The Art of Listening in Business | Ameil Shadid

I'm sure you had to spend a little time saying, "Hey, I'm changing because I'm doing this differently. Feedback I got in our review was this." And so, let's be honest, a lot of people don't like hearing feedback like that. You know, the people who can take that feedback and handle it in a constructive manner and not get angry and know that my peers want the best for me, I believe that. The people that I work with on a day-to-day basis, assume positive intent, and they want the best for me. And so if they're going to give me feedback like that, what can I do with it to make, you know, our environment better? And so, 18-year-old son who, you know, looks up to me and models my style of communication, frankly, has been really interested in the listening piece. And we've talked a lot about it because he is very headstrong in his beliefs and centers them inability sometimes to look at the gray area.

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Welcome to another episode of The Profitable Creative, the only place on the interwebs where you will learn how to turn your passion into profit. I am your host, Christian Brim. Joining me today is Emil Shaded of Deb Key Consulting.

Welcome, Emil. Glad to be here, Christian. It's great to see you. Congratulations on your success.

Thank you. It was very hard for me to not say email, but I got through it without calling you email. Old habits. Yeah, I know. It's bad. So tell me what your, how you got here, what you're doing with Debkey and how you came to this point.

Well, thanks to COVID and the ability to look at things with a positive lens, In early '20, I was laid off right at the start of COVID from Butch's Rat Hole and Anchor Service. And the reason I can say who it was is because I still have a great relationship with those guys. I support them. I still find myself saying I'm on Team Butch's. So that happened in February, and I was unemployed for a good 5 months of, uh, COVID, just peak COVID. And the gift was, one, I got laid off before everybody else did, which allowed me to get on unemployment before everybody else did. And so I never had any problem. A lot of friends got laid off and, well, how did you do it? And I said, I just beat you to the punch. I got laid off earlier. And so I was at home with our kids and Christy, my wife, and it was glorious, Christian. It was federally funded unemployment, and I do not recommend anybody to do it because it took a pretty healthy swath out of my personal net worth. However, when I was home, you know, I started thinking about things I'd like to do. You know, the only thing we really had to look forward to at that time was an afternoon nap because everything else was— so, you know, I came— I sit on my back patio frequently, and during that time it was great weather, springtime, and so I'm a note-taker, and I have compiled these, they used to call them lab books, but now they're just notebooks, since I started working at OU back in '02. And so I started thumbing through them, and I kept seeing this consistent theme of great relationships that were built on long-term, deep-dive, intimate relationships with donors. And so as I was looking for a new job, I started to call those people and not for a job, just to touch base and check in on them and told them what I was thinking about doing. And I had many people tell me, "Merrill, I never met somebody who is a better listener than you." And you know what, Christian, when I stopped and thought about it, I thought, I don't know that I've had better compliments. Just really hit me in the heart that, you know, the reason that I was given the opportunity to have these great relationships relationships with people who were, you know, huge investors to our alma mater, the University of Oklahoma, that it was centered around listening. And so I started to develop some content around active listening and pitched it to several friends, Carl Miller, who was at University of Texas San Antonio, and Brooks Hall, who was at Louisiana Tech and now is at Texas State in San Marcos, to say, hey guys, I've got this crazy idea for some content. Are you open to me coming and talking to your team? And they both said yes. Speaking of profitability, they both said, we will cover your expenses and that's it. And so I said, that's how you have to start. Yeah. And I said, I'm in, let's work on the dates. And so That started and it has run alongside my day-to-day job where I work for a non-traditional, very non-traditional small Catholic high school here in Oklahoma City. And so it's led to speaking opportunities around the country, really sharing the process of active listening and how you can use it in your work along with at home. And honestly, the benefits that it's given me in my professional career, but in my personal life, have been too numerous to list. And so, I didn't want to keep it a secret anymore. And so, I founded Debkee Partners, which is, Debkee is a traditional Lebanese dance that's done at family reunions, weddings, and celebrations. And no, I won't do one today, but maybe next time. But I was trying to think of a name that's, you know, captures my Lebanese heritage. And so, the Debke dance is that, and the partners is just my family. And so, my son is my creative director. He does the PowerPoints and I write the content.

So, I love it. So, one of our core values at Core is listen. And it's interesting that that is what you are an expert on because I am not. And, you know, we evaluate each other as a team on our core values. And we've been doing this for about 8 years when we set those core values. And listen was one that I always scored lower on with my peers and my team. And first, I was kind of taken aback by it, maybe My feelings were hurt a little, but I realized that as an entrepreneur and a husband of 30 years and a father for 29 years— actually, that's not right, a husband for 31 years, a dad for 30. Yeah, time passes. That when I listen, my default when I listen is to go into problem-solving mode, right? And so I disengage listening and I'm problem-solving. And so I think that, that evaluation of me was, was fair and accurate. And it's still something that I struggle with because my brain does default to wanting to fix. But what I've learned as I have tried to be better at listening is that it's not so much the words people say It's understanding all the other factors, the body language, the tone. To see my goal now when I listen is to make sure I understand the intent behind the message, not necessarily the words. Because, you know, a lot of times when people come with a problem— that sounds bad, but like, that's where my brain disengaged and went to problem solving. So like, you know, they tell me a situation and I go into problem solving mode. What I replaced that with was trying to understand and ask the feelings behind that. So like, okay, how does that make you feel? And at first that was awkward, and it was awkward for other people saying, oh, what do you mean, how do I feel? Like, well, okay, how does that make you feel, right? Because I found that getting into the feelings behind the situation was much more informative to me, and it kept me out of that problem-solving mode. So I don't know if that lines up with your rubric and, and how you teach listening, but that's been my experience.

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So, one of the things I think that you touched on is that you're the leader of the organization, and that's an intimidating place for people who are not the leader who work under you to come and share problems and issues because they often think, "Well, I should be solving this." myself? Why is this making me feel in a way that I've got to go and talk to my big boss about it? And so, it's not uncommon at all that leaders feel like they are told that they're unapproachable. You know, they, why would me as an employee, even an employee who's been with you for a long time and you know well, you know their family, you know their story, We get in a place where we think, "Gosh, I should already be able to solve this." Right? And so, it tells me a lot about your leadership ability that you can take a low score and self-reflect and say, "Okay, well, I want to be better for lots of reasons." But when you go and you ask, "How does it make you feel?" That's a question that I ask my team. And encourage them to ask me and others is that it's a disarming question, right? It can be. But when it's used to having you in a certain presence and tone and nonverbal, and you've changed, they go, what's going on? You know, whoa, hold on. So I'm sure you had to spend a little time saying, hey, I'm changing because I'm doing this differently, feedback I got in our review was this. And so, let's be honest, a lot of people don't like hearing feedback like that. You know, the people who can take that feedback and handle it in a constructive manner and not get angry and know that my peers want the best for me, I believe that. The people that I work with on a day-to-day basis, assume positive intent, and they want the best for me. And so if they're going to give me feedback like that, what can I do with it to make our environment better? And so, 18-year-old son who looks up to me and models my style of communication, frankly, has been really interested in the listening piece. And we've talked a lot about it because he is very headstrong in his beliefs and centers them, inability sometimes to look at the gray area. Which I think comes with some—

which is typical for an 18-year-old, right?

Yeah, it comes from some gray hair or loss of hair that we can listen a little bit better. But, you know, getting into it, because I do feel like it's the— it is the opposite of what leaders really think they should be doing. We should— I know how to lead. I've been doing this long enough. Yeah.

And I think coming from my experience, you want to have that confidence, right, that you know what the answer is. But the reality is the larger and more complex your team grows, the less you really do know the answer, right? And for me, that was a lot of ancient history. Like, the problems they were trying to solve were problems that I hadn't dealt with in a decade. And so, like, what my experience was may or may not have been helpful. And so, in asking the question, How do you feel? It's also about effective delegation, right? Because the other relevant experience that I've had is in the Entrepreneurs Organization. In our small groups that we meet with, we call them forum, we have this protocol that is based upon the psychology of Gestalt. And I'm not a psychologist, but the way I understand it is that Gestalt figured out that when you tell— give people advice and tell them what to do, they don't take ownership of their own problem, right? And so in Gestalt protocol, we only share experience with our peers. And so shifting my conversations as a leader to asking, okay, what feelings is this bringing up for you? And then potentially sharing relevant experience share rather than saying, "Okay, here's what you need to do to fix this," because that was my default. And I thought that was projecting confidence because they were coming to me for an answer. But, you know, as long as people aren't solving their own problems, they're not growing. And as a leader, if you're not growing your people, then you're not doing your job.

Couldn't agree more. I think one of the things that underlying in all of that that you just shared is for you to be able to be vulnerable with your employees and them to be vulnerable with you. Because yes, you've hired great people, you've seen them grow, but do we— none of us— I don't feel like there's anybody who we work with that says, I did not— I don't want to grow anymore, I've grown enough, I got this.

I have grown out enough, but that's, that's a different—

yeah, that's a totally different show. And, um, When I think about work with several different generations of people, and technology is great, but it has really transformed how, say, younger, under-30 people communicate. You and I would pick up the phone and call each other. We would maybe send a text and say, "Hey Christian, can you call me when you get a few minutes?" And now you've got someone sending a Slack message to the person who's next door or Snapchat to the person that's across two floors rather than getting up and walking down to the office and saying, "Hey, I just got your email. Help me understand. Can we work together on—" I mean, those are the things that come with a little bit of wisdom, I think, and wisdom I was reading about wisdom in the Bible over the weekend, and the message at church was about wisdom too. And just kept— wisdom has kept hitting me square in the face over the last 4 days. And so I think it's our job as we age into more seasoned leaders to share that wisdom. However, we can learn a lot from our younger peers. Absolutely. If we're willing to ask and if we're willing to listen. I may not ever Snapchat my colleague next door, probably always going to go next door, but I can learn a lot. And I have learned a lot because, you know, the methods of communication, you know, particularly in fundraising, there's a— it's been a pretty big sea change between your traditional and now with AI and influenced automation and fundraising. It's been, it's been wild. So I spent a lot of time asking questions. What's worked? What hasn't worked? Where can we meet in the middle to find— let's not recreate the wheel here. Let's add things to it and make it better if we can.

Yeah. I mean, the communication thing is fascinating because I remember when I first got— it was an internal email only software. Installed at my computer at work when I was a banker. So I've been here since the advent. But the thing about the written communication, be it Slack or text or whatever, you lose a lot of— I don't know, I call it bandwidth, right? Like, so you don't hear the person's tone, you can't ask a follow-up question easily. And so, and I agree with this being possibly a generational thing because For some of my younger team members, I've just asked the question like, "Have you picked up the phone?" Because what I find is that you can have written communication back and forth and it seems to be stressful or heated or whatever, and it's solved so easily by picking up the phone and letting them hear your voice. Like, they know that you care and I care enough that I'm talking to you, and let's figure out what the situation is. Because that's been much more powerful. Again, to, to your point, technology is great, but, but, and, and email is great, and all of those other methods of communicating are great, but they're not real great for listening.

Well, I have a real-time example of this that happened to me last week, and there was all of those things that you just stated. There was— I was very passionate about something. I had sent some emails that were a fair really passionate and probably should have saved draft on. And then we got together at a table in a room, and I read through some items that I wanted to talk about. And I didn't print off a copy for everybody who was there at the meeting because I wanted to see what their nonverbal was as I read through these key points. And totally different. I mean, we build up in our own mind to be perhaps what's going to be a difficult conversation. My experience, 99 times out of 100, is nowhere near as difficult as we played it up to be. And I, you know, I tell people I'm not in the business of pre-purchasing worry. I don't need to. I got enough as it is. I don't need to pre-purchase worry. And so When I can go and have a conversation, save myself an email or a text with an individual or whoever it might be, the guards come down and the want to solve goes up.

Yes, I think one of the benefits on my team, there's only other one male and my two oldest children are daughters. And it really has helped me grow my listening ability being in that environment because I think women tend to intuitively listen better. I don't want to make that a— yeah, I don't, I don't know if that is true or not, but the, the, the definitely the dynamic is different between, uh, how women communicate and how men communicate. Um, but being in that environment has helped me grow my listening skills for sure. Hey listeners, are you ready to turn your passion into profit? Then grab a copy of Profit First for Creatives. Click the link in the show notes to purchase a copy. And if you're not ready to make that full commitment, you can download a free copy of the first chapter. Check it out right now.

And that's because you've had experience and life experience, right? You know, some good, some bad, and some in the middle. And one of the things that I've really spent quite a bit of time and talk a lot about when I'm given the opportunity to speak in groups is the ability to listen with your eyes. And that's hard to do when you're trying to listen with your ears and your eyes. But, you know, I can see behind you, you've got a little trophy there. I don't know what that trophy is for, but it is important enough to sit next to the book that you authored. So it must have some meaning. And so, you know, when we go into someone's office and— or we meet with someone at their home or place of business, if you're listening with your eyes and spending the time to actually digest, you know, what you see and note that, um, oh, they've got a picture of their family, or maybe it's a buddy's golf trip, or a diploma— all of those things to me are, you know, items that I can tick down and, and put here and say, okay, well If it's valuable enough for you to have it in your office, it's very important to you. Yes.

And I think one of the other things I learned even before I started working on listening was a lot about intent and expectations. And my business coach calls it the conversation behind the conversation. And it, it's so many times we go into situations of communicating with some intent in mind, some outcome that we want to achieve, right? And that puts us in, I think, a potentially confrontational mindset, as opposed to I'm going into this conversation without any real expectation of what the outcome is, and that frees you up to listen better. I mean, so, so it's, it's not about like, I've got to take control of this conversation and manage it to a specific outcome. Rather, I'm going to go listen and hear what the other person says and then see where it goes. Hey listeners, are you ready to turn your passion into profit? Then grab a copy of Profit First For Creatives. Click the link in the show notes to purchase a copy. And if you're not ready to make that full commitment, you can download a free copy of the first chapter. Check it out right now.

So, you know, expectations are really interesting. Expectations, again, to me have been nothing but future resentments. And so lowering my expectations of the outcome of a particular topic or event, and not to say that one, you can't have success without expectations. You have to have a certain level of expectation. But when we've built up an expectation either of an employee, of ourselves, or of our boss, it can really be a blinder and a blind spot that does not allow for us to see any personal growth and frankly cuts off that creativity pretty substantially in my mind. When you're thinking, you've already in your mind thought, this is the result that I want. How do I help this person get there? Oh man, that's dicey. And that's manipulative too, by the way.

Yes, and that's actually where I learned it was in the context of sales calls. And so like you go into a meeting where you're pitching what you do with the, the hope that you're going to close the deal, right? But having that intention really makes it more difficult if you go in with no expectation. Like, so, and it is around addressing those feelings, like, so You gotta sell to keep your business going, right? And you've whiffed at the bat, you know, 3 times and you're on the 4th sales call or the 4th pitch or the 4th sales presentation and you're feeling a little pressure, right? And you're feeling like this urgency and that automatically gums up the conversation. If you can instead release those feelings and, and just go in and hear what the person has to say. I was astounded by what you learn is the conversation behind the conversation, right? So the person that you're, you're selling to has got their guard up because they're not, they don't want to be sold to, right? But there's something beneath the surface that they're not telling you, that there's, there's a need that they need, that they have, or they wouldn't be talking to you, right? And so going in and not having an expectation of closing the deal, that, that automatically lets them bring down their guard of not being sold to. And then you can find out what the real problem is.

So I have spent my entire professional career in a forward-facing business development, sales, fundraising role, and I cannot tell you the number of times I've thought I was going to end up closing a sale or whatever it was, and early on, and not— and missing so much, stepping over so many dollars to pick up dimes, and just repeatedly. Now that I think about it, it's just— I can laugh now, but if you're going in and there's, I think, 2 or 3 things here. One is that if you're in sales or have a forward-facing role in which you have multiple meetings a day and a week, those people who you meet with on Monday morning at 8:30, the same Christian Brim and the same level of output. And so you need— one has to gear themselves down to gear themselves up. We can't always be on, right? And then I've gone in and I'm, you know, I've got a, you know, fake brochure here, and I really want to talk about this, you know, poly pipeline that Butch's Rat Hole and Anchor Service has just taken over in South Texas. And, and the person that I'm meeting with wants to talk about preset surface casing. And frankly, the poly pipe opportunity was one small piece, whereas the other opportunity is 10 or 20x of revenue. And so being able to ask the question, you know, tell me about what your needs are, and then listening. And sometimes, Christian, there have been times where I've said, you know what, I'm not able to solve that problem, and I hope you appreciate my honesty, but We cannot do that. And man, you talk about people sitting back in their chair and thinking, no one's ever been that honest with me.

Yes, I, I think at the end of the day you have to approach it of, can you be of value to that person in that conversation, right? And for me, a lot of times what I help people obtain is clarity. For themselves about what it is they really need and what the motivations are, right? So like, okay, you say you need this, why? Because oftentimes people, because we're emotionally driven, we come up with the thing that we think that's going to solve the pain, right? But as professionals, Sometimes we see, you know what, it's really not what you think it is. It's the nail that's sticking into your head, right? You know, that you just ignored, right? It's the nail. Yeah. It's not the nail. I don't know if you guys know the video, but it's not about the nail. I don't care what your wife says. It's not about the nail.

It's a great video. No, that's the truth. And have we stumbled? Sure. You know, I was with the leader of a large private school over in Tulsa last week, and we were having a discussion based on, based and centered around fundraising and what his mindset was going into a potential call. You know, I've got to talk to him about this, this, you know, and I, it was, it was racing. He's very excited and I said, you know, what happens if they stop you after your first bullet point and say, well, I'm in for that, or they say, you know what, we're not giving a dime to that project, you know, how do you react? And do you treat the conversation as a conversation rather than a sales pitch? And man, when we are actively listening and being respectful and responsible for who we are as a person, it's a whole different conversation. Yes.

And in asking those questions and listening, what you're going to do is you're going to provide value. Whether or not you end up closing the sale, so to speak, it doesn't matter. You've provided value to them, and that's more important.

You know, from my friends, some of which are your friends also, have asked me for a long time, Emil, how do you fundraise? I just can't do that. Like, how do you ask people for money? And, you know, my answer is a lot of the times I don't have to make the ask. The relationships that we've built or I've built are strong enough where they know, and they'll come to me and say, I want to do this project. And but there are times where, you know, you've got to sit across from someone and say, Christian, I would like for you and Stacy to consider an investment of $5,000 in X and just sit there and let you as the recipient of the question digest the subject.

Yes, because I could see where fundraising would seem strange to those in business, but it's fundamentally no different, right? Because what you're doing is trying to fulfill a need that they have. It's not begging somebody for, you know, charity. It's they have money that they want to invest in certain things to give for, for altruistic reasons. And it's about aligning what your project is with those needs. But in business, it's the same thing. Like, I think where we get stuck as business owners is we get stuck on what we're selling. Right. And, and it's, it's, that's, that's the exact opposite place to start. You need to understand what it is that they want before you can sell them anything. And to your point, you may end up not being able to sell them anything. Like, you know what, what I, what I got, you don't need, you don't currently need.

And being able to be transparent and open and honest about that, I think, has won me over many, many times, you know, over the course of my career. And, you know, I love the title of your podcast because profitable and creative, you know, oftentimes don't go together. Chat was that one of my goals for the people that I interact with at work and have the opportunity to work with and supervise, as well as people that I'm meeting with is for them to unlock their creative side and be able to share what that is as it relates to feeling comfortable saying to me as the supervisor, Emil, what if we tried this? I've been thinking about this, and last night it came to me that maybe we do this a little bit differently. There's no— I love that. That's my favorite thing is when my team comes to me or a donor comes to me and says, I've been thinking about this. Could we do it this way? Well, there's— that to me is one of the highest compliments that we built trust. We've reached a level where you trust me enough to come to me and say, "Hey, boss, I think we ought to maybe try this. Maybe it might end up a little differently." Perfect. Love it. You own it. You know, that gives that ownership piece, but it's all built on trust and that relationship that we built over time. It's not, you know, you've got a team that you are responsible for, and there's, as a business owner, feel responsible for making sure that they can provide for their families, right? That's an inherent thing that is a core value for you is you want to provide for others, right? So, you know, that— but that's all built on trust. And I, you know, unlocking the creative side, you know, is probably a little cliché, but I'll use it anyways.

I love it. Emil, how do we find more about Dubkey Partners Consulting?

Well, I am on LinkedIn only for the time being. You can— it's, uh, Emil Shaded on LinkedIn, S-H-A-D-I-D. You can message me there. I will give you my email. It's dubkeypartners@gmail.com, which is D-A-B-K-E partners, no dot, no slash, at gmail.com. You know, particularly I work you know, with smaller organizations, Christian, to help them on their fundraising. I've, you know, on the active listening side, I've spoken to groups as small as 5 and as many as 500. Have had a lot of great stories shared with me post our times together of things that have worked for them as they've implemented it. So that's how you reach me. And, um, My cell phone number is on my LinkedIn, and so text or call, I will answer, I promise.

I love it. Emil, thank you very much for showing up and giving us your insights. Listeners, if you like what you've heard, rate the show, share it with someone else, subscribe. If you don't like what you've heard on the show, send us a message and tell us what you want besides email. Until later. Ta-ta for now.

And that's a wrap for today's episode of The Profitable Creative. Until next time, you money lovers. And don't forget, Profit First for Creatives is live via Amazon. Link below.