Deep Listening - Impact beyond words - Oscar Trimboli

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?'

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.  Just visit oscartrimboli.com/survey that’s 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?   Thanks for listening

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.

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.

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 

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?   Thanks for listening

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 

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 

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.

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.

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 centers around the Listen(n) 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  

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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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. 

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. 

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 

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 

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 seven 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 express in and storing information.  We cover the role of subjects and objects in discussions through the lense of points of focus.  Michael and I start off discussing the ways people process and store communications. 

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Today I'm really lucky. I'm joined by two people, Jenny 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 Jenny 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 researching 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.

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. 

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.   

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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Dr Alison J. Barker is a neuroscientist from Max-Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in Berlin.   Dr Barker explains the importance of listening with patience over her multi-year study into language and dialects.   During this discussion, Dr Barker explains the importance of listening to yourself, the content and the context.   Using complex computer algorithms to listen, Dr Barker discerned patterns in language faster than a human listening. She explains the limitations of software and where humans hold an advantage.

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. Listen for free

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. Listen for Free

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. Listen for free 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

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.

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. 1. Determine the grid coordinates for the pickup site. 2. Obtain radio frequency, call sign, and suffix. 3. Obtain the number of patients and precedence. 4. Determine the type of special equipment required. 5. Determine the number and type of patients. 6. Determine the security of the pickup site. 7. Determine how the pickup site will be marked. 8. Determine patient nationality and status. 9. Obtain pickup site NBC contamination information normally obtained from the senior person or medic.   https://api.army.mil/e2/c/downloads/355651.pdf   Listen for free

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.

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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

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. Listen for free

If you've got a question about workplace listening, send me an email podcast@oscartrimboli.com

Are you listening to the content or the context? Are you discussing the system and process or details?

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.

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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   Listen for free

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.

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?"   2. 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.   3. 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.

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

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.  

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: 1. sequence before, during and after the meeting. 2. the role. Are you the host or the participant? And 3. 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. 1. 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. 2. 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. 3. 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.  

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 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

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. 1. 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. 2. 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. 3. 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

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 Once a month your questions answered   https://www.oscartrimboli.com/howtolisten https://www.oscartrimboli.com/videoconference https://www.oscartrimboli.com/90days https://www.oscartrimboli.com/podcast/106 https://www.oscartrimboli.com/podcast/104 https://www.oscartrimboli.com/podcast/103 https://www.oscartrimboli.com/podcast/102 https://www.oscartrimboli.com/podcast/099 https://www.oscartrimboli.com/podcast/097 https://www.oscartrimboli.com/podcast/096 https://www.oscartrimboli.com/podcast/095 https://www.oscartrimboli.com/podcast/093 https://www.oscartrimboli.com/podcast/090 https://www.oscartrimboli.com/podcast/084 https://www.oscartrimboli.com/podcast/082 https://www.oscartrimboli.com/podcast/074 https://www.oscartrimboli.com/podcast/068 https://www.oscartrimboli.com/podcast/064 https://www.oscartrimboli.com/podcast/054 https://www.oscartrimboli.com/podcast/052 https://www.oscartrimboli.com/podcast/035 https://www.oscartrimboli.com/podcast/024 https://www.oscartrimboli.com/podcast/007 https://www.oscartrimboli.com/survey

Four Habits That Derail Listening, with Oscar Trimboli (episode 500) Dave's Interview interview notes in PDF format (free membership required)

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

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. Listen for free

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  

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.  

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.

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

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.  

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.

  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

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?