323 - Listening as a Superpower: Transforming Conversations into Opportunities for Growth with Curion's Keren Novack

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.

Karen Novak, welcome to Listening with Leaders. You are the president of a company called Kurion, which can be found at kurioninsights.com. You guys are in the business of collecting data around customer preferences and insights for your clients, and you've had an interesting journey. Welcome to the show.

Thank you so much. I'm excited to be here.

Absolutely. So let's start with your backstory. You went to a college that had the highest academic load of any place you could find. I think that's what I heard, right? Correct? Is that right?

That is true. And I still question that decision.

I was going to say, what are you—

I went to an Ivy League college and And that was good enough. What the heck? What are you thinking?

What was I thinking? It's interesting because I actually saw that college sight unseen. I went to high school in Hong Kong and I had the opportunity to go back and look for college, look at colleges with one or both of my parents. And I said, no, I'm busy. I can't. And so ultimately I took that giant book of colleges that had the tiny thin pieces of paper and I flipped through them. And what I was looking for is a college that was going to give me a degree that reflected accepted how hard I worked at, at it. And I also ended up meeting a very lovely person on the campus of Hong Kong International School. We went to high school and I just felt a connection to her. And I think that's important when you find and feel a connection for someone. And I knew that the degree was going to be worthwhile too. I wasn't gonna be getting into any Ivy League college, so kudos to you, but that was not the path that I was on. But Franklin Marshall's a very good college with rigorous academics and Very proud to have gone there.

You were a liberal arts major like me. I was an English lit major. And back in those, back in when I went to college many years ago, we figured a liberal arts degree and 25 cents will get you a cup of coffee. That back in the day when coffee was 25 cents.

I was also equally terrified graduating with a liberal arts degree in psychology.

Here's the thing. I think that today, young people should be pursuing a liberal arts degree because I think that with the advent of artificial intelligence, we're not gonna need coders anymore, 'cause AI's gonna handle it. What we need are people who have enough, broad enough exposure to human knowledge that they can ask the AIs the right questions exactly. And I don't think there's any other degree other than a liberal arts degree that can really train people how to think critically across a broad spectrum of disciplines.

Yeah. Someone said to me the other day, oh, psychology must be the perfect degree for you in the, in the role that you're in. You must use it so much. I said, I don't remember a darn thing. I don't remember a a single theory, a single psychologist that we learned about. But what I do think it taught me is how to think, and the entire liberal arts education is what exactly did exactly that.

So tell us a little bit about your backstory. So you go to this college, they work your butt off, you get your degree. Now you're a freshly minted liberal arts person.

Oh boy, what next? All of us, what do you do?

In my day, if you didn't go to med school, you went to law school.

So, and many of my friends at school, that is exactly what they went on to do. In fact, I ended up, went on to marry one of them. On it. There you go.

You're married to a lawyer or a doctor? Doctor. Okay, tell us a little bit about your career trajectory.

Yeah, I— whatever I've done in life, but I think back on it, I've done because I've enjoyed it. And so I actually showed up on day one at Franklin Marshall pursuing a degree in biology, and I quickly realized after taking Chem 101 that this was not going to be for me because you had to pass Chem 101 to get into Bio 101. So I made the decision to pivot out of that, but it really wasn't until my junior year that I found psychology and, and really That was at the point when I declared the major in psychology. But coming out of that, I decided to cast a very broad net. The easy thing would have been to do, I'm going to go get a master's, but a master's in what and for what? And so I ended up at a job fair and a little company named L'Oréal was there and they had a post and it was back in 2005. They had a post saying they were looking for an insights person that had a degree in psychology or sociology and mathematics or statistics. I was like, why did they just write this job for me? And that's exactly what I made majored in and minored in. Anyway, 4 months later, because it took a while for a large company like that to get their act together and offer me a job and decide that they really did want me, I started at L'Oréal. And that was when I fell into this world of sensory and consumer insights. And I was just absolutely fascinated at everything it took to get a product to market. Just, you take for granted that there's products on the store shelves, drugstore shelves, that are there and they are what you need and they function in the way that you imagine that they should function. And it was just really fascinating to me to see what went into making sure that product met consumer expectations.

And so you were there for a while.

Yep.

And I think you— were you doing consulting work for the company you work for now?

So the— how I ended up there is a kind of a funny story because I was getting a little antsy, as I do. I bore fairly quickly, as my team knows. I'm gonna— I'll take that as one of those answers to my greatest weakness and also my greatest strength. And so I was getting a freelancing, and I decided that I needed to, to start looking elsewhere. And so I decided instead of just applying for jobs, I was going to go out and talk to some people and take some courses. And so I ended up out at a course at a company called Trigon, and it was on a descriptive analysis methodology called Trigon QDA. And as I stepped into that facility on the first day, I knew something was special about it. This place is beautiful aesthetics. It was gorgeous. And then I proceeded to sit in this room and listen to these folks that had founded this methodology and been the very first interns of this company. And I have no other way to describe it except that it just made sense. I have never been so engaged in 3 days straight of courses than I was in that moment. And so, I did what any 25-year-old would do and I went into the CEO's office and I said, "Sir, I'd like to work at this company." I was like, okay, let's talk. Ultimately, he was like, you want to be in Chicago, the role would be here in California. And I was like, okay, that's not going to work for me because I'm really trying to get to Chicago. Nice meeting you. And I went on my way. And then I thought, no, I want this. This is the place I want to be. And I just, I knew in my heart that's where I needed to be. And so I emailed him back a couple days later and said, what if I came to California for 9 months to a year? And then open up the office in Chicago. Why would you do that? Because I want to work at this company because I feel it. So I came in as a project manager 15 years ago. Yep. And here we are today.

So the company is based here in California?

It was. So it's a combination of 4 companies now, 4 main companies now. And it merged with Q, Trigon merged with Q Research in 2017 and formed Kurion. And it was around that time that the headquarters went from the Bay Area of California to Chicago, where I'm located today. That worked. Well, I, a little bit by design, I think of where I ended up, where I ended up being. And obviously the Chicago area is fantastic for our client base. The Fortune 500 food and beverage clients around here is a huge piece of what we do.

So how did you become president of the company?

Oh, you keep having an opinion long enough. Eventually you end up here. Now I say I bleed Kurion orange. I have a tremendous amount of passion for this company. The people that work here are our clients, et cetera. When we became Kurion back in 2017, I went from individual contributor to leading a small team and really worked to build up what became known as the Midwest food and beverage team. I was getting ready to come back from maternity leave with my third child and went for a walk with my CEO. It was COVID at that time. Went for a walk with my CEO. We took our dogs because that's what you did. You had to go outside during COVID And he said, you're coming back, right? I said, of course I'm coming back. This is part of who I am. Why, why, why? What are you saying? He goes, I want you to be president of the company. I said, sorry, what? And he's okay. If you're not going to take it, you're going to help me find someone to do that. I said, I don't want to do that. And so anyway, it was a bit of a longer story than that, but I have him to thank for recognizing that not just the passion that I had, the tenure that I had in the company, but my ability to lead a team at that moment. And so became president in 2021. My last past 16 years, we've gone from 30 people to close to into 300 people. Yeah. But especially in the last sort of 5, 6 years, it's been an incredible ride. Lots of different roles and responsibilities along the way.

So what do you, what are your roles now as president?

Yeah. I'm very client-facing. I work very close in with the research teams, our marketing and sales groups as well, just really bringing all of that together. And I'd say one of the most exciting things that I've been working on now is our new products. Our industry is one that is ripe for disruption, and Kurion is at the forefront of that. We're looking at different ways of measuring product success and benchmark in market and figuring out how to leverage everyone's favorite tool of AI to get work done faster, better, cheaper, and more efficiently.

And it's a lot of fun. AI is amazing. I'm working on my 5th book on leadership empathy and no kidding, you gotta be careful.

You sure do.

I'm in my 4th. I'm on, yeah, I'm on my 3rd deep edit and I, I, this is at the point where I start working on citations and I found out that ChatGPT, oh, Gemini, wrong. Then none of the, none of the sources that it cited stated what Gemini said they stated.

Not entirely surprised, but yeah, a little frightening, especially when you some people have adopted it so, so quickly without the knowledge of the limitations around it.

Hence the liberal arts degree, right?

Yeah, there you go. I guess so. I always say I know enough to be dangerous. I think about that. And yeah, so we've been leaning heavy into that and figuring out how can we best leverage it to support the research that we're doing.

Exactly. I'm treating it like a stupid graduate assistant.

It's a little bit like a buddy for me. It gets a little lonely working here, so I'm working a day in and day out behind your computer screen, and it's like, how can I reword that? Can you give me another word? So a little bit on a more superficial level.

So you've been doing that, you've been president since 2021, so that's 3, 4 years. What is it that gets you up in the morning and gets you excited to go to work?

Yeah, I have to say, I keep showing up for the people. I've hired and worked with some of the most brilliant people. There's certain people that you just want to be in the presence of. And that's how I feel about the folks that I work with at Curion. Just, you get on the phone with them and you see them and you— I'm excited to talk to you today. So certainly it's the people. And I think no matter where you work, so long as you've got good people, it doesn't matter if you're making notebooks or granola bars or toilet cleaner, you can have a really great day. That being said, The products that we work on, the diversity across food and beverage, restaurant, durable goods, health and beauty, you can't beat that. The top brands in the world and the diversity. I was working at L'Oréal, it was all mascara, all foundation, all day long. And so to come into, to Keryon and like, I'm going to work on pizza today and tomorrow it's going to be hamburgers and the next day it's going to be mascara and the next day it's going to be something else. I'm a bit of a natural. I'm drawn to problems and challenges and always having something like that really keeps my attention. As we mentioned, I bore easily. So this helps me keep from being too bored.

I understand that problem. It's interesting that you say, should say that. It's just remarkable. As I told you before we started recording, I've done 330, 340 interviews of CEOs and executives like yourself, entrepreneurs. And the one thing that stands out is how important the people are.

Oh yeah.

And every single successful person has said the most, the smartest thing I did was hire people smarter than me. Oh, always. Let them go to work, get out of their way. And you're saying exactly the same thing.

Yeah. You've gotta find your, you gotta find your people. And I think most importantly, yeah, sure. Everyone's smarter than somebody else, somebody in a different way and understanding where they have their strengths and then giving them the boundaries, the guardrails to go after. Nobody wants to operate on a straight line, but giving them the opportunity to figure out where to go next, I think, is so important. And that's where you establish that trust with folks, giving that.

Yeah, I'm writing a whole book on empathy and trust, a whole chapter. Yeah, it's critical. Karen, what is it about you personally? You've touched on a couple of your attributes, but what is it about you that you think you bring to the table that makes everything so successful?

My annoying energy.

All right, that's an interesting way of putting it.

Yeah, you know, you have to have, you have to have passion and love for what you do. And whether you draw that from people or the product or the research that you're doing, you have to want to be there and you have to have, you have to have that passion. And when you've got that passion, it's really easy to have the energy to, to work up whatever you have to do that day. And if I find I don't have the energy for something, I don't, I, it doesn't end up getting done. And, and then you have to look at why didn't it get done? Does someone else need to do that? Do I delegate that out where someone else is going to find more energy than I will out of that? Or how can I find the energy within that?

Yeah, I think I'm curious. Why do you use the word annoying?

Probably because I'm just being a little bit—

self-effacing.

Yes. Yes. I have a tendency to do that. Sometimes turn around and go, how the heck did I get here? I don't know. It's probably not. I think it's probably another one of those greatest strengths and greatest weaknesses of mine when I want to do something. So we had a product that we launched at the end of last year. I thought of the idea on Saturday morning. I was actually at the salon getting my hair done and I just I was waiting for my hair to process and I typed the whole thing out. By Sunday night, I had a go-to-market plan. By Monday, I had sales and marketing on a call talking about it, and I launched it to the company on Friday, and we got it out to the market the next week. So when you have some passion like that and you have some energy like that, you can make things happen. You can make things happen. Absolutely.

Let's say that the listing in your— I read with great interest in your Authority Magazine interview that that listening is one of your power skills. And of course, this show is called Listening with Leaders. I don't know if you know anything about my background, but I teach deep listening. And as a peacemaker and mediator, I found that that is the foundational skill of life. Tell me how about listening and your journey around listening.

Yeah, I think listening, right, and good listener, etc., is, is a bit of an overused term, perhaps a bit cliché. And oh yeah, okay, what does it mean? And anyone could tell you, sure, it means understanding, connection, engagement, But to me, it's what it ladders up to at that next level that is what matters the most. And, and that's trust. Anyone can be a good listener and understand what you're saying, and they can be present, they can ask the questions, et cetera. But you haven't become a great listener until you've built trust with that person. So I think that to me is what being a great listener is, cuz it's not something that you can build in a day. You might believe that you can trust me after this 20-minute call, but can you really?

I can trust you to show up.

But something that's just built over time and oftentimes a variety of different channels. You can be a great listener when you're on a Teams Zoom call, but what happens when you go to email someone and you break the communication aspect? It, you can, that can chip away from that, your ability to be a great listener if you don't keep up those traits in all the different communication channels, right?

Trust is nothing more than how much am I willing to risk you betraying me.

Yeah.

And it takes— to your point, it takes a long time to build and an instant to break.

Yeah.

And once broken, it most of the time can't rebuild.

It's very challenging to come back from broken trust in, in communication.

How do you see listening as the, the tool tool to build trust? I have my own ideas, but I want to hear what you have.

Yeah, that's a great question. I see listening as a tool to build trust. I think it's about having that safe space. And I don't mean someone to come and vent to, or I'm going to trust you with all of my secrets, but that I can have an open dialogue with you where I can feel heard, I can feel valued. And I can get this level of feedback that is not gonna feel critical, overtly critical, can feel more constructive or encouraging in that sense.

Exactly. Good job. You passed.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So I think from my perspective, having studied this for over 25 years, when you're engaged in deep listening, it's not about you. As a listener, I have no interest in me. I'm interested in making sure you feel heard and validated from your frame of reference. And when you feel heard and validated at a deep level, at a deep emotional level, then you are naturally going to trust me because I understand who you are and what you're saying and what you mean. And so I think that's, from my view, that's One of the ways that listening builds trust. The other thing that you said, which is critically important, is safety.

Mm-hmm.

And I teach people how to jump into the Buddha bubble, where you imagine you're in this bubble of energy, and the only thing you can do in that bubble is reflect back the emotional experiences of what somebody's talking about. When they're talking, the only thing you listen to is their emotions and reflect what their emotional experience is. And you have to be non-judgmental, non-critical, and non-reactive. Yep. And be in that space.

That's hard to do.

It is and it isn't. It's like anything else that takes practice. This is a practice that my wife and I developed, and it's amazing how well it works when you need, especially when you're dealing with a difficult conversation.

Yeah.

And if you can put yourself into that space, it no longer becomes difficult. It becomes transformative. And that's the real secret to this. Yeah, you're right. And yeah, it, it's so rare. To find somebody like yourself that really understands this. And I ask the same questions. I do 2 or 3 podcasts a week and I ask the same questions to all these famous executive people and some are pretty clueless.

It's a, it's a very difficult thing. And I think as, as you go through the interview process, it is extremely difficult to figure out in, in a short interview if you're really going to have nailed somebody with their ability to listen and build trust in a long-term way. Um, that's— I, I not— it's, it— I think it's a coachable skill.

Absolutely. Totally learnable. I can teach anybody how to do it in 8 weeks.

For most people, I think it's a very coachable skill.

I've been working— I developed these skills back in 2005, and in 2010 started working in maximum security prisons training life and long-term inmates how to listen to stop prison violence. And we started, my colleague Laurel Carver and I started in the largest, most violent women's prison in the world, working with 15 women who were all serving life and long-term sentences for murder or homicide. And they turned, we turned them all into peacemakers. And 2 years later, that prison was not violent.

Impressive.

If you can teach, if I can teach a murderer how to do this, I can teach anybody.

Yeah. I think that the, the key with anything when you're coaching or teaching is they have to want to learn.

Well, that's right.

Have to believe that they have that problem or—

That's the other point. I was talking with a guy, a potential client, HR, who's an HR guy, and I was talking about your people. How many people have a growth mindset? How many of them have a fixed mindset? I said the growth mindset people will love this. Fixed mindset people, maybe not so much.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's crazy. So did you learn about this or is this just something you picked up by osmosis, trial and error, and figuring it out on your own?

Yeah, a lot of trial and error over the years. I think I, over the years, I've learned where my strengths are, and I, I always hesitate saying my strengths because it's still something to this day I'm not very good at, but I will try here. Is I feel like I'm fairly good at reading the room and, and understanding how people are reacting to me and reacting to the situation. And it can cause, it can cause problems because I will feel a bit uncomfortable, you know, if I'm in a situation with a big group and I can tell one person is being made feel— felt uncomfortable than another person. That's a lot of dynamics to try and manage yourself. But what it has afforded me is the ability to adapt a little bit in my skill listening and communication skills.

It's interesting. One of the titles that I'm testing out is called Leadership Empathy: Read the Room and Lead It.

Yeah. Yeah, you do. You have to pause before you react.

Absolutely.

In any situation, really make sure that you understand what you're about to say do. And listen, I, sure, I'm maybe I sound, sound fantastic, but this is a work in progress continually for everybody.

We stop learning and what happens? We start dying.

If you're not moving forward, you're definitely moving backward.

That's right. Yeah. This is not, this is not just a process that you learn and you continue to evolve. You have to.

Yeah.

And that's what makes it so much fun.

Yeah.

And dealing and figuring out what are other applications to all of this? How can I talk about about listening other people into existence, making them feel heard. And I say every time you listen to somebody into existence, you're throwing a pebble into the pond of peace. Imagine if we all could every day throw a pebble into the pond of peace.

Yeah.

We'd soon have a tsunami of peace. And that's the mantra that I follow.

Yeah.

When you're really listening and you're really building trust with someone, you're making them feel valued and you're making them feel heard. And at our core, human core. We wake up every day wanting to feel like we belong here.

That's exactly right.

That's exactly right. In the world, in the office, et cetera.

Yeah. Yeah. And your children, same thing. The easiest way to— I teach parents, I said, coach, coach your children emotionally. Listen to their emotions. Listen to what they're feeling.

Yeah.

Ignore their words. Pay attention to what they're really feeling and help them under— help them learn to articulate what they're feeling.

Yeah. And some children and adults are much better at communicating their feelings. But what I have learned from my 4, 9, and 9-year-old— 3 kids, 2 are 9 and 1 is 4.

2 are 9-year-old twins.

Some are very good at telling me, I feel this, I feel that. And others don't. And you have to watch for other signs. And I think that too, they always say kids help you grow up in a way and even professionally than you would never have expected. But it's left me watching and reading the room in different ways. It's not always verbal. Sometimes it's—

Exactly. It's almost always nonverbal.

Yeah. And that's the advantage of the cameras. And so I do get frustrated when people don't have their cameras on because I lack the ability to read body language that you don't want to be seen.

You've got 58% is body language and another or 38% or so, 37% is tone of voice, vocality, tone of voice, volume, pitch, that sort of thing. And then 7%, of course, words.

Yeah.

And I studied the evolutionary biology of why this is. It's fascinating. We evolved to be able to read emotions. We did not, we haven't evolved to have language. That only came 230,000 years ago.

Hmm.

And there was a genetic, there, one gene mutated And at the same time, hominids discovered how to master fire, and the combination of those two things allowed us to rewire our brains to have language. But before 230,000 years ago, there was no language.

But we could still communicate.

We still communicate. And we still have an innate ability today to do that.

Yeah.

You don't need to listen to what people are saying. You can, if you know how to do it, your brain has the absolute innate capacity to read emotions effortlessly and accurately every single time.

Yeah. You, and then you can in turn make feel people feel valued and heard.

Absolutely.

Without saying a word to them.

That's right. Yeah.

Cool.

We're coming up to the end of our time here, although I could think I could chat with you for quite a bit longer.

Same.

So Karen, what's one thing about yourself that we would never know about unless you revealed it to us?

For this group here, thinking about just communication and stuff, I'll tell you my first job. My first job was at a hotel and it was a Comfort Inn. And I don't know what prompted me to go and get a job at the front desk at the Comfort Inn because I, like many people, was very introverted growing up and still have introverted tendencies in terms of—

I need to comment on that.

You spend and you pull from people and you give to people all day, but sometimes you just— and as a child, I was much, much more introverted, hiding behind my mother's skirt, et cetera, et cetera. Anyway, I went to the hotel, got a job at the front desk. And I had to answer the phone 6 times an hour for 8 hours straight. I had— and in between that, I had to talk to people face to face, solve problems, manage that. I think that's the job that got me where I'm at today. Not any fancy internship or my first job at a great company or any client communications, but at some point someone pushed me so far out of my comfort zone phone. I was, I wouldn't answer the phone in the house if even if a friend was calling because I was afraid of who else was on the other line. To be fair, I still don't like answering my cell phone. If you call me, I'm not likely to pick up unless I know you.

I want to share something else with you that I've learned in all these, in the 2 and a half or 3 years I've been doing this. Every success, without exception, that I can think of, 340, 330 executives and leaders I've interviewed interviewed. Not one of them is an extrovert.

Interesting.

Every single one is. And I'm an introvert. Every single one of them is an introvert as well.

But yeah, what's very interesting about that is almost all of us, you said, have said it's the people that get us out of bed in the morning.

That's right.

I find that very interesting.

It is. But we're not motivated. If somebody told you, hey, we're go— let's go out and party tonight and go out to a party of 50 people, you would say, uh-uh, no, I'm going to stay home. And that's the way I am. My wife says, we gotta go to a function. And I say, huh, really? No thanks. Because we get our energy inside.

Yeah.

And extroverts get their energy from being around other people.

Yeah.

And that's where it comes from. But I think the fact that introverts, because we are inside so much, we tend to be a little bit more self-reflective. And I think that means we pay attention a little more.

Pay attention to others.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's a great point.

That's my, that's my thing, and I'm sticking to it. Well, Karen, this has been really great talking to you today. Thank you so much for taking your time out of your busy day.

Yeah, absolutely, Doug. Thank you. You're welcome.

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 the 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 Listening with 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.

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