S2 E12 | Listening

As a listener, you have to be vulnerable to ask questions like, I just connected with somebody I haven't seen in a long time. And one of the things they, they, they finally read demand side sales. And they basically said something to the effect of like, I didn't think you were that smart. Cause you just asked all these questions like you almost like stupid questions. But then I realized like those questions are actually how you understand everything from context. Because at some point in time, standard answers don't help you. I'm like, yes, exactly. And so part of this is realizing like at some point somebody giving you just standard answers doesn't help either one of them in the listening perspective understand what they're saying.

Welcome to the Circuit Breaker podcast where we challenge the status quo of innovation.

And new product development.

We'll talk about tools and skills and methodologies used to build better products and make you a better consumer. I'm Bob Mesta and I'm the co founder of the Rewired group and I'm one of your co hosts and we're.

Joined by Greg Engel, who is my.

Co founder and chief. Bob Interpreter to our. Join us now as we trip the circuit and give you time to reset, reorganize and recharge your brain to build better products.

Hey Bob.

Hey, Greg. What's up?

So today we're going to talk about something and we might have covered it before, but I just think it's something worth talking about. It's kind of one of the guiding principles of what we do. So I want to talk about how to listen, the jobs you done way or how to listen. And the reason why I want to talk about it is because we still see a lot of people writing down verbatims. We still see a lot of people writing down supply side things. We still, when we do coaching, we still see those types of things happening and we want to talk a little bit about, okay, how do you actually listen better? How do you actually practice the skill of listening and how do you, and what are you listening for? And I don't think it's just for jobs we've done. No, quite frankly, I think this is a skill that we have to refine for a bunch of different things. If you think about some of your, your miscommunications in the past with family, with business, whatever, sometimes it comes down to listening or not understanding each other's points. So I think this is a, a good topic to talk about. Even if we've touched on it.

Well, we've touched on it in multiple Different. You know, part of listening is empathetic perspective. Part of listening is causal structures. Part of listening is some other things. But like listening is a skill that the, the better you get at it, the better you'll be.

Right.

Period. I think that's just like, it's like working out. It's the same thing. If you, if you listen better, you will think better.

So how do you think about listening? How, what, what's your thought on what should we be listening for?

Yeah, so one is, I'm really bad at small talk. Very bad at small talk. Like the weather, like how the lions do. Right. Because I don't know where the purpose is going. I don't know what it's about. It's merely kind of, it's conversational in nature, but it doesn't have a purpose of where it's going. And so to me, listening is about actually understanding where people are going and what they're trying to do. And so when it gets down to being able to understand in a jobs be done context or even when you're talking to an engineer about what they're to go build, you need to very much listen about not only what they say, how they say it, and ultimately what I call the orientation of the language. Is it an input, is it an output, is it an action? What are they really talking about? So a lot of times you just end up getting people talking a lot, but they don't actually say anything.

Right. Because what we're trying to do is active. Listening to us or listening to us is a two way street. Right. You have to ask the questions that get people to give you real answers and then you have to be able to, willing to listen to those answers. And sometimes they're hard to hear.

Yes.

So it's a two way street. And then also we, we talk a lot about intent. Yes, we keep talking about intent. And if you listen to this podcast series, I'm sure you've heard the word a gazillion times. If you had a dollar for every time you could retire. I'm sure. But when we're talking about listening, we're actually talking about listening for the intent. And the reason why we talk about that is because people use words differently all the time.

All the time that use the same word in very different meanings and different context.

And we have the argument with our, everybody that's listening to this podcast knows we have a lawyer in our office. Yes, we have an argument. We have an argument with him all the time. Because he's like, well, words Matter. And I agree, words matter, but the intent matters more. Because if I don't understand the intent, then I'm offended by a word that they don't mean offensively or whatever. Right? So. So we have. We have to get down to the intent. And you do that by asking questions, you do that by listening. You do that by playing back, and you do all those types of things. But when we talk about listening for intent, if I give you a phrase we've heard in an interview, I bought it because I had to run back home, and I didn't have time to run back home.

Right.

The most people would think home means where they live every day, Right? But if you actually listen to intent and context, and they had told you before where they were on a business trip, well, they weren't talking about running back home to their place they live. They were using home as a hotel.

I remember that. Yeah.

Right. So this is what we mean. This is what we mean by unpacking and understanding the context. So not only do you have to understand the intent, you have to bring in the context that they've given you. You have to take all that in your head, which is hard, right? This is a hard skill. This is not a skill that you pick up in a day. This is not a skill you pick up by listening to us one time. This is something you have to practice over and over again. So intent boils down to what did they mean? But also, you have to. A lot of times they can't tell you, so you have to put their.

Context to wrap the context around it.

Their outcomes they were seeking. All those things you were talking about has to be brought in. And it's your job. We think it's your job of the listener.

Yes.

To help the question, the answer. The answer e. To get those answers out. Because as humans, we are generally guarded, unless we're with really close friends or family. And sometimes we're still guarded, and we're.

Even more guarded sometimes.

So it's our responsibility to get that out. If we're trying to help them through something or we're trying to figure something out for them. So it's. It's our job to do that. So that's what we talk about when we're talking about intent. It's actually not just one thing. It's actually a bunch of different things. And most people only want to listen to the last thing someone says, and they forget everything else. But you actually have to hold multiple things in your head that. And it's hard.

It's it is hard. And this is where it gets back to, you know, who, who's saying what, when, where and why. Right. And ultimately most people talk about what they did or they talk about when they did something, but ultimately it's like, why did they do it? Like what made this the right thing to do next? And so part of this is us piecing together and understanding through causation kind of what they meant by things. And so this is why the when question. So the when part is important, but it's not the why. And so most people are confusing the timeline and listening for the timeline of all the little actions of everybody did and said, oh, I got the interview because I have the timeline. But they actually don't understand any of the reasons why somebody did something. They just know what they did. And so ultimately we're trying to get to the why through the what and the when and the where. And we can actually understand the why right from those things. And so this is where we, we always talk about the fact of like we use the timeline to help us interview, but ultimately the interview is an intermediate thing to help us get to the forces, what are the things pushing, pulling anxieties and habits wrapped around it.

Right.

And so when we're listening, we're using different things to help extract that information.

Right. So some of the things that people are going to be using in that is, and we talk about a lot of them over and over again is okay, so you're listening for intent, which means why are they doing it?

Yeah.

What is the context wrapped around it? All those types of things. Then you have to start unpacking. So you have to unpack because they're going to say a word, they're going to say, you know, home. And you have to ask a follow up question, well, what do you mean by the word home there? Were you home or you know what home are we talking about? Or just ask a clarifying question. And sometimes it's stupid.

Yes. But a lot of times it is.

Sometimes it actually uncover something. Then you have to use, once you get, you start unpacking, you understand that then you have to start using some deductive reasoning.

Yep. And you also have to use some exclusionary logic, which is they can't tell you anymore what it is, but they can tell you what it's not. Right.

So you're doing that. And the example I give there is often we talk around the office.

Yes.

You have to know who you're talking to. Because if you're talking to you and you say the Word I. Most people would stop and you'd say, oh, he did, Bob did that because he said I. But I have to ask the follow up question, who's I? Because I could be you and Katherine if they're talking to me. A lot of times I'll use we.

Yeah.

And you have to ask, well, who's we? Well, I wrote it. Right. So you have to ask those questions sometimes or you have to know the person. If, and if you know the person, if this isn't an interview and this is with somebody that you work with or something. Sometimes you know that stuff.

Yeah, but it takes some time to learn. You take some time to learn it and you basically make mistakes back and forth. And you and I, I mean we've worked together for almost 20 years. And so it's like we know each other and I know like when you're asking something and I don't know, I will just say, hold on, where, where were you? Or who, who's I?

Right. So we, so you have to use those types of things. You have to be willing to unpack. You have to be willing to test the boundaries.

Yes.

You have to be willing to be.

Vulnerable as a listener. You have to, you have to be vulnerable to ask questions to, to like I, I just connected with somebody I haven't seen in a long time. And one of the things they, they, they finally read the demand side sales and they basically said something to the effect of like, I didn't think you were that smart because you just asked all these questions like you almost like stupid questions. But then I realized like those questions are actually how you understand everything from context. Because at some point in time they're like, standard answers don't help you. I'm like, yes, exactly. And so part of this is realizing like at some point somebody giving you just standard answers doesn't help either one of us in a listening perspective understand what they're saying. Right.

And the other thing I think people miss a lot of times is knowing why you're in the conversation. Because sometimes you're in the conversation just to pass time. And that's one thing. And then listening is not, you know, yes, you have to listen because I have the conversation, but how much energy do you want to put into it? But then there's times where you're listening. If you're listening in a jobs you'd done context, you ratchet that up a little bit more. But you have to understand, why are you in this conversation? What is this conversation for? So you know the right level to go to. Because if you're in a small talk conversation, you start asking the questions you do, we just yell at you and say stop. But most people won't do that.

Well, and, and we have, we have our, our I'll say around the office. It's actually kind of, in some cases it's brutal because people will just use casual language to say, oh yeah, this is, I'm eating this because it's natural and it's organic. And we'll go like, okay, what does all that mean? And you start to unpack it and it's like they were just making a statement and next thing you know, we're down the rabbit hole of like, where, where's the definition of natural and why is that natural and this not natural and etc. And so, you know, I think the notion of being sharper and sharper with your language and being more intentful about what you hear and what you think you know and what you don't know, because again, I'm more of the, the prime of the school of thought of like, it's all about what I don't know. And so instead of trying to tell you what I know, it's like, how do I figure out what I don't know about this situation? And ultimately it's, that's where the listening comes in, is to actually uncover the unknowns.

And the last thing I think we use a lot in, in the listening process is knowing your own biases. I have to understand what my biases are because that, that limits me. Could limit me about how far I unpack something.

Right.

Could limit me on what I actually hear. So know your own biases going in as well as something that we talk about a lot.

Well, and that's why we have, especially when we're doing interviews in very or very, you know, in very specific situations, we have multiple people listening. So we actually try to not eliminate, but to diminish the kind of biases that we might have. We all have them. We just have them. And so part of it is, is, but, but by having it, having multiple people listen to it, you can actually use it as a, as a way to filter out those things.

I think that's also why it's actually easier for a lot of people to hire us to do interviews is because we come inherently, we come with less biases on certain things, especially on the supply side. And that's from the company side.

Yep.

Right. Why somebody eats or why somebody drinks there. There are very defined things from every company has different reasons why they think that happens. And there's institutional bias that's built. So coming in fresh without those biases where a, we're able to recognize we can go deeper in the conversation, but then we are not in that conflict of are we violating what the company believes because we don't know?

Well, that's right. Well, I think the other thing is that what we end up doing is we push to make sure that it's solution agnostic as possible so that the answers that the customers are talking about is the outcomes they want as opposed to what technology do we want to use. And so it's being able to pull people away from the product or the service and make sure we understand kind of the context and outcome in a. In its purest form.

And I think that's another point of knowing kind of your bias or knowing the things is knowing that we all come with that we all come with the wanting to get the answer. And really jobs you don is about finding where everything lies and then coming up with an answer later.

Yep, that's. I always call it hypothesis building kind of research as opposed to hypothesis proving.

So it's one of those things where in an interview, a lot of times when you're listening, you have to understand what ear you're listening for in life. You have to understand that as well. Right. I actually think if people listened better, their relationships would be better. Right. Because a lot of times we still even just hear with our ears, even in that context. So this podcast, I think, is going to be a quick hitter. I don't think it's going to be as long as some of the other ones. And I think all we're really trying to do is just crack your head open a little bit as you listen to this and saying, where are my biases? Where are my. Where am I comfortable going deeper? Do I need to practice unpacking? Do I need to practice going deeper? Do I need to practice asking. Being vulnerable and asking questions that may seem very elementary to the, to the person answering the questions, but it actually gives us a lot more information. And that's what we're just trying to. We're just trying to create the. The first tiny struggle with this podcast. Right. That first little thing of. Of can you be better at it?

The one concept that really has helped me a lot, I'd say early in my career, was from Dr. Taguchi around the notion of what he called signal to noise ratio. It's a very complicated equation, if you will, but the notion is, is that you have to be able to understand if you get rid of noise, typically you eliminate signal and signal to noise ratio is about this notion of seeing the. Seeing the important intent from all the other stuff people see. And so it's about distilling it down to what is the. What is the intent. And a lot of times we have to realize there's a lot of noise wrapped around what people say because that's just how they talk.

So I think this week what we want to leave people with is when you're in a conversation, I want you to try to figure out what the intent of the person was and you need to use the tools. We kind of talked about unpacking, asking questions, context, context, outcome, those types of things. So just kind of practice that do you actually. Can you recognize intent or can you get to. Intent is really the practice we're asking people to do this week. Other than that, I think this is, like I said, I think a little bit quicker.

That's all right. So hopefully you can do more homework.

Or hopefully it fit your. Whatever you're using it for your drive time or your workout time or whatever it might be. Hopefully we didn't screw you up too bad. But as always, thank you for listening and we'll see you guys again when the next one drops.

See ya.

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