Why Listening is THE Leadership Skill to Cultivate [feat. Mark Goulston]

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Hi, I'm Susan Drum and welcome to the enlightened Executive where your personal evolution sparks your leadership evolution. Each episode we feature groundbreaking techniques and strategies to help you get the edge in personal and leadership effectiveness. This episode is brought to you by Meritage Leadership. At Meritage, we strengthen leaders and empower teams to achieve high performance. Go to meritageleadership.com to learn more. Today we're focusing on the power of listening and why you need to get better at this skill in all areas of your life. And I'm very excited to welcome my guest, Dr. Mark Goldston, who is a listening coach teaching executives to be better listeners while helping them unlock what may be holding them back from realizing their full potential. He's the co author of nine books translated into 42 languages and his book Just Listen is the top book on listening in the world. He was a UCLA professor of psychiatry for more than 20 years and a former FBI and police hostage negotiation trainer. So welcome Mark.

As my mentor, Warren Bennis used to say, one of the nicest things about people, saying things like that about you is it gives you something to live up to.

Right, right. Like I did all that. Really. Nine books is a lot of books, Mark. That's pretty amazing.

Well, thank you. You know, one of the things that also my mentor Warren Bennis shared with me, and it's one of my favorite quotes that I actually bring up when I have guests on my show and you're going to be a guest on my show, is he had a quote from Saul Bellow, the playwright, and it was be a first class noticer. Because when you notice, it's different than looking, watching and seeing. When you look, watch and see, you're passive. But when you notice, you're tuned in. So I'm noticing that I'm looking straight into my camera lens, which means I'm looking into your eyes. But I don't see your eyes because I see my camera lens. But I am noticing it and I'm hoping to connect with you through the power of a Canon camera.

Well, the noticing is also then of course, using the eyes and listening. We're using the ears. And bringing those two together is really the power of leadership ultimately. And I think people don't notice enough and they don't listen enough. Tell us a bit about your philosophy around the skill of listening.

Well, something I've been trying to teach the world for the last four or five years. After I spoke in Moscow, I headlined with Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman. He wrote Thinking Fast and Slow. And I Spoke to a thousand Russian businessmen and women leaders, managers. And what I am trying to teach the world and what I try to teach them is that Whoever you're with, one on one, one on five, one on 500 underneath they're listening to you, which is transactional listening. They're listening for something. And if you know that they're always listening for something and you can just be curious what that is with a beginner's mind, they will lean towards you. So I'm going to try a little experiment with you and tell me how it goes. So underneath you listening to me, this is what I think you might be listening for. And wish me luck if it works out. Tell me what your experience is. I believe that you really want to honor your listeners. They trust you, they have confidence in you. And I think one of the ways you want to honor them is to not waste their time. Time is really precious and you're looking for information that's valuable to them, relevant to them, that they can use immediately to make their lives better, more productive, more effective. And you may also be listening for guests who, even if they have a best selling book, they're stiffs. I mean, you have to protect your listeners and viewers from them. And you have to go back to them and say, you know, maybe we can do it over, but you know, we're not going to be able to use the interview. Now granted that doesn't happen so much because you have a producer who screens and vets the guests. But, but does that land for you that you're listening for someone who will make the best use of your viewers and listeners time and you're also listening for people that, who might offend your viewers and listeners because you're protective of them. Is any of that true?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, clearly I'm interested in making sure that people get the best use of listening time. There's lots of podcasts out there, millions of podcasts, right? Why listen to this one? And part of that, I'm also listening for what I'm curious about with you because my own curiosity could drive others me to ask a question. One of the pieces of feedback I often get is I like how it's not rehearsed. It really sounds like you are listening to the guest and your questions follow that. And that's what I try to do because nobody wants anything rehearsed like, oh, I've got these set questions I'm going to ask you. No, I'm really, I start out with a couple. I read your bio and I want to make the most of the time, for sure.

Absolutely. You just triggered something and I want to share this with you and I hope this will be of value to your listeners and viewers. When I coach executives or I coach people about how to manage up to executives, there are four things that I think busy people want you to be. When you come in to have a conversation with them, they want you to be relevant to something that your group is trying to solve. They want you to be clear, they want you to be concise and then they want you to be gone. Relevant, clear, concise and gone. And I've been coaching people, executives who are trying to develop their management skills and they get frustrated when people are not relevant, not clear, not concise, and don't take a hint and not gone. And what they've now started to do is mention to their people, here's the best way to manage up with me. I don't want to be rude, I don't particularly want to cut you off, but if you want to score points with me before you bring anything up to me, give it a little thought. Make sure it's relevant to something our group is trying to solve or relevant in that you need me to do something with my authority. And then please be clear because if you're confusing and, and I have to sort through what you're saying, it's going to be frankly frustrating. And then try to be concise and then after that realize that I have problems to solve and you have work to get to and so politely be gone.

Your end is hysterical, I have to say. But I very much agree, particularly with coming in and being clear. And what I found helps people the most is tell me what I'm listening for. Right. What I'm here to get a decision from you on whether we're moving forward on this marketing plan. And to do that, I'm going to present the following data and then you get into it. So many times I see leaders just dive right in. Well, here's the charts. And here. What am I listening for? I don't know what I'm listening for. And, and the work, I think is being very clear. What's your intention of this meeting? What do you want to get out of it? What do you want the other person to get out of it? And just say that up front because it's going to make things so much easier.

Absolutely. People do like a directness. Here's a quote that you're welcome to use. I interviewed someone the other day and they seem to like it. Culture eats strategy. For breakfast.

Oh, yes.

But clarity, eats, culture, and strategy for lunch. So do your best to be clear. Something else that you, You. You triggered. I gotta come up with a better word than trigger. I mean, I wrote a book on ptsd, and if I use the word trigger too much, I'll have a flashback going back to I don't know where. One of the things I try to also coach executives on and anyone who wants to advance their career, is you want to be compelling, to open people's minds so that you then earn the right to be convincing, to get them to do things. And one of the things that I've discovered with people who are technically incredibly competent, a number of them, if they're engineers, tend to be a little bit on the spectrum. You know, flirt a little bit with Asperger's, they often come off as convincing too soon. You know, they'll go into something and then what'll happen? And I coach startups. I coach startups who are pitching to investors. And one of the things that I mentioned to them, I think you'll get a chuckle out of this. Let me see. If I, if I. If I know my friend Susan, I said, do you have a pitch to investors? And you're on slide three, and they smile and you think it's a yes. And then they say, they say, yeah, I say investors generally don't smile. It's about money. When they smile and slide three, they're trying to not let you see that they don't want to be rude. So they're smiling because what they're thinking is, I'm done. And this looks like a long presentation. And so the more. And sometimes you have to pay the price of thinking that smile is going to lead to, when can we start? How much money do you need? And instead they say, very interesting. Which means you'll never see them again. And so what. What I'm suggesting to people is whoever you're with, wherever you go, realize that they're listening for something. And what I've suggested to these startups is that if you get that smile after two or three slides, unless it's you clearly have come up with a unicorn, they will smile. If you have a unicorn, that's going to make up for all the losers they've invested in. But usually they're smiling because they're done with you. And what I'm recommending is stop, pause, and say to them, can we stop for a moment? Now they're going to get nervous because you caught them not wanting to be rude and they're going to go, what? What? And you say, when I started the presentation, you were listening for something and you didn't hear it. And not only didn't you hear it, I'm getting a sense that you're feeling you're not going to hear it and that we're getting further away from it. I have a presentation, and what you're listening for or looking for might be in it. But rather than take chances, what were you listening for and looking for? Because we actually might have it either later on in the slide deck or I can tell you because, you know, I want to be able to keep your attention. And then are you tracking we. Then they'll say, well, we were looking for this, we were listening for this. And. And then you can bring up whether you have it or not. And something else that I. I like to coach people on in sales is what I call bringing out the elephant in the room. So when you're doing B2B selling and you're having a conversation and it's. It doesn't feel like it's going A plus at some point and you've answered their questions and, you know, you ask if they have any more, you might say to them, could I bring up the elephant in the room that we haven't talked about? That's an intriguing question. And if you say it politely, very few people are going to say no.

Yeah, yeah.

And if it's a B2B sales call, I think what you're listening for is, is something that you uniquely bring to your boss that gets your boss the biggest promotion and raise when they're next reviewed. And if you have a good boss, they're going to share part of that big raise and promotion with you. So we focus a little bit about what might get your boss that big promotion and raise. And what this does is. And you got to practice it, so it's natural. What this will often do is the person you're speaking to will pause. They'll look up at the ceiling because it's a question they would like to know the answer to and they haven't thought of. And when you can break a transactional conversation with someone by causing them to pause and look up at the ceiling, when they come down and look at you, it's not a transactional conversation because you've caused them to think outside the box in a way that's going to help them be more successful. So did any of that make any sense?

For sure. And definitely, you know, as a coach, you learn that asking questions and not Getting an immediate answer is a good thing. Give the person time to think. It means you've asked a really great deep question. So the example you gave would be that question. If they pause and don't get uncomfortable by that and don't keep talking, shut up. Because that person is thinking and you're talking is laying over top of it, Right? There's another piece that I would also add, and maybe it's not even for sales for any meeting, is be really clear about what your intention is in the meeting, but then check in. The question I like to ask is, what would make this meeting valuable for you? Here's what I'd like to cover and here's what I'd like to get out. But how does that track with what you want to get out and what would make it valuable? In fact, you could even go it further and say, what would make this meeting a home run? Like the best part of your day, Right? So now you're really having them visualize, gosh, if this was the best part of my day, what would I get out of this meeting? And giving you clues for how you need to shift and move the conversation based on that to achieve, to achieve that to the best of your ability.

I love what you're saying and I hope you're going to return the favor. And like what I'm about to say, the majority of the world has reverse cognitive bias. Very few people have a forward cognitive bias. What that means is the majority of the world waits for things to happen and then they react to it. And CEOs have a forward cognitive bias. So when you use the word goals, what's your goals? They can answer it without hesitation. But people who have a reverse cognitive bias, when you say what are your goals? They'll often go hama hum, hum, hum, hum. Because they tend to wait until things happen and then they react to it. And all of us have a combination of it. When I coach people, my background is I was a psychiatrist for many years and I'll give you a heads up, I'm co founding something called the Deep Coaching Institute and it's going to be part of a larger leadership company. And the idea is going in deep with people when all the conventional coaching approaches haven't reached something that they need to unblock and unlock. And part of our focus is on our clients complete well being, not just their professional, but their personal well being. And I'm saying this to you because marriages are more stressed than ever. Marriages with kids, it's an epidemic of irritability between new moms and new dads because they're all exhausted. And so one of the things we suggest for people's personal lives is if you're going to take that weekend off, use the reverse cognitive bias. And before you head out on it, ask each other what needs to happen for you so that when we finish our two or three days, you look at me and say, that was amazing. That was amazing. And we need to take this seriously and schedule that at least every three or four months. So imagine we've had our three days. Instead of leaving it to chance or random and the risk of, you know, a bad restaurant or something that either of us are critical of, imagine that we're coming back from it and we look at each other lovingly and say, we need to do this again soon. What happens? So can you see how that reverse cognitive bias and utilizing that in your life can make a difference?

Absolutely. Absolutely. Tell me a bit about how people need to think to become better listeners. Because everything you've, we've talked about so far is about what do I say in the beginning of a meeting or how do I think about setting up my intention and clarifying my intention and visualizing the end state. If, let's say, an executive, and I know many have gotten feedback, they need to be better listeners, what advice do you have for them to develop this skill?

Well, going back to, you need to be compelling and then be convincing. Listening is a tough sell. I mean, when you ask a lot of people, and I do this on my podcast, what is something that you could be even better at? 70% of them will smile and say, I could be a better listener. So the majority of, of people in this world know they need to be better listeners, but they don't want to be. And so here's one of the ways I make a compelling case for listening. So the first step is you got to get them to open their mind and see that they urgently need to become a better listener. And there's an approach I use, and you can use this with coaching, you can use this with anything that's a little bit on the soft side. And it's what I call the pincer approach. And so I might ask that executive, I'd like you to imagine someone who cares about you, believes in you, has your back, and think you have amazing potential. I want you to imagine asking them in your mind what would be the positive, measurable impact on my success, my happiness, the regard people have for me, including you, if I became a better listener. Small, moderate, large, and most People, you know, will be, you know, kind of a little bit humble and say, oh, my. That person would say, yeah, moderate. And here's the pincer effect. Now I'd like you to imagine saying to that person what has already been the negative, measurable impact on my success, my happiness, and people's regard for me when I have been at my worst as a listener, when I have interrupted people, when I've talked down to them, when I was sarcastic, when I was dismissive. And whenever you ask that second question, they get quiet and they say, that person would say huge. So you want people to get flashbacks of times when they paid a big price for having not listened to. There's a lot of times we do pay a big price for not listening. And afterwards we say, oh, I've got to improve. I can't do that again. But then we get distracted and we don't get back to it. So you want to get people into that space again. And then you drill down, tell me a little bit about what happened. And have you ever had a case where you felt like you barely dodged a bullet by having listened so poorly and it took a lot of energy to repair a relationship with someone? So you get them talking about that. And then one of the things that I say to people is I'll look at them and I'll say, people don't do what's important. They do what they care enough about. So clearly, this conversation has demonstrated that it's important to you. But it was important to you the last five times you thought you should be a better listener. What would it take to get you to care enough about it to become one?

And let's say they care. Let's say they do know it's a problem. Then what? Like, I know it's a problem. I would say most of the executives that I work with say I get impatient, and I think I already know what they're saying, and we're wasting time because the person is just droning on, and I interrupt, and that's where my listening skills falter. Others are listening because they're just setting up their next point, right? And they heard something initially and they want to address that, but the person keeps going on. And I'm like, but I don't want to lose my point that I. I thought about, you know, when they first started talking. Those are two examples of places that I know people get stuck. And what would. What advice would you have for them in dealing with those challenges?

Well, I think the more that you can inform those people how to manage up with you. And we can go back to what we said before is you can take people aside or you can meet with them in a group and say, and there's something I call assertive humility. It's where you bury your neck assertively. And you can meet with. And people love it when you do that. And you can meet with a group or meet with an individual and say, I'd like your help with something. And people are going, what? And you don't do it in a whining way. I need your help with something. I need. When we talk, I need you to give some thought before we have a conversation as to what you want the outcome to be. And I want you to give some thought and have the intention of being relevant, clear, concise, and then finished. Because I know sometimes it just feels good to be. You're talking to the boss, you're getting my attention. Oh, this is great. You're having an authority figure treat you as special. Don't go there. You will be special. The. The more relevant, clear, concise, and finished that you can be. And I'd like you to practice that, because where I need your help is that when you're not any of those, I get. I get frustrated. And you can pick it up in my voice. And my intention is not to shame, embarrass, or punish anyone. My intention is to deal with the hundreds of decisions I have to make a day and get through one so I can get on to the next. And I need your help with that.

And part of that is managing them right. So that strategy, which I think is being very clear about what do I need to be a present listener in this conversation? So speaking to that, speaking to what best works for me, I think hugely valuable. And I also believe that there's something that you need to do with yourself internally, too.

Yeah. And here's something. When I speak to entrepreneurs, many of their faces go white when I suggest this. Say how many of you would like to be better in your private life? Because you know and I know that your company is your baby, and sometimes it's even your spouse. But you have a spouse and you have a baby, you have children. So how many of you would like to get a little bit better at that? And they'll sheepishly, you know, raise their hands, and when you have it chance, say with your spouse, and this is not just male to female, it can be female to male. You take them aside and say, I'd like your help with something. And again, saying that assertively, really is very disarming. And then what you say to that person, have I ever made you feel that you weren't worth my undivided attention and interest? They're going to go, what? Which is a. Which is a. Yes. Capital font. Yeah. Have I ever made you feel that you weren't worth my undivided attention and interest? And then you want to look into their eyes and you want to look into their eyes and see the person you fell in love with and adored and how it has slipped away. And then they may be a little nervous because they don't know where you're going with it. And the next question is, give me an example recently of me at my worst. And an interesting thing happens when someone can describe something so clearly that you see it with your eyes, they re experience it, but while they're re experiencing it, you have a little bit of fluidity to change the way they look at you. And when they describe whatever it is, you may not remember it because you didn't intend to upset them or hurt them or treat them like you were too busy. Whatever they say, it's true for them and don't take issue with them. And, and they're. And they're going to be looking away from you because this, this is giving them the chance to get frustration off their. And they may even start to tear up a little bit. And you say, look at me and they'll look at you. And you. And then you say, I did that. I do that more often than I should. You deserve better. And I'm going to fix it.

And so getting to the fixing part is what we're really talking about. Yeah.

And so the fix. But again, it gets, it gets. All of this gets down to your commitment. Do you care enough about fixing it or do you. Is it important? And then you blow it off. What I'm telling you, for all of you people who have been divorced and don't want to get divorced again, when you can have a conversation like this that opens them up and you see the pain that they've experienced in dealing with you, that pain can matter to you.

Well, we could talk about this all day long. I really appreciate you coming on to talk about the power of listening. Highly recommend our listeners get your book. Where can people learn more about you?

Well, you can find me on LinkedIn. You know, I guess we're all on LinkedIn and I keep that pretty much up to date. You can find my books on Amazon. Something I will do a pitch for which I would love your feedback on. I partnered with a group of people. And every Wednesday we have something called 92nd Mentor. It's on LinkedIn and we take the best sound bites from interviews and we're finding that it's building engagement and esprit de corps and lessening isolation and loneliness in companies. Because every Wednesday they say, oh, we're going to have an optional Wednesday wisdom meeting where you can get on Zoom and people will share something that people can then open. I mean, you'll hear the sound bite. So for instance, one of my favorites was from Gary ridge, the former CEO of WD40. And he's just so inspiring and likable. And what he talked about is you're not a manager, you're a coach inside your business. You manage inventory, you manage numbers, you don't manage people. People do not like to be managed. They resent it. And you're a coach. And what does a coach do? A coach doesn't get on the field. A coach helps their people to be the best that they can be. And one of the things that he talked about also is, is that at WD40, where the engagement is like off the charts, he said, we don't believe in mistakes, we believe in learning moments and that's our vocabulary. Oh, so that happened. So let's talk about what you learned, you know, because if you learn something, it won't happen again. And so every week we have a fresh sound bite from Ken Blanchard, Susan Cain, Whitney Johnson, Daniel Pink, Daniel Goldman.

That's great.

Pretty good.

Cast the couch on LinkedIn then.

Yeah, just look up 90 second mentor on LinkedIn. You can do a search for it and it'll take you to that. And what some cultures are doing is when you're with a group of your peers and they get to talk about that. So what do you think about the idea of being coaches instead of a manager? What happens is people open up at a non transactional level and so people start bonding, people start liking those conversations because you hear a part of people that doesn't come out often in everyday business.

Awesome. Thank you. I really appreciate your time here today and thank you for joining me on the Enlightened Executive. Find out more about Mark's work on LinkedIn as well as get his book. Let's all lead the way. Hope you enjoyed today's episode and I'd like to point you to the next important step. Hit the subscribe button and the bell to get notified when we release new content. I'll see you on the next episode of the Enlightened Executive.

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