The Art And Science of Listening With Oscar Trimboli

Hello, my friend, and welcome to another exciting episode of Negotiate Anything. Thanks for joining us today. With over 10 million downloads and listeners from more than 180 different countries, it's dedicated listeners just like you who have made Negotiate Anything the number one negotiation podcast in the world. I'm your host, Kwame Christian. I'm a business lawyer, mediator, author, and the proud CEO of of the American Negotiation Institute. Now, before we get into today's insightful conversation, I have a golden opportunity for those of you who recognize the power of negotiation in your professional lives. Have you ever found yourself wishing that you could navigate those high stakes conversations with more confidence? Or perhaps you're looking to empower your team with the art of persuasion and conflict resolution? At the American Negotiation Institute, we've crafted specialized keynotes and workshops tailored for those very needs. We've transformed the negotiation skills of professionals worldwide and we're eager to do the same for you. We believe the best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations. And our goal is to help you improve your lives and the lives of those around you one difficult conversation at a time. Don't let another challenging conversation leave you second guessing. Click the link in the description to discover how we can help you find confidence in conflict, negotiate better deals, and have stronger relationships. Because in the world of business, every conversation counts. And now, without further ado, let's jump into the interview.

Oscar, thanks for joining us.

Kwame, thanks. I'm really looking forward to listening to your questions today.

Yeah. And you know, before we even get into this, it's really funny the way that you said that because most people say I'm looking forward to the conversation. But again, just true to form, I'm looking forward to listening to your questions. Listeners, I just wanted to point that out for you because that's just a taste of what we're going to get from Oscar today. This is great. So, Oscar, how about you tell us a bit about yourself and what you do?

I think to understand me, you have to zoom into a boardroom. In April 2008, I'm on a video conference between Sydney, Seattle and Singapore, and we're doing the annual budget process. It's a very famous process because the meetings always run over. This is scheduled to be a 90 minute meeting and we kick off and at the 20 minute mark, my vice president, she's sitting in the room and looks me straight in the eye and said, oscar, I need to see you immediately after the meeting. Now, Kwame, I can tell you one thing. I didn't listen to one thing, from that point on, for whatever was blah, blah, blah, budgets, blah, blah. That's probably the reason why I got a 32% uplift in my budget. I was just thinking, how many weeks of salary have I got left in my bank account? And I was on a scratch pad just trying to work out the answer was nine weeks. Well, funnily enough, the meeting finishes at the 70 minute mark. It finishes 20 minutes early. And Tracy says to me, oscar, please close the door. And I think, oh, great, I'm getting fired. And it's all going to be in private. And as I walk back from closing the door, Tracy says to me, you have no idea what you did at the 20 minute mark, do you? And I go, awesome, I'm getting fired for something. I have no clue. I did. And as I sat down, she said to me, oscar, if you could code the way you listen, you could change the world. And as profound a moment of listening as that was on Tracy's part, Kwame, the only thing going through my head was, woo hoo, I haven't been fired. And I put all that money back into my bank account. And since then, I've honored Tracey's request to code how I listen. And more importantly, with the Deep Listening Ambassador Community, a group of like minded workplace professionals, we're helping other people improve their workplace listening.

Oh, this is incredible. Also, listen. Kudos on an incredible story because that.

Was a really strong way to start this episode.

And I love the name of your book because you name books the same way that I name books, how to Blank.

So this is great.

Can I tell you, I didn't name the book. The process of coming to the title how to Listen was a result of listening to people who already knew me. Listening to people who didn't know me. In the book, we outline how we research the topic, the structure, and it was all a process of listening. Here's the bad news for me, Kwame, when you say you're a listening expert, you have to practice what you teach. And the next thing we did was we made sure we surveyed people who didn't know me. So we surveyed 1500 people and we asked them about the book title. Now, the crazy book titles we thought were really cute and blah, blah, blah. No, it all came back to this. We got people who knew me, people who didn't know me and the work. And then we had to go and listen to somebody that we don't pay attention to, but has a huge impact on the way people find you. We went and listened to Amazon, and we went and listened to Google and their search tools. And if you think about three circles, those who know me, those who don't, and the search tools, the answer was in the intersection of those three, and it was as simple as how to listen.

That's incredible. My team will be listening to this and we will be taking notes of how to name things in the future.

Because I think I just gave up. I'm like, ah, the book's about difficult conversations about race. So that's going to be that.

But yeah, this is great. I love this. And when you think about listening, let's actually start with what people often get wrong with listening.

I'll give you three things. Number one, people think listening starts by focusing on the speaker. That's the wrong place to start. Number two, people think listening is the conversation. It's not. Listening happens before, during, and after the conversation. And number three, good listeners focus on what's said. Great listeners notice what's not said. So choose your own adventure. Kwame, where do you want to go on those three?

Oh, I mean, where I want to go is Amazon and buying your book.

That's where I want to start.

Okay, so let's start off with before the conversation. Because we talk about preparation, a lot of in on this podcast, I'm really interested to how, how we can prepare to listen better.

So listening happens before, during, and after the conversation. Before, it could be something as simple as asking the counterpart or the group this very simple question. This very simple question becomes a listening compass during the dialogue that will, based on our research tracking group of 14, 10 people will shorten your meeting on average by 15%. Now, some people shorten their meeting by 75%. But this phrase becomes a really powerful way to listen during the conversation. Not just for them, not just for you, but for the purpose of the conversation itself. And the question is as simple as what will make this a great conversation? Now, some people get this wrong and say, what would make this a great conversation for you? Now, if you say to them, what's going to make a great conversation for you? You're already setting up the meeting to be all about them, and it's not. The meeting is about the process and the outcome, what you're actually dialoguing through, whether that's a group or individual, whether it's face to face or online, asking that question will change the way the speaker communicates. When you are in the conversation together, you have just had the dirty little hat that basically says, I want to land something in your subconscious. Kwami and for the next couple of days, your mind is going to be thinking, what will make this a great conversation? And when you turn up, ask that same question again. Kwame, you said a great conversation would be blank. I just wanted to check if that's still the case because life moves and things change and people's priorities move. Now, you're already signaling before the meeting started that you listened to what they said. Now, this could be a telephone call, could be an email, could be WhatsApp, could be a slack message. It doesn't matter. But what you're role modeling to them is, one, I care about the outcome of this conversation, which is setting you apart from anybody else already. Number two, when you check in, they notice that you went, oh, wow, they heard what I said. And it opens up the conversation for them to ask the reciprocal question, which is what will make this a good conversation? And you say, look, thanks. What will make this a great conversation for me is blank. Off we go. Now, that little piece of information becomes the compass for the dialogue. Imagine we're having a one hour meeting every 15 minutes. Check in with that question. Kwame, at the beginning, we said, this will make this a great conversation. Can I just check? Are we on track? And our deep listening ambassadors in our research study say a third of people at this point, 28% go, Kwame, I've got everything we need. Let's wrap it up. The meeting's over in 15 minutes. The promise of listening well is not only improved profitability, but we know that on average, our longitudinal study group gets 15% back in their schedule in a week. Great listeners change the way the speakers communicate. They move the speaker from what they say to what they think to ultimately what they mean. Now, for those of you who can't see Kwame, he is in an intense place of listening. And I'm curious what's going on for you right now, my friend?

Hello, my friends. Before we get back to today's episode, I want to ask you a question. Have you ever wondered how to elevate your team's negotiation game and how you can help the folks on your team have better, difficult conversations? At the American Negotiation Institute, we offer transformative keynotes and workshops tailored to empower professionals with top tier negotiation and conflict resolution skills. Whether it's a keynote for your next event or hands on training for your team, we've got you covered. Don't just negotiate. Master the art with the American Negotiation Institute. Click the link in the description to find out more. Elevate, negotiate and succeed.

Man. This is good. Well, let me just say this. I think when. When you have somebody who is a master at their craft, they see the world differently. So, like, your shirt is blue. My shirt is blue. You have books over your left shoulder. They are different blue. I see maybe navy blue, sky blue. That's essentially the extent of the blues that I have in my vocabulary. An artist sees hundreds of blues. You see listening differently in this short period of time. You've exposed the layers of listening that are new to me. And as a negotiator, a mediator, somebody who focuses on communication, I have to know how to listen. But this is just an example that there are levels to this game. I don't even really know where to start with the follow ups here. But I think one of the best ways to start is just recognizing something subtle in the psychology here because it's. I want to get your perspective on this because it seems like you're priming people to behave differently in the conversation. Because when you're saying what would make this a great conversation for you, what you're doing is you're showing them there's a different intent in the way that you intend to relate to the person. And then by checking in, it's almost like you're. You're teaching them how to converse as you are conversing with them, which changes the way that they relate to you. Am I kind of getting that right?

Yeah. I just want to come back to what will make this a great conversation, as to what will make it a great conversation for you. I'm making an invitation. I don't really want to prime them. They're human, they have choices. I'm not trying to architect anything that's a manipulation here. What I want to do is raise their consciousness. And you mentioned color before. And one of the things I talk about often is most people listen in monochrome. But when they listen deeply, they have a full spectrum of colors to listen in on. One of the exercises we do in our workshops in the check in what color is you're listening and describe it in one sentence. And all of a sudden it gives people a palette to think about their listening in a completely different way. Listening is a very abstract topic. It's ethereal. People don't have a framework to operate in. Maths. Plus, minus, divide, subtract, English, verbs, nouns, pronouns, chemistry, periodic table of elements. They're all universal across languages, across cultures. Listening, we have nothing. Colors is a good way to think about it. Kwame, I noticed your eye movement was completely different when I started to mention what color is. You're listening, so I'm curious for you right now. What color is your listening in this moment? I don't want you to answer straight away. I just want you to pause and reflect on it, because it may be different to where you started.

And when you say color, you mean, like, an actual color? Yeah, this is. Oh, we are pushing my mind in new places. Let me. Let me actually stop and think about this, and I'll actually reason out loud here, because I know I said the word. I've been focusing on blue, and I don't be the thing that I automatically think, but I think, honestly, the color that's coming to mind right now is red. Because for me, red is like, you know, a stoplight. So, hey, stop. Pay attention. And with a lot of the guests that I have on the show, there are things that I've heard a lot, but they're said in a different way. So it's. It's definitely good for me to hear it and hear it in a different way, and I'm still learning. But what I'm realizing here is that as soon as you began to get into your craft and the way that you approach this, I'm like, whoa, stop. There's a bit of a record scratch happening. Like, this is. This is a complete reorientation of the way that I listen. And so I think right now, the color is red. At the beginning, it was probably gray, like a more neutral color where I'm just kind of passively absorbing. But now it's like red flash. Pay attention. This is different. Is. Is that kind of what you're going for?

The important point is it doesn't matter what color you set. What matters is the descriptor. Okay? Because it's an abstract topic, we want to connect it to a topic we're comfortable with. Like, color, like a palette for an artist. We can pick from here, and then we can choose where we want to go. Most people aren't even conscious of the color of their listening battery. Kwami. Most people arrive in a conversation with their listening battery at yellow or red, and they wonder why listening is such a struggle. So for most of us, just orientating ourselves around color or some kind of numeric value, on a scale of 1 to 10, how much attention are we bringing to this conversation? Well, most people probably not even think about it, but if we give them a number, they can connect around that. We'll ask them that question throughout a workshop, for example, to move them along. I do want to look back to your original question, though, Kwame, because I think it's important. Let's check in along the way and notice the color of your listening, because I think I love red and how you described it. It's like, stop, look and listen. It's like this is a moment. A good listener will listen to the content and try and comprehend it for themselves. A great listener will notice how the speaker says it, not just what they say, which invite you to listen to Christopher and Christopher's story. KWAME I was introduced to Christopher from Minnesota by Jennifer, his mum. And Christopher was jumping, skipping home from school. A kindergarten kid came home from school. Jennifer, former primary school teacher, work at home, Mom. And Christopher comes in and says, oh, you know, Mommy, I, I learned maths. I learned that three is half of eight at school today. Did I hear what he said? I'm not sure what's going on. She said, honey, could you say that again? And he said, yeah, Mummy, three is half of eight. And she put her hands in her face and thought, what are they teaching kids at school these days? So she went to the kitchen cupboard and she got 8M and Ms. Out of the kitchen cupboard and she lined them up four by four like little chocolate soldiers facing each other. And she picked Christopher up and put him on the bench and said, honey, can you count how many chocolate soldiers are here? And he said, four, Mommy. How many on the other side? Four, Mummy. And she said, see, Christopher, four is half of eight, not three. And with that, Christopher, he leaps off the bench, he goes to a corner cupboard in their home, grabs a piece of paper, and he draws the figure eight with a sharp puppy. I'll give Kwame a little visual here because he'll start to understand this. So he draws the figure eight for his mum, and then he folds the piece of paper in half. And then he folds the piece of paper in half again. And he says to his mum, as he tears the piece of paper in half, he says, see, Mummy, three is half of eight. Now, if you fold the piece of paper horizontally, zero is half of eight as well. So the difference between good listeners and great listeners, a good listener listens to three is half of eight. And they're listening for similarity. They're pattern matching because our education system teaches us to do that, whether it's precedent in law, whether it's a scientific method. In science, we're taught to pattern match, gather evidence, form a pattern, extrapolate a hypothesis. And whether you went to college or not, your parents, your family, they're all teaching you to Listen for similarity. Yet there is a subset of people who went, three is half of age. That makes complete sense. See, Christopher was thinking in geometry and his mum was thinking in math. And what it meant to Christopher was very different to what it meant to his mum. When you listen for difference, you're listening much broader there. Now, when I interviewed Christopher about this, I interviewed him and his mum. The premise of the interview was completely different. See, what you don't know about Christopher is a world champion bug catcher. Now, he graduated college four years earlier than any of his student cohort. He's a world champion bug catcher. Now, some of you, because you're listening for similarity, are visualizing a net and a butterfly and insects when I talk about bugs. Yet Christopher is the world champion computer software bug catcher. He works on some of the most complex computer problems in the world. What you also don't know about Christopher is his neurodiverse. Some people might call him autistic, but that sometimes is considered a pejorative term. Now, here's what I asked Christopher, what's the one tip you would give everybody about how to listen better? And he said, communicate about how you communicate before the conversation starts, and you will remove a lot of friction in the dialogue. Now, Christopher said to me he was on a camp, and he was struggling with one of the camp coordinators. And he just stopped them and said, look, because my attention span is really short, when you tell those really long stories, after about 90 seconds, I check out. If you could shorten those stories, it will make sense to me and I can take the action. I know you like to communicate in stories, but I can't catch the full length of your story if you can shorten it. And their relationship completely transformed. They're best of buddies Now, Kwame, have you had a three is half of eight moment besides the one I just showed you?

Oh, yeah.

I feel like I have a three is half of eight moment every day. And I think what's really interesting is that I'm seeing tens of thousands of light bulbs going on across the world listening to this episode, because I think what we're realizing, number one, is that a lot of our miscommunications come from those types of moments. But then now we're also realizing that there are so many more of those moments that we have missed simply because we did not know how to listen. And I think it's empowering, but it should also be a little bit frightening because we were realizing that we think we're communicating, but we're not. I Think what is the quote? I think it's George Bernard Shaw. The greatest challenges in communication is the assumption that it has occurred. And I think we're realizing that a lot of times we are hearing what people are saying in a biological sense, but we're really not listening. And a lot of times I think the biggest problem is that we don't even know the difference.

Yeah. And most of us have a very simple construct of listening. And what we know is that 86% of people in our 23,000 research sample database. So that's not our longitudinal study where we stay in touch with folks. 23,000 people are stuck at level one. They're stuck in a world where they have so many browser tabs open in their mind that they literally have no memory to process. And because people aren't even conscious of their listening battery coming into a dialogue just because the meeting is scheduled, things have changed since. And for you and for them, now might not be the right time to have the conversation. The first question I guess I'm famous for when I'm speaking to somebody I've never spoken to before is simply, this is now still a good time for this discussion, Kwame? And 99% of the conversations, the answer is, yeah, of course, no problem. But I remember working with a different Jennifer. Intergalactic CFO in a big, complex organization. She was one of my star clients. I loved her. She paid attention. She was always in the zone. Today was different. Today she was texting under the table. And while we were having the conversation and I checked in again, I said, is now still a good time, Jennifer? And she said, no, Oscar. My mother in law's had a fall between my son, my husband and my sister in law. We're trying to organize who's closest. Can we get there before the ambulance? Which hospital are we going to go to? Can we reschedule the meeting? I said, of course, no problem. There is a version of that going on in people's heads without disclosing it all the time. If you don't ask that question, because in Jennifer's case, her listening battery was probably going from red to shutdown. We can't have a conversation if we're not available equally. You have a responsibility as the leader of the process. You're a leader now because you've listened to these conversations between Kwame and I. You know the secrets of how to listen. You need to ask that question for others as well. But you need to be available yourself if you're going from back to back to back to Back to back to back meetings, from zooms to webexs to Google Meets to teams. What is the ritual you have in place to ensure you have a neurological circuit breaker between meetings? I'll give you three quick tips. These are really simple ones. And the deep listening ambassadors say to me consistently, oscar, these tips are so easy, yet they're difficult to practice consistently. So the practice is where you're going to build your listening muscles. Tip number one, if you can listen to a song in between a meeting, now I play three songs. There are different speeds they set very different intentions, not for me but for the outcome of the meeting. Marconi Union it's instrumental, it's eight minutes long. It is designed to get me into a place of deep contemplation when I'm talking to risk managers or engineers that are building complex things that dealing with climate change and political systems. I need to be in that place for them because they've got complexity to deal with and they need deep thinking. Number two, Easy by Groov Armada It's a fun song to put a smile on your face, about 130 beats per minute. It's just lyrical, it's light, it's got words. And then finally a lot quicker, 150 beats per minute. People laugh when they hear me say that. I listen to this song. It's called Remember the Name by Fort Minor and it is a very specific tempo in the song. It's a rap and people are very confused why there's white dudes listening to rap music. It's all about the poetry and the lyrics. But that's a story for another day. You will change your mental state. Your listening batteries will get a little quick recharge. If you listen to music, pick the song that's appropriate is the point. Number two is manage your notifications. The electronic notifications was based on literature from 1973 that was used by the slot machine industry in Las Vegas to ensure that people kept pressing the button and putting their coins in. Why do I know this? I apologize. I worked in the industry that built those notifications that has email pop ups as default, little red dot. All those things. Just use the technology. Don't let the technology use you. You be the master of the technology now. I work with people in on call environments, ER doctors, they can't switch off their electronic notifications but they are incredibly present when they're dealing with their patient. Kwame in our research, the biggest distractor in the last two years hasn't been a pandemic, it's been Connected watches. We are moving the distractions closer and closer from our hands to our wrist. And I don't know where it's going to finish up. So tip number two, manage your notifications. Tip number three, please continuously drink water. A hydrated brain is a listening brain. And if you're hosting a negotiation, make sure you have water for all the guests and role model drinking water every half an hour. And you should be drinking a glass of water before you go into a conversation as well. Now, for some of us, our kidney limit is very different from other people's kidney limits. And I know some people actually use that as a negotiation tactic. Have you heard about the famous Putin water torture treatment for some of the diplomats that visit him? Anyway, that's a story for another day. Kwame I'm just going to have some water.

No worries.

And I have heard about that tactic.

It is devious, different kind of distraction. The third tip, sorry, the final tip, the fourth tip is just be conscious of your breathing. In through your nose, down to the bottom of your diaphragm and then out through your mouth. Most people actually don't know how to breathe properly. James Nestor has written a group of amazing books around breathing breath. He's a free diver, somebody who swims under the ocean without the aid of any equipment, up to 5, 10, 15 minutes under the water. He expresses a range of techniques. The techniques include ancient wisdom as well as modern medical science as well. His father in law's a professor of medicine, so he had to, he had him fact check everything in his book. Breathing sounds so basic, yet the deeper you breathe, the deeper you listen. A hydrated brain is a listening brain. And the brain, although 5% of body mass consumes 26% of blood sugar and your listening battery is very much informed by where your body state is at. If somebody says something during a negotiation that you fiercely disagree with or is that important point for you, rather than react, just breathe. And when you've mastered your own breathing, start to notice theirs. That is a really powerful signal for you to understand how important something is for them. Kwame I'm sure not only have you done it today, but you'll notice people across the table do this. In negotiation, when something fundamental is discussed, the person will pause, their eyes will move to a different location, their head tilt will be different and they'll sigh or they'll take a deep breath in and it's a signal. If your head's buried in a laptop or continuously taking stenographers notes, you won't be able to see the change in their state. It's a signal from their body that says, here's an extra piece of information, Oscar, for you. Not to use against them, but to help the speaker decode what they're processing. So you'll notice today I used a phrase. Kwame, I'm curious. What's. What's going on for you? What are you thinking about? So I'll use that now and kind of pause and go, hey, Kwame, what's going on to you right now? What color is your listening at? Given we went from gray to red and now.

Hmm. I think now it would be more.

The.

It was. It's green or yellow. It's green or yellow. And I. Yeah, actually, let's dig deeper into this, because I think when I was starting, when I have a lot of people on the podcast, I had an earlier episode today. It's usually like, it's thing. It's again, like I mentioned before, it's things that I'm. I've heard in different variations. And I think what I was responding to at the very beginning with the red was like, hey, hold up, Kwame. This interview is completely different. You are no longer an interviewer. You are, like, in complete learning mode. Usually I could go from interview, like, learning mode to interview mode, but there are some episodes where it's like I need to. It's like my body is on high alert. And now I think I've kind of settled into being able to take a lot of notes while still stay in the mode of listening. So it's gone from that gray and neutral interviewer mode where I always start off in. To red. Like, hey, hold up.

Wait a second.

Pay attention to now. It's a little bit more of a fluid green or yellow where I can. I'm still flowing, but I've readjusted. So I think that's where I am now.

And while you were listening to Kwame, what was your initial reaction to the colors to green and to yellow? Because for many of you, you would have been pattern matching and go, oh, yellow. That may be warning. You made an interpretation. Now you've heard Kwame explain. It's about fluidity. It's about comfort. Now, what's going on for you? We need to let people fully express how they're processing the idea. And many of us don't. We don't do that.

Check.

A good listener, a great communicator, will hold the process and check in. Just not what. What's the content? What's the agenda? Have we. Can we Move on to the next item we want to check. We are building a culture and a system in a group negotiation that needs to have trusted its center because it's not just what we do in that dialogue. Remember earlier I said listening is before, during and after the conversation. If you don't take an action and you come back to the next negotiation, people go, oh, I don't trust them. They're just not listening. They didn't do that. Or worse still, they brought back something that wasn't asked for because they didn't check to make sure what you said is what they heard. Because a lot of the time we don't take the moment. Particularly if you're a leader who delegates tasks. Oh, Kwame, I want you to bring this back by next week. And Kwame nods as opposed to Kwame, what are the first three steps you're going to take on that? 1, 2 and 3. The leader can then go, Look, 1 and 2. Great. Awesome. Just with 3, think about this, this and this. Now, if we didn't ask that question, Kwame may have wasted a whole bunch of time on three. And this is the friction and the cost in not listening. And it's the leader's responsibility. It's not the responsibility of the other person. You have to hold the process. And the reason you do is because you've learned how to listen. Today, only 2% of workplace professionals have had any training in how to listen. And yet when we do, we change the consciousness of the group and we move from listening to symptomatic issues to listening to system wide issues and we make bigger breakthroughs, we have bigger impact and people enjoy working with us and they enjoy the work they're doing.

It makes so much sense. And actually, let's pause for a second, listeners, because you didn't see what just happened. Just an example of expert listening here. Because Oscar is not just listening to what I'm saying. He is recognizing my body language and paying attention to my breathing. So he knows when there's something that I want to say. So I feel like if I would have continued to sit back, you would have continued to speak. But then you saw me lean forward and take a breath in. But me, you know, that was a subconscious maneuver. But then me as an interviewer, I'm like, kwame, no, I'm listening. I want Oscar to continue. But Oscar, being the alpha listener in.

This conversation, recognized what was happening in my subconscious and paused. So listen, there's some nuances happening here.

That are very, very hard to appreciate. So I wanted to call that out. Expert listening on display. So I'm realizing something. So I'm thinking about if we were to go back to, like, 1700, 1600s, and we were to enter into a home, I think besides the technology, something that we would recognize that's very different is that it's dark. When we're talking about before the light bulb, we just had candle and sunlight, and that is very different from what our life looks like today. And so as I'm thinking about this, what I'm realizing is that for the majority of people, we're negotiating in the dark. We're communicating in the dark. We think we can see clearly, but we don't have the light bulb. Like, this is the light bulb. There's so many nuances here. And we've been talking for, what, like 20 minutes, something like that, and we've just completely changed the game. So I think there's a lot that we need to work on. There's not even, like, a question that comes after this. It's just a recognition of just how much work needs to be done, just in the professional world in general when it comes to listening, but more specifically, how much our communication and negotiation skills can improve just by improving our listening. Because I think a lot of times people come to negotiation trainings, listen to podcasts like this, and they're looking for hacks. How can I manipulate the other side? How can I get them to think differently, things like that? But we don't take the time and say, I wonder how I can listen more effectively. And I feel like this would solve the majority of the problems that we face in these conversations.

When I speak to audiences, Kwame, I often get this. Oscar. Listening is hard. It's draining. It's complicated. And I just simply say, can I make an invitation to a different place, To a place where listening is light, easy, and energizing, where listening requires you to shift your orientation? Because when done well, a lot of people's mindset. Kwame, I don't know about you, but when they think about good listeners, they visualize a movie, a psychologist, a psychiatrist, a psychotherapist. Listening to somebody on a couch. And listening in the workplace is not therapy. This is where a lot of people get confused about their listening. The dirty little secret of listening is it's not your job to make sense of what they say. It's your job to help them say what they think. Because most people don't know these three numbers. If you know these three numbers, you can turn off the podcast, and your life will be changed. Kwame's going. It's not as simple as that. Oscar, don't tell them to switch off the podcast, please. 125, 400, 900. If you know the implications of these three numbers, this will completely alter your listening battery. Your listening battery will stay on for much longer. You will help the other person sustain their listening battery. And this will change the way the speaker listens to you as well. Because listening is a simultaneous equation. You're speaking, you're listening, you're speaking, you're listening. And the roles move fluidly through the conversation. If you understand these three numbers, it alters the pace and the altitude of the conversation. You'll move from listening exclusively for similarities to listening for similarities and differences. Now, don't get me wrong, listening for similarities is not bad. It's just we have a bias and we only listen to similarities. When you listen in a balanced way, you can help everybody's perspective. Just broaden a little bit about the consequences in the short term and the long term. When you listen in this way, it alters not just how we're listening, but the dialogue is moving from symptoms exclusively to understanding the systemic implications of that. Who else is impacted? Not just the people in the room. Does this impact regulators? Does this impact media? Does this impact voters? Does this impact the next generation? Or something as simple as does this impact the department I work with very regularly who's not in the room? Let's unpick those numbers. 125 words per minute, average speaking speed. Now, a horse race caller or cattle yard auctioneer, they can speak at about 200 words per minute. You can still understand what they say and it's no problem. Now, we know this because Everybody's watched a YouTube video at two times speed. You may have this podcast on at two times speed. And the reason you can is you can listen 400 words per minute. We have peripheral vision, we have peripheral hearing. And you are coded neurologically to be distracted when you're listening. It has sustained the species. That saber toothed tiger, was that Russell in the reeds, was that just the wind? Was that something more lethal to our tribe, our people? People say to me, kwame, Oscar, how do I stop the distractions? And I always say, well, the bad news is you can't. But the good news is good listeners will move their orientation to notice their distraction quicker and come back into the conversation. They won't drift for as long. Now, of the three numbers, the number that matters the most is 900. 900 words per minute is the speaker's average thinking speed. Average. Now, if you work in complex negotiations, you work in conflict situations, you work in creative environments, you work in areas that have a lot of resource conflict. You may be thinking it up to 1600 words per minute, but let's just stay with the average at 900. 900 words per minute is my thinking speed. My. Sorry, my thinking speed and my speaking speed. 125 words per minute. The math is simple. The first thing I say is 14% of what I think. The reason conversations fail, kwame, is because 86% of the dialogue is never actually tabled. Now we can't get all 900 words out. And to be honest, you don't want to know that. One of the 900 words going through my head right now is, I hope my wife doesn't switch on the washing machine right now because I'm in the middle of an interview. That's not useful for the context we're in, but it is an example of one of the things I'm thinking about. Kwame, when you hear that 14% of what people say the first time is what they're expressing. What's going through your mind right now?

Me, right now, I'm just. I'm envisioning pulling a thread. Pulling a thread, because imagine you have some, like a thread sticking out on your garment. You're like, oh, let me pull this out. And then the next thing you know.

Is like ruining your whole shirt because you're just. This thread is much longer than I thought.

And I think that's how it is with the. With the conversations that we have. People are only giving a little bit. And I think a lot of times we feel like we're expressing ourselves fully because typically in these conversations, we are. We don't have the benefit of talking to somebody who is a good listener. So 14% feels like the normal amount of self expression. But then if you're talking to a good listener, it's like pulling a thread. You share a little bit. And then they listen, ask great questions, and they pull out the rest of those remaining thoughts. So that's the metaphor that was in my head. And listeners, I hope you can, like, go back about 40 seconds to when Oscar said, I'm going to pause and ask you a question. And you could hear the me saying, me, like I'm confused with a much higher intonation than I typically do because I was.

I was so in the zone with listening to what you were saying that.

I forgot I'm here in a conversation with you. I was just sitting here listening, like this is a course.

And it's like the teacher just called my name through the YouTube video. I'm like, how did you say my name? So that's the surprise. I am deeply ingrained in this.

This is really fascinating.

Now I want to give you a way. Remember earlier when we talked about your listening compass? The first element of the listening compass is what will make this a great conversation. Yeah, that's our north star. North, north, south, right. Which direction are we heading in? There's two types of questions. I want to give you a question that explores similarity and I want to give you a question that explores difference. Keep in mind roughly if your question is more than eight words long, it's biased. That's not good or bad. I want you to be conscious of the fact that open ended questions are not always productive and biased questions are not always productive. When it comes to decision making, it is crucial that you ask biased questions. How do we allocate a limited budget? How do we price this transaction? All these things are example of bias questions. They're not good or bad. What I want you to become conscious of is become conscious of how to skillfully, elegantly and productively use questions appropriately rather than I'm sure you've all been taught open ended questions are really important. That's true. Not always. And beware of false binaries. I've been doing it all day today, creating false binaries, similarities and differences, that it is an easy way for us to hook onto things and the political class uses that against us. It creates false binaries and you are human with much more complexity. Embrace the nuance and we will have a different political discourse. That commercial break is brought to you by Samiti. Now back to the point, Kwame. The north south question. The shorter the question, the more you'll pull out. And you would have heard this question before. It's a really simple question. Tell me more. Now the question isn't as important as the direction of the compass. This is helping the speaker continue going north, south in their own dialogue. So we're not looking to go left, right or east, west. We'll get to that shortly. That will get to the point we just want the next 125 words out. When you ask this question, what will typically happen is they'll pause. They'll say something like actually, you know what I haven't told you about. Oh, actually there's something that's really important that I need to explain. But if you don't ask that question, you're not going to get that. They're just going to sit on that and maybe something that's a fundamental motivation for them. So the north, south question, continue on the same path. Tell me more now, when we're going to go east, west. So that question is designed to listen into similarity for them and for you. And then when you want to go east, west and what else? This is designed to move them away from their current position and ask them, and what else? And they might say, kwame, we haven't even thought about the regulatory implications of that pricing model. Oh, if the media get a hold of that, that's going to be a disaster. Wow. All of a sudden you've got them thinking on a completely different plane. When you combine those two elements of the compass, you're starting to move from the symptom to the system. And you can look at it at a much higher altitude. For all of us, we get into robotic and really consistent questioning. We're not conscious of the design of our question. Just because you ask a question doesn't make you a good listener. You can ask some absolutely absurd questions, and all it will prove is you haven't been listening to what somebody else says. So be conscious of the kinds of questions you want to ask and simply ask yourself this question when you ask it. Is this question designed for me to comprehend more of what they're saying, or does this question increase the consciousness of the speaker and the group? If you're in a group setting? So a lot of people who are introverts say to me, kwame, look, I've always got good questions, but I never know if I should ask them. Our leader's an extrovert. He's always thinking out aloud, but I can see the flaws in his argument. And I always say, ask the question that the group would ask, not just the question you would ask. If you ask the group question, it's going to have a much broader impact for that leader than just your question. Now, a lot of the time, that question will completely change the way people think about it. We're in a workshop with a tech company in 2015 in a very dusty boardroom. KWAMI I was brought in because the organization was looking to move its focus overseas. It had been growing at about 30% per annum, which was fantastic in the domestic market, but it wasn't where the global peers were at. And the CEO said, can you work with our leadership team and just get them to think and listen about it differently? And in the room, 12 people at 12:35, just before lunch, and the reason I remember it's 12:35 is because I remember this sound. This is the sound of the CEO banging their finger on the top of the desk and pointing to their watch as I nodded at them. His head was in a laptop and didn't see my head nod. And he continued on with the finger tapping. And we were doing an exercise and the exercise was this. If this organization was an animal, what animal is it? This is a variation on the color exercise we did earlier on. 11 out of 12 people said a leopard, a cheetah, an osprey, a bird of prey, something that moves fast, very agile and is a predator. It kills things. One person hadn't spoken five minutes to one, the food had been brought on the table. And I think the finger tapping from the CEO was, he was hangry, he hadn't eaten. And he was kind of saying, you know, feed me, feed me, feed me. But there was one person over to my left who hadn't spoken. And I just gestured to Lynn and Lynn and the gesture was just not even making eye contact. I just gestured towards her and she said, I thought it was obvious. And she paused. Like it felt like five minutes. Kwame. It was probably five seconds. I thought it was obvious. I thought we were a snake. The tension in the room, Kwame, is just gone up ten, tenfold. We got eagles, ospreys, cheetahs and leopards and a snake. Like what's going on, Kwame? When you think of a snake, give me some characteristics of a snake. What's going through your mind?

Most people don't like snakes.

A little bit on the creepy side and cold blooded. I think that's noteworthy as well. Those are the two main things that I think about. If I, if I go a little bit more creative. Think about how snakes typically eat so meal and then digest for a long period of time. And so people refer to a snake and how they consume things, but usually is a snake typically in the grass. That's not how you want to be described.

Okay, so let's zoom back into the room. Lynn says, I thought we were a snake. And then what she said next changed everybody's perspective. See, what you don't know about Lynn, she's a card carrying member of the introvert community. How do you know that? And when you say to a room, put your hand up. If you're an introvert, a card carrying member of the introvert community will not put their hand up. They do not want to be seen. Lynn says one thing also. You don't know about Lynn is. She's not from the dominant culture in the room. She's from China. The dominant culture in the room is not Chinese. What she said was, I thought it was obvious. I thought we were a snake. We've forgotten to shed our skin every season. And the practices and the systems we have in place are holding us back. We're holding back our staff, we're holding back our customers. And if we want to go global, we need to shed our skin. Now. What was hilarious, Kwame? Nobody ate a single bit of food until 1:25. To which the CEO pulled me aside and said, I cannot believe this group is dialoguing with the head of finance. We're having a business development conversation. And the leader in the room is finance. Now what happens next? They go global. They have little beanie toys made up of snakes. Snakes become code names to the products. And this is a story. Now, in the Chinese culture, a snake means something completely different. A snake means something very different from Christian traditions where the origin story in Genesis that is taught to every child in a Christian tradition is a snake has tempted the first humans on the planet and we have to work for the rest of our lives. And that is where the snake got its bad name from. In medieval times, snakes became symbols of medicine. Snakes are the symbol in a pharmacy in Europe. You'll see a snake there. And in some medical badges that doctors have, you'll also notice a snake as well. If you're listening for similarities, you're listening for a snake in the grass. A sneaky, terrible, cold blooded thing. If you're listening for difference, you may have explored something very, very different. Throughout that conversation. I could feel that the CEO was like. I felt like I was in a comic strip climbing because I felt the laser beam of the CEO's eyes trying to explode my head because he want to get to the food. This is why your work around diversity is so important. And the book that you've created because embracing a different cultural perspective in this conversation and just waiting long enough for Lynne to make her explanation and holding the space for the group because I was acting in a way that was like, I don't know what you're talking about, people, but I know it's important that you hold this space and listen to the next 125 words that were coming out now. Don't be down on extroverts. Introverts are great synthesizers, but extroverts need to speak out aloud to process their thinking. That's not bad. That's just how they use the World Introverts versus extroverts. Another example of a false binary. We don't experience the world that way. In a. In a room full of accountants, I'm considered an extrovert. In a room full of actors, I'm considered an introvert. So sometimes you need to be aware that listening is situational. It's relational, and it's contextual. You'll listen differently to your mother than you will to your mechanic. You'll listen differently to a police officer than you will to a principal at school. And you'll listen differently to an actor than you will to an accountant. So just be conscious. Sometimes we operate in a world where the easy answer is A versus B, 1 versus 2, red versus blue. But we all live in a world that's full of a palette of colors. And when we do, brilliant, infinite opportunities open up. 0 is half of a, 3 is half of a. 4 is half of 8. When you embrace that way of listening, the possibilities for you and your negotiation are endless.

Oh, my goodness.

This was so good, Oscar. This was great.

My mind is blown. I'm going to need to. I wanted to take some time and synthesize this.

I know.

I am going to buy the book. Oh, what was the name? How to listen. How convenient. So we'll check that out. And before you go, can you let the listeners know about how they can get in touch with you and learn more and connect?

As much as I'd love you to connect with me, I'd love you to connect with your listening barriers. Either buy the book how to listen at your favorite retailer or take the listening quiz. The listening quiz is designed to find out what your listening barriers are. And if you want to have me back, Kwame, I'll deconstruct the four villains of listening and the research that sits behind that. Take the seven minute quiz. You'll find out what your primary listening barrier is, and we'll give you tips specifically to your profile about what to do about that. Listeningquiz.com is where you'll find it.

This is amazing. Yes, I will certainly take that listening quiz and I will take you up on that offer. Listen, Oscar, I can have you on the podcast literally every single day and I would be a happy man. I appreciate this.

I've got to run to my next.

Episode, but this was really great. I appreciate you taking the time today.

Thanks for listening.

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