How well do you listen? Like, really listen? We waste so much time, energy, resources, and money due to a lack of effective listening. It causes misunderstandings, rework, mistakes, and in some cases, dangerous outcomes.
My guest today is a Listening Whisperer! Oscar Trimboli starts out sharing his epiphany moment in a meeting that led to his current work. With over 35,000 people in his research database, Oscar shares the 4 common listening villains that cause barriers at work – and perhaps you can select which one you might be! I share my common villain with all of you, too. We talk about what the best listeners have in common, how listening changes when it’s face-to-face versus online, and practical ways to improve your listening at work and in meetings to ensure engagement and positive outcomes. Oscar shares what he’s learned about how deaf and blind people listen, and he even reveals some ways to listen better when you are utterly bored by a presenter or in a meeting.
To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Listen in for…
- The four most common listening barriers at work.
- When interrupting can be an empathetic action.
- Characteristics of the best listeners.
- Ways we can engage when we don’t feel engaged.
“If you focus on the speaker, you’re starting from the wrong place. Listening starts with you. You need to shut down the browser tabs in your own mind so you can create enough space in your working memory.” — Oscar Trimboli
Episode References:
- Take the Listening Quiz! www.listeningquiz.com
- Apple’s award-winning podcast Deep Listening
- Oscar’s Books
- The Empathy Edge podcast:
About Oscar Trimboli: Speaker, Podcaster, and Author, Deep Listening
Oscar Trimboli is an author, host of the Apple award-winning podcast Deep Listening, and a sought-after keynote speaker.
Along with the Deep Listening Ambassador Community, he is on a quest to create 100 million deep listeners in the workplace.
Through his work with chairs, boards of directors, and executive teams, Oscar has experienced first-hand the transformational impact leaders can have when they listen beyond words.
He is the author of How To Listen – Discover The Hidden Key To Better Communication, the most comprehensive book about listening in the workplace. He’s also the author of Deep Listening – Impact Beyond Words And Breakthroughs: How To Confront Assumptions.
Oscar loves his afternoon walks with his wife, Jennie, and their dog Kilimanjaro.
On the weekends, you will find him playing with Lego with one or all four grandchildren.
Connect with Oscar:
Oscar Trimboli: oscartrimboli.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/oscartrimboli
Connect with Maria:
Get Maria’s books on empathy: Red-Slice.com/books
Learn more about Maria’s work: Red-Slice.com
Hire Maria to speak: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross
Take the LinkedIn Learning Course! Leading with Empathy
LinkedIn: Maria Ross
Instagram: @redslicemaria
Facebook: Red Slice Threads: @redslicemaria
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Welcome to the empathy edge podcast, the show that proves why cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I’m your host, Maria Ross, I’m a speaker, author, mom, facilitator and empathy advocate. And here you’ll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy, from trends and research to the future of work to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn’t just good for society. It’s great for business. How well do you listen like really listen? We waste so much time, energy resources and money due to a lack of effective listening. It causes misunderstandings, rework, mistakes and in some cases dangerous outcomes. My guest today is a listening whisperer. That’s my name for him anyway. Oscar Trimboli is an author, host of the apple award winning podcast, deep listening, and a sought after keynote speaker. I admit I found myself kind of nervous speaking with him, knowing that he may be assessing my listening skills. He is on a quest to create 100 million deep listeners in the workplace through his work with chairs, boards of directors and executive teams, Oscar has experienced firsthand the transformational impact leaders can have when they listen beyond words. He’s the author of How to listen, discover the hidden key to better communication and deep listening impact beyond words and breakthroughs, how to confront assumptions. Oskar starts out sharing his epiphany moment in a meeting that led to his current work with more than 35,000 people in his research database, Oscar shares the four common listening villains that cause barriers at work, and perhaps you can select which one you might be. I share my common villain with all of you too. We talk about what the best listeners have in common, how listening changes when it’s face to face, versus online. And practical ways to improve your listening at work and in meetings to ensure engagement and positive outcomes. Oscar shares what he’s learned about how deaf and blind people listen, and he even reveals some ways to listen better when you are utterly bored by a presenter or in a meeting. So many gems. Take a listen. Hi Oscar. Welcome to the empathy edge podcast. I am delighted to have you here today to have a deep conversation about deep listening. Welcome to the show.
Oscar Trimboli 02:53
G’day, Maria, really looking forward to listening to your questions.
Maria Ross 02:56
So before we kick off and share all your insights and wisdom with our audience. Let’s just hear a little bit about your story and how you came to this work of sort of being a, I was going to say a listening whisperer, but that would be counterintuitive. So tell us how you got to this work around deep listening.
Oscar Trimboli 03:14
You have to zoom in to April, 2008 I’m in a boardroom. We’re doing a video conference between Sydney, Seattle and Singapore. It’s the annual budget setting meeting. I’m the director of marketing for Microsoft in Australia. And 20 minutes into this meeting, my vice president, who’s sitting directly across the table, looks me straight in the eye, and says, Oscar, we need to talk immediately after this meeting. Now Maria, when somebody says, Honey, we need to talk. I did not pay attention to anything. I didn’t listen to anything for the rest of that meeting, all I did was take out my notepad and I figured out how many weeks of salary have I got left, and who are the five people I need to call after I get to start networking. Yeah. Yeah. So meeting finishes a little early, and everybody kind of makes their way out the door, and I try to escape. And Tracy says to me, Oscar, please make sure you close the door, because what I have to say to you is really important. I close the door. I start the 10 steps back to the boardroom table. And she says to me, halfway, you don’t know what you did at the 20 minute mark, do you? And I thought, Great, I’m getting fired, and I don’t even know why. And I sat down getting ready for my execution, and Tracy says, Oscar, if you could code how you listen, you could change the world. What I heard was,
Maria Ross 04:32
Oh, I haven’t I’m not fired. Yeah.
Oscar Trimboli 04:36
And the only thing I could blurt out to Tracy was, do you mean code or code? Code? And she goes, Oscar, we work at Microsoft art, I mean code, software. And since then, I’ve been on a quest to create 100 million deep listeners in the workplace. And we’ve coded into three books and over hundreds of podcasts where we interview the best listeners in the world. We’ve created jigsaw puzzle games. Teams and online assessments, and we’ve researched over 35,000 workplace listeners. So the difference between hearing and listening is taking action, and I hope every day I’m monitoring Tracy’s request to code how to listen, not how I listen.
Maria Ross 05:15
I love it. What a great story that we all wanted to listen to because of the way that you told it. But I’m curious, do you still work with Microsoft, or are you on your own now?
Oscar Trimboli 05:26
Yeah, no, I’ve been doing this work for 15 years now, on my own. Probably was another five years after that before I left Microsoft. So yeah, it’s like next week I’ll be going to Denmark working with labor unions and how they listen during negotiations. Oh my goodness, an international assignment with construction companies and how they listen around safety and their clients and legal groups and pharmaceutical companies. So the wonderful thing about technology, even though I’m on the walls, worst time zone,
Oscar Trimboli 06:01
I’m able to work with people all around the world,
Maria Ross 06:03
yeah, well, lord knows the world needs more listening these days to bring us together rather than tear us apart. So let’s talk about this. Then, with these 35,000 people in your database, what are the most common listening barriers at work,
Oscar Trimboli 06:21
the kind of four of them and the research that we did, we asked people, what do you struggle with when it comes to listening at work? And we analyzed all that information in a world before AI, so I literally went through two and a half 1000 responses with it, with the market research company, and we coded them into four. I’ll describe the four, and then I’ll describe the characteristics of each four. So it’s dramatic interrupting lost and shrewd. And these are the labels that people gave themselves, and also the speakers. We also interviewed people from their perspective about speaking. So we didn’t just look at them from a listening perspective. We asked them, What do you get frustrated about when someone’s not listening to you? So dramatic characteristics is, they love to form connection, but their blind spot, their barrier is somebody says, I’m really struggling with my manager. Oh, you think you got a bad manager? Let me tell you about my so they move the spotlight off them, and the speaker says it’s all about them. Unconsciously, they’re trying to just form a connection through a story. They’re not allowing the other person to fully explain what matters to them, interrupting, Oh, I hear a question.
Maria Ross 07:42
Well, I was just going to make a comment on that really quickly without interrupting, hopefully. But, you know, that’s what I term empathy hijacking in the book, where it’s done with the best of intentions, to try to help someone feel less alone, or to jump into problem solving mode, or to just, you know, make them feel better. And you know, we’re doing it from a very pure place, but it completely decenters the narrative away from the person who actually needs to be heard and needs to have time to process whatever they’re processing. So I love that, because one of my past guests shared a technique around that when you’re working with an employee of stop for a minute when someone’s coming into your office, hot right, with a complaint or an issue, and ask them what they need? Do they need you to see it? Do they need you to solve it, or do they need you to just support you? So I love that you’ve identified this listening type that. And I like that. You called it dramatic.
Oscar Trimboli 08:44
Well, you see, I didn’t call it dramatic. That’s the theme that came out of like, the actual labels that, you know, they’re such a drama queen, was the way they described it. Look a little commercial break from neuroscience and why it’s critical that you either don’t interrupt or you don’t share the story. Although we speak in a range of 125 to 150 words per minute, we think on average at 900 the range is 600 to 1600 so if you’re working complex, collaborative, competitive workplaces, you’re closer to 1600 than 900 what does it mean? It means the first thing you say is 14% of what you think and mean Said another way, 86% of what you think and mean you don’t say the first time. So this is the reason why, if you are an empathetic hijacker, you’re actually missing out on what they mean. You’re just hearing the very first output that they’ve got. And most of the time when somebody says, you know, Maria, what I actually meant to say was, or now that I thought about it a little longer, or, as you did, you took a little deep breath in where I said, Oh, I noticed a question. It means you haven’t finished your thought. So for many of us, we need to connect with white, and that’s W, A, I T, why am I talking? And this is because silent and listen share exactly the same letters. So if you want to become a little bit better, and we’ll get to the three other barriers to listening in a second, quite often, knowing the numbers around their speaking speed and their thinking speed is enough for people to go, Oh, I’ve actually got a reason now to pause, to breathe, to ask myself that question, why am I talking? And you’ll be surprised what you learn from that.
Maria Ross 10:42
Let’s finish off with you. I love it. I love it. Yes, please. The other three.
Oscar Trimboli 10:46
Next one’s interrupting. It’s what we thought would be disproportionately represented in our database, but it’s roughly a quarter as well, and they’re the quiz show contestant that presses the buzzer before the hostess asked the question on Jeopardy, and that got a really fast answer to the wrong question, or they may have a really fast answer to the correct question, yet the speaker feels belittle. They feel less than they feel like they don’t matter, and the interrupting listening. Villain is very conscious of time, and their orientation is productivity. So they basically go, been there, done that. I can figure out what they’re going to say next, and I can give you the answer so we can move on. Well, you know what if all they say the very first time is 14% of what they think in one in five cases, you will solve the most correct question. In four out of five, you’re going to get it wrong 80% of the time. And that’s why workplaces are full of chaos, confusion and conflict. So again, if you’re the interrupting listening villain, just ask yourself that question, why am I talking? The next one lost. They’re very polite people. They’re invited to meetings, and they’re not sure why, or they’re part of a group discussion, and they drift away. They’re kind of not in the meeting. They don’t understand why they’re there. They come across as vague and disinterested, and these people simply need to ask the meeting host, what role do you want me to play in the meeting? Or I’m not clear on my purpose in this conversation, if you’re part of a one on one, if the host doesn’t describe that, then as the Lost listening villain, you want to make sure that you ask that question as close to the beginning of the conversation as possible. In workplace meetings, you may ask the question, look, I’m not clear about why I’ve been invited to the meeting, but if you’d like me to put the customer hat on during this conversation, or the competitor’s hat on during this conversation, or a different department’s hat, a regulator’s hat, then you can play a really, really powerful role. If you don’t feel safe enough to ask that question, then just adopt the position of somebody who’s not in this meeting, who’s impacted by this and you will bring a powerful external perspective to the conversation. And then finally, the shrewd, listening villain.
Maria Ross 13:19
That’s an intriguing title. Well, they’re the kissing
Oscar Trimboli 13:22
cousin of the interrupting listening villain, but they’re a little cleverer. It looks like this, if you’re listening on the podcast, I’m kind of giving great head nods. I’m stroking my chin. I’m going uh huh, and I’m not interrupting you, but if I had closed captioning on what’s going on in my head, it would sound kind of like this. Oh, my God, this is the world’s most basic problem. How slow are they describing this? Yeah, once they get there, they’ve realized that they got three more problems ahead of this. But don’t worry, I’ll save them from the speaker’s perspective. What they say is, I know they’re trying to fix me. And again, it corals. Is friction in the relationship, because that’s how they’re trying to fix the problem. They’re trying to fix me. And when it comes to the shrewd listening villain, just be cautious. Stop listening to what they say and start to listen to how they say it. Are they talking about the past, the present or the future? Are they talking about themselves or external factors as well? So those four again, dramatic interrupting, lost and shrewd. Think of the worst listener, you know, Maria. Which villain are they?
Maria Ross 14:39
That’s a hard one.
Maria Ross 14:41
I’m not asking you to name the person. No, I’m not. I’m not
Maria Ross 14:44
going to name the person. It’s interesting because I think I don’t know if this is just based on recent experience I’m having right now. It’s it might be the a tie between dramatic and lost,
Oscar Trimboli 14:56
and we listen differently at work than we. Do at home, yeah, and we have a primary and secondary listening villain. So I’m shrewd at work. You know, you can imagine the kinds of people who approach me who would like some work to help you, and like, I’ve got a database with 35,000 people. I’ve got correlations out to Wazoo Yeah, I’ve been there and done that and got the cigar yet at home, I’m lost. When my two brother in laws bang on about religion, I’m completely checked out. They’re bang on about the religion of canon versus Nikon. They’re into photography. That’s their religion, like my phone is my camera, right? So occasionally they throw me a bone and say, What do you think Oscar? And I go, sorry, what’s the question?
Maria Ross 15:41
Oh, wait, I didn’t know I was going to need to interject. And I will say, and I wrote about this in the empathy dilemma that, and maybe even some of my other books too. I am an interrupter because I get so excited about what people are saying. And also I have this thing where I think I’m going to forget, and I want to make sure I throw it out there. And usually what I do out of I try to, out of empathy and kindness, say, You know what? Here’s the thing I wanted to say, but let’s put a pin in that so I don’t forget it. But keep going with your
Oscar Trimboli 16:12
story. Yeah. And if you get a chance, go back and listening. Listen to Maria’s episode about why active listening is so hard. Interrupting is not wrong or incorrect when it comes to listening done well, skillfully and professionally, interrupting can be a great sign that you’re listening. The difference is people are not conscious when they interrupt mid sentence, mid breath or mid thought, if you can allow them to complete their breath, complete their thought, complete their sentence, the interruption doesn’t carry the same weight. In the episode that Maria recorded, she talked about cultural variation in interrupting. So for example, in Eastern Europe or South America, interruption or talking over the other person is a sign of a very strong relationship. So there are cultural variations in interrupting as well. But please don’t think that interrupting is bad. If you’re hosting a meeting and someone’s going on and on and on and well away from the agenda, this is your permission fully interrupt them and bring them back to purpose.
Maria Ross 17:21
Yeah, I mean, because that’s also un empathetic, is to not is to sort of lose control of a meeting where someone is taking up so much space that other people can’t jump in. So that is so useful. And I just want to say, I just want to ask, I guess, a follow on to that is, you know, we were talking about, these are the most common listening barriers at work. And what would you say is the most detrimental outcome of any of those? What does it look like when those barriers exist? What is the outcome for the people on the other side?
Oscar Trimboli 17:55
For the people on the other side is reduce trust meetings that take way too long, or meetings that re you get revisited when you apply these techniques, and the measure we use is your meetings are shorter and you have fewer meetings. The opposite is true too, when the group is not listening effectively and communicating in a way that’s about the purpose. Meetings tend to take longer, or even if you have short meetings, you come back because somebody comes back to the next meeting and says, Oh, great, Maria, here it is. I’ve delivered what you want. And Maria says, Oh, actually, that’s not what I meant. What I meant was this. And then there’s a whole rework. And depending on how senior you are in the organization, that rework can have some major implications for other people, and there’s a cascade impact of that ultimately less profitable great customers that you want. They go to the competition because your competition listens better than you do, and then employees leave because they feel like they haven’t been heard.
Maria Ross 19:03
Okay, so let’s switch gears, and let’s talk about the right way to do things. So what are the best listeners have in common? What are some of their tricks and rituals?
Oscar Trimboli 19:11
Yeah, well, their characteristics are, they’re open, they’re flexible, and they’re curious. That was the consistent themes that came across. And the first thing that they do differently is they don’t focus on the listener as sorry. They don’t focus on the speaker as the start of their listening. If you focus on the speaker, you’re starting from the wrong place. Listening starts with you. You need to shut down the browser tabs in your own mind so you can create enough space in your working memory. Listening is a relatively modern process in the human brain. We learnt to see much earlier in our evolution than we learned to hear and learn to speak. So you know, you mentioned, why is active listening so hard? It’s hard because we have so many components. Heating priorities in our mind. So when it comes to listening, great listeners are very open to start off with, because they manage their state. They have very simple rituals to start. First one is they don’t start the meeting at the top of the hour or the bottom of the half hour. They schedule space in their invitation for the other person. So practical tip number one, if you’re still doing meetings at the top of the hour, you’re going to have people rushing in five minutes after the end of the meeting. Go, sorry, I’m late. I just had a back to back meeting, but I’m here. I’m ready. I’m here now. Well, they’re not. They’ve arrived at five past the hour, but their mind arrives at about 10 past the hour. So create that space, not just for you, but for the others you interact with as well. Pre meeting, have a ritual where you drink a glass of water before the meeting commences. Why? It sends a signal to the parasympathetic nervous system, that’s the nervous system around your heart and lungs, that’s the survival instinct, and it says, relax, everything’s okay, and it will help to shut down those browser tabs in your own mind. And then just notice your breath and take one deeper, longer breath than normal, sends exactly the same signal to parasympathetic nervous system. If you don’t have a glass of water, hold it and then exhale. Typically, we’re holding it for between three and five seconds longer than normal, and it will shut down another browser tab. So they manage their state and they get ready to listen. The next thing they do is they’re clear on purpose. So a meeting. May have an agenda. That’s what we’re discussing, but they’re very good at the purpose of the discussion. How are we going to have the conversation? How are we allocating time? How do we know if we’re on track? And they typically ask a version of a very simple question, what would make this a great conversation? Not what would make this a great conversation for you? If the conversation is between two people, there are three entities present in that dialog. You them and the conversation. We are tracking the conversation, not the speaker, not the listener. The reason we ask that question is it gives us a permission slip to check in regularly, every 10 minutes and say Maria at the beginning of the conversation, you said this would make it a good conversation. How are we tracking? By the way, it’s a great permission slip to interrupt somebody who’s carrying on as well. Finally, they’re very conscious of how people say things and creating the space to let them get the first 125 and the next 125 words out. Please be careful listening in the workplace is not therapy. It’s not your job to be their psychiatrist, their psychologist, or anything you’ve seen on Netflix on a
Maria Ross 22:59
couch. I just wrote an article for Forbes that’s called why you don’t need to be your employee, psychologist or therapist. Yeah, so I hear you. I’m with you. It doesn’t mean they’re on your couch. And what was one of the quotes from my book, one of the leaders I spoke to said, I’m very clear that I’m not here to help you discuss boundary issues with your mother in law. That’s not why I have this job.
Maria Ross 23:20
And I thought that was such a great way of putting it,
Oscar Trimboli 23:22
yeah, yeah. And even though they manifest regularly in the workplace, and I was working with a leader just yesterday who’s incredibly and beyond frustrated about the way employees interacting with them, and I simply asked, you know, they had used the word frustration. And I said, What’s that frustration about? And they were like, as if they had up fire hose and they were squirting it all over the employee, and they’d finished. And I said, and what is it about for you? And you could see this big shift in their state. They took this big breath out, and I went, Yeah, I guess I got some work to do. I said, Well, the good news is you won’t be doing that with me. It’s like there are other approaches to doing that. So better listeners manage themselves. Notice that there’s a process we need to put in place. And what will make this a good conversation? What would make this a good meeting? What would make this a good whatever or productive? Your choice of words, and they’re skillful to understand the silent and listening have the same letters, and we were in a team workshop with a tech company, and they’ve been growing at 30% per annum. And although that sounded great, the market they were operating in was growing at 200% per annum, so they weren’t growing as fast as they could. And they were frustrated. We had a leadership team, and I simply had them before the lunch break. And I said, describe this organization as an animal. And we went all. Around the room, and it was a cheater or an Osprey or an eagle, and it was basically something that was fast and kills things. 12 people in the room. We came to the very last member of the group who hadn’t spoken the whole meeting, card carrying member of the introvert community, and a CFO. And I simply extended my arm out to her, and I didn’t say, speak up or anything like that. And she said, I thought it was obvious. And she stopped, and everybody kind of like, hurry up and finish. Hurry up and finish. And she said, I thought it was obvious. I thought we were a snake. So Maria, I’m curious, what were you associating with a snake? What adjectives are you using to describe a snake?
Maria Ross 25:43
Well, I feel like at that point I’d go tell me more about that. Because is she meaning a snake from a like, attack and sly and sneaky angle, or was she meaning a snake of like, sort of wrapping herself around in circles.
Oscar Trimboli 25:59
When you think of a snake comes to mind for you.
Maria Ross 26:02
I imagine something very ominous and something very dangerous and sneaky, and you never know what it’s going to do next. Yeah.
Oscar Trimboli 26:12
So I didn’t say tell me more, because if I was from a different culture to the dominant culture in the room, and I just extended my hand just a couple inches further out, and she said, she repeated, I thought it was obvious. I thought we’re a snake. We’ve forgotten to shed our skin every season. We have systems and processes and mindsets that are holding our organization back. And if we learn to shed our skin, we can grow as fast as the market now, the meeting went from a bunch of group think, which is listening for the similar, because we have orientation to listen for similar and because I speculate, rarely is she invited into the conversation, and you don’t have to verbalize it to invite it in. Just a simple gesture can work. The meeting trajectory completely changed. Everybody started to talk about their process that had been fossilized, or, you know, the skin hadn’t been shed, and the meeting was supposed to have lunch. Just before she spoke, they went on for another 35 minutes, and the level of engagement was very, very different. Now, what happened was they took the metaphor and they started using snake varieties as code names for their product development. They had internal awards based around different kinds of snakes in the West, snakes have very negative connotation because for many people, the origin story the first story they learn. What you don’t know about the CFO, the culture she was from, is Chinese where a snake means something very, very different. The connotations about agility and skill, not a negative connotation about sneaky and ominous and all would you use there Maria to describe that so listening, sometimes we think exclusively as kind of one on one, kind of conversations. The good meeting hosts get everybody to listen to the active speaker. Great meeting hosts get everybody to listen to each other, and that takes a lot of pressure off your listening as a host as well. So I wonder what you’re taking from the snake story. Maria, Well,
Maria Ross 28:28
it’s interesting because, you know, I was not in the room, so I was not aware of the ethnic difference there. I think that would have factored in. But I love how you unlocked and got them excited about what was happening after that, because they genuinely stopped and listened instead of continuing to engage in groupthink. That’s kind of what I’m taking away with it. And it it’s, you know, reminding me of, you know, some of the best workshops you facilitate or talks you facilitate is when you bring in the person that doesn’t usually express their opinion, or the people that have been discounted, you know, oh, they’re a squeaky wheel, they’re a curmudgeon. They’re, you know, whatever the story is that they tell. And I have found in client workshops over and over again, the person that people are not sure why they should be in the room, and maybe that person isn’t even sure why they’re in the room, they come up with the best epiphanies in the room because they actually get space to be heard. Because I have no skin in the game, so I am like, No, keep talking. Tell me why you have a problem with this. Tell me why this is so negative. Instead of trying to silence that person, it’s letting them feel heard, and often, not always, but often they come up with that gem that kind of stops everybody in their tracks, like the story you just told. And so that’s that power of having the diversity in the room, but not just having it in the room to the work that you do, being able to listen to. Actively to what they’re saying and take it in and not just humoring
Oscar Trimboli 30:04
them. Yeah, and the really important question you want to be asking yourself, if you’re moving up the levels of listening, is what’s not being said. And as Pam mentioned in her interview with you, what perspectives from outside the room are not being represented inside the room, right? One of the things is that these card carrying members of the introvert community amazing synthesizers so they can play back to the group what they have heard in a way that the group can’t articulate. Equally, they also say what’s absent. Unfortunately, they say it much too late. So imagine a one hour meeting at the 40 minute mark. They’ll say, Well, we haven’t even talked about the competition, or we haven’t even talked about the customer, and it feels like a hand grenade to the group. Progress for the introverts out there who have some superpowers when it comes to listening around synthesis and noticing the abstinence speak earlier in the meeting, and you will create much more momentum in the conversation and bring more people along, rather than slowing down progress with an Outstanding and insightful observation at the wrong time.
Maria Ross 31:24
Okay, I have so many more questions for you. I love this so much.
Oscar Trimboli 31:27
Oh, we can come back again. We can come back another episode. I do
Maria Ross 31:31
want to ask you, first of all, more of a meta question of
Oscar Trimboli 31:36
how not on Facebook? Haha. I It’s
Maria Ross 31:41
more about, how can you learn to be a good listener? What can what mental game? What mental gymnastics Can you play? What practices can you do internally when you’re genuinely bored by what’s taking place in the meeting or what’s taking place in the presentation? What are some ways that we can engage when we don’t feel engaged, if at all? I guess that’s also the question too. Is it possible?
Oscar Trimboli 32:11
Yeah, so there’s three perspectives on that. Quickly. Number one, we need to unlearn what we’ve learned about listening to become better listeners. We learned to listen at 32 weeks inside our mother’s womb. We could distinguish our mother’s voice from any other voice in the outside world, so we knew how to listen before we were born. Unfortunately, as we move into our homes and our cultures and our parents and our aunties, we learn how they role model listening, and we become a facsimile, a copy of them as well. So sometimes it’s not what’s the hack I need to
Maria Ross 32:49
learn? I know I hate using that word, but yeah, it’s just what do
Oscar Trimboli 32:53
we need to unlearn to get there? The second part for the specific question you ask is it is common to be bored and drifted off. And here’s the reason why. Back to the neuroscience. Remember, we talked about the speaker 125 words per minute, and they can think of 900 here’s what’s going on for you as a listener. They’re talking too slow, in fact, to prove the point, at least half this audience is playing back this recording at a speed faster than one time speed. Yeah, yep, truth. So you can listen and comprehend at up to 350 400 words per minute. So I’m speaking four times slower than you can process and you’re bored and drifting away, and that’s okay. The hack is simply this, what do I want to get out of this conversation and start to zone into that? That’s why a great meeting host will make sure they go around the meeting and understand what everybody is listening for or wanting to get out of the meeting. If you’re bored, just simply look at the eyes of the active speaker for five seconds. Use that as a mental reset. Now, it’s much easier to do on video conference, because it doesn’t come across as staring right or intimidating, right being face to face meetings, just notice the eyes of the speaker and see if you can figure out what color their eyes are. When I interviewed Christina BERGSTEN, who’s the world champion military sniper, and she uses techniques where she focuses on leaves because she has extended periods of boredom, but she needs her full attention in a in the work she does. So find something you can focus on for short periods of time that has variation based on this. So eyes What color are mine? Mine actually is slightly different left to right eye, slightly different color. As an example, you’ll be surprised how many people have variation in eye color. If you use that simple hack number two, write down, why am I here? Yeah, because you the best thing you might do with your listening is leave the meeting. You don’t need to be there if it’s not effective for you, or you’re not there to represent others. So sometimes the final tip is, Why stay? The most effective thing you might do is leave the meeting.
Maria Ross 35:37
Such good stuff. You brought it up. So I want to just follow that thread a little bit. What? How does listening change for us in face to face versus video meetings, because we are dealing with a lot of environments that are still remote or hybrid. So how does listening show up differently in a face to face environment versus an online environment?
Oscar Trimboli 35:59
Yeah, extraordinary variation. We’ve written 110 page guide to how to host an online meeting from a listening perspective, and some of the things that people show up something we don’t know about listening. We either listen with our eyes first and our ears second, or our ears first and our eyes second. Now the easiest way to figure out which one you are, close your eyes while you’re listening to this, unless you’re driving and please keep your eyes open. And Maria, if you want to play the game, you can close your eyes a little bit. And what happens is, if your primary visual first and auditory second, if your eyes are closed right now, you’ll find this conversation really frustrating you as desperate to see what body language signals are coming across. So if you’ve played the game, you can open your eyes right now. So I’ll just ask Maria, was that something that was comfortable or uncomfortable for you?
Maria Ross 36:56
It’s a little uncomfortable. And I think you’ve just landed on why I try to like audio books, but I can’t. Oh, even though I’m reading, I’m not watching somebody speak. But for me, it’s also a it’s a cognitive thing, I think too, of like, I can retain information really well, both visually and orally, auditory, auditory so I find myself like, when I closed my eyes and I was listening to you, I found myself kicking myself, of like, make sure you’re listening, make sure you’re listening, make sure you’re getting it, make sure you’re getting it. And I do that much more naturally when I can both see and hear. But what I love about this is this brings about a point of empathy in regards to people that are disabled and the different senses that they need to rely on in order to listen, even if they’re hearing impaired, right? How do they process and take in information, and what are the different ways that we can honor that for people and not just assume there’s one modality for communication that will serve the needs of every person in our group or organization or team.
Oscar Trimboli 38:13
Yeah, and I’ve interviewed deaf people and I’ve interviewed blind people about how they listen, so a very simple tell us about that of empathy is when I interviewed Dame Evelyn Glennie from the United Kingdom, who was the first deaf percussionist in the royal Symphony Orchestra. For example, She She applied and they rejected her the first time. But one of the things I did, I spoke to a deaf interpreter before the interview, and you will notice I’m wearing a black shirt. By the way, for most of you who are listening, I’ve got a black shirt on. This is designed to create maximum contrast for anybody who needs to lip read with me as well. Now, when I interviewed Dame Evelyn Glennie at the end of the interview, she said, this was by far the most different interview I’ve ever had. And a point she made is, you didn’t treat me as a deaf person. You just had a conversation with me now deaf since the age of 12, and she learned to lip read, so it was crucial that I had contrast in my body so that it will maximize what’s around my lips. But Dame Evelyn Glennie would teach all of us is, do you listen with your whole body, not just your ears and your eyes? You listen with your complete being? And when she plays percussion to listen to the other instruments she plays barefooted as an example. But I also have interviewed blind people, and Daniel Kirsch is an amazing example of that. When I interviewed he had a selfie stick on a camera, on his sorry cell phone, and to welcome me into the discussion I had with him. He showed me all around his house. He showed me his cats. He took me outside. He showed me his orange trees, and the whole conversation was had walking now, Maria would appreciate this. As anybody recording any interviews, you’re freaking out, it’s like background noise and all of this, Daniel maintained complete eye contact with me during the whole interview. There was minimal background noise, and he was quite possibly, like, I don’t have favorite children or grandchildren, and I don’t have favorite people that I interviewed, but he would be in the top group if I did have favorites. His ability to listen full meaning, not just for what we were discussing, was extraordinary. And again, he said to me at the end of the interview, Oscar, it was great. You never mentioned my blindness once. Treat me like a normal person. And I think when it comes to us thinking about people who don’t necessarily have the same way we listen or the same way we see, we think that maybe they’re less and they’re not. So one of the big things, I would say, is back to your original question. If you really struggled with that exercise, you tend to struggle more with listening in video conferencing than face to face. So visual people prefer the face to face because they’re getting more non verbal cues from the room that they’re present in if you’re auditory, you don’t mind. You can work with that too. That equally, you find it a little frustrating where people don’t get to the point as quickly as possible, too. So there you go, primary auditory, primary visual.
Maria Ross 41:37
I love it. I mean, I know we could talk for another hour, but we’re going to wrap up and we’re going to guide people to your wonderful books. You’ve got the book that just came out in 2023 which is that’s not deep listening impact beyond words and breakthroughs. That’s that book came out prior to that yes,
Oscar Trimboli 41:59
yes, yeah. Okay, yeah, that’s how to listen, the most comprehensive book about listening in the workplace.
Maria Ross 42:04
That’s it. That’s right, that’s just came out, and I think that that’s we probably just got a taste of what’s included in that book in this discussion today. So we will have the link to that book and other resources in the show notes. Do you want to take a second to tell folks about the listening quiz?
Oscar Trimboli 42:21
A lot of people say, hey, Oscar, where can I learn more about my listening? So I invite you to explore what are your primary and secondary listening barriers? If you take the seven minute quiz, you’ll get asked 20 Questions. You’ll get a resource which is five pages long tells you your primary and secondary listening villain, and we give you three tailored tips based on your responses, what industry and profession you’re in that are very practical and you can use immediately in your next meeting. So go to listening quiz.com to learn all about
Maria Ross 42:50
that great. And we will have that link in the show notes. But just because I butchered it earlier, I want to give the name of the book again that folks should check out how to listen discover the hidden key to better communication. Oscar, it’s been a pleasure talking to you today, and I hope we continue the conversation and the listening as we go forward and we’re connected now. For folks that are on the go and can’t access the links in the show notes right now and they’re just listening, where’s the best place they can contact you or find out more?
Oscar Trimboli 43:21
Oh, to find out more about the listening quiz, that’s it calm, nice and simple. And if you want to get into contact with me, all the coordinates for contacting me at listening quiz.com also
Maria Ross 43:35
wonderful listening quiz.com thank you again for your time and for your insights today. Thanks for listening, and thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Please rate and review or share it with a friend or a colleague, and until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. You announcer For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy. Visit the empathy edge calm. There. You can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice Maria, never forget, empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.
