustrations. Howard seemed pleased and impressed.
Now, Mike’s work stretches across the whole spectrum from user testing to designing an interface to make things look right and work properly.
In this episode, Mike discusses the process of facilitating a group of people to listen to what users and an organization need. The first step is to create a script to test on the users. What do you want to discover about your application? Users are observed using the application and notes and videos are captured. What are the patterns? The information leads designers to finding solutions.
Tune in to Learn
- It is beneficial to see people using applications and products to determine what works well and what needs to be improved. Discussions are held to find solutions to issues.
- Mike leads whiteboarding sessions for his team to spend time discussing an application before user testing.
- Mike shares examples of when end users or staff members had a transformational impact on an application after discussing or testing it.
- You don’t want end users to struggle with an application and simply give up on using it. Often, it involves listening to what is unsaid. Testing identifies such issues, and lets a team immediately regroup to solve issues and test again.
- Mike has authored two books: The Sketchnote Workbook and The Sketchbook Handbook. His books help people to listen properly and simplify what they hear when taking notes.
- Mike had been frustrated about his own notetaking - he was good at it, but hated doing it. He wrote too many details and in too big of a book. He never wanted to reread his notes or analyze them. He discovered tips and tricks, including using a smaller notebook and writing fewer details. He started to analyze and listen to what was valuable enough to be captured. He started to draw pictures instead of writing, which he began to refer to as sketchnoting.
- Mike discusses the process of printing his books, from understanding the content, deciding how to lay it out, handling production work, and creating illustrations.
- He wanted to create a community through his sketchnoting books, where he could spread the concept to others and make it adaptable. The community is warm and encouraging - creating a generous spirit. It is a gift and legacy from Mike.
Links and Resources:
Sketchnotes; The Sketchnote Workbook and The Sketchnote Handbook
Leica cameras
Howard Austin at Milwaukee Area Technical College (MATC)
Quotes:
Listening is the real secret weapon of sketchnoting.- Mike
The trick is you can’t give the answers. When they struggle, you start to see revelations. - Mike
Want to create a big impact? Subscribe to the Deep Listening podcast and never miss an episode.
If you have any suggestions, questions or recommendations for people to interview for podcast please email podcast@oscartrimboli.com.
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Most organizations, which are groups of people led by someone, are poor at listening. But the tone at the top drives it all. As a leader, if you don’t listen to both verbal and non-verbal communication, as well as proactively engage others, then your approach or method of listening will not cascade through your organization and down to customers. Create a connection that is powerful and deep. Karen Borg is a commercial businessperson who discusses the role of market research in commercial organizations and how money is wasted by repeating research and ignoring what customers are saying.
Karen brings many different perspectives on how to listen to different opinions to reach a great outcome. What are the roles involved with listening? As a result, you may have to change what you are saying.
While in boarding school in Germany, teachers taught Karen about listening. In the German language, there is a formal and informal use of “you.” The language and the culture is more of a formal way of communicating. Therefore, listening is predicated on whether you are being addressed formally or informally.
Concessions are made for people who have not grown up in such a culture. But you should consider certain things when interacting with someone from another culture. Such as, appreciate any effort someone has made to understand your culture. If they don’t put forth effort, then others may view their engagement style as insulting and inappropriate. Karen describes the importance of appreciating and respecting different cultures and demonstrating that you want to learn more.
Tune in to Learn
- Karen describes the difference in commerce cultures in the East and elsewhere, such as whether to shake hands or not.
- In Japan, Karen went to a supermarket and thought she bought some kind of dried fish. She shared it with others, which made meetings with them much easier because they had shared something together.
- Karen attended boarding school in Germany, in a culture where she knew nothing about it. She was very much a foreigner. Eventually, she could listen to others who were speaking German and understand everything they were saying. Her experience in Germany, though, helped her to become independent and adaptable.
- Karen was born in Australia, and eventually moved back there. When she returned to Australia, she discovered how much more informal and acknowledging teachers were in schools.
- Karen moved from academic learning into commerce, which took her to some amazing far and away places. She wanted to experience the intersection of commerce and creativity, so she first got into advertising.
- Business is about the delivery of outcomes. Ultimately, you have to deliver results. Customers, shareholders, and others expect that.
- Briefing Process: To write a good brief is an art. Language, when well used, can tell a very clear story about the objective you are trying to achieve. When briefs are done poorly, the outcomes can be diabolical. People are not well-trained in how to articulate their thoughts and structure briefs.
- A common element across all great briefs is when you start out with the end in sight - what you are trying to achieve. Develop the structure of the objective first, and then fill around it.
- Karen decided to move away from advertising to become a client instead, where she could experience owning everything - from making decisions to handling budgets. She went to a chocolate company to learn how to build and maintain a business.
- Money is often wasted on market research. Hear what the customer said and do what the customer asked. Customers are usually emotionally attached to specific brands and products. Determine whether research results have changed or not and how people view the packaging and products - do they find them tiring or not. It’s the trusted and the loved that keeps customers coming back.
- Nobody has bad memories, only good, about confectionary - sunny times and good feelings.
- Karen shares an experience with a dissatisfied customer in a hospital in Japan about a sterilization product and a lightbulb malfunctioning in it. In Japanese culture, a product must work the same way, every time. When it does not work the way it should, a customer’s anger becomes intense. In response, Karen was sincere, apologized, and expressed that she would try to solve the problem. She listened to the customer and acknowledged their frustration. It comes down to cultural norms.
- Organizations are typically poor at listening and engaging others, and that approach comes from the top. The leader of an organization setting up metrics around customers and their needs that need to be followed, measured, and responded to quickly via dialogue.
- Leaders are listeners who consider what others say and offer support. Trust that the other person has heard you and is willing to respond in some way. Judge by action, not words.
- Set up an engagement model that works for everyone. Acknowledge that something needs to be addressed, but not calling it out or identifying the “elephant in the room.” So that in ends positively and resolves issues.
Links and Resources:
Karen Borg
Rowntree Hoadley Factory; Nestlé
Haribo Gummy Bears
Volkswagen
Mars and Coke
Johnson & Johnson
Quotes:
“By opening yourself up and demonstrating you want to learn more, people want to share more.” - Karen Borg
“It’s an art to say just enough, not too much, not too little.” - Karen Borg
Want to create a big impact? Subscribe to the Deep Listening podcast and never miss an episode.
If you have any suggestions, questions or recommendations for people to interview for podcast please email podcast@oscartrimboli.com.
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Ebohr Figueroa is the principal consultant for Converge International. In this episode, Ebohr and I take a magical tour through modern corporate Australia. He is a world-class moderator who opens a window into modern corporations. He looks at conflict and totally deconstructs it. We learn what is disempowering about conflict avoidance. We also learn what is productive when conflict is managed well.
How many conflicts are you a part of right now? What role do you play in trying to avoid these conflicts? Ebohr provides fantastic tips on how to make progress through conflict. The goal is to do this in a way that supported, productive, and impactful. We really deep dive into conflict resolution in the corporate workplace, and Ebohr offers amazing insights.
Today’s Topics:
- Constructing a vessel where we feel safe includes having core values like being kind, being courteous, being honest, being thoughtful of others, having a sense of humor, and recognizing that we are all human and can be misunderstood when we get stressed.
- We need to have the courage to check in with colleagues if we say something that is inappropriate.
- Managers need to be able to call behavior problems when they observe it.
- We also need to be compassionate and understanding.
- We may see a colleague with bad behavior and not understand that they may be struggling with personal issues.
- There is an appropriate way to do that without having it turn into gossip.
- We should also be careful that we aren’t fanning the flames of conflict.
- Recognizing power dynamics and practicing feedback.
- Role modeling and still being human when wearing your manager’s hat.
- Find a mentor to practice conflict resolution. Be aware of factors that create a positive work culture such as making people feel valued and recognize. Also be mindful of social values and understand that people will place value on different things.
- Creating a safe environment and creating context.
- Managers should also practice coaching their team members.
- How people can sometimes feel trivialized to not heard when their mediations are swept under the carpet.
- Ebohr asks many questions until he finds the person who can give detailed context, so he can understand what is actually going on.
- He meets with people individually, but they sometime have a support member with them.
- To prepare Ebohr clears his mind and sets an intention to listen and understand.
- Mediations where some people don’t speak English well. Some are aware or self-conscious of their accents.
- There are nuances to language that can be lost.
- Finding what is important to a person and what makes them feel validated. A misunderstanding is just the tip of the iceberg.
- Listening deliberately for what is unsaid and listening beyond the obvious.
- You often get the most crucial piece of information towards the end of the conversation.
- Listening with vulnerability and creating barriers. Ebohr shares a trip that he went on with his dad.
Links and Resources:
Converge International
Ebohr Figueroa on LinkedIn
Quotes:
“In order for tension to be received well, an environment has to be created where it’s safe for me to say those things.” Ebohr Figueroa
“We need to have an acceptance that we are all fallible and yet also commit to a baseline of positive human traits.” Ebohr Figueroa
Want to create a big impact? Subscribe to the Deep Listening podcast and never miss an episode.
If you have any suggestions, questions or recommendations for people to interview for podcast please email podcast@oscartrimboli.com.
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Sammi Grant is a professional dialect/vocal coach and voiceover artist. She has coached over 50 theatrical productions, worked on major television shows, and provided private coaching to countless actors. Sammi brings a unique perspective on listening and focusing on the human voice. Sammi is legally blind and her hearing is more attuned, because it has to be.
Today, we explore how to listen like a dialect coach. We also explore the impact of breathing on how we listen to ourselves and others. Sammi listens deeply to accents from around the world and translates how those accents are spoken to teach her clients the use of those accents. She also provides accent modification to anyone wishing to sound more general American.
Today’s Topics:
- Sammi is legally blind. She still has impaired vision in one eye, but she has degenerative glaucoma.
- She shares a story of Mr. Thompson a great teacher who would really listen to students.
- The last couple of years of high school, Sammi started noticing how people use their voices to tell stories.
- She is hyper aware and even tones who voice down to sound more general American.
- She is aware of what she is doing in a curious non-judgemental way.
- Consciously using breath and avoiding vocal fry which can be limiting and not as pleasing to listen to.
- A lot of people don’t breath before they start talking because of fear of public speaking.
- Sammi helps actors learn how to portray a certain role. She strives for authenticity, comprehension, and acting.
- The accent needs to be tied to the character and the choices that character makes.
- Placement, oral posture, sound changes, rhythm and intonation are all things she looks at.
- She also has clients who want to tone down their accents.
- Sammi shares how to create an accent from London and Pakistan.
- Noticing the feeling and emotion behind the words without using vision.
- Using pitch and volume to either express or hide your emotions.
- Time periods and the characters circumstances play a role in how their accents sound.
- Be open minded and listen beyond the surface.
Links and Resources:
Sammi Grant
Sammi Grant on Facebook
Sammi Grant on LinkedIn
How To Do 12 Different Accents
This Dialect Coach Can Transport You With Her Perfect Accents
Quotes:
“It’s a natural inclination of mine to listen and take everything in.” Sammi Grant
“I am accustomed to analyzing my voice down to tiny little breaths and pauses.” Sammi Grant
“I’d rather listen to people with different accents than to listen to the same one all day.” Sammi Grant
Want to create a big impact? Subscribe to the Deep Listening podcast and never miss an episode.
If you have any suggestions, questions or recommendations for people to interview for podcast please email podcast@oscartrimboli.com.
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Not listening creates a huge cost to the medical system. Dr. Michael Buist is here today, to talk about that cost and the importance of listening in a medical setting. Dr. Michael Buist is a full time academic physician and intensive care specialist. He is a graduate of Otago Medical School in New Zealand (MB ChB 1983) and completed specialist training with the Royal Australasian College of Physicians in intensive care medicine (FRACP 1991, FCICM 2010).
In 2007, he graduated Doctor of Medicine with the submission of his thesis to Monash University; The epidemiology and prevention of in hospital cardiac arrests. He also has a graduate certificate in health economics from Monash University (2001). He is a Honorary Clinical Professor, Faculty of Health, University of Tasmania. In addition he undertakes private physician clinics in a community general practice in Wynyard, Tasmania and is a clinical coordinator for Ambulance Tasmania.
His academic contributions (80 peer review publications) are in the areas of health reform, evidence-based approaches to improving hospital systems and processes, and clinical engagement, on contemporary issues related to patient safety and patient centred care.
He has made significant contributions to patient safety that has had a substantial positive impact on hospitals, clinicians and communities nationally and internationally. This is best exemplified by his two publications on Rapid Response Systems in the British Medical Journal (2002 and 2007) and the Lancet (2005). Professor Buist has been a passionate and public advocate for health system quality and reform with a particular focus on patient safety.
In this episode, Dr Michael Buist describes the impact of limited listening training in the medical profession. Michael outlines the personal cost to him and his wife of not being heard whilst they were patients in hospital and the systemic implications across the medical and public sector which provides most of the funding to health care.
Tune in to Learn
- How Michael is passionate about the role of listening in a medical context.
- Michael’s athletic coach taught him how to listen with his own body to notice the congruence of what is being said and what the body is showing.
- How the most important thing that can be changed in the medical profession is reforming the listening between patient and caregiver which takes place at the bedside.
- The nuances of listening and observing children who are faced with life and death issues.
- Michael shares powerful personal stories about life, death, and himself and his own family. These stories accentuate Michael’s passion for listening.
- Transforming 21st century medicine to patient centered medicine.
- Assuming that people are listening and not teaching people to listen well.
- How not listening can lead to adverse medical events. Patients need to be listened to.
- How patients who don’t have doctorates and aren’t highly educated get ignored.
- The problem with healthcare is too based on how the healthcare system runs as opposed to patient centric care.
- Asking what was the best part of your day instead of saying how is your day. Listening is about conversation.
- When there is an equivalent level of verbal questions and listening that goes both ways people are hitting it off.
- Teaching students to ask thoughtful questions from a medical perspective.
- The power of exploring what is unsaid.
- How a UK hospital had a culture of substandard care. A woman blew the whistle on the hospital on how her mother was treated there.
- They found that the right culture needs to be created at the bedside, and a big part of that culture is just listening to patients.
- Patients need to be treated as human beings who do understand their bodies.
Links and Resources:
2014 Paris keynote - Please listen to me, I am bleeding - Michael Buist
Australian Story - Doctor in the House (Dr Michael Buist)
Quotes:
“When I was growing up we didn’t have sophisticated training tools, so it was all about listening to your body.” Dr. Michael Buist
“Listening to me is not about just taking in the words. It is taking in the whole environment and what is happening.” Dr. Michael Buist
Want to create a big impact?
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If you have any suggestions, questions or recommendations for people to interview for podcast please email podcast@oscartrimboli.com.
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As a young girl, Adaire Petrichor companioned her grandfather during his life-altering experiences with cancer, the treatments that followed and his eventual death. Adaire was profoundly affected when her youngest sister's life was tragically cut short when she was 21. In these two very different deaths, Adaire began to see the many ways grief carved its initials into one’s heart and soul.
She was to learn one more lesson about advocacy and cancer and the circles of life and death when her youngest son, age 11, was diagnosed with a rare form of cutaneous lymphoma. Little did she know how these experiences would shape and influence the inner landscape of her soul, nurturing the seed that was emerging as her life's work.
Adaire is the Founder of Heart of Dying Doulas LLC and the Founder and Director of The Heart of Dying Project, a budding non-profit dedicated to building community-based circles of care, through education, training and advocacy. The Heart of Dying’s mission is in Guiding the dying home, one Heart, one Family, one Community at a time.
She is deeply invested in the community and has been training end of life doulas, holding monthly meet-ups, workshops and trainings in end of life care for the last several years. A large part of the Heart of Dying’s vision is in creating a social hospice serving homeless and underserved women, while training displaced women, to accompany the residents as end of life companion doulas.
In this episode, Adaire describes how she listens to others at the end of their life. Adaire explains how she integrates families and medical professionals into the discussions that happen when life is about to move to a different place.
Today’s Topics:
- Adaire is an end of life doula and chaplain who helps people navigate through the difficult task of transitioning from life to death.
- She shares how she listens carefully to those moving on and away from life.
- She listens carefully to their families and the medical practitioners involved in the situation.
- We talk about the incredible power of looking carefully into people.
- Listening deeply without judgement to make sense and meaning out of what they are saying about the purpose of their lives.
- Finding the story for why children are here on earth. There are a lot of emotions that rise and fall like a hurricane on the ocean.
- The importance of being open and developing rapport, but not offering answers and just letting them talk.
- Not being emotional and thinking of yourself as a conduit or blank slate that is just holding the words, feelings, and energy that this person is sharing.
- Adaire uses techniques to bring herself in the present moment like journaling, writing, and paying attention to the chair she is sitting in.
- It’s not her job to take away this person’s pain as they offer her moments of their history and grief.
- When they are finished they will tell her physically and emotionally and take back what they need.
- Sharing these moments is a gift that is being shared and received.
- Repeating some parts of the story helps with integration and making sense.
- Listening and just helping the family out and creating a healing and remarkable experience.
- Balancing listening to those transitioning and those staying behind. Trusting intuition and experience.
- Practice applying value to the act of being to become a deeper listener.
- How the dying speak in a different language when they are close to death.
Links and Resources:
- The Life of Death
- Heart of Dying Doulas LLC
- The Heart of Dying Project
Quotes:
I benefited thinking of language as a whole experience. - Adaire
The visual, the sound, and the smell all of that is really part of my language. - Adaire
Want to create a big impact? Subscribe to the Deep Listening podcast and never miss an episode.
If you have any suggestions, questions or recommendations for people to interview for podcast please email podcast@oscartrimboli.com.
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Cameron Hough is an acoustic and theatre consultant with consulting firm Arup, and a freelance music critic. He has over 10 years experience in the acoustic design of a wide range of projects, but has a special interest in the acoustics of performing arts buildings, which combines his technical background as an engineer with his skills as a classically-trained orchestral musician.
He regularly attends performances and continues to play with orchestras and chamber music groups (including as the concertmaster of the Brisbane Philharmonic Orchestra and first violinist of Point String Quartet), and brings an approach to listening from both an artistic and a technical background.
Today, he explains how engineering can improve the way you listen to sounds of instruments and voices, and how you can learn how to create an effective listening environment.
Today’s Topics:
- Cameron talks about growing up and having to be the child who was seen and not heard.
- He started playing violin when he was five or six, and he has always been interested in sound.
- Cameron is the concertmaster or lead violin. He is the person who tunes the orchestra at the beginning. He is an intermediary between the conductor and the orchestra.
- What’s involved when creating music and the maths behind the sound of a violin.
- Hearing beats when the strings are perfectly in tune.
- How sound interacts with our ears and ultimately our brains.
- The interaction of sounds in spaces like auditoriums, concert halls, and restaurants
- How great listening environments are created through their physical attributes.
- How to make an impactful office from a listener’s perspective.
- Taking sound for granted because it is always there. It’s not obvious if you can’t listen deeply.
- Experiencing a place for the first time and thinking of it as tourism of sound.
- How it takes practice to train your ears to notice things when you walk into a room.
- Being filled with wonder when hearing things for the first time.
- A great conductor has an ability to hear what is happening with several musicians simultaneously.
- How good acoustics has an element of personal taste similar to wine tasting.
- Providing a sound experience for people through acoustics and a good environment for sound.
- Using white noise or introducing extra noise to an office can make things better.
- Hard surfaces reflect sound effectively. Foam and soft furnishings can absorb sound.
- The lost listener is not hearing you or engaging at all.
- Cameron feels he is the shrewd listener, because he likes solving problems.
- Understanding where a sound is coming from by noticing the time that it arrives at your ear.
Links and Resources:
- Cameron Hough on LinkedIn
- Arup
- Brisbane Philharmonic Orchestra
Quotes:
“Once your ears are open, you realize how much more is out there” - Cameron
"I would really love if people had more awareness of sound.” -Cameron
Want to create a big impact? Subscribe to the Deep Listening podcast and never miss an episode.
If you have any suggestions, questions or recommendations for people to interview for podcast please email podcast@oscartrimboli.com.
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Sophie Weldon is a strategic storytelling and community engagement specialist. She is an experienced public speaker, filmmaker and recognised leader and innovator in her field. Sophie began her social action journey at 14 after she had a deep listening
experience with a former refugee named Adut. She believes stories have the power to connect, heal and transform us.
Stories also capture an organisation’s purpose, align employees to this purpose, increase productivity and act as a medium for communicating values & beliefs. In short, stories help us belong. Sophie has worked with key social and private sector organisations before starting her own business Humankind Enterprises.
Humankind Enterprises, established in 2015, is a social enterprise with a mission to connect people, one story at a time. They develop projects and platforms that harness the power of storytelling to create greater connection, acceptance and resilience in
Australian communities. Today, we talk about how listening is a practice and a discipline. What can the next generation and the last generation teach you about listening?
Today’s Topics:
- How Sophie is an amazing story collector, and how she has created a community of story collectors through social enterprise.
- Creating a listening culture across generations by having youth of this generation collect stories from an older generation.
- Sophie shares the role that her grandmother played in her development and journey.
- How a refugee from Sudan named Adut influenced the way Sophie shares stories and makes them heard.
- What compelled and motivated Sophie and listening with her heart.
- How just listening made a difference in Adut’s life. Through this listening, the deepest friendship of Sophie’s life was created.
- Enriching the society of the older population and creating connections.
- Powerful questions about past, present, and future that unlock the story.
- What have your strengths and successes in life been? This is a social starter question to celebrate the successes of life.
- Struggling with unreconciled stories and creating a meaningful experience.
- How do you want your family to remember you? What is your legacy?
- Sophie likes questions of the moment and stories of the present.
- Moments of freedom and beautiful reminders of hope.
- The role of silence in collecting stories.
- The story booths and pods are popup video booths that they bring into organizations, and people can use them to record stories on their own.
- Prompting with story starters based on the organisation's values.
- Helping companies to better humanize what their values are through the use of stories.
- Helping people to feel connected and heard and using micro moments to record stories and beautiful moments.
- Start with your own story, your family’s story, and your community’s story.
- It starts with each of us and treating people as you want to be treated.
Links and Resources:
- Humankind Enterprises
- StoryPod
- Sophie Weldon on LinkedIn
- @SophieWeldon2 on Twitter
Quotes:
If you want to know about listening, start to listen all around you. Sophie Weldon
There is so much we can’t see until we look for it. The same goes for listening. Sophie Weldon
My grandmother taught me to listen with my heart. She used to say the heart is the heart of the mother. Sophie Weldon
Want to create a big impact? Subscribe to the Deep Listening podcast and never miss an episode.
If you have any suggestions, questions or recommendations for people to interview for podcast please email podcast@oscartrimboli.com.
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Anthony Weeks is an illustrator, documentary filmmaker, and visual storyteller based in San Francisco. He has more than 18 years of experience working with senior-level product and strategy development teams to think visually and turn data into stories.
In the role of public listener and illustrator, Anthony collaborates with project teams to create visually rich chronicles and murals of conversations in real time. The visual storytelling facilitates dialogue, engages participation, clarifies vision, and animates the process of ideation.
In this episode, Anthony explains how he prepares to listen and the role of subjectivity in listening. He provides some very practical tips on what to do when you get distracted whilst listening.
Today’s Topics:
- Anthony is a graphic facilitator who listens to teams and groups and then creates a visual chronicle of the conversation.
- The role of meaning and how to think about listening in capital letters.
- Listen carefully as he talks about his capital S and the role of subjectivity in listening.
- Explore with him as he talks about the role of silence in a one-on-on dialogue.
- How silence can honor a room in a group context and give the room an opportunity to think and reflect on where they are at.
- His capability to listen for meaning and bring it to life in his visual artefacts.
- Preparing for the day ahead. Anthony has had several repeat clients who know why he is there.
- When working with a client for the first time, he gets in the room early and positions himself so he will be present but not intrusive.
- His role of listening dictates where he sets up his work area. After a brief introduction, he listens and creates drawings.
- Anthony claims his subjectivity as a listener, and he hopes he is hired for that.
- What is not being said can have many meanings, but we aren’t talking about it because of culture, safety, or it’s a painful subject.
- The challenges of getting into the mental and emotional space of listening.
- People talk about mindfulness a lot. For Anthony, mindfulness is meditation everyday, every morning, and before every meeting to create space to listen in a dedicated way.
- Appreciating and honoring the facts that we can all be good listeners.
- An example of listening from the perspective of a 911 operator. Transactional listening and recognizing oneself as a listener.
- The importance of coming up with a language around listening.
Links and Resources:
- Dogpatch Films
- @Weeksonian on Twitter
Quotes:
“There are threads and connective tissue that pulls the conversation together beyond just data point.” Anthony Weeks
“The best compliment I get is when somebody says that I really captured what they were trying to say.” Anthony Weeks
Want to create a big impact? Subscribe to the Deep Listening podcast and never miss an episode.
If you have any suggestions, questions or recommendations for people to interview for podcast please email podcast@oscartrimboli.com.
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Cath Mundy’s work composing original music for theatre has explored diverse ground, including sacredCOWs, The Quivering, which won a Green Room Award for Outstanding Sound Design / Music Score 2007.
In 1996 with British singer-songwriter (& husband) Jay Turner, Cath formed acoustic-music duo Mundy-Turner, performing as a vocalist, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist (violin, piano, ukulele, percussion).
Over two decades, they released seven albums, their debut High Life winning a Queensland Recording Association Award 1999 for Best Folk/Ethnic Album. They have toured many countries performing at festivals, venues and events, including supporting The Corrs and Fairport Convention.
Cath conducts three community choirs: Freedom Train, Mixed Beans multicultural choir and With One Voice Brisbane. She witnesses first-hand every week the power that group-singing has to make positive change in individual lives and to create healthier, more connected communities. Cath is passionate about empowering all people to reclaim their human right to sing.
Today’s Topics:
- What audiences can learn from a musician and a customer.
- How we are listening on a number of levels.
- It’s a skill to listen and train as a choir. They listen to themselves, what’s around them, and the whole group.
- The difference between local listening, neighborhood listening, and regional listening.
- How a conductor not only listens to the choir, but they also listen to the audience.
- The importance of relaxing. Getting people to play to help them relax.
- Visual cues and people’s breathing. Changing the shape of their mouths and helping them hear the difference.
- Shining eyes and an inner smile are signs of being engaged.
- A surprise visit from John Farnham and the Choir of Hard Knocks.
- Hearing an intensity of motion beyond the sound.
- The conductor’s role listening to the audience. The importance of engagement.
- It can be difficult without the visual, but you can feel their energy.
- Smiles, brightness of eyes, and an open body facing towards you signals engagement.
- Making creative choices as opposed to mistakes.
- The importance of eye contact especially with connecting with the choir and keeping them focused.
- Reconnecting as a lost listener.
- Silence is important. Not forgetting to pay attention to the silence.
- Paying attention to the space and where we breath.
- Silence can be difficult for some people. A sign of a good friendship is comfortably sitting in silence. Where more emotion gets heard.
Links and Resources:
- Mundy - Turner
- Freedom Train
- Cath Mundy on Facebook
- @cathjay on Twitter
- Benjamin Zander
- You’re the Voice John Farnham
- The Choir of Hard Knocks
Quotes:
I like to draw my attention to those moments of silence. They might be really small ones, but they are just as important as the notes we are singing. - Cath
The contrast between sound and silence is where all that interesting interplay happens. - Cath
They were so totally tuned into each other that I felt a total alignment of their sound. - Cath
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Cai Kjaer CEO of Swoop Analytics explains how leaders and employees can listen to each other across issues, departments, and across the world. Today, we explore beyond the one on one dialogue. We also explore beyond team dialogue. We dive into listening at scale including thousands of more of conversations simultaneously.
Cai Kjaer is an extraordinary leader in this field. His company Swoop Analytics focuses on the power of collaboration and people networks to get work done. They are a consulting company that maps organizational networks to find the most valuable metrics to drive collaborative business performance.
Today’s Topics:
- The difference between the way men and women network.
- How everyone in the warehouse went to a guy named Elvis for help, yet it was completely unknown to upper management.
- There is no simple manual way to get this information sent to you.
- Cai shares how he got involved surveying people about who they contact to get work done. This eventually led to the founding of Swoop Analytics.
- Yammer is an enterprise network where people can collaborate.
- They took all of their IP and built the platform about relationship insights to build a profile around collaboration habits.
- If you have an enterprise social platform is make yourself visible and start to read.
- Having biases and seeing many sides.
- Collecting data across multiple industries.
- 5 archetypes: observer, broadcaster, responder, catalyst, and engagers.
- Engagers are most aspirational as listeners.
- The difference between listening and hearing.
- Being authentic in the way you interact with people.
- Killing myths and conversation at scale.
- Pay attention, look at people, and stay in the moment.
- How men and women play different roles in communication,
- Women are better at interaction with women and with men.
- Men don’t interact as much with women than they do with men.
- Gender issues and diversity in Silicon Valley.
- Forming more relationships with women and listening and engaging.
- Appreciating the role of women in a networked world.
- Ask questions. Listen and ask followups. Don’t get into the mindset of just telling.
Links and Resources:
- Swoop Analytics
- Cai Kjaer LinkedIn
- @caikjaer on Twitter
- Yammer
- Facebook Workplace
Quotes:
“We looked at gender data and women are better at interacting than men are.” Cai Kjaer
“Men are good at establishing new relationships from a transactional basis to get work done then move on.” Cai Kjaer
“Senior leaders have no clue about who are the ones that really carry the most influence in their organizations.” Cai Kjaer
Want to create a big impact? Subscribe to the Deep Listening podcast and never miss an episode.
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Lisa Lockland-Bell is a Leader in Vocal Communication. Her ability to Diagnose, Heal and Reveal the potential that lies within each human voice is Spectacular. A respected Keynote Speaker, Vocal Coach and Facilitator: With over three decades of experience, her unique perspective on vocal communication forms the foundation for her skill based speaking and training programs. Highlighting the importance of using your Voice for Positioning | Impact | Influence. Her strategies are innovative yet simple, with a clear framework that are unique to Speaking within the New World.
Why?
Lisa has studied vocal communication with the world’s best, performed as an opera singer and coached internationally for more than 30 years. The true richness in Lisa’s communication mastery comes from her profound battle with cancer not once, but twice, arousing a deeper exploration of how human beings communicate. With more than 20 years of research into alternative therapies and understanding of the inner voice, Lisa has combined her skill-based training with elements of survival, reinvention and core values, making her the expert on both the internal and external voices.
Now, passionate about building confidence within the individual and organisations: Lisa’s life work is to Change Results and lives one tone at a time. From tweaking your embouchure to getting the most from your resonating cavities, Lisa knows the human voice intimately. Now, she distils this knowledge into useful communication skills training. Whether it is an intimate one-on-one negotiation or working with a room of staff. Lisa has the knowledge to improve your vocal intelligence, presentation, persuasion, negotiation and public speaking skills.
How?
Lisa knows your voice has the power to break a heart, seal the deal or change the world. But, do you? From the first day Lisa started speaking and coaching, the hearts and minds of the people she works with have been the centre of her business model.Her strategic approach helps you release a restricted voice, soften a forceful tone, strengthen a timid response, make a deeper connection and break down the barriers to effective communication.
Today’s Topics:
- The importance of listening to yourself first.
- Attaching an internal voice to your external voice.
- How to listen and learn voice, listening, and emotional intelligence from an Opera singer.
- Remaining present on stage and bringing magic to the audience and understanding the conductor intimately.
- Being 125% ready or insecurity will step in and create tension in the body.
- Being intensely present, yet human and have humility.
- The conductor can hear the movement of the audience and tell if they are getting bored.
- Voice coaches help people have control over their voice and communicate on different levels.
- Six steps for improving your voice.
- Shift the mindset to understand what you are doing when speaking.
- You can change the way that you structure sound.
- Physical responses when listening to a voice which comes from vibration.
- Speaking with belief and leaving no room for interpretation.
- Synchronizing breathing for deeper listening and understanding.
- Breathing deeply and feeling intake of breath and bringing your brain into focus.
- Indicators of what is not being said such as gestures and body language.
- How deeply someone can listen, and the Armenian women speaking about Lisa.
- She was able to understand by observing and measuring the space between words.
- Lisa had learned all of the cues of timing and inflection and understood that they were talking about her.
- She is very attuned to what people speaking other languages need to speak English.
- An accent doesn’t hinder your ability to communicate it’s your intention and inflection.
- Feeling the pain and having empathy while listening and developing techniques and strategies to help younger people through the process of struggle.
- Asking questions about the lives of older people. Life attaches itself to the voice.
- For both men and women the emotion is just under the surface. For men, it is what is coming out of their mouths as opposed to tone.
- For women, listen with empathy.
- Learning to trust your gut and then daring to give it a voice.
- Being brave and doing what you are meant to do on this Earth.
- Listening for emotion with your right ear.
Links and Resources:
- Lisa Lockland-Bell
- Lisa Lockland-Bell on LinkedIn
- Lisa Lockland-Bell on Facebook
- @LLocklandBell on Twitter
Quotes:
“I’m listening for the nuances and inflections. I’m listening for when you make a statement are you actually landing the voice with the inflection because that gives me a feel of whether you know what you are talking about.” Lisa Lockland Bell
“I’m also listening for the way that you deliver and the timing and the cadence.” Lisa Lockland Bell
“There’s a space between the words that changes everything. Notice the speed. Notice the space.” Lisa Lockland Bell
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Broadcaster and Journalist Tracey Holmes explains how to listen across continents, cultures and context. We learn how to understand the role of preparation in bringing you into a state of complete listening to the speaker. For three decades, Tracey Holmes has been a journalist & broadcaster covering international news, current affairs and global sport.
Her job has taken her around the globe, several times; she's lived and worked for extended periods in Hong Kong, Beijing, Abu Dhabi & Dubai for some of the world's most recognised organisations such as the ABC, SBS, CNN, China Central Television & Dubai Eye.
She is an award winning interviewer, a published author and an educator. Currently Tracey works for the ABC presenting a daily international news & current affairs program and a weekly sports politics program, The Ticket.
She is also senior lecturer in journalism at UTS, Sydney; senior mentor for the IOC Young Reporters program; and trainer for the joint ABC-Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade international program 'WINS'. Tracey is a board member of Volleyball Australia and The Greg Chappell Foundation & is an Ambassador for the Australian Museum and the Sydney Institute of Marine Science.
Today’s Topics:
- Listening to yourself and how a journalist prepares for an interview.
- How Tracey uses all of her senses to gauge how her interviews are going.
- The importance of asking others about who you are interviewing and how those perspectives will help you listen more deeply.
- Digging as deeply as Tracey can and then getting down to the essence of the interview.
- The life in the day of a broadcast journalist and understand the techniques required to stay focused.
- How to keep going when things don’t always go as you plan.
- What Asia can teach us all about listening.
- Watching what people do when learning a new language.
- The things that are said and the things that are unsaid.
- Listening with open eyes and open ears and an open heart.
- With radio people listen deeply and open up.
- How Tracey’s family went to South Africa to go on a surfing trip.
- How International journalists were more about humanity than economics at the Olympics.
- Making people from different places feel more comfortable.
- Going into meditation when not thinking about exploring.
- The importance of language and its syntax and context.
- Listening to history and art to connect better to the people and the culture.
- The role of learning from other cultures and the aboriginal nations.
- How her husbands grandfather was chained to a tree for using his native language.
- The Aboriginal people are good listeners and use space between words well.
- The importance of slowing down and listening completely.
- Being comfortable with silence.
- The story of Clinton Pryor and his 6000 KM trek across Australia.
- He walked from Perth to Canberra to meet Malcolm Turnbull.
- The importance of listening and trying to understand. You don’t always have to have an answer.
- How there is a lot of discussion in the middle that people will listen to.
- Using caution when describing people as role models.
- Listening for meaning and being genuinely curious.
- Tracey carries a microphone and records people who she thinks are interesting.
- Tracey’s interview with a homeless man who had a story.
- He shared why he was there, the problems in Australia, and that he worried about the same things we all worry about.
- You can look at everybody and take something away that makes you better and the overall picture better.
- Meditation and understanding what someone is going through.
- Going on a journey and then bringing it back.
- How Tracey works through the conversations beforehand.
Links and Resources:
- Clinton Pryor
- News Radio
Quotes:
“With your ears you are not just listening. You are also seeing and feeling.” Tracey Holmes
“I can tell when something is gripping because the people around stop doing their work and start listening.” Tracey Holmes
“With all of your senses, you have to do all things.” Tracey Holmes
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World class educator John Corrigan explains how to help children learn to listen. Learn the impact of your listening effectiveness when you notice the familiar and the different.
John Corrigan is a world-class thought leader in education. John is an expert at listening in many dimensions, but the most powerful is as an educator. Today, we have a powerful conversation about helping children to focus and listen, not only during school but for the rest of their lives. I also share a fascinating lecture on effective listening and children.
John is the founder and Principal of Group 8 Education. He specializes in helping individuals increase their effectiveness in the world around them. The steps involved include shifting our attention to rewire our brains, focusing on the wellbeing of others, and leading teams to empower and transform. John has used his education and background to implement change management in organizations and help education shape our capacity to engage in the world around us.
Today’s Topics:
- John grew up in Manchester and his father was a headmaster at a school.
- John got a degree in mathematics, then joined the parachute regiment, he then became a wireline logging engineer in South America and around Europe.
- His thoughts about listening began to emerge as he was trying to learn French.
- He learned Spanish in South America.
- When he moved to Italy he focused on listening intently when Italian people spoke. This actually worked and he was able to learn Italian.
- When he listened he tried to identify the 400 main words of the language.
- He picked up the gestures and face expressions while listening intently.
- He pays attention to everything and his full attention is on the other person.
- Looking at someone's eyes can help focus attention.
- John moved to Sydney and started working in a change management program.
- Then he worked for an environmental group.
- He wanted to work in social change and stumbled upon education as his calling.
- An extraordinary teacher who understands how to listen can impact a child for their entire life.
- By listening fully I was able to encourage my son to modify his behavior for success in school and life.
- Listening by paying full attention. This makes the speaker feel you care about them and they should care about you in their response.
- Using the familiar form of listening. To learn language effectively use the seeking difference mode.
- Our brains aren’t fully developed until our twenties.
- The childhood mind is based on the more primitive parts of the brain.
- The adult mind is based on the whole brain and is self aware and can manage impulses.
- Three phases of education models. Education leads the child out of the childhood mind to the adult mind.
- Allowing the childhood mind to exist in parallel with the emerging adult mind.
- The childhood mind fades away and a young adult emerges.
- Asking different questions based on the model.
Links and Resources:
- Are We Listening To Our Children?
- Group 8 Education
Quotes:
“I was interested in organizations where the relationship between the employee and the customer where a large part of the value.” John Corrigan
“I interviewed a number of teachers, and found a teacher who left a lifelong impact. I discovered that she was listening fully and not judging while responding with kindness and compassion.” John Corrigan
“Outstanding teachers listen and pay full attention.” John Corrigan
Want to create a big impact? Subscribe to the Deep Listening podcast and never miss an episode.
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Bronwyn Law is a family advisor in the funeral industry, and today we explore the role of empathy in listening. Bronwyn deals with conversations at the end of people’s lives. This role has given her an extraordinary sense of empathy and lack of assumptions. She has to display absolute presence when helping families make the difficult decisions when emotions are high and people are vulnerable. This was probably one of the most transformational interviews that I have been a part of.
Today’s Topics:
- Bronwyn shares how she does her job and creates space for people to decide what they would like to do.
- How Bronwyn knows the pain and depth of sadness of losing a loved one.
- Bronwyn shares her childhood and background and how she lost her brother when he was 15.
- Bronwyn also shares her cancer diagnoses when she was 14 and how it was a life changing experience that helped her mature.
- How Bronwyn became involved in the Make a Wish Foundation. She also shares her life changing experience in Nepal.
- How Bronwyn’s brother seemed to be doing well before his suicide.
- The role of silence and the questions that Bronwyn answers for people.
- The importance of not only listening to the words, but also understanding the meaning of the words as expressed by that person.
- Doing your best is the last thing you can do in the person’s honor.
- The balance between it being about the person and for yourself as well.
- How it is important to listen from a place of real genuine interest.
- The opportunity of hearing the story of what people have been through.
- Being present with people as they make necessary decisions to remember their loved one.
- How the death of a spouse after a long marriage of 50 plus years can be very emotional.
- Bronwyn is all four listening types. We can all be a lost listener when we are preoccupied. There is a real art to being present.
- Always take a deep breath before walking into a room and meeting with someone.
- The 5Rhythms dynamic movement process and Gabrielle Roth.
- How everything we do in life leaves a rhythm.
- Listening is not about you, it is all about the other person.
- The importance of building a connection, dropping assumptions, and being present and available.
Links and Resources:
- Make-A-Wish Foundation Australia
- 5Rhythms Gabrielle Roth
Quotes:
“I can sit in a room with someone and be genuinely grateful that I am not in the spot that they are in.” Bronwyn Law
“What I enjoy about my job and what gives me satisfaction is creating space for people to consider what they would like to do.” Bronwyn Law
“When you meet with someone there are ways to communicate other than words.” Bronwyn Law
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It is so important to be able to focus when listening for an extended time. Adam Purcell shares his unique perspective on this as an air traffic controller. He also shares how his career path was discovered through a World War II log book, and how it changed the entire course of his life.
Adam Purcell is an enroute air traffic controller in the Melbourne Air Traffic Services Centre. The aviation bug bit at a young age, while Adam was growing up in the NSW Southern Highlands. He Learned to fly shortly after finishing high school and holds a Bachelor of Aviation from the University of New South Wales, and he worked in airline operations in Sydney before moving into air traffic control.
A qualified controller for five years, he has recently returned to operational work after completing an 18-month secondment as an instructor, teaching trainees at the Air Traffic Control training facility in Melbourne.
Outside of work, Adam has a keen interest in WWII Air Force history, and he has interviewed many veterans of the strategic night bombing campaign for a UK-based archive. He is also a keen photographer.
Today’s Topics:
- What a day in the life of an air traffic controller is like.
- The importance of the read back and actively listening.
- Overcoming internal and external distractions.
- Keeping instructions straight forward and slowing down with International pilots.
- How old memories can spark a tangent and those are the stories that trigger another story.
- The importance of longer pauses and asking fewer questions to get more out of an interview.
- The role of silence can be awkward, but it is also an important interview element.
- Being aware of your audience when you look at them and how visual cues may not mean what you first think they mean.
- How recall takes time.
- The lost listener who moves on during the read backs and not monitoring what he is hearing.
- How there are consequences of not listening for air traffic controllers and the pilots and planes.
- The power of high standards for listening.
Links and Resources:
- Adam Purcell International Bomber Command Centre
- Something Very Big
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In this episode of Deep Listening, we have the opportunity to listen to Eva Hussain who is an accredited NAATI translator and foreign interpreter. She is also the founder and CEO of Polaron a language services provider. The mission of Polaron is to transform the language services sector and be the leading authority on European citizenship worldwide. The company has seen steady growth since Eva has been managing it.
Eva’s voluntary roles include founding member of Australasian Association of Language Companies, deputy president of the Australian Society of Polish Jews and secretary of Polish Community Services of Victoria. Eva is originally from Poland and wants to solve complex communication problems between different cultures and geographical areas. She speaks 6 or 7 languages, but English and Polish are her strongest languages. Listen in as Eva shares her story and communication philosophy.
Today’s Topics:
- Eva always wanted to immigrate to Australia, but started out in France first.
- Her first few years in Australia were incredibly difficult even though it was her desire to integrate.
- Interpreters are actors who act out other people’s words. What comes out of the mouth of an interpreter needs to represent the intent and meaning.
- It’s like a loop where the language is stored on the interpreter’s brain and then transformed into a different language and conveyed to the listener.
- There are no opinions. To practice interpreting watch the news and pause it for 30 seconds and then repeat what was just said.
- Preparation for interpreting includes self care and preparing oneself on an emotional level.
- Some interpretation jobs can be quite difficult emotionally, such as when someone is in a life and death situation.
- Acting professionally at all times no matter how difficult it is.
- Breathing techniques can be used to calm the interpreter down.
- Being assertive and asking for breaks is also important.
- The importance of understanding context and getting what is unsaid.
- In difficult situations the best thing that an interpreter can do is to do justice to the words. Be very conscious of not being judgemental.
- The four villains of listening are the lost listener, the interrupting listener, the shrewd listener, and the dramatic listener. For Eva, the interrupter is the worst.
- Give people from other cultures space to get their point across.
Links and Resources:
NAATI
Polaron
Eva Hussain facebook
Eva Hussain LinkedIn
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Today, I have a conversation with acoustic engineer and soundscape designer Mitch Allen. He has over 10 years experience as an acoustic engineer and is currently spearheading the business offering of Soundscape Design for Arup within the Australasian region. He is also the founder of One Two Studios a music production company that specializes in bespoke royalty free music. Mitch has been commissioned for various local and International soundscape installations, and he is passionate about sound design in urban environments.
In this episode, he takes us to the jungles of Bali to illustrate that listening is not something we just do with our ears, it is a multi-sensory experience. Mitch shares the dimensions of the role of a soundscape designer. He talks about the differences between creating soundscapes in modern industrial environments and yoga studios. This is an amazing show, not only because of what Mitch says, but how he says it.
Today’s Topics:
- Acoustic engineers solve acoustic challenges of a place or area.
- Mitch solves problems such as mitigating noise or vibration.
- Mitch likes to create a desirable sound experience and that is why he started calling what he actually does as soundscape design.
- Restaurants are often challenging environments for communication.
- These areas need to have a positive soundscape, but it is hard to satisfy everyone’s desires.
- A desirable soundscape is attached to the intent of the purpose of the area.
- For the Vivid Sydney project Mitch took sounds from the Harbor and transformed them into sounds of the future.
- Mitch shares how the yoga studio sound he designed needed a hum and he used a 40 hertz sound of a crystal himalayan
- Mitch had a challenging yoga studio soundscape design where the owners wanted a 40 hertz hum playing throughout the area, but it didn’t sound right.
- Mitch solved the problem by using a recording from a crystal Himalayan singing bowl and adjusting the frequency.
- Sound is just a form of energy in a vibrational frequency in a range that we can hear.
- The frequencies are the oscillating waves or vibration in the air.
- Our ears pick up the vibration and it is converted to sound energy.
- Noise is unwanted sound. Sound is something that you can choose to hear or ignore.
- Using natural soundscapes as opposed to sound masking in an office environment to minimize the distractions.
- To prepare for listening it is a good idea to remove or be aware of the internal dialogue.
- Embracing the full body experience of listening or the sounds that Mitch feels as he experiences the world.
Links and Resources:
- One Two Studios
- Mitch Allen LinkedIn
- Mitch Allen Blog
- Loftus Precinct
- Vivid Sydney
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Christina Rostworowski da Costa is a professional interpreter and translator from Sao Paulo, Brazil. Christina translates Portuguese, English, French, and Italian. She has worked in boardrooms, meeting rooms, and a variety of venues as she helps translate meetings, deals, high-stakes negotiations, and even arbitration.
Today, Christina shares tips, tricks, and hacks on how to listen deeply and be empathetic without letting that cloud her interpretation of the words. She talks about breathing technique and being completely available to the conversation. The goal is to stay focused on the content and the person speaking. She also shares a story of poise and heroism about her grandmother who was a secret agent and translator in Poland during World War II.
Today’s Topics:
- The difference between an interpreter and a translator.
- How Christina was raised in a bilingual environment and switching languages was common.
- Christina shares how her grandmother was a key interpreter helping the Allies in World War II Poland.
- How Christina prepares and handles the pressure of interpreting for high-stakes corporate meetings.
- Christina meditates every morning where she sits down and focuses and pictures the day ahead of her.
- Examples of vocal exercises that Christina uses to warm up her voice.
- Deep listening and synchronizing your breath with the speaker.
- The silence of the interpretation booth and connecting to the speaker.
- The challenge of dealing with jokes and curse words.
- How it is key to establish initial contact with the speaker.
- Taking on different tones and intonations for each speaker.
- The differences between listening, understanding, and remembering.
- Interpreters can’t be distracted and can’t waste their focus.
- The four listening types: the lost listener, the shrewd listener, the interrupting listener, and the dramatic listener.
Links and Resources:
- Christina Rostworowski da Costa
- Christina on LinkedIn
Quotes:
“In theory, interpretation should be unbiased, yet it is a challenge.” Christina Rostworowski da Costa
“Part of what I do is engage with the person and connect in one way or another.” Christina Rostworowski da Costa
“Breathing is absolutely essential. I go through the classic meditation and breathing routine.” Christina Rostworowski da Costa
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In this episode of Deep Listening we go through the forests of Idaho and the borderland between Canada and the United States as we speak to world class mediator Ken Cloke. He mediates across multiple domains from families, to schools, to corporations. Ken has been a mediator for 37 years, and he is a prolific author with 20 published books.
Ken takes us on a journey that describes the power and the transformational impact of listening for meaning. He finds a way to listen to himself first before listening to the meaning of the conflict. Ken shares how he mediates to prepare for conflict resolution, and how he is present for the meeting. He also shares how to avoid destructive circles and conflict resolution techniques as they apply to the five levels of listening.
Today’s Topics:
- Listening inside yourself to understand the meaning of the conflict.
- The two levels of mediation the issues and the relationships.
- Approaching a conflict with the right attitude. Mediation is a great way to prepare.
- Fully showing up with the realization that the conversation is important.
- Diverting negativity from overwhelming the ego and changing statements to requests.
- Ken shares an example of a couple’s experience and how he goes inside himself to find questions to get to answers.
- How if there is not an equals sign between the heat of the argument and the topic of the argument there is an underlying meaning.
- A touching story of how Ken discovered the root cause of an issue with a teacher conflict and found a way for the teacher to feel appreciated and keep her job.
- Group communication and bringing the human dimension into the conversation and having a transformational impact.
Links and Resources:
- Ken Cloke
- Books by Ken Cloke
Quotes:
“To discover what the conflict means I have to find it inside myself and listen correctly.” Ken Cloke
“The mediation becomes the relationship on a deeper level.” Ken Cloke
“Talking about what things mean to you can have a deeply transformational impact.” Ken Cloke
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My guest today is Jodee Mundy an independent Creative Producer and Artistic Director. Jodee’s work points to a future beyond inclusion where the diversity is as valuable as the art. She also grew up as the only hearing person in a deaf family.
Jodee knew her family was deaf, but she didn’t realize that they couldn’t hear until an incident when she got lost in a local store. Jodee brings a unique perspective about what the deaf community can teach the non-deaf community about listening. We also explore why the deaf community are actually better listeners.
Today’s Topics:
- Jodee was born into a deaf family. She is the only one who can hear.
- Jodee didn’t realize her family was deaf until she got lost in Kmart as a child.
- She grew up in the culture of signing and lights flashing.
- Becoming an interpreter and blending into the environment.
- Adding, subtracting, and substituting information in Auslan.
- Interpreting for the Dalai Lama.
- Listening with your whole mind and body.
- How the deaf community is completely welcoming to everyone who can sign.
- How deaf people are great at charades, and they are not defined by language.
- The power of silence and speaking with our eyes.
- The extraordinary capacity of humans to communicate.
Links and Resources:
Jodee Mundy Website
Jodee on Twitter @JodeeMundy
Auslan
Quotes:
“I knew my family was deaf, but I didn’t realize that it meant that they couldn’t hear.” Jodee Mundy
“When interpreting, you have to change the source message into the source language.” Jodee Mundy
“Auslan is a three dimensional language that is like an incredibly dense comic strip.” Jodee Mundy
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What do you want your employer to do with your feedback?
This is bonus episode for subscribers only
Deep Listening - The Managers Master Class Prototype request for feedback
I am looking for 10 managers who can provide feedback on my course before I launch it this year
The course is designed for managers who work in organisations of more than 500 employees
It’s a commitment of 3 – 30 minute meetings to hear from you and listen to feedback that will improve the course for you and other managers
I really value the fact to you are a loyal listener and this request is only going
If this is you, send me an email podcast@oscartrimboli.com with the subject line
The Managers Master Class
There is a huge amount of money being invested in engagement surveys. Are these surveys effective? Is there a way to make them more effective? My guest today shares lessons learned from other cultures that could improve the entire communication and listening process.
Today, I am speaking to corporate anthropologist Michael Henderson as we explore the jungles of Africa, South America and the boardroom. Michael brings a perspective of listening to cultures. He shares the role of engagement surveys and how they are question biased rather than listening biased. He also shares lessons learned from the Pygmy people and the three key elements for building a powerful culture.
Today’s Topics:
- Why employee engagement surveys are question biased.
- Applying skillsets from anthropology into the business world.
- How the Pygmy people compare culture to a fire.
- The role of culture inside businesses and being a beacon in the dark.
- The importance of having three elements throughout cultures.
- Understanding what is actually meant not what is just said.
- Patterns and listening to context within corporations and listening to adjectives.
- Being conscious and listening deeply when people are speaking.
Links and Resources:
Michael Henderson Website
Corporate Anthropology: Michael Henderson at TEDxAuckland
Quotes:
“Engagement surveys end up being question biased rather than listening optimised. ” Michael Henderson
“The world’s best engagement survey would be designed by the employees themselves.” Michael Henderson
“I still ask what is your culture doing to light the way and be a beacon in the dark that attracts others to it?” Michael Henderson
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I am excited to have Jessica Watson on today’s show. Jessica became the youngest person to sail solo nonstop around the world. She was named Young Australian of the year in 2011 and received an OAM (Order of Australia Medal). She is co-founder of the marine startup Deckee and Youth Ambassador for The United Nations World Food Programme. She is currently working on her MBA and her second book, a novel published by Hachette.
While Jessica was on her solo trip sailing around the world, she learned to sail with her ears as she listened to her boat to understand changes in the ocean and with weather conditions. She takes us on an amazing journey of how she sailed with her ears, and how she uses her deeper listening skills to conduct television interviews. She talks about the power of silence and not interrupting while listening. All in an effort to help people and groups listen to each other.
Today’s Topics:
- How Jessica broke the news to her family about sailing solo around the world.
- Jessica kept focus using small goals and different milestones along the way.
- How Jessica sailed by her ears by listening to the sound of the water.
- There is constant noise from the boat and the roar of the waves.
- A noise that you are not used to can signal that something is wrong.
- How amazing it was for Jessica to have such amazing alone time.
- The role of listening when sailing and communicating with boat crews.
- The importance of letting others express their thoughts and feelings.
- How listening is a practice, discipline and a process.
- The power of listening, body language, and silence when interviewing people.
Links and Resources:
Deckee
Order of Australia Medal
UN World Food Programme
Jessica on Twitter @watsonjessica
Quotes:
“My parents always told me that I could do anything I wanted to. I may have taken it further than they intended.” Jessica Watson
“The way I told them (my parents) was probably more important than what I told them.” Jessica Watson
“It’s easy to stay focused and not give up when you don’t have any other choice.” Jessica Watson
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One of the five elements of deep listening is making meaning from listening to others. My guests today are Sarah Manley and David Christie from Innovation Arts, a hybrid strategy consultancy and design agency. David is the founder and Sarah is a project manager, and they both use a form of visual communication called scribing to create solutions.
During the scribing process, a graphic facilitator will create a visual map of a conversation, even if that conversation is between hundreds of people. Businesses and organizations face complex problems that are difficult to solve in a linear fashion. The scribing process creates a visual representation of the conversation and can be used to discover systems and solve complex issues. In this episode, we discuss this process along with focus, preparation and applying design thinking to solutions.
Today’s Topics:
- David and Sarah met as part of a large team that created solutions for Y2K.
- The primary function of a graphic facilitator is to create a visual map of the conversation.
- How participants focus on listening to the conversation and the scribe does the work.
- Scribes listen with intent and make visuals of what they hear.
- How they listen to what is unsaid and make connections with ideas.
- Preparation includes a content briefing and learning about the company culture.
- Being fit and healthy is also mandatory.
- Having the discipline and mindset to stay focused the entire time.
- How it’s about being curious and engaged with helping people solve problems in the best way possible.
- People are beginning to understand the systemic nature of things.
- Complex problems need to be mapped out and the skill set does not always exist.
- Applying design thinking to a range of problems people are seeing.
- Capturing the present, past and future in these visual maps.
- Bringing a meaningful approach to systemic listening.
Links and Resources:
- Innovation Arts
- David Christie on Twitter @christoi
- David Christie on LinkedIn
- The Value Web David’s Website
- Sarah Manley on LinkedIn
- Sarah on Twitter @puppetopera
Quotes:
“If you're taking notes while listening to a conversation, you are not engaged in the most effective listening possible.” Sarah Manley
“Scribes try their best to connect ideas and make connections with what is being said.” Sarah Manley
“You have to think in terms of systems because everything is interconnected.” David Christie
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In this episode, I have the opportunity to speak with Alan Stokes. Alan is a journalist and a Lifeline Counsellor. Listen carefully as Alan explores the way that we can become more potent while on the telephone. He shares tips and tricks for becoming more effective when listening on the phone and really getting to the heart of what is being said. We also talk about authenticity and how to be deeply empathetic to the dialogue as it happens.
We explore the role of judgement, and how it takes away from the impact of the conversation. Alan grew up in a beach family, surfing and body surfing. He always loved the escape and the silence of surfing. He also used to be a heavy drinker, when he first became a journalist. He has also struggled with mental illness which has helped define his world view and the importance of being listened to.
Today’s Topics:
- Asking to have a talk instead of telling sad people to cheer up
- The difference between sympathy and empathy
- How reflection is giving back to someone what they have told you in meaning
- How Alan asked for professional help in his forties
- Problems have to be solved by the person with the problem
- How conversations are heightened during phone calls
- The importance of silence and the true mark of trust
- Minimal encouragers or reminding the person on the line that you are there
- Avoiding lecturing or making someone feel interrogated
- Empowering people with open questions, such as how does it feel
- How “why” questions can be loaded with judgement
- Physicality and sitting in an open position and looking interested
- Getting into the right mindset and being ready to listen
- How Alan’s journalistic background has served him at Lifeline
- Importance of bringing out the unsaid
Links and Resources:
- Ring 131114 in Australia
- Lifeline Australia
- 000 If you are in crisis
Quotes:
“If someone says they are not okay, listen acutely and sit with them as they talk.” Alan Stokes
“Don’t judge, be an empathetic shoulder that sits with someone during their pain.” Alan Stokes
“What helps the sad person is empathy and making it about them, not me or the person listening.” Alan Stokes
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Jennifer MacLaughlin is an Auslan Interpreter for the deaf community. Auslan has a similar language structure to Asian languages. The word order is different and the picture and scene is created first. The language is created in a visual sense.
We explore a conversation where Jennifer was standing on stage translating an extraordinary piece of poetry to a group of people who were in the dark. I was moved by the energy that Jennifer brought to the conversation about what it means to listen deeply.
Today’s Topics:
- How signing involves taking turns and respecting space and time
- Having to wait for concrete meaning before signing
- Jennifer shares her family life and how they moved to Australia for warmth
- How Jennifer became interested in Auslan after being prompted by a friend
- She has signed in many venues including corporate settings, universities, hospitals, and rallies
- Challenges of interpreting poetry and how Jennifer did this for 1,200 people in Hyde Park
- Staying focused with so many dimensions going on
- Feeling the energy of the person speaking and staying connected
- Unpacking the meaning of a word to make connotations very clear
- Really thinking about what you are saying when speaking
Links and Resources:
- Auslan Services
- Video - Jennifer MacLaughlan AUSLan Interpreter - Deep Listening Impact beyond words
Quotes:
“Deaf people are very good at respecting people’s space and time and that is something that non-deaf people could benefit from.” Jennifer MacLaughlin
“Interpreting is not about the words, it is about the meaning.” Jennifer MacLaughlin
“Auslan is such a creative language that uses a 3D language to create pictures out of concepts.” Jennifer MacLaughlin
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Welcome to Deep Listening, impact beyond words. Do you know that we spend 55% of our days listening? Yet, only 2% of us are trained on how to listen. Listening is the competitive advantage of the 21st century. Whether you are a business owner, executive, employee, or parent, this podcast will transform your impact through listening.
I’m your host Oscar Trimboli. Workplace research shows that the difference between good managers and great leaders is their ability to listen and actually hear their employees and customers. These organizations that have great leaders outperform the others by a factor of four. I have witnessed first hand the cost created by a lack of listening. With this podcast, I am going to help you create impact with your listening as we explore the five levels of listening.
The Five Levels of Listening
- Listening to yourself
- Listening to the content
- Listening for the context
- Listening for what is unsaid
- Listening for meaning
Quotes:
“Listening and not speaking is the competitive advantage for the 21st century” Oscar Trimboli
“I will provide you with tools, tips and techniques to move from an unconscious listener to one that creates a big impact.” Oscar Trimboli
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