S2E47: Oscar Trimboli, Creating Deep Listeners

This is the No Ego Podcast, where we ditch the drama, end entitlement, and transform your workplace. I'm Sy Wakeman. Welcome, listeners, to another episode of the No Ego Podcast. As promised, when I find people doing interesting— what I think is evolutionary work out in the workplace or the workplace— I like to see if they would honor me by being guests on our podcast so that you can learn from them, and I'll pick their brain on your behalf. And today I get the opportunity to bring Oscar Trebolli onto my podcast. And what really intrigued me about Oscar's work is that he's an expert in deep listening, and I want to hear and know more about that. So, Oscar, thanks for coming on to talk about this incredible topic.

Yeah, g'day, Sy. I'm looking forward to speaking to you and listening to you as well.

Perfect. So we'll get, I'm sure, to your background during the interview, but I would love to just hear you riff a little bit on deep listening. What is it? How does it differentiate from what we traditionally, or I would say probably unconsciously, do in many interactions with others? And how did you come to be an expert in it?

Yeah, I think most of us see in color, but we listen in black and white. We spend 55% of our day listening on average. If you're in a senior role, you're a manager, manager, a manager, or a leader, or an exec, you could be spending up to 83% of your day listening. Yet only 2% of us have ever been trained in how to listen. We've been taught math, we've been taught languages, we've been taught science, and yet listening is the most used skill we have in the workplace. And nobody knows what good looks like. We kind of think about listening as something that we need to do actively, but that's about as sensible as saying we need to breathe actively. So I'm on a quest to create 100 million listeners, deep listeners, before I leave this planet. And deep listening is being able to listen in 5 levels of Technicolor. And we'll spend a bit of time talking about what the 5 levels of listening are. But I also want to smash some myths about where listening starts from. And a lot of the listening literature tells you to get focused and fixated and obsessed with the person speaking. And my proposition is that's handy, but it's not powerful. The most important person you need to listen to first is yourself.

And that is one of the many things I love about your philosophy. In our work, we talk a lot about your own self-reflection and making sure that you're coming with some really good hygiene, good energy, just awareness to an interaction. And I loved that differentiation when I read your work about not focusing on the other as much as you're focusing on bringing your kind of most evolved self into the place.

That first level is really foundational. So if we're not showing up available in the conversation to listen to the other person, if we've got a story going on in our head about the last conversation we just had that was struggling with or the next conversation we need to have after the one in front of us. We may be thinking about our shopping list. We may be thinking about picking up kids from school. We may be thinking about our next vacation. We may be thinking about a whole bunch of different things, but that's the equivalent of turning up to a symphony performance with your iPhone earbuds in listening to rock music. It's just completely unproductive. So for a lot of us, and I've done some proprietary research with 1,410 10 people over 3 years to track their listening journey. Most people struggle with level 1 listening, listening to yourself, because the, the big things that they're getting distracted by are electronic devices, the stories that they're saying in their own head, and their lack of breathing. Ironically, their ability to breathe deeply is holding back their ability to listen deeply because Typically, we're not getting enough oxygen to the brain.

That's fascinating because I know at times when I'm involved in some conversations, I have a story about the fact they may be full of conflict. I notice that I stop breathing. It's like one of the things I'm like, I hold my breath and wait for what somebody is going to say next. And I never connected that at the very time your brain needs full oxygen, We might not be.

And that lack of education about how to listen means that for a lot of us, listening is a complex cognitive task and we tend to overwhelm our brain while we're listening. I was, I was chatting to a German neuroscientist the other day and he said, oh, you know, listening's so hard for me. And I said to him, Boris, you're just doing it Wrong. I said, listening's really light. And he said, well, how is it light? And I said, when you listen, you're there to help the other person make sense of what they're saying. It's not your job to make sense of it for yourself. So if you're listening, your role is to help the speaker make sense of what they're saying, not necessarily for you to make sense of what you're saying. And if it's all about you, it means your ego is showing up in the conversation. So if your ego's out of the conversation and you're really listening deeply, You're helping the speaker make sense of what they're saying. And I explained to him in a context that really made sense for him the neuroscience and the maths of listening. Three numbers really matter, Sai. The first one, you speak at about 125 to 150 words a minute. And if you've heard those cattle auctioneers or horse race callers, they might get up to about 200 words a minute. So if you can speak at that speed. I can listen at up to 400 words a minute. So my mind is programmed to be distracted. I fill in the gaps while you're talking with those other 250 words. In fact, it's happening to you right now listening to this podcast. You're driving, you're running, you're doing another task while you're listening and your mind's drifting away, but that's okay. The difference between a distracted listener and a deep listener is not that they get distracted, it's they know they will and they have techniques to adjust as a result. But just as important, the 125-400 rule— they speak at 125, you listen at 400— the speaker themselves can think on average 900 words per minute. Now, so the likelihood that you're going to say what you think when you have 900 words in your head and you're stuck with a mouth that speaks at 150 or 125 words a minute, it means there's a 1 in 9 chance that what you say, the The very first time is what you're thinking. About 11%. So I don't know about you, but if I went to a doctor and they were going to operate on me and they gave me an 11% chance of surviving the surgery, I'd probably ask for a second opinion. Yet most of us go through life not asking the other person a really simple question. Tell me more. And if you ask them, tell me more, you'll hear these amazing code words that they start to use where they start to access what they really mean rather than what they say the first time. I'm the person who washes clothes at home in our household. And even a washing machine has 2 rinse cycles. But while the washing machine's in wash cycle, the water is dirty, it's sudsy, it's soapy, it's not really clear. And the of speaking is like a rinse cycle on a washing machine. It gets all the things that matter out so you can focus on getting to the clean stuff. And the code words that people use, Sai, and you'll probably nod knowingly when I say this, they'll draw in a deep breath and say words like, hmm, well, actually, or they'll say something like, you know what I really— Should have told you. Or, you know what really matters? Or, now that I've thought about it, what I need to tell you is— and these magic code words means you're listening at a level of depth that's helping them access their meaning. And all of us know we've been in a great conversation when that happens. It's productive for you as a listener, but more importantly, it's productive for the person who's speaking. So listen out for those code words, but the way to access them is simply to ask them, tell me more.

What a great technique. We talk a lot on this show about staying curious just one minute longer, um, you know, as a way to really keep the focus on what you can, you know, learn or observe or understand. But, and I've heard so many conversations and teachers on listening, I'm just loving the counterintuitive way you're presenting this, where our role really Is helping people kind of find their own meaning. And what a gift to help me be more clear about my meaning or my purpose or my kind of very real view of the world. Like, helping me get through my own clutter is— it just is the ultimate gift of freedom, like the freedom to better understand myself. Just loving where you're going with that. So tell me more is a great technique, and then staying actually curious and staying in there. Interesting. So what are some of the other myths when you hear about— or did we cover some of those? I know you talk a lot about myths of listening before you move into kind of the levels and some of these great techniques.

Yeah, well, that's the very first myth, is that by being focused and fixated on the speaker, you, you're actively listening. And the active listening movement, um, For those of you might be a little bit younger in the audience, came about in in the 1980s and the 1990s, and it talked about things like paraphrasing and nonverbal affirmatives such as mm-hmm and nodding. And Sai, I don't know about you, but if I was in a restaurant and we were having this conversation, and I said to you, "Hey Sai, do you mind passing me the salt?" Now, if you were to follow the active listening movement, they would say to you. So I would then say, Oscar, did you just ask me to pass you the salt? And I'd say, yes. And then you'd pass me the salt. But active listening is like active breathing. You can't fake it. You either are listening or you're not. So being present in the conversation is crucial. So being focused on the speaker when your foundations are faulty, when your foundations have those other things in your head, So I think this— the next myth is that body language is really critical, and if somebody's folding their arms, for example, they're being really defensive in a conversation. Um, handy to listen for body language, but too many of us make independent assumptions about what that means. If somebody's got their arms folded while they're talking to you, they could simply be under a really cold air conditioning duct in the office and they're trying to stay warm. So for a lot of us, we take body language signals out of context. The most important thing we can do as a listener is look for congruency in nonverbal signals. So the fact that their arms are folded is an interesting signal of defensiveness, but if their language is open, then they're probably cold, you know. So, so reading too much into body language So body language is one of the other myths of listening. The next one is not being present enough to notice the change in their state. For a lot of us, when we look at body language, we look at the space between the eyebrows and the chin, for example. We look at cheeks and smiles. We look at eyebrow movements. Occasionally, we might look at arms. But for a lot of us, we miss some massive signals. State change happens with state change in breathing. State change happens with the width of their pupils, for example, when they have a big insight, and also the position of the spine. So for a lot of people, when they have a big insight, when they have an aha moment, when they have a lightbulb moment, they will draw in a huge breath. And as a result, their shoulders will go back. As a result, their spine will stay erect for an extended period of time, no matter what their body position is. And for a lot of us, we're not listening. To sense their state. And the reason we're not is because we're distracted by phones, we're distracted by iPads, we're distracted by laptops. If you want to be completely present in a meeting, take analog notes. That means, sure, have an iPad, but draw pictures. Don't write verbatim notes down. The minute you write verbatim notes down while you're listening to somebody, you're Most people will be saying the words in their head, and in doing so, they shut down the auditory cortex, which means although you can hear, you won't be able to listen to what people are saying. And a lot of people who write verbatim notes versus just big pictures about meaning— and I'm not worried about what kind of artist you are if you're a person who is the equivalent of the first class or the first grade when it comes to drawing. The good news is the drawing is for you to decipher meaning. And capture actions. It's not there for you to write down literally word for word for what they're saying, because if you are listening at the word-for-word level, again, you're listening in black and white. You're not really listening in color.

He really is calling people to be present and experience the fullness of the moment without motive, um, or perhaps the only motive is to help people, you know, come to better understand themselves. There's so many times where Something is taught as leadership philosophy, like active listening, and our egos are so sophisticated we can grab that and use it for evil rather than good. I mean, I've had people do that whole active listening, repeat back to me what I just said, to the point where I get so frustrated and angry at how it is interruptive and slowing down kind of what I'm trying to convey. And I feel so unheard at the very moment they're actively listening. Mm-hmm. But it actually works, works against— I just had this flashback of this experience and, and even had one person in my life who does a lot of active listening, but he, when he talked to me, would just insist that he would say, now tell me what you heard me say. And I just, I felt, um, like I was taken hostage. And so I just, I love this, this, this— yeah, because I think we—

You sound frustrated, Sai.

Yeah,

yeah, that's what— that's

Oliver. It's like, no. Yeah.

And that's That's what the active listening movement would teach us. Now, it's very unfair to kind of stereotype them there. Like anything, there are good practitioners of active listening and there are poor ones as well.

Yeah, but it's like they're doing good work in the world to just raise our consciousness and use it as one tool. It's just that I just point out to our listeners, our ego can really take any of these things and use it for its own motive, its own work. But I really, I love where you Ask us to look for congruency, um, and rather than the actual body language, and just, uh, pay attention to when people seem like they've had a bit of a wake-up or an aha moment. Because how cool would it be to, when you notice that, to use that, tell me more about what just got clear for you? Or, you know, that would be such a great cueing. I love it.

Look, another myth is deep listening takes longer. And what you'll find is the first part of the conversation takes longer, but the impact is so much bigger. And the result is so much more productive that most conversations don't take longer. In fact, they're much shorter because you're getting to the rinse cycle on that washing machine so much faster. How many project teams have failed because they haven't listened or they've been listening superficially in work-in-progress meetings? How many employee engagement programs have failed because year after year after year, they ask their employees, the same questions and never take any action on it. The distinction between hearing and listening is the action that the person takes as a result of the conversation. So back to those egos in that database of 1,410 people, we had a bit of fun and we did some analysis. We found 4 villains of listening, which all show up with big egos. And the first villain of listening is the dramatic listener. They love listening to your conversation. It gives them a stage or a theater to play on. No matter what you say, if you've got a bad boss at the moment, they've had a worse boss. If you had a tough merger, they've had an even tougher one. If your marriage is really difficult right now, theirs is even more difficult. So the dramatic listener loves listening to your story so they can tell you an even bigger story. And that's one of the villains of listening. The next villain of listening is the one that most people notice. It's the most overt listening type. The interrupting listener. They love the minute you draw breath because that's their commercial break to give you their opinion on the topic, and you haven't even finished what you're saying. But the interrupting listener is so engaged in the conversation that they need to be actively participating, and they really struggle with the process of hanging out and listening to silence and being comfortable with silence. The next listener is the lost listener. The lost listener may not even be sure why they're part of the conversation. They may not be sure why they're attending a meeting. They got invited to the meeting in a team meeting context or a project meeting context. So they'll turn up and they'll kind of say to themselves, look, I'm smart enough. So if I hear enough of the conversation, I'll start to make sense of my role in the conversation. But equally, the lost listener, once they get distracted, They really struggle to come back, and a lot of people call them vague or just not part of the conversation. And then finally, the shrewd listener is the 4th villain of listening. And the 4th villain of listening, the shrewd listener, listens to a conversation like this. You think that's your problem? I've thought of 3 other problems and I've already solved that problem. So I wish you'll hurry up and catch up with me because I am so smart. I'm thinking about 3 problems ahead of where you're at. They're not really listening to the conversation. They're just trying to come up with clever ways to solve the problem. Disproportionately represented, Si, the shrewd listener is disproportionately represented in support functions like IT, finance, legal, human resources, and equally disproportionately represented in the sales profession and any professional services kind of organizations like lawyers or accountants. The shrewd listener always shows up. But in trying to solve the problem, their ego's getting in the way and they're not really listening for meaning. They're missing what matters to the person speaking.

Those are great. I could identify myself in all 4 of them as an uneducated deep listener.

Yeah, so listening situational and relational, those villains turn up differently. So for me, I'm a shrewd listener at work and at home, I'm a loss listener. So we listen differently to a parent than we would listen to a police person. We listen differently to a politician than we would to a school principal. We'd listen differently from a doctor to a lawyer, depending on the situation. So, you know, one of the other myths is that listening is uniform and it's always the same, but listening is very situational and it's very relational as well. You'll listen differently to somebody you're in a long-term relationship with Very, very differently to somebody that you're meeting for the first time, as an example.

Good examples. So the levels of deep listening, is this a good time to dive into what those levels are?

Thanks for the invitation. Let's just talk about what the 5 levels are, and then we'll spend a little bit of time exploring where you'd like to go with them, Cy, because you, you know who's listening better than me. So level 1 is listening to yourself. Level 2 listening to the content. The content is what you see, what you hear, and what you sense. Level 3 is listening for the context. This is listening for patterns and backstories. Do they speak consistently about the past or the present or the future? Do they speak consistently about themselves or do they speak about groups? Do they speak in detail? Do they speak in big picture, for example? And level 4 is listening for what's unsaid. And I think this is the ultimate ninja move that deep listeners are really good at. It's taking the time to say, tell me more, and being comfortable with the silence when they can't access it and knowing that they're a fully capable human and they know their own answer. So level 4, listening for what's unsaid. And then finally, level 5 is listening for meaning. And the meaning is theirs, not yours. And there's a tipping point from level 2 to level 3 and beyond. So at level 1 and 2, you're listening to yourself and you're listening to the content. Level 3, level 4, and level 5, you're listening for context. You're listening for the unsaid and you're listening for the meaning. So your orientation moves. But in our research, most people, 86% of people are stuck with With so many barriers at level 1, they struggle with distraction. They struggle with focus. They struggle with attention. So that's the biggest barrier and the biggest myth that most people think they're better listeners than what they are. 82% of people, Sai, think they're above average car drivers. 84% of people think they're above average IQ. And 83% of people think they're above average listeners. No matter whether I look at the academic research or I do a poll with our audiences when I do training courses or speaking, and I ask them, do you think you're above or below average as a listener? And those statistics are true no matter which geography or age group or industry type I'm in, or whether you look at research from Germany, from Israel, from the United Kingdom, Canada, the USA, or even from Asia.

That's so interesting that we overrate ourselves. And I think we're fed a lot of information about multitasking. And when the new research came out— it's not so new anymore— and they talked about the fact that you really aren't that good at multitasking, people took affront to that. I had lots of friends that thought they were the exception to the rule of, um, you know, well, everybody else might not be able to do it, they could do it. But, uh, but that's the biggest barrier. What are some of your best techniques or directives at this point since it's such a basic level, recommendations for our listeners to do the obvious and get rid of the distractions?

Yeah. So, if you're okay, I just want to play with this multitasking myth. One of the things people say is, well, I can drive and listen to the radio. Isn't that multitasking? Yes, it is. But the processes that your mind's going through are very different. So, When you're listening, listening is using the neural part of the brain or the prefrontal cortex. And this part of the brain is relatively fixed for most people, meaning they can process one thing effectively at that part of the brain. And because we haven't been taught how to use that part of the brain for the task of listening, it's very easy for us to get distracted. So back to your question, how do you get out of your own way so you can listen Listen effectively. Let me talk about a couple of practical things that people always say to me, that's useful, Oscar. So when I walk from wherever I'm going to visit a client, and the minute I step into the building, the very first thing I do when I cross the lobby is I switch my phone into flight mode. From the time I press the button for the elevator to get to the floor I'm going to or to reach reception, I'm concentrating on 3 deep breaths. And again, most of us haven't even been taught how to breathe properly. Most of us breathe in through our mouth and out through our mouth. If you take 3 deep breaths in through your nose, hold for 3 seconds, and then out through your mouth— I'm not asking people to become yoga practitioners in a lift and sit there with their legs crossed and saying om and all those kinds of things, but just collecting your thoughts and having 3 deep breaths And setting your intention. So the moment I announce myself to reception, my state is completely changed and my state is completely available to the other person. When I come to reception, they often ask me, would I like a cup of tea? Would I like some coffee? And I always say, look, if you don't mind, I'd love a glass of water for me and for my guest. Now, the reason I'm asking for a glass of water is a hydrated brain is a listening The brain is only 5% of the body mass, yet it consumes nearly 26% of the blood sugars of the body when it's undertaking really complex tasks. Listening for complex and abstract topics. As we move from the information economy to the imagination economy, we have to use much more of our brain than we ever have before, rather than just going through repetitive tasks. So So it's always great that you have a glass of water there. And if you drink coffee, that's okay too. If you love Starbucks and you're a big fan of Starbucks, you're just going to have to drink an extra glass of water for every cup of coffee you drink because drinking coffee is going to dehydrate you a little bit. So number 1, focus on your breathing. Number 2, have a glass of water present because the process of thinking hard— you'll hear a lot of people say this, oh, my brain hurts. And the reason your brain hurts is when you're doing complex tasks, you are actually getting dehydrated and your brain hurts. So drink water. A hydrated brain is a listening brain. And then finally, I would encourage you, if you need to take notes, take them in an analog format. If you've got a stylus on an electronic device, please use that, but use it just to take notes of the big points The meaning of the meeting and possibly the actions of the meeting. But if you're going to type or scribble down verbatim notes, word for word what they particularly said, it's going to not only distract you, it's going to shut down the auditory cortex. So take visual notes and that will help your memory. So Boris Konrad, the neuroscientist I mentioned earlier on, he's the world 4-time memory champion. And at the— they have a World Memory Olympics. Can you believe there's such a thing? So they shuffle a deck of cards and they have to repeat the cards back in order.

That's crazy.

They cover the cards up and some of these people can recite 52 playing cards in under a minute. Now there's 52. Now I can't even speak that fast, let alone remember those cards in color and suit and all the kinds of things that they need to do. And the point Boris makes is the part of the brain that remembers the most is the visual part of the brain. So if you can have visual notes, not only will you capture the essence of what's being said because you're doing fewer notes, but you'll remember it longer. How good is that? So try and capture visual notes as well. So those 3 things are really foundational. I could get into a lot more sophisticated stuff around listening, Sai, but that's where most people are at. That's where 86% of people are struggling with today based on the research we've been doing over 3 years.

It's so interesting because I tape podcasts every week, and I would tell you the last 10 podcasts that I've interviewed others, breathing and water just continues to come up, whether they're brain experts or spiritual gurus who've worked with the Dalai Lama, or everyone about the importance of nasal breathing, like really breathing and getting water. I love the idea about the notes too, and I think I learned it because I started life as a therapist. Another thing to do— so I take a lot of notes in marker on journals, and they're like maybe one word that somebody may use over and over again that I hear, or it may be just, you know, some themes or a picture. It looks like scribbles to everybody else, but one of the things I would add, it just works for me anecdotally, is I take those notes in a fine tip Sharpie that's dark enough, and I have it flat on the table whenever I'm talking so that anyone else can read the notes I'm taking. So as they see me write something down, it's transparent to everyone, and it just seems to not inhibit conversation where people get distracted wondering what I'm writing down. I just— it's there for everyone to see. If, you know, I write down like what I wrote down talking to you is, is that deep listening really is about being effortless. And I wrote down help others make sense. Like everyone could see that, that it's a supportive note-taking rather than that maybe cynical note-taking from that skeptic listener. So great stuff. I know the first 2 stages we talked about are really getting the the content, listening, you know, to yourself and listening to others. What are some techniques in addition to tell me more that gets us able to be more aware and present to the context of what people might be willing to share with us?

We spend a lot of time kind of in the orientation of listening as a one-on-one exercise, but I want to talk about this and kind of bring it all together in group settings. With 2 stories. And for a lot of you listening, you're in the workplace and you're trying to make sense of groups of people speaking together. And 2 stories that really come to mind that will bring together listening for the context, listening for the unsaid, listening for meaning together. I was facilitating a technology company in about 2006, and it was a kind of one of those narrow, dusty boardrooms with very little natural light. The organization had been enjoying 30% plus growth, which for their industry was average. It wasn't phenomenal. Most people in most industries would kill to have that kind of growth, but they plateaued at about 30%. And I'd been brought in with the— by the CEO to facilitate the planning for the next couple of years. And it was about 10 to 12. We were about to break for the lunch break, and the CEO was keen to wrap up because the catering was coming in. And we all know sometimes these deadlines are really important and sometimes these deadlines are really false. They're just arbitrary. And I'd asked the group to explore the possibility that how would you describe the organization as an animal? And most of the people in the room had described the animal either as an eagle or as an osprey or some kind of bird of flight, some kind of bird of prey. Some kind of bird that was fast and agile, could swoop, and and and and had a level of speed that was unmatched. And as we went around the room, we got into one of those kind of groupthink moments where everybody was yeah, Amos, yeah, sea eagle, yeah, and everybody was the same. And there was one person still to go, and Eileen hadn't spoken. And Eileen was a card-carrying member of the introvert community. You know, they're a card-carrying member of the introvert community when you say, hey, if you're an extrovert, put your hand up, and the extroverts kind of stand up and shout out. And then you say, hey, put your hand up if you're an introvert, and the introverts put their hand up. But the real introverts don't put their hands up. They would never admit they're introverts. They want to be so hidden from everybody else. So Eileen was one of those. She wanted to not be noticed, but she was a thoughtful person. And I just extended my hand to her. And we're 5 past 12 by now, Si. So the CEO is giving me these superhero or supervillain laser lights and pointing to his watch as if to say, can we get on with it? And we hadn't heard from everybody. And I just reached out with my hand to Eileen. I didn't say anything. It was just an invitation. And I could see she was formulating what she wanted to say. And she took in this big, deep breath. And what she was about to say mattered to her. And she said, I thought it was obvious. And she stopped. So I extended my hand a little bit further. Now, most people wouldn't. They'd say, tell me more. And sometimes listening can be done without a word, but with a simple gesture. And I think this kind of nuance sometimes is missed. Well done by those in the Eastern cultures, Japan, China, Korea, but not so well done in the West. So Eileen drew another deep breath in and said, I thought it was obvious we're a snake. Now, Sai, what's going through your head?

What went through my head, to be honest, is, isn't that what eagles are hunting for? But it's as obvious as you can get.

Yeah. And if you were to describe the characteristics of a snake, what would you do?

Oh gosh, I don't love snakes, but slithering. Yeah.

So there's the first thing.

Yeah. Something I don't want to come upon on the trail, although they're harmless creatures and do good for the world. That's my override coming in. But my first response is I'm breathing shallow. Shallow right now and wanting to talk about something else.

Hmm. And in that, in that moment, I saw a courageous person speaking their truth. And I thought, well, I can stop there or I can say, tell me more, which is what I did. I didn't say it. I just kept extending that hand out a little bit further in invitation to her. And she said, well, when we've been successful, we're like a snake. We shed our skin every season. We adapt to the environment around us. We move fast when we need to. And when we need to code, we stay in our hibernation and we get that done. And then we come out when we're required. We're like a snake. And I think we've forgotten to shed our skin and adapt to what our clients And the tension in the room was broken then. It was great because everybody breathed out. But in that moment, it became a tipping point for the team. They started to go, oh, yeah, we do this like a snake, and we do that like a snake. And snakes are pretty fast, and snakes can do things in a clever way, and snakes can sense by their tongue and all these things. What then becomes of this? The team adopts snake as their mascot. their organizational mascot. They make beanie snakes that are all around the organization. They use different snake names for code words. They listen and put snakes in the presentation and tell the customers why they like snakes. As a result of this, they not only enjoy 30% growth, but for the next couple of years, up until now at least, they're enjoying triple-digit growth. Now, we could have ignored Eileen. We could have had lunch. But for most of us, we're not listening to those voices that are unspoken in the room. So in group settings, if there are 10 people in a room and 2 people are dominating the conversation, why did we invite the rest? One of the things that great skillful leaders do is bring all opinions to the table and they listen across all perspectives, whether it's comfortable or not. So that's that first story that kind of brings together listening in group environments. So the next one, a little bit shorter, but just as interesting. I was doing a presentation to about 70 people managers in a pharmaceutical company. I'd got about halfway through the presentation. In fact, I got up to the piece about listening villains. But what I was doing was I'm sensing the And 2 people had walked in at about the 15-minute mark and the room temperature changed. The tension in the room changed dramatically. And from that point on, the— it, it just wasn't feeling right. I was sensing this big change. So I paused at that point in time and I turned to my host, who was the CEO of this sterile manufacturing pharmaceutical company, and I said, do you trust me? And he looked at me very confused and he says, do I have a choice? And I said, yes, absolutely. Um, I'm just going to ask the group a question, which is not part of anything we discussed in the brief. And he said, okay, I trust you. And so I turned to the group and I said, look, I sense there's an undercurrent I'm missing here. So for the next couple of minutes, just humor me. Turn to the person next to you, just have a chat. If this manufacturing facility was a movie, what sort of movie would it be? So So you could hear the chatter and the energy in the room transforms very quickly and it's very hard to wind them back. 2 minutes became 5 minutes and then I got the room back and I said, okay, so what are the movies we're talking about? And the movies were Die Hard, Towering Inferno, Titanic. They were all disaster movies. And it got me super curious and I just paused. And I turned to the CEO who was giving me those supervillain laser-like eyes straight into my eye saying, why did you go there kind of thing? And I said to the CEO, he almost jumped up at stage and took the microphone off me. And he said, and I'll never forget this moment, he turned to me, he said, thank you, Oscar. If you could just grab a seat offstage. I thought, okay, well, I'm not going to get paid for this job. I was still in the room, but what I witnessed next was, was when I talk about impact beyond words, deep listening is impact beyond words, is what he said next. He turned to me and he thanked me and he said, Oscar's been able to put his finger on something we've all been struggling with for the last 3 months. But more importantly, I've been struggling with. Team, I'm really sorry. I apologize. I don't want anybody to turn up to work that feels like a disaster movie. I need your help to solve this problem. I don't know the answer, and I've been pretending I do. Can you help me? And again, the tension in the room changed immediately. Now, so what I didn't know, for the last 3 months, they've been struggling with some issue in the sterility process that meant lots and lots of the drugs that they were creating weren't passing quality. And there were millions and millions and millions of dollars of stock stuck in quality because they couldn't solve this problem. And in the next couple of minutes, what he asked me to do was to facilitate a quick conversation about what we're not listening to, because this organization, highly technical, very engineering-led, very clever people, they were using Six Sigma, Five Whys, fishbone, advanced fault diagnosis methodologies. And I just asked a simple question, who aren't we listening to in this process? And they were stuck for a little bit, but then eventually they said, well, we're not listening to the operators on the assembly line. We're not listening to the people who are closest to it. And, you know, within 3 days in talking to the operators on the assembly line, they solved this problem that was holding up millions and millions and millions of dollars worth of stock because they gave up their ego, knowing that all the engineers were brilliant, and talked to the people at the coalface. And quite often, in trying to problem-solve, most organizations, whether it's employee engagement feedback or customer satisfaction feedback, they always ask the people in senior roles how to solve this. And yet, the people at the coalface go unlistened to, and these people can solve the problem. So I think both those stories kind of capture listening for context, listening for what's unsaid, and listening for meaning to have a kind of transformational impact on them along the way.

I think they're just wonderful areas for us to challenge ourselves to expand in, you know, listening to yourself and listening to the content. But I like— I love it, listening for what's unsaid and context and meaning. A great question, who aren't we listening to? And we talk in Reality-Based Leadership about how to activate that silent, many times majority, where a couple people dominate the meeting. And a great leader manages the energy towards ensuring that you provide space for, you know, those Elaine's of the world as well. Oscar, very well done. I am so in love with the philosophy you bring to the table. It aligns so well with No Ego as far as deep listening. I love your goal 100 million deep listeners in this world. And hopefully in this podcast, we have converted some folks to at least undertake the challenge. You have a great book called Deep Listening. You also have a couple other books. But how can people engage with you and add you to their social media teachers, their, their feeds, so to speak?

I think the simplest thing is just to go to listeningmyths.com, and that will have all the coordinates If you prefer Twitter or you prefer LinkedIn or you prefer Facebook, it'll take you to all the links there. So if you just go to listeningmyths.com, Sai, that will kind of get you started on your, on your deep listening journey.

Perfect. And deep listening is not, um, your only significant work. You also do a lot of coaching. And what was your other book? Was it titled Breakthrough? Or I can't remember.

Yeah, Breakthrough: How to Confront Your Assumptions was the first one. Yeah,

which is wonderful because we talk a lot about editing our stories. As we unfortunately have to wrap up, I really want people to go deeper into deep listening. I just think it's such a vital skill to evolve as a human being, and I love that it can be learned and we can get better through practice. But one of the things you put out there was using metaphors and having people move adjacent to what we're talking about directly, and the use of a metaphor is really powerful. Wonderful to say, if this was a movie, what would it be? If this were an animal, what would it be? And if you really want to go after some meaning and, and the things unsaid, it's a great technique to try with your team. And in fact, when I was studying to be a therapist, we were using hiking a lot as a metaphor. And we went out into the woods and they had us identify a question that we ourselves were contemplating in our own lives. And to see something that catches your Mm-hmm. And then to listen to this inanimate object for all the lessons, all the things you needed to know about what you should do next. And I was struggling with a parenting issue, and I found this flower that I focused on, and I noticed the stem was very strong, very strong yet flexible, and yet the flower part was just like beautiful and lovely. And, and it actually— I walked away with all kinds of parenting advice from a flower who never said anything, but it was a process of getting us to use metaphors and deep listening. And I just like to end with assignments. And so I would ask all of you to ask yourself and ask others some of these metaphor questions. If you had to describe our team as an animal, what would it be and why? And I just love that you use that technique, Oscar. But thank you so much for imparting your wisdom in such an easy-to-listen-to but wonderful way here on the podcast.

Oh, you've given me the greatest gift of all, Cy. You've listened to me. Thanks for listening.

You are welcome. Anything else you want to add before we say goodbye?

Oh, just if you want to join the journey and visit listeningmyths.com, and we'll help you to do some of the most practical and basic things possible to move you from a distracted listener to a deep and impactful listener.

Perfect. And many of you are thinking about what competencies you need for your teams for them to really create beyond-ego workplaces, and deep listening is one of them. I hope you're inspired by this podcast to really get involved in accelerating and improving your listening abilities. So thank you, Oscar. I appreciate it.

Thanks for listening.

This is the No Ego Podcast, where we ditch the drama, end entitlement, and transform your world place. I'm Sy Wakeman.