143 - Reclaiming the Art of Meaningful Conversation in a Conditioned Society with Jake Stahl Consulting's Jake Stahl

Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional and only 2% rational. Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my experience, the foundational skill of life. Stick around to the end of the show and I'll reveal how you can be on our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started. Jake Saw, welcome to Listening with Leaders. You are a consultant, a listening consultant among other things. So this ought to be an interesting conversation. And your website is Jake Jake Stahl, stahlconsulting.com. Welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me, Doug. It's a true honor. Thanks for having me.

Absolutely. So briefly, when I look at your website, you've got, you've got a whole bunch of different things you do, but, but essentially what you're trying to do is bring out the best that your clients have to offer in terms of their humanness. And bring that out and get them to be playing with that all the time rather than hiding it away somewhere with under some mistaken belief that you can't be human and authentic and be effective. Is that a fair summary?

Yeah, as a matter of fact, that's one of the best summaries I've heard. You know, Doug, the problem is we're in a day and age that we've become so conditioned with certain responses and we have become so lost in the art of conversation. A great example is just, how are you? You know, it's, it's a common back and forth. And the reality is we're already conditioned to listen for it. We're conditioned to give it. We're conditioned with a response for it. And I think the reality is somewhere in the midst of all that, Doug, true human conversation doesn't take places— take place. And what we do is we get so used to that that we don't give it a second thought anymore.

I agree. I mean, I teach people how to listen to emotions. My mantra is ignore the words, read the emotions, and reflect back the emotions with a you statement.

And that's a, that's a great thought. When I school people on selling and using proper verbiage, I always tell them to record themselves, then watch it back with the volume off.

Exactly. Yeah, that's one of the exercises I use with my students when I'm training executives how to listen in this very unique way that I teach, I say, well, go watch a, get up, put a Netflix film on and turn off the sound for 2 minutes and write down all the emotions that the actors are portraying and see how many emotions you can pick up.

Now, I'll bet they find that they can pick up a ton more than they thought.

Right. Especially after I've taught them how to structure emotional data. And that's the whole trick with, in my work is understanding the emotion. For most people, emotions are unstructured data. So they have nowhere to access.

That's a good point.

And how to do it. And then once they've got the data structured, then they can see it immediately. So, yeah. So how did you get into the business you're into now?

Well, it's funny. I grew up in a generation where kids were seen and not heard. So I attended more business meetings with my dad, who was a very successful business owner, where I didn't say a word. So as a kid, you don't listen too much, but as you grow older, you start to listen into the conversations. And I think what amazed me, Doug, growing up and as I got older, was how many conversations are what you would consider a non-conversation. They're words that come out, we don't really think about them, and before you know it, 20 minutes have gone by and, and nobody said anything. And whether that's in an effort to be polite or in an effort to beat around the bush so you don't hurt somebody's feelings, there's a plethora of reasons why, but the bottom line is nothing is transacted in some of the conversations that you have. And I don't mean transactions like a business deal. I mean actually getting down to what the base meaning is. And that's illustrated by the fact that you'll get off the phone and you'll turn to somebody you know and go, they just didn't get it. I wonder why they're doing this. And, and they proceed to bring out stuff that they didn't bring out on the call. So I think that with this day and age of not talking as much and, uh, AI kind of taking over and having our conversations for us, I, I just think we're getting further and further lost.

Well, I, I think, I think that keeps you and I in business.

Yes, it does. Yeah, I'm not complaining, but, uh, it is a shame.

I think it's a— I think there are a lot of things that have led to this. One, I completely agree with you that, that we as children were not taught how to, how to listen. And there, um, the, what you're describing is what I call Type 1 listening, where the agenda is on you, the listener, and all you're interested in is what you're gonna say next and whatever marginal information the other person might have for me, as opposed to Type 2 listening where it's flipped and where as the listener, my focus, my total agenda and focus is on making sure you, the listener, is deeply validated and heard from your frame of reference. And most people do Type 1. Very few people do Type 2. Very few. I mean, it's really rare unless you've gone through training. It's really hard to do Type 2 listening. And that's where the connection occurs is when I can make you feel like you've been deeply heard to the point where you say, oh, wow, you really get me. That's, that's when the click occurs. And most people don't know how to do that.

Well, and I think to add on to what you were saying, Doug, was when you can make someone feel good about conversing with you, they associate those good feelings with you.

Absolutely.

And it sets a precedent for future conversations. So not only do you do yourself a favor now, but you're doing yourself a favor later. It's amazing what taking the time to listen does.

Right. What I tell all my clients is that you will build instant trust, loyalty, collaboration, and cooperation just by listening to your people. In a, I mean, truly listening to them. In a Type 2 listening, not in a Type 1 listening. And I, I'm surprised at how many leaders don't get that. They think they're good listeners and they're awful listeners, but they all think they're really, really good and they, and they're not listening at all. Um, very, very strange. So how do you go about taking somebody who is not a good listener and helping them become a better listener?

The way I do that is, is I have a rule I developed probably 20 years ago, and I've trained in a number of countries and all across the US, and I find it universally works. And it's called the 2:10 rule. And the 2:10 rule basically says that every 2 minutes or less, you should create an interaction, a valid one, where you give an empathetic response or you do something that encourages two-way conversation. Then at the end of every 10 minutes, you go through kind of a summary process. So this is what we were just talking about. I want to make sure I got it. It, it's much more in-depth and intricate than that, but the 2 and 10 kind of set up a cadence. And the philosophy that I have with my customers, and I'm actually writing a book about it right now, is that cadence trumps content. Because until you establish that back and forth, the content doesn't really matter.

When you talk about cadence, what are you, what are you talking about?

So having an interaction every 2 minutes or less, and then having that summation every 10 minutes. And this can be done by a presenter, public speaker. It can be done in the boardroom. I've even helped couples that I know that have been having issues develop this cadence in their conversation. And the cadence is just that steady back and forth.

So, so the cadence is the cadence of conversation, turn-taking, and, and then making sure that you're demonstrating appropriate empathy so the other, other person feels heard and validated, and then keeping the, keeping everything on track by essentially paraphrasing and reflecting back what the conversation has been all about over the past 10 minutes.

Exactly right. And the thing about it, Doug, was I used to teach this years ago before I kind of wrapped it into a name. And I always had trouble teaching people because it was hard to get them to just understand there was a back and forth. But the mini miracle happened when I started to wrap it in parameters. And I'd say, don't go beyond 2 minutes without having an interaction. Don't go beyond 10 minutes without having a, a reflection point. Where you can paraphrase and make sure you understood what happened during the last 10 minutes. And as soon as I wrapped it into a timer, it was incredible what happened. People started to become conscious of it. And during the first week, honestly, they hated it. Ah, this is too hard. I don't like this. Yeah, it's work. But the amazing transition happens after you go about a week. Then people are like, I didn't think I needed the timer anymore. And it just felt natural to go back and forth. The part that's always amazed me, Doug, is as kids, we know this automatically. Look at two 5-year-olds. This is my mom. Which one is yours? I'm 5. How old are you? I like trucks. What do you like? It's natural. There's no need to teach kids give and take because they know it. But somewhere along the line, and in particular salespeople, it just, I don't know, it kind of disappears. And I've found that when I coach leaders and they take this into their boardrooms, the interactivity spawns new ideas, new input. People feel good about working there. It's an amazing process.

Well, yes, learning how to listen is, is what I count as a foundational skill of leadership. And, you know, that's why this show is called Listening with Leaders, because it's overlooked and underrated by many, many, many people. And of course, there aren't many people out there that are teaching listening skills. It's kind of amazing how few people, how few people out there actually saying, look, listening is a skill that has to be taught, just like learning tennis or golf or skiing or anything else. And it's got to be practiced.

Very true.

It's got to be practiced. It's not a natural— we all think it's a natural skill because we have the ability to talk, we have ears so we can hear stuff, but connecting it all up cognitively and emotionally to make it work, um, is, is not intuitive. In fact, it's counterintuitive. And that's what I've discovered in my work is that I tell people my skills are counterintuitive and counter-normative. And so you have to practice it to overcome the inner, our social inertia against listening.

100%. And to kind of grow on that a little bit, Doug, one thing that I've noticed is that when it comes to businesses, we tend to bring it down to a math equation. And if every 100 people we call, we close one person for business. Out of every person we close, out of 10 of those, we may get a long-term contract. But we don't look at anything else in life like that. We don't think, I have to date 1,000 person before I find my wife. I have to meet 50 people today before I can get a friend. We don't put anything else in that context. And yet somehow when we get into business, it, it becomes a numbers game. Well, no, it doesn't have to be. If you have good solid communication skills and you learn the art of listening, it transforms that.

Right.

We up our odds of finding the right person in dating by doing research and listening when they talk and putting on our best clothes. But we think in business, it's just numbers. Let's just tag 1000 customers and we'll get somebody that will buy.

Right. The thinking behind that is the myth of rationality. And that is that business and the law and many other disciplines assume, have made the, a flawed assumption that what makes us human is rationality. And so everything becomes, can now be containerized and computerized and driven into numbers and bottom lines. And it's all, of course, it's all false. It's all true. I mean, none of it's true. We're not rational beings. We're emotional beings. There's, I teach a graduate class at Pepperdine called Decision Making. And in that class, I teach my students, there's no such thing as rationality. You know, that's a myth. And Socrates and Aristotle and all those guys, they were wrong. I mean, they used the best judgment they had considering what they, what tools they have. But we know with neuroscience today that every single decision we make is an emotional decision. There's no such thing as rationality. And so when business people, or you go to graduate school, business school, and you learn quant analysis, you know, and, and all this number stuff, you're thinking this is already rational, but you're never taught the human element, that this all comes down to how emote, how people emote and how they feel. And what you're talking about is the idea that when you truly listen to somebody, you're listening to their feelings, and that's giving you really important information about who they are and what they feel and what they're experiencing.

I'm liking where this is going, Doug. You're one of the few people that really latch on to this concept of listening and emotion. I often argue with people that talk about, oh, our price is too high, our price is too low. I would argue it's never about price. No, it's, it's always about the passion and the emotion tied up in a purchase. If it were all about price, no million-dollar home would sell, no BMWs would go off the lot. It's Again, I would argue it is virtually never about price.

No, it's emotional value. And that's the secret. And so when you're working with sales, for example, salespeople, they want, all they want to do is talk about features and benefits. And you're like me, right? First thing I do is say for the first 10 minutes of any conversation, you don't say a word about anything about what you're, why you're there. All you do is listen and reflect.

Exactly right.

That's all you do. You know, telling is not selling. No. Yeah, people get that.

It is. And I think it's funny, I was talking with somebody on LinkedIn the other day and I reached out just because I admired their business and I wrote him a note. I'm like, man, I really admire your business. I think it's great what you're doing. You know, and I kind of congratulate them and the person really was suspicious. They're like, why aren't you selling anything? Why aren't you, why aren't you trying to push anything? Well, because I just admire what you're doing, but we've gotten so far over the edge with trying to push what we do in our price that people are suspicious if you're friendly, it's, it's gotten weird.

Well, it's of course the online environment is made, made available instant communication with anybody anywhere in the world that has access to the internet. And so now there is a certain size, a certain percentage of population that's going to use that for manipulation and for fraud and scam. And so we all get blasted with that sort of thing, and you just have to learn to be discerning. But some people get very defensive about that because they're highly suspicious of honest communication online because nobody's honest, right? So when somebody is honest, you must be dishonest.

Yeah, it's funny you say about the honesty. Um, our granddaughter is 2 years old and my daughter called me and she goes, Dad, I'm kind of at a crossroads. She said, you've always taught us to be honest and diplomatic about it, but, but honest to a fault. And she goes, but Dad, nobody does that. She goes, I don't know whether to teach our daughter to be thoroughly honest all the time, or if I need to teach her to be, you know, just a different way because everybody's a different way. It's just her having a daughter now, my daughter having a daughter, has led to some very interesting conversations about they were raised, how they were raised versus how they want to raise their own children and what it means to communicate with a level of honesty that other people may not be used to.

Right. The, the way I coach parents on this is to say, all right, from, you're gonna raise your toddlers and your small children and you're gonna give them some very basic foundational rules and it's gonna be pretty black and white because that's all they, that's all they can really master at that age. But when they turn 12, you gotta have a different conversation with them and you gotta say, look, you're 12, you're moving into adulthood. Next 4 years are gonna be pretty insane for you. Next 4 8 years are gonna be kind of insane as your body goes through all these changes. And the things we taught you as, as children, we need to rework those rules a little bit and give them, and then give the 12-year-old, 13-year-old a new set of rules to start playing with and, and moderate the, all the rules of a 2-year-old, which is don't be selfish, you know, don't talk, don't, children are be not like, to your point, are not to be heard. They're only to be seen. And start modifying all that and start saying, so now you have to— it's time for you to start becoming assertive, and this is how you do assertiveness without being rude. And it's time for you to be discerning, and it's time for you to take care of yourself and not be a pleaser and recognize that just because you're taking care of yourself doesn't mean you're being selfish. I think that's the conversation we need to have with teenagers. And that, I think, answers the question for your daughter. Well, 2 years old, yeah, black and white. This is the way it is, right?

Yep.

With the understanding that in 10 years there's going to be another conversation, and maybe 10 years after that there's going to be a third conversation.

Yep. Because at 30, we're having much different conversations than we did 10 years prior and 10 years prior and 10 years prior.

So, so, Jake, what is it that's unique about you that you bring to the table that, that you think makes clients really appreciate and want to work with you?

One of the things that's much different about what I do is I really get into the psychology and social psychology of just people. You know, we use a lot of words and we do a lot of things each day that can make a subtle difference when talking to others. Uh, one of my biggest, uh, I guess, guy crushes is B.F. Skinner and his philosophies. And one of his was, and you know this probably better than I do, was that free will is somewhat of an illusion, that we're a set of preconditioned responses that we've developed over the years that we use now, because in the past when we've used them, they've yielded good results. So one of the things I talk to my clients about that I don't know of any others that are talking about this is what's conditioned your client? What do they think about you before they even pick up the phone? What do they think about you when they look at you on a website or hear your name. And how do we break that conditioning? You know, instead of saying, how are you, when you get on the phone, what can you say that's along the same lines that breaks that fine, how are you feeling? And so a lot of what we'll do is we will spend time think talking about that. And when I teach sales to people, we localize it because how you're going to sell to somebody in Augusta, Georgia is going to be significantly different than how you sell somebody in Los Angeles, California. And we do a lot of localization training to just get people in the right mindset. The smile and dial is dead. That even the day of scripts, in my opinion, should be gone. We've gotten people so reliant on scripts that nobody gets to know each other sincerely anymore. So the thing that makes me different is I'm always up on the latest psychology and social psychology and, and words that neurolinguistically make a difference. And are more likely to get positive responses so that you can build a relationship earlier. And you're not spending the time with the how are you's and oh, what's the weather like? And oh, you're a Bears fan? So am I. You know, just build a real relationship. So that's what makes me different. I don't have a set in stone selling program that I just hand off to you. I take any program that I develop around your company, around your demographics, around your customer. And when I leave, it's yours. Use it forever. But it's custom designed to you.

It's interesting. You were talking about B.F. Skinner and of course, behaviorism had a lot of problems.

Oh, of course it did.

But when Watson and Skinner, later Skinner, were thinking about this, they were trying to get away from Freud and Jung and all those guys. It was totally subjective. Non-scientific belief. And they were trying, and to their credit, they were trying to objectify human behavior. What's really— and then that, that they were displaced by the cognitive scientists, right, the 1970s, '80s, and even into the '90s. And now we've got neuroscience, and neuroscience is swinging back around to say that, you know, we're, we're bio— everything is biologically determined, uh, it's biological determinism, and there is no such thing as free will. Which is at a neuroscientific level is really interesting and is creating a lot of chaos in professions such as law and economics and other social sciences. Because if we don't have free will, then what is there, right?

Absolutely. I agree. And to me, that's what makes it so fascinating.

Absolutely. So how do people find you? Just, I mean, is it, you had just have developed sufficient reputation that, that people know about you and you get referrals, people find your website. How, what, what, how do people discover that, hey, this guy Jake Stahl's out there and does amazing work?

Most of my, the business I get are through referrals. So I will work with a client and they will refer me to other people. And I, I do get a lot of repeat work. So somebody will have me work with their sales team and then they'll call me back to work with their customer service team. So I do get a lot of referrals. I do get some business off of LinkedIn and some off my website, but it's probably 1/8 of what I get from referrals. And frankly, I prefer it that way because then I know a little bit of something about who I'm working with. They know a little bit of something about me, and we're starting off at stage 2 instead of stage 1. It just makes life easier.

Just a little warmer, warmer to get in. So exactly. A client engages you. I presume you must do some kind of diagnostic process to figure figure out just exactly what it is that— what are they asking for and what do they need?

Exactly right. And oftentimes that's two different things. They'll say, this is real, I wanna— what I wanna have. And after we're done, it's like, oh, I see, I really needed something else. Right. So I always give a 1-hour free consult just to get a lay of the land. Oftentimes I followed up with another hour free to dig a little bit deeper. And then when a client engages me, if they're interested in moving forward, then what I do is I sit down with them, their management, their salespeople, and I get a true lay of what people are thinking. So what I may hear from a CEO could be drastically different from what I hear in the ranks, right? So then I develop a game plan for moving forward. Then I take it back to the leadership. Oftentimes when I take it back to the leadership, they'll say, Well, that's not what I thought. And my first response is call your company and act like a customer. Call customer service or call your sales team and say you read about it on the web or you saw an ad and just see how they respond. And I will tell you, 9 out of 10 CEOs after calling their own company and trying that come back and go, okay, you were right.

So is your emphasis really in sales or is it other stuff as well?

I specialize in sales and customer service. I've helped some sales teams 3x their sales, and I was working with this customer service team recently. We got their survey scores up by 1.5 stars. And honestly, it's not rocket science. It's so basic that I think it's just— it's difficult to think the simplest things work. I've taught the martial arts for 20 years. And the one thing I always tell people, or the people who ask, uh, they say, well, what would you do in this situation? I'd rely on one or two moves, and chances are they're the ones you taught in the first class, right? Nothing fancy.

What, what kind of martial arts?

Uh, I taught Aikido.

Oh, interesting. I've got a— I'm a secondary black belt in Northern Chinese style and a Tai Chi master.

Oh, nice. Oh, that's great. I respect all the arts. I, I just think it's an incredible discipline And you go into it thinking, well, not you. I went into it thinking that I would come out and I'd be able to kick butt and everything was great. And I found the longer I was into it, the more passive I became.

Right. Exactly correct. And so somebody asked me, what would you do if? And I said, I'd run.

Exactly right.

Yeah.

It's like, oh, what would you do in this situation?

The last thing I want to do is use my skills.

No question.

Because that means somebody's going to die. And it's not good. And so, yeah, I run.

Yeah. I've had people say to me, what would you do if somebody pulled a gun? I'd say whatever they want.

Right.

Just whatever you can do to just defuse the situation and be able to walk away. Yeah. Nothing fancy. And that's what I, that's what I help companies with. How can you reduce this down to the simplest possible denominator and make it work?

Right.

And I think honestly, Doug, that's the biggest objection I get. Is, oh, is that all this program is? That's all it needs to be. When two people are running from a bear, you don't have to outrun the bear, you just have to outrun the other person.

That's right, right, right. People are really— they're really— I mean, what I teach is very simple, although it's very difficult. It's difficult to do in the beginning because it's so counterintuitive. I mean, when I'm teaching you how to tell another person how they're— what they're feeling, you know, that's weird.

Because that is weird.

We just don't do that in our culture. But the neuroscience shows that when you tell somebody, when you, especially an angry person, if you label an angry person's emotions, they'll calm down almost instantly every single time. They can't help it. It's how we're amazing, how our brains are hardwired. And I developed this skill in 2005 as a mediator. And then in 2010, began working in maximum security prisons here in California, training murderers to be peacemakers. And this is the first skill that we taught them.

Wow, that's incredible.

And they completely changed the yards they were on from being very violent places to being quite peaceful places. Just—

that's incredible.

Yeah, I mean, it's amazing. So it is, it is, to your point, these simple basic ideas can be so transforming and so transformational.

And you have found that to be the key too. So we have an n of 2. It must be right.

Well, one more question, Jake, and I'll let you go. What is one thing about Jake Stahl that we wouldn't— other than the fact he's an Aikido guy— and, uh, but, uh, what's one thing about you we would never know? Unless you revealed it to us.

I am a licensed blackjack dealer.

No kidding.

How's that? Yes, I am. Where—

how did that— okay, okay, there's a story there. A license— first of all, I didn't know there was a license for blackjack dealers.

Yeah, if you want the down and dirty truth, I went through a very, very rough time in life. My health was bad. I went through a divorce, things got really rough, and I needed something to kind of pull me together. So I went and, uh, I had always enjoyed going to casinos. I'm not a huge gambler. I like the atmosphere. And they were offering a 200-hour blackjack course. So you learn that and you learn baccarat as well. And then you get licensed to deal. So I went through it. I went to the casino. You deal for a couple of pit bosses. They give you the okay and you get a license for it. And it was a lot of fun. I, I really enjoyed it and I love to play blackjack. So. I think it helps me raise my odds.

Well, yeah, this has been a great conversation, Jake. Thank you. Yes, I'm out to be with me today.

Thank you, Doug. It was a pleasure being here.

Doug Noll here. Thank you so much for listening to Listening with Leaders. If you are a successful executive leader who would like to be on this program, please visit podcast.dougnull.com/podcast. If you got something out of this interview, would you please share this episode on social media? Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you know someone that would be a great guest, tag them on the social media to let them know about the show and include the hashtag #ListeningWithDougNoll. Leaders. I love seeing your posts and guest suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content. To make sure you don't miss any episodes, go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up, ratings, and reviews go a long way to help promote the show and mean a lot to me and my team. Want to know more? Go to my website, DougNoll.com, or follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. That's @DouglasNoll. Doug Noll. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next show.