Welcome to the next episode in our series on listening, part of the ongoing listening experiment that began in May 2024. Join your hosts Shaney Crawford, Claire Pedrick (master coach and host of The Coaching Inn), and Oscar Trimboli (expert in deep listening) as we continue to explore the fascinating world of listening. Let us know if you’d like to hear more!
In this episode, we delve into:
- Oscar's Deep Dive into Carl Rogers
- Claire's Listening Experiences in Spain
- The Interplay of Seeing, Hearing, and Sensing
- Standing vs. Sitting and the Listening Container
- Mastery and Breaking the Rules in Listening
- The Impact of the Online Container on Listening
- Exploring "Sense, See, Hear" as a Possibility
- The Difference Between Hearing and Listening
- Listening Like Trampolines vs. Sponges
- The Use of "We" in Conversation
- Offering Information and Ideas While Listening Deeply
- Listening Like Comedy and Sex
Here are the first 3 episodes
- https://thecoachinginn.podbean.com/e/s5-episode-13-the-listening-experiment-continues-with-oscar-trimboli-and-claire-pedrick/
- https://thecoachinginn.podbean.com/e/s4-episode-61-unlocking-the-power-of-listening-in-coaching-with-oscar-trimboli-claire-pedrick-shaney-crawford-kathryn-mannix-extended-edition/
- https://thecoachinginn.podbean.com/e/how-to-listen-with-oscar-trimboli-1711631905/
Contact:
- Oscar linkedin.com/in/oscartrimboli
- Shaney linkedin.com/in/shaneycrawford
- Contact Claire by emailing info@3dcoaching.com or checking out her 3D Coaching Supervision Community
If you like this episode, subscribe or follow The Coaching Inn on your podcast platform or our YouTube Channel to hear or see new episodes as they drop.
If you’d like to find out more about 3D Coaching, you can get all our new ideas and offers in our weekly email.
Key Words
listening, communication, empathy, non-verbal cues, cultural perspectives, mastery, online interaction, human connection, understanding, awareness, listening, communication, sponge vs trampoline, mood, sieve analogy, language, deep listening, presence, conversation dynamics,
We love having a variety of guests join us! Please remember that inviting someone to participate does not mean we necessarily endorse their views or opinions. We believe in open conversation and sharing different perspectives.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:13):
Hello and welcome to this week's edition of The Coaching Inn, which is the fifth episodein a series of podcasts about listening.
My name is Shaney Crawford and today we're continuing the listening experiment thatstarted back in May 2024 when Claire Pedrick, master coach and host of The Coaching Inn,
invited Oscar Trimboli, an expert in deep listening, to join her at The Inn for a talkabout listening, upon my strong recommendation.
(00:43):
Episode two in this series was a collection of reflections from the audience after theylistened to episode one.
Then episode three was a very special one for me as I was invited to join theconversation.
In episode four last month, the three of us came together for a live podcast where theaudience was invited to be a part of the conversation in real time.
(01:04):
And that brings us to today, episode five, where the three of us have come together againto explore the world of listening and see where it gets us to today.
So with that said, Claire and Oscar, perhaps I can invite you into the listeningplayground by asking you to share with the audience where you are in your thinking about
(01:25):
listening today.
Go on, Oscar.
Thanks, Shaney.
I think at the moment, I'm in a very deep space of research.
(01:46):
I'm currently reading the original paper written by Carl Rogers in 1952 about listening.
It's a 32 page document and
What you don't know about Carl Rogers, he was good buddies with Abraham Maslow of Maslow'shierarchy of needs.
Maslow never drew the pyramid, by the way.
(02:08):
That was something that the marketing team got a hold of later on and helped to transmithis idea.
The one thing you don't know about Carl Rogers, he was called before the McCarthy hearingsor anti-American activities committee as it was known then to
(02:29):
basically explain why he was listening to the workers.
And a lot of the work in the 36 page paper is about listening in the workplace and how tolisten to workers.
But one of the things that frustrated me about this journey was professor as he became,all his academic writings are now behind a paywall.
(02:58):
And you have to
pay or you can kind of cheat the system and speak to somebody who's got access to thoseuniversity sites.
But as I spent at least 20 years negotiating intellectual property contracts on behalf ofsoftware companies, I have an aversion to doing that.
(03:20):
So eventually I discovered somebody had legally printed it into a booklet, which is the 36pages I'm reading right now.
apart from writing Python scripts for analysis of share of voice from transcripts of teammeetings.
That's another thing I'm doing for professional development on my own part.
(03:46):
So that's where I'm at, Shaney and my listening tourney.
That's so, so interesting.
want to get into that today, get into hear more about that.
Claire, how about you?
Where are you today?
Well, I've just come back from Spain, where I've been pretty much since we last met.
And listening in a space where you are, where people are speaking not your secondlanguage.
(04:14):
I suppose I could gloriously say Spanish is probably now my fourth, but I'm not, I'm notgreat.
So I think what's interesting about being there was how much it tunes up.
listening because you've got less you've got less capacity to understand but you've gotmore capacity to hear so getting the sense of being more important than the than the than
(04:43):
the actual content of so i was very proud of myself because our apartment had a drainageissue which was very unpleasant
Mm-hmm.
And not only did the guy who came, well, he wasn't speaking Spanish, he was speakingValencian and very fast.
And so you had to go, I had to go entirely for the visual and the sound in order to beable to understand what he was saying.
(05:11):
And the only word that I understood was the one word that really mattered.
I thought that means elbow.
So.
which was the bit of the drains that had broken which he was going out shopping to fix.
But I think what was fascinating about that was learning again.
(05:32):
how we can listen when we don't understand and still do some really good listening.
Claire, is that about tuning faces?
Is it about the musicality?
Which one are you tuning in first and second in that regard?
(05:55):
That's such a good question.
Can I go to the impact first?
The impact was that everybody thought I spoke Spanish.
I think probably tuning into the looking first.
(06:20):
and then tuning into the sound.
But what was fascinating was that we were in a restaurant one evening and I startedspeaking in Spanish and then they started speaking in Spanglish, a kind of combination of
Spanish and English.
And in the end I had to say to her, I can't speak Spanglish to you, I can speak Englishand I can speak Spanish but I can't speak both at the same time because it was, because,
(06:45):
and that was to do with hearing her.
It was like I was listening with one way when she was speaking English and with anotherway when she was speaking Spanish and when she was speaking both.
I don't think my brain knew which bit to tune into.
So I just couldn't do it.
So it was really interesting.
(07:09):
It's very interesting.
I do a lot of...
Please do.
So, but the looking on.
where do you start your focus and then where do you diverge your focus when someone'sspeaking?
(07:31):
in that context.
So in coaching, I would do it on the eyes, I'm just now in my cafe in Spain, where I wrotevery badly.
I think it starts with the whole...
(07:54):
for me it starts with the whole face.
and then
except with the plumber when I think it was face and hands.
I think it depends on the nature of the conversation, doesn't it, and what you'relistening for.
(08:14):
with the plumber, I was listening for a solution very urgently.
I think what was interesting about the dance of the conversation, the listening, if Ithink about the person I spoke to the most, who was the owner of a cafe where I was
working.
(08:41):
and I have a desperate need to drink a cafe con leche.
There was something about, there was something about the mood of the looking, the, the,the, the,
Because if I try and remember, it was only last week, it only four days ago.
(09:04):
But my memory of him is the whole of him.
So I wondered whether I was listening, whether I was looking at the whole first.
I'm speculating that two of
them were listening to somebody standing and one might have been listening to somebodyseated.
(09:26):
Yeah.
different isn't it?
It's not only the physicality of the container, its width and its depth and its height,it's also how we're positioned in that container.
Width, depth and height and the relativity of all of that.
(09:50):
What's I got you thinking, Shaney?
Yeah, that is fascinating.
I never thought about the listening being different based on whether the speaker isstanding or sitting.
and therefore the amount of data that you're able to have access to is quite different.
(10:18):
And it also allows them to transmit data in a way differently if they're standing versusseated.
And equally, how does somebody arrive at a conversation and how do they settle into aconversation?
That energy and frequency will also transmit differently to somebody listening and whetherthey're tuned in to all of that as well.
(10:47):
because yeah, I often think of the shape, but not just the shape of the virtualenvironment, the physical environment, but the relative shapes.
And that's not just the physicality of the shape, but it's also where the range in thevoice is coming from, or even if there is range in the voice.
(11:11):
And yeah.
suspecting that
If you think about the waves, the height and the distance between the waves, Claire'stuning was...
different in that Spanglish example compared to English versus Spanish versus the thirdone, which was that a dialect or a completely separate language, Claire, the
(11:42):
but it's very strong because I've only ever spoken Spanish in northern Spain and wherethey speak Catalan as well.
And Catalan and Valencian are quite similar, but the way people speak Spanish in Valenciais really different from the way they speak Spanish in the north.
So tuning into that took a few days.
(12:05):
Yeah, very interesting.
Cause I don't...
Go on.
So now, I'll close.
I was just going to say I'm not sure that the music is useful until we've sensed the look,the looking for me.
(12:35):
I think the noticing, the visual, kind of positions it.
And then the sound comes in after.
I there's a consciousness for us to think about the difference between practice andmastery.
(12:57):
I think in practice, we talk about prescriptions and steps and mastery is conscious ofprescriptions and sequence.
That's why I was curious which was first and which was second in that example, because Ithink until you've mastered the steps,
(13:19):
not sure what the sequence is.
So for example, in the book, I'm very explicit about hear, see, and sense.
They're building on top of each other because that's the way most people are processingtheir listening.
Yet the impact is at the bottom there.
(13:41):
It's what do you sense, the state shift and all of that.
As something just shifted for Claire, for those of you who can't see.
when I said sequence and hear, and sense.
So I'm curious what you're sensing there.
Well, I'm always consistent in the way I write about those three words, but I write themin a different order, So I write, see, sense.
(14:08):
Isn't that interesting?
And you write, hear, see, sense.
And I wonder what that says about us and the way we are in the world.
And I wonder whether that's to do well, that could that I mean, that's a very interestingquestion.
Yeah, I don't think one is correct or incorrect.
Mine is not informed by my practice, but where people are in my research database aboutthey struggle first with the hearing part of listening, and then they struggle with the
(14:39):
seeing part of listening, and ultimately they struggle with the sensing.
So mine's kind of a boring response.
Mine's driven by the data that I've collected.
It doesn't make it right.
just is.
So I speculate that yours is informed by many more domains than research.
(15:04):
Yes, I think you're right.
I also have a question that I'm living with at the moment, which is how flexible aredifferent people's ways of thinking to being able to notice?
(15:25):
And, and I, that's a kind of new inquiry for me.
But my observation would be that the seeing can be...
Some people will adapt to seeing once you've noticed it, once you've said, I wonder whatyou can see, then they can see it all or they can see a lot.
(15:54):
Other people kind of go, what do mean?
I didn't see that.
And I wonder what that says about difference.
Yeah, and I think part of that talks into adult development theory and your ability to beconscious in a higher state of thinking and whole duality versus people who are trying to
(16:20):
master one of the elements and go from there.
I think, you know, with great art and great music, you need to master the rules so you canbreak them.
And it's in mastering the rules that you know, know, when you look at Monet and how manylilies did he paint, he painted many lilies in a very literal sense.
(16:46):
And then he moved to very different ways of expressing them in the world because he could.
So it's an interesting tension there.
I'm also conscious.
We've got a bunch of questions, Shaney, from
our last conversation that we probably haven't got around to doing and the differencebetween hearing and listening is taking action.
(17:10):
So I'm just curious if there are questions that are coming in via the chat that we mightlike to explore for the current discussion or pick up a handful from the previous
discussion as well.
But before we do, Claire, have we finished?
Yeah, I think so.
Something came to me and it's gone again.
(17:38):
yes.
So when you said the thing about mastery is learning and then breaking the rules.
The conversation that's built out of the last conversation that we had, the biggestexploration has been when you and I both said that when people are venting, we're not
(18:00):
listening.
Mmm.
And I would say we're being present, but we're not hearing the content.
And I would say that that's a really good illustration of what you just said.
That's what I was thinking.
Mmm.
And a hat tip to Mark for his very elegant, sophisticated and well thought throughcommunication.
(18:27):
was a piece of poetry that he wrote that really touched me.
So I just want to acknowledge you, Mark, if you're watching and if you're not, you'll pickit up on the recording like you did last time.
But his ability to feel like he was present, even though he's watching a recording wasjust so prosaically put together.
So thank you.
(18:49):
He's here.
Hi Mark.
Yes, so I definitely would like to invite the live audience to share any reflections orquestions that you have.
You can share them in the chat.
Also afterwards, if you're listening to this afterwards and you'd like to be a part ofthis conversation, we definitely want to hear from you as well.
(19:10):
And you can email Claire with your questions or your thoughts to share so that we canbring them into the next conversation.
So just looking in the chat, Lizzie has a question for us, but she says we've moved on.
But let's just have a quick look at her question.
(19:32):
So how does the impact of the online container have on the listening for you all?
For me, I find it easier online because...
(19:56):
I was always taught that staring is rude.
Face to face.
And I think that in the online space, there's something about being able to really noticestuff without the person that you're listening to and noticing feeling overly
self-conscious.
Now we're all being a little bit self-conscious.
(20:19):
So I think it's different.
Yeah, I think it's different.
And I often close my eyes when I'm listening online, probably in a way that I wouldn't doface to face.
(20:39):
which is ironic given our previous conversation from five minutes ago.
So it means that you're blocking out the visual to get a better sense of things or to hearthings.
(21:00):
I wonder whether it's time to do it to work out.
I wonder whether it's to do with the moving from the seeing and hearing to the sensing.
I'll have to, I'll have to see, to practice.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
(21:20):
Interesting.
Oscar?
Mm-hmm.
So here's my caveat, beware of profits with false binaries.
So let me present you with a false binary, Lizzie.
There's online synchronous and online asynchronous.
This is synchronous, where we're all in the same space at the same time.
(21:41):
And asynchronous is a recording.
So you can create containers in both.
The real question is how conscious are you of the container you're creating?
You're creating the container online by your lighting, by your background.
You're creating a container by the speed at which you speak, how close you get to themicrophone, how often you might just whisper to kind of get people to lean in just a
(22:09):
little more to what you're saying.
So do you choose to stand or do you choose to sit?
So two people are choosing to sit and I'm choosing to stand.
That creates a different container.
So the same thing is true too in an asynchronous environment.
Do you choose to share the recording as audio?
Do you choose to share the recording as video?
(22:32):
Do you choose to share the recording with a transcript?
Do you choose to share the recording with the chat?
So there are many ways you can create a container in an asynchronous environment as well.
we'll pop onto Mark's question, but Lizzie,
curious to get your feedback on that is what have you heard there that's useful for youand even better what have you heard that's completely useless perspective on that as well.
(23:12):
Shall we go, it may take Lizzie a few moments to type in her answer.
Shall we move on to Mark?
Okay, so Mark has said, what about sense, see hear as a possibility?
(23:36):
So that's the order that Oscar mentioned, that people naturally will go here see sense andwill struggle with here, then struggle with see, then struggle with sense.
And they may not, am I interpreting this correctly, that they may not get to see or senseunless they're really working at it.
(23:57):
Certain people may not get to the see or sense without active engagement and activelytrying to get there.
So possibly what Mark is saying is, well, what do think Mark is saying?
Let's say that.
I'll go first, Claire.
I think it doesn't matter.
(24:18):
The question you have to ask yourself is, does the order serve the purpose of the dialogue
rather than your primary preference?
That's irrelevant.
Your primary preference should be driven by if it's a hugely moving conversation about thefact that
(24:40):
the person struggling with a cancer diagnosis and they're trying to figure out how toexplain it to their manager at work.
Well, I guess here and see a completely irrelevant in that context.
And you're going to stay with sense because you're going to move to what does it mean foryou very quickly rather than how are you going to tell somebody?
(25:04):
I'm like, who cares how you're going to tell somebody, but maybe that's how they present.
a situation two weeks ago where somebody was talking about someone on their team that wasin that situation.
And they came to them and said, Hey boss, I don't know how to tell you this.
And, you know, so, so there was, there's that.
(25:25):
So again, back to when you've mastered the rules, then you break them and you get to anorientation of what's in service of the dialogue.
not what's my primary preference.
Clear?
(25:49):
I'm thinking about really extremely empathic.
And I noticed that there are some people who will sense first.
And I'm doing some work around it actually at the moment because there's an Englishpsychotherapist called Nigel Wellings who said, never know first, never know better, never
(26:20):
think you know.
But there is a certain kind of person
who probably do know.
So there's a there's a
So I'm not sure they think they know.
I think they actually do know, no.
(26:42):
I think their sensing is so tuned in.
And there's a timing issue for them in the way that they engage in dialogue with others, Ithink.
Because that is overwhelming for the person that you're present with if they think thatyou think that they know.
(27:06):
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, when they sense before you do, there is a perceived power differential.
And if I can't even verbalize what you felt about me, how can I even dialogue with it?
Yeah, there's a podcast called the Telepathy Tapes that's about nonverbal autistic peopleand their capacity to communicate deeply nonverbally.
(27:37):
And that's on my list of things to, it's very controversial, but it's on my list of thingsto listen to, to see what insight it gives here.
Yeah, it's a really fascinating one.
I would say that for people who have, yeah, I think it depends on.
(27:58):
the unique differentness of the way that your brain functions, probably.
And for Mark and Lizzie in the chat, which bit of that's useful for you or not, both ofthose inputs will be useful for.
Claire, you also have the same...
(28:22):
Do you also see people in your practice who think they know and don't know?
Who think that they are deep empaths, but it's something that's going on inside of themthat they're kind of projecting?
And is that more common or less common?
Is it common?
(28:42):
I guess that's my question.
I think.
I found the Nigel Wellings thing.
I can remember I was in Wales and somebody had written it down on a post-it note and giveit to me and said, I think this might be useful.
go, yes, it's amazing.
(29:04):
And I was kind of of the mind that I thought that the risk was that we thought we knew andwe didn't.
But I've got a number of neurodivergent coaches that I'm working with who have a really,really, really strong sense of sensing.
(29:27):
and we're in dialogue about the learning.
Yeah, it's interesting, but I think the risk for many people is that we think we know wedon't.
Mm-hmm.
And I think it comes from a different place, because I think the think we know comes fromour thinking head.
(29:51):
And I think that the sensing we're talking about comes in somewhere else.
I've been listening to Eckhart Tolle recently, who is very relevant to this conversation.
Actually, just this morning I heard something and I was like, oh, I maybe can bring thisup at the podcast today.
(30:13):
And it's exactly about this.
Would you mind if I read out the quote that I heard today?
So it's from his podcast.
The title of the episode is called Wisdom and Stillness.
And he says, as you practice what I suggested here, sense perception without labeling,looking at another human being, or listening to another human being without any judgment
(30:37):
in your mind, in that space of open alert presence, that's the state of not knowing.
and yet where true knowing actually arises.
That's what we're talking about,
We do that in our improv training.
(30:59):
Really?
What does that look like?
It looks like two people standing opposite each other and one of them thinking somethingand the other one looking.
Mmm.
And then, yeah, one of them has to be something they have to they have to be thinkingabout somebody.
(31:24):
Mm-hmm.
So they have to go, am a five-year-old child in a bad mood, or I am a this or I am a theother.
It's just a bit fun, it's really interesting.
I was reading something the other day.
Have you read this Oscar about there are eight senses, not five.
(31:48):
What are the other three?
I don't know because I it in my pile.
Stay tuned!
it went it said it said there are eight senses not five and i thought that needs to go inmy pile
I see.
Yeah, there's more nerve endings in our gut than there is in our brain, for example.
(32:09):
So, you know, when people talk about their gut feel, it's also a metaphor because, youknow, our parasympathetic nervous system, which sits around and protects our lungs and our
hearts also is a nervous system in itself as well.
So when we feel threatened or joy, that's expressing itself in...
(32:31):
in the way we use our breath or the way we color our face and things like that as well.
So I have no doubt there's more than five senses and the reading you just made justbeautifully expresses something we talked about, I think in our third experiment where we
(32:54):
talked about we're not here to learn what we know, we're here to explore what we don'tknow.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Shall we check in?
I love the build from Mark and Lizzie in the chat.
yeah, Mark, think it's for me, the way I process it is, is the order useful rather than isit a rigid rule?
(33:23):
That's how I process it.
Claire says that about models, some, some, how is it?
Some models are useful and that's it.
That's it.
That's it.
Right.
So shall we check in and then, oh, sorry.
everything lightly, isn't there?
(33:44):
Mmm.
Mark said hold the sensing lightly, there's some, there is absolutely, but, but the, thinkthere's something about being open to be changed.
That's about the partnership that we're talking about in this way of engaging with people.
(34:10):
So shall we check in?
Where are we now in our experiment?
And where do we want to go next?
I know that last time, for example, we had some questions last time and we didn't get allof them.
One of them that I thought was interesting was the one about how do you help people listenlike trampolines rather than like sponges?
(34:36):
And this, Oscar, you said you mentioned where this idea comes from.
Yeah, it's sourced from Falkman and Zenga who touch on in their management consultingpractice, executive impact.
And what they have touched on in some of their research is, I've got a research piece thatI've quoted in my book around about four and a half thousand workplace executives and
(35:07):
they're listening and...
The article that this is sourced from, which is a subset of their research, is trying tocontrast listening at work versus listening as therapy.
So a lot of the article talks about listening is heavy, listening is draining, all theseimplications of therapeutic listening.
(35:31):
But again, just be careful of the false binaries.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
the sponge versus the trampoline.
So the sponge is the therapeutic listening where you're taking it all in and you're takingit all in and you're taking it all in, but they aren't getting anything back.
And the trampoline is about energy and how does it help create height for an idea?
(35:53):
How does that create distance for an idea?
How does it provide energy for both participants in the dialogue?
So I think again, back to the point I made earlier on, it's
It's not about is listening like a trampoline correct or incorrect, is listening like asponge incorrect or correct.
(36:14):
It's in that moment, what does the conversation need to make the progress or not on thecontract that we've engaged to have a conversation to.
So I think I would recommend if you get a chance and we can definitely link it in the shownotes.
(36:34):
This eventually became a other business review article, but the original research that itwas sourced from is about four and a half thousand listeners where they make some highly
speculative points about gender-based listening, which I can't see the evidence in theirresearch to actually support it.
(36:54):
Interesting.
Claire, I saw you go off into dreamland there for a moment.
Can you share with us where you went?
Yeah, I did.
I went back to the last conversation that we had when we talked about three people, threeparts of the conversation, you, me and the thing.
Mm-hmm.
and it made me start thinking about, where's the sponge?
(37:21):
Where's the trampoline?
Mmm.
where's the stuff going?
And, you know, what choices do we have about where the stuff is going and how the stuffreturns back?
Because for me,
For me, the purpose of listening deeply is for the other person to be heard, not for me toremember.
(37:51):
And one of the things that I notice a lot when I'm working with really experienced coachesactually listening to recordings is how easy it is to miss the mood in service of
remembering the facts.
So if you listen to a piece, and I find working with recordings an extraordinary thingactually.
(38:15):
So you'll listen to a piece.
and they'll have been live in the room and they'll have picked up on the facts and whenthey listen back to the recording and I say, don't forget the facts because they know the
facts.
What do you notice about the mood?
They almost always are really, they can really notice it.
(38:35):
And it's very easy to suddenly go into they're distressed and I'm going, no, that's adiagnosis.
What are you noticing about the mood?
it's very quick.
It's very high.
It's very low.
It's very slow.
And there's something there about cadence, the pace and the pauses and all those otherthings.
(38:58):
So there's so much in the noticing.
And I wonder and I think now, I think I listen much more to the pace and the sound andvisual than I do to the content.
because I think that's where the, for me, that's where some amazing things can happen.
(39:24):
to me that sounds less like a trampoline or a sponge and more like kind of a sieve, likecollecting the good bits, letting things sort of pass through.
It might sound like a bad analogy or a bad metaphor that you're letting things go, but Idon't know, what does...
(39:45):
It's helping them hold the sieve and notice what's going through themselves rather thanyou holding the sieve for them.
Mmm.
So your listening is the sieve for them, no?
they're holding the sieve.
(40:05):
The sieve is the third, part of the conversation.
Your job is to be a witness.
Your presence will unlock more than any question you ever ask because it's your presencethat's helping them process whatever it is out into their own sieve.
They're holding it themselves and they're noticing what's staying in and what's goingthrough and they
(40:30):
need to make the meaning from that.
If we make the meaning from that, they don't have agency on deciding what to do about it,especially if we're holding the sieve for them.
Especially if we're telling them, I have a sieve and I'm going to pick out the gold foryou.
But the gold is, for them, the gold is what they see in the sieve after the things thatthey know have dropped down, isn't it?
(40:57):
uh huh, uh huh.
I have a question I've been playing around with.
I don't like standard questions, but I have got a question I've been playing around with.
it sounds like you've done lots of thinking about this.
How do we need to be different today so that we get...
(41:19):
So that's the kind of invitation.
And it might be that we need to think about the same thing again.
That's fine.
But it's an invitation to...
Be different.
Is the way deliberate there, Claire?
How do we need to be different?
(41:40):
Yes, because I think that when we're the three of us...
you, me and the thing, the conversation, then I think we're we.
That's true for me.
then when they leave, they're them.
(42:01):
And I'm me.
Oscar, you think that, do you have a different view on the Wii?
Do feel that that's inviting you into a space that, inviting yourself into a space thatyou shouldn't be in?
(42:24):
I was, the curiosity was about making explicit choices with language and had Claireconsidered that.
And the answer was definitely yes, because it's in service of that.
so yeah, I'm, I'm now curious about my choice of when I use we and how conscious am I ofwe.
(42:51):
because it's rare for me to use it.
Is that connected to it being more of a workplace situation than a coaching situation?
Yeah, I don't distinguish between the two because they're all in service of a thing tomove forward.
(43:13):
No, it's just about my consciousness about it's how am I clear that one, it's not my thingversus it's definitely their thing versus a shared thing.
Now, don't get me wrong, there are times where I'm weeing in the conversation and it'salso deliberate and conscious, but I'm just conscious right now of the frequency of the we
(43:48):
and am I holding something?
right now very hard versus very light and how can I play with that?
As you're talking, I was thinking in the workplace would I use we as much as I use we whenI'm not going to see anybody between today and next time.
(44:19):
And I think I might make different choices.
I need to think about that.
It makes me think about the power differential and yeah.
(44:44):
very interesting shall we go on to a new question or and i don't see any my goodness iapologize that's my alarm telling me to go to bed sorry about that it's quite all right
(45:09):
it's riveting conversation
Shall we?
We've got about 15 more minutes, so I would love it if we could make amazing use of thattime and perhaps we can go to one more question.
See if we can take a stab at one more question.
(45:31):
Okay, how do you offer information and ideas when they are useful and still listen deeplyand fully?
(46:03):
I wonder whether we've now got a fourth thing.
you, me, the conversation and the good ideas.
Mmm.
And as I said that, it made me feel, know, sometimes they can have their equal share atthe table, which is where it gets very, very skewed.
(46:32):
Mm.
I think for me, it's a deep noticing about the dialogue between my ego in that moment andhow conscious am I?
(46:54):
And this requires a lot of practice to get your state right for the conversation thatyou're in.
And you've got to do the work before you get into the conversation to be present enough tonotice that duality playing out.
because I have to tell you, like my ideas are so sexy.
(47:18):
It's like when I'm talking to myself about my ideas, my God, they are the supermodels ofideas.
They have shape and height and they're spectacular.
They're like fireworks and they're so seductive.
(47:39):
and I have to ask myself.
Is it my idea?
Is that a useful idea that's coming through me at the moment because it's in service ofthe conversation?
More often than not, it's just me trying to sound, you know, kind of useful, right?
(48:03):
And so that, I always think about a couple of heuristics.
it, it,
A useful idea is that my ego, right?
That's the first screen.
Is now the right time for me even to bring it up?
That's my second screen.
And by the time I've got through all of that, they've moved on and who cares, right?
(48:27):
And I've missed something by not being present because I'm having sex with my own ideasand that creates nothing because it takes two parties to create something.
That's a
really bad analogy Oscar, but that's what was coming to me in the moment.
Mm-hmm.
(48:50):
I like that.
Yeah, I have a sense checking question that says, this, where's this coming from?
Is it is it coming from what I see, hear and sense?
Or is it coming from my preference, opinion, da da da da da?
(49:10):
Do you have sexy ideas, Claire?
I brilliant ideas, amazing ideas.
brilliant.
They're not sexy
But there is something, isn't there, that actually, I think for me, there's somethingabout learning that when you wait long enough, often the thing that you were thinking
(49:32):
comes out from them much better than it was creating itself in your head.
And I think when you see that happen enough times, for me, that makes me go, I don't evenbother going.
yeah.
(49:54):
Where this shows up in the most unproductive way for me is in the conversation wheresomebody wants to contract my services as opposed to a coaching conversation.
The overwhelming need to be sexy at that part often will repel a subset of potentialclients for me.
(50:18):
you
So they've come.
that is the thing we do about listening.
that's easy.
When a minute something's at risk or, you know, there's a reward.
Wow.
You know, sex sounds pretty good to me.
Hahaha
(50:42):
Yeah.
Paul Mark, he's got no idea.
He's laughing his head off right now.
Hahaha
I'll be interested in your written reflection on this one, I can't wait to...
Mark and Sue Finch, I'm waiting for your prose.
(51:06):
Yeah, definitely.
So we do have some comments in the chat and it's hard for me to watch for the comments andtry to make sense of them while also listening to the two of you.
So let me just have a quick look over there.
this, is a really good illustration of the container shiny.
(51:27):
Mm-hmm.
Same.
signal to the room that you're going to pause and look at the chat, which should be asignal to the participants to also pause.
Don't try and do this real time kind of multitasking thing.
It's not going to help you.
(51:48):
just like, okay, there's important input in the chat.
We need to pause.
So we all pause.
So take your time, mate.
Will this still be here?
That's an excellent idea.
Thank you for saying that because I have been trying to keep an eye on the chat andsometimes the chats are coming in too fast and too furious and can't get to them.
(52:12):
So that's excellent advice.
Okay, then let's pause for a moment so I can have a look at the sexy comments that arecoming in here.
What are the best, so Lizzie says, what are the best context for we versus not we, giventhe conversation is about two people to build on the content.
(52:38):
That sounds very black and white.
It's not meant to be.
I think we played a bit of Wii vs.
I ping pong earlier on.
I'm suspecting Lizzie asked that question before we dived into it.
If we didn't, Lizzie, we will honor you and come back if something's not clear.
(53:04):
Thank you.
There's something for me about the I and we about being in company versus feeling alone.
And I think sometimes we can accidentally isolate the person that we're listening to sothat they feel as though we're not really there.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
(53:25):
there's something about being present and not being on top of it sorry I'm really caringabout language now okay let's just leave that one shall we
hmm.
So we have about six more minutes, six or seven.
(53:47):
can't get the analogy out of her.
Yeah.
So we've got about six more minutes as Claire likes to say.
What do we need to do with that six minutes to get to where we want to get to today?
Well, just to close it out completely, I do have a confession to make.
(54:09):
I did do a keynote in South by Southwest Sydney, which came to Australia two, three yearsago now.
And my talk was, why is listening like comedy and sex?
So I do have form in this department.
Do we have a recording of that that we can share in the podcast?
(54:32):
I'm afraid not.
But because I was listening to the audience, some of the suggestions they came up with islistening and comedy is all about timing.
It's all about listening to the audience.
(54:53):
It's all about pacing.
And so is sex.
and don't try too hard.
feedback.
Yeah.
Don't try too hard.
It was interesting.
So we had a speaker briefing.
like a speaker kind of.
(55:17):
And I turned to somebody who was another speaker.
said, what are you speaking on?
And she said, I'm talking on diversity in the workplace.
I said, that's fantastic.
Tell me more about that.
She says, no, no, I want to hear about your session.
I said, it's about listening, comedy and sex.
And she goes, sounds like my life.
(55:37):
I'm not getting any of all of the above.
And I said, that's way too much information.
She said, when you're
When you get to my age, there are some things you need and some things you want.
And yeah, so I think timing.
But as we did the Q &A in the session itself, somebody picked up the mic about halfwaythrough.
(56:04):
And I don't do Q &A at the end.
I always go just pick up the mic when there's a pause.
We'll have the conversation.
And she said, if somebody said something really powerful to you, is it okay to usenonverbal language?
And I said, what will be an example of that?
And no joke, she grabs the mic and goes, mm hmm.
(56:27):
huh.
Mm hmm.
And the whole audience is just cracking up laughing because they've joined the dotsbetween the title and what's going on.
And she has no idea.
So I have to give her a very deadpan kind of response about nonverbals and all of that.
And then about two minutes later, she bursts out laughing at the table because somebodyexplained to her what she'd said.
(56:54):
Hehehehe
So yeah.
That's so funny.
I don't think we can top that.
Well, shall we wrap up for today on that note?
Sounds good.
I just, can I just notice something?
(57:17):
When you said, Oscar, that you don't take Q &A at the end and you take, and people say it,like questions as you're going through, what a beautiful example of timing.
Because at the end the question's meaningless.
And there's also very selfish reason why you don't want Q &A at the end.
(57:41):
If you're delivering a keynote or a workshop, you want to be deliberate about the energymanagement and the state of the room and be deliberate about how they exit.
And if you hand the mic over to somebody else and they ask a naft question, it's likepeople's like, get me the hell out of here.
And that's all they remember of what was created for the previous 55 minutes, as opposedto
(58:05):
If they ask you that question at the 15 minute mark.
Great question, Sue.
I really appreciate that.
When we get to the appropriate moment in our talk, I'm going to refer to your question.
And if not, I'll speak to you at the end kind of thing.
And then you're really deliberate about that.
(58:26):
But for me, it's always the biggest challenge I have with events.
They always want me to do a 45 plus a 15 Q &A and I say I don't do that This is what I doand it's in service of the audience not me because the audience gets more value from their
questions than they do from my speech and consistently the event Organises after the factgo I'm so glad you did Q &A all the way along I wish more speakers had the courage to take
(58:52):
questions because it's all about being present to the audience, right?
It's it's listening from
stage or from your position as a host that's really critical and I love the way I seeClaire do that in some of the videos she's shown about the workshop she does as well.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
One of the things I learned from being doing really big events was if you're out on thefloor with Q &A, never let go of the microphone.
(59:18):
But that's about timing too, because actually that's about saying once the questionsarrived in the flow, the person needs to stop because everything that they say after that
is interrupting the flow.
(59:38):
Lovely.
So does this conversation continue?
Have we said everything we need to say about listening?
Or is there more to say?
to the audience, not to us.
If they want more, they'll let us know, and if they don't, they'll let us know.
(59:59):
And we'll be listening either way.
Perfect, perfect ending.
Thank you, Oscar.
Thank you, Claire, for being with us today.
And for the fifth episode in this series, which I've been enjoying very, much and I hopeeveryone else is too.
Thanks for listening.
Yeah, thanks for listening and thank you, Shaney, for the idea.
(01:00:20):
I'll take credit for that.
bye bye.
Hello and welcome to this week's edition of The Coaching Inn, which is the fifth episodein a series of podcasts about listening.
My name is Shaney Crawford and today we're continuing the listening experiment thatstarted back in May 2024 when Claire Pedrick, master coach and host of The Coaching Inn,
invited Oscar Trimboli, an expert in deep listening, to join her at The Inn for a talkabout listening, upon my strong recommendation.
(00:43):
Episode two in this series was a collection of reflections from the audience after theylistened to episode one.
Then episode three was a very special one for me as I was invited to join theconversation.
In episode four last month, the three of us came together for a live podcast where theaudience was invited to be a part of the conversation in real time.
(01:04):
And that brings us to today, episode five, where the three of us have come together againto explore the world of listening and see where it gets us to today.
So with that said, Claire and Oscar, perhaps I can invite you into the listeningplayground by asking you to share with the audience where you are in your thinking about
(01:25):
listening today.
Go on, Oscar.
Thanks, Shaney.
I think at the moment, I'm in a very deep space of research.
(01:46):
I'm currently reading the original paper written by Carl Rogers in 1952 about listening.
It's a 32 page document and
What you don't know about Carl Rogers, he was good buddies with Abraham Maslow of Maslow'shierarchy of needs.
Maslow never drew the pyramid, by the way.
(02:08):
That was something that the marketing team got a hold of later on and helped to transmithis idea.
The one thing you don't know about Carl Rogers, he was called before the McCarthy hearingsor anti-American activities committee as it was known then to
(02:29):
basically explain why he was listening to the workers.
And a lot of the work in the 36 page paper is about listening in the workplace and how tolisten to workers.
But one of the things that frustrated me about this journey was professor as he became,all his academic writings are now behind a paywall.
(02:58):
And you have to
pay or you can kind of cheat the system and speak to somebody who's got access to thoseuniversity sites.
But as I spent at least 20 years negotiating intellectual property contracts on behalf ofsoftware companies, I have an aversion to doing that.
(03:20):
So eventually I discovered somebody had legally printed it into a booklet, which is the 36pages I'm reading right now.
apart from writing Python scripts for analysis of share of voice from transcripts of teammeetings.
That's another thing I'm doing for professional development on my own part.
(03:46):
So that's where I'm at, Shaney and my listening tourney.
That's so, so interesting.
want to get into that today, get into hear more about that.
Claire, how about you?
Where are you today?
Well, I've just come back from Spain, where I've been pretty much since we last met.
And listening in a space where you are, where people are speaking not your secondlanguage.
(04:14):
I suppose I could gloriously say Spanish is probably now my fourth, but I'm not, I'm notgreat.
So I think what's interesting about being there was how much it tunes up.
listening because you've got less you've got less capacity to understand but you've gotmore capacity to hear so getting the sense of being more important than the than the than
(04:43):
the actual content of so i was very proud of myself because our apartment had a drainageissue which was very unpleasant
Mm-hmm.
And not only did the guy who came, well, he wasn't speaking Spanish, he was speakingValencian and very fast.
And so you had to go, I had to go entirely for the visual and the sound in order to beable to understand what he was saying.
(05:11):
And the only word that I understood was the one word that really mattered.
I thought that means elbow.
So.
which was the bit of the drains that had broken which he was going out shopping to fix.
But I think what was fascinating about that was learning again.
(05:32):
how we can listen when we don't understand and still do some really good listening.
Claire, is that about tuning faces?
Is it about the musicality?
Which one are you tuning in first and second in that regard?
(05:55):
That's such a good question.
Can I go to the impact first?
The impact was that everybody thought I spoke Spanish.
I think probably tuning into the looking first.
(06:20):
and then tuning into the sound.
But what was fascinating was that we were in a restaurant one evening and I startedspeaking in Spanish and then they started speaking in Spanglish, a kind of combination of
Spanish and English.
And in the end I had to say to her, I can't speak Spanglish to you, I can speak Englishand I can speak Spanish but I can't speak both at the same time because it was, because,
(06:45):
and that was to do with hearing her.
It was like I was listening with one way when she was speaking English and with anotherway when she was speaking Spanish and when she was speaking both.
I don't think my brain knew which bit to tune into.
So I just couldn't do it.
So it was really interesting.
(07:09):
It's very interesting.
I do a lot of...
Please do.
So, but the looking on.
where do you start your focus and then where do you diverge your focus when someone'sspeaking?
(07:31):
in that context.
So in coaching, I would do it on the eyes, I'm just now in my cafe in Spain, where I wrotevery badly.
I think it starts with the whole...
(07:54):
for me it starts with the whole face.
and then
except with the plumber when I think it was face and hands.
I think it depends on the nature of the conversation, doesn't it, and what you'relistening for.
(08:14):
with the plumber, I was listening for a solution very urgently.
I think what was interesting about the dance of the conversation, the listening, if Ithink about the person I spoke to the most, who was the owner of a cafe where I was
working.
(08:41):
and I have a desperate need to drink a cafe con leche.
There was something about, there was something about the mood of the looking, the, the,the, the,
Because if I try and remember, it was only last week, it only four days ago.
(09:04):
But my memory of him is the whole of him.
So I wondered whether I was listening, whether I was looking at the whole first.
I'm speculating that two of
them were listening to somebody standing and one might have been listening to somebodyseated.
(09:26):
Yeah.
different isn't it?
It's not only the physicality of the container, its width and its depth and its height,it's also how we're positioned in that container.
Width, depth and height and the relativity of all of that.
(09:50):
What's I got you thinking, Shaney?
Yeah, that is fascinating.
I never thought about the listening being different based on whether the speaker isstanding or sitting.
and therefore the amount of data that you're able to have access to is quite different.
(10:18):
And it also allows them to transmit data in a way differently if they're standing versusseated.
And equally, how does somebody arrive at a conversation and how do they settle into aconversation?
That energy and frequency will also transmit differently to somebody listening and whetherthey're tuned in to all of that as well.
(10:47):
because yeah, I often think of the shape, but not just the shape of the virtualenvironment, the physical environment, but the relative shapes.
And that's not just the physicality of the shape, but it's also where the range in thevoice is coming from, or even if there is range in the voice.
(11:11):
And yeah.
suspecting that
If you think about the waves, the height and the distance between the waves, Claire'stuning was...
different in that Spanglish example compared to English versus Spanish versus the thirdone, which was that a dialect or a completely separate language, Claire, the
(11:42):
but it's very strong because I've only ever spoken Spanish in northern Spain and wherethey speak Catalan as well.
And Catalan and Valencian are quite similar, but the way people speak Spanish in Valenciais really different from the way they speak Spanish in the north.
So tuning into that took a few days.
(12:05):
Yeah, very interesting.
Cause I don't...
Go on.
So now, I'll close.
I was just going to say I'm not sure that the music is useful until we've sensed the look,the looking for me.
(12:35):
I think the noticing, the visual, kind of positions it.
And then the sound comes in after.
I there's a consciousness for us to think about the difference between practice andmastery.
(12:57):
I think in practice, we talk about prescriptions and steps and mastery is conscious ofprescriptions and sequence.
That's why I was curious which was first and which was second in that example, because Ithink until you've mastered the steps,
(13:19):
not sure what the sequence is.
So for example, in the book, I'm very explicit about hear, see, and sense.
They're building on top of each other because that's the way most people are processingtheir listening.
Yet the impact is at the bottom there.
(13:41):
It's what do you sense, the state shift and all of that.
As something just shifted for Claire, for those of you who can't see.
when I said sequence and hear, and sense.
So I'm curious what you're sensing there.
Well, I'm always consistent in the way I write about those three words, but I write themin a different order, So I write, see, sense.
(14:08):
Isn't that interesting?
And you write, hear, see, sense.
And I wonder what that says about us and the way we are in the world.
And I wonder whether that's to do well, that could that I mean, that's a very interestingquestion.
Yeah, I don't think one is correct or incorrect.
Mine is not informed by my practice, but where people are in my research database aboutthey struggle first with the hearing part of listening, and then they struggle with the
(14:39):
seeing part of listening, and ultimately they struggle with the sensing.
So mine's kind of a boring response.
Mine's driven by the data that I've collected.
It doesn't make it right.
just is.
So I speculate that yours is informed by many more domains than research.
(15:04):
Yes, I think you're right.
I also have a question that I'm living with at the moment, which is how flexible aredifferent people's ways of thinking to being able to notice?
(15:25):
And, and I, that's a kind of new inquiry for me.
But my observation would be that the seeing can be...
Some people will adapt to seeing once you've noticed it, once you've said, I wonder whatyou can see, then they can see it all or they can see a lot.
(15:54):
Other people kind of go, what do mean?
I didn't see that.
And I wonder what that says about difference.
Yeah, and I think part of that talks into adult development theory and your ability to beconscious in a higher state of thinking and whole duality versus people who are trying to
(16:20):
master one of the elements and go from there.
I think, you know, with great art and great music, you need to master the rules so you canbreak them.
And it's in mastering the rules that you know, know, when you look at Monet and how manylilies did he paint, he painted many lilies in a very literal sense.
(16:46):
And then he moved to very different ways of expressing them in the world because he could.
So it's an interesting tension there.
I'm also conscious.
We've got a bunch of questions, Shaney, from
our last conversation that we probably haven't got around to doing and the differencebetween hearing and listening is taking action.
(17:10):
So I'm just curious if there are questions that are coming in via the chat that we mightlike to explore for the current discussion or pick up a handful from the previous
discussion as well.
But before we do, Claire, have we finished?
Yeah, I think so.
Something came to me and it's gone again.
(17:38):
yes.
So when you said the thing about mastery is learning and then breaking the rules.
The conversation that's built out of the last conversation that we had, the biggestexploration has been when you and I both said that when people are venting, we're not
(18:00):
listening.
Mmm.
And I would say we're being present, but we're not hearing the content.
And I would say that that's a really good illustration of what you just said.
That's what I was thinking.
Mmm.
And a hat tip to Mark for his very elegant, sophisticated and well thought throughcommunication.
(18:27):
was a piece of poetry that he wrote that really touched me.
So I just want to acknowledge you, Mark, if you're watching and if you're not, you'll pickit up on the recording like you did last time.
But his ability to feel like he was present, even though he's watching a recording wasjust so prosaically put together.
So thank you.
(18:49):
He's here.
Hi Mark.
Yes, so I definitely would like to invite the live audience to share any reflections orquestions that you have.
You can share them in the chat.
Also afterwards, if you're listening to this afterwards and you'd like to be a part ofthis conversation, we definitely want to hear from you as well.
(19:10):
And you can email Claire with your questions or your thoughts to share so that we canbring them into the next conversation.
So just looking in the chat, Lizzie has a question for us, but she says we've moved on.
But let's just have a quick look at her question.
(19:32):
So how does the impact of the online container have on the listening for you all?
For me, I find it easier online because...
(19:56):
I was always taught that staring is rude.
Face to face.
And I think that in the online space, there's something about being able to really noticestuff without the person that you're listening to and noticing feeling overly
self-conscious.
Now we're all being a little bit self-conscious.
(20:19):
So I think it's different.
Yeah, I think it's different.
And I often close my eyes when I'm listening online, probably in a way that I wouldn't doface to face.
(20:39):
which is ironic given our previous conversation from five minutes ago.
So it means that you're blocking out the visual to get a better sense of things or to hearthings.
(21:00):
I wonder whether it's time to do it to work out.
I wonder whether it's to do with the moving from the seeing and hearing to the sensing.
I'll have to, I'll have to see, to practice.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
(21:20):
Interesting.
Oscar?
Mm-hmm.
So here's my caveat, beware of profits with false binaries.
So let me present you with a false binary, Lizzie.
There's online synchronous and online asynchronous.
This is synchronous, where we're all in the same space at the same time.
(21:41):
And asynchronous is a recording.
So you can create containers in both.
The real question is how conscious are you of the container you're creating?
You're creating the container online by your lighting, by your background.
You're creating a container by the speed at which you speak, how close you get to themicrophone, how often you might just whisper to kind of get people to lean in just a
(22:09):
little more to what you're saying.
So do you choose to stand or do you choose to sit?
So two people are choosing to sit and I'm choosing to stand.
That creates a different container.
So the same thing is true too in an asynchronous environment.
Do you choose to share the recording as audio?
Do you choose to share the recording as video?
(22:32):
Do you choose to share the recording with a transcript?
Do you choose to share the recording with the chat?
So there are many ways you can create a container in an asynchronous environment as well.
we'll pop onto Mark's question, but Lizzie,
curious to get your feedback on that is what have you heard there that's useful for youand even better what have you heard that's completely useless perspective on that as well.
(23:12):
Shall we go, it may take Lizzie a few moments to type in her answer.
Shall we move on to Mark?
Okay, so Mark has said, what about sense, see hear as a possibility?
(23:36):
So that's the order that Oscar mentioned, that people naturally will go here see sense andwill struggle with here, then struggle with see, then struggle with sense.
And they may not, am I interpreting this correctly, that they may not get to see or senseunless they're really working at it.
(23:57):
Certain people may not get to the see or sense without active engagement and activelytrying to get there.
So possibly what Mark is saying is, well, what do think Mark is saying?
Let's say that.
I'll go first, Claire.
I think it doesn't matter.
(24:18):
The question you have to ask yourself is, does the order serve the purpose of the dialogue
rather than your primary preference?
That's irrelevant.
Your primary preference should be driven by if it's a hugely moving conversation about thefact that
(24:40):
the person struggling with a cancer diagnosis and they're trying to figure out how toexplain it to their manager at work.
Well, I guess here and see a completely irrelevant in that context.
And you're going to stay with sense because you're going to move to what does it mean foryou very quickly rather than how are you going to tell somebody?
(25:04):
I'm like, who cares how you're going to tell somebody, but maybe that's how they present.
a situation two weeks ago where somebody was talking about someone on their team that wasin that situation.
And they came to them and said, Hey boss, I don't know how to tell you this.
And, you know, so, so there was, there's that.
(25:25):
So again, back to when you've mastered the rules, then you break them and you get to anorientation of what's in service of the dialogue.
not what's my primary preference.
Clear?
(25:49):
I'm thinking about really extremely empathic.
And I noticed that there are some people who will sense first.
And I'm doing some work around it actually at the moment because there's an Englishpsychotherapist called Nigel Wellings who said, never know first, never know better, never
(26:20):
think you know.
But there is a certain kind of person
who probably do know.
So there's a there's a
So I'm not sure they think they know.
I think they actually do know, no.
(26:42):
I think their sensing is so tuned in.
And there's a timing issue for them in the way that they engage in dialogue with others, Ithink.
Because that is overwhelming for the person that you're present with if they think thatyou think that they know.
(27:06):
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, when they sense before you do, there is a perceived power differential.
And if I can't even verbalize what you felt about me, how can I even dialogue with it?
Yeah, there's a podcast called the Telepathy Tapes that's about nonverbal autistic peopleand their capacity to communicate deeply nonverbally.
(27:37):
And that's on my list of things to, it's very controversial, but it's on my list of thingsto listen to, to see what insight it gives here.
Yeah, it's a really fascinating one.
I would say that for people who have, yeah, I think it depends on.
(27:58):
the unique differentness of the way that your brain functions, probably.
And for Mark and Lizzie in the chat, which bit of that's useful for you or not, both ofthose inputs will be useful for.
Claire, you also have the same...
(28:22):
Do you also see people in your practice who think they know and don't know?
Who think that they are deep empaths, but it's something that's going on inside of themthat they're kind of projecting?
And is that more common or less common?
Is it common?
(28:42):
I guess that's my question.
I think.
I found the Nigel Wellings thing.
I can remember I was in Wales and somebody had written it down on a post-it note and giveit to me and said, I think this might be useful.
go, yes, it's amazing.
(29:04):
And I was kind of of the mind that I thought that the risk was that we thought we knew andwe didn't.
But I've got a number of neurodivergent coaches that I'm working with who have a really,really, really strong sense of sensing.
(29:27):
and we're in dialogue about the learning.
Yeah, it's interesting, but I think the risk for many people is that we think we know wedon't.
Mm-hmm.
And I think it comes from a different place, because I think the think we know comes fromour thinking head.
(29:51):
And I think that the sensing we're talking about comes in somewhere else.
I've been listening to Eckhart Tolle recently, who is very relevant to this conversation.
Actually, just this morning I heard something and I was like, oh, I maybe can bring thisup at the podcast today.
(30:13):
And it's exactly about this.
Would you mind if I read out the quote that I heard today?
So it's from his podcast.
The title of the episode is called Wisdom and Stillness.
And he says, as you practice what I suggested here, sense perception without labeling,looking at another human being, or listening to another human being without any judgment
(30:37):
in your mind, in that space of open alert presence, that's the state of not knowing.
and yet where true knowing actually arises.
That's what we're talking about,
We do that in our improv training.
(30:59):
Really?
What does that look like?
It looks like two people standing opposite each other and one of them thinking somethingand the other one looking.
Mmm.
And then, yeah, one of them has to be something they have to they have to be thinkingabout somebody.
(31:24):
Mm-hmm.
So they have to go, am a five-year-old child in a bad mood, or I am a this or I am a theother.
It's just a bit fun, it's really interesting.
I was reading something the other day.
Have you read this Oscar about there are eight senses, not five.
(31:48):
What are the other three?
I don't know because I it in my pile.
Stay tuned!
it went it said it said there are eight senses not five and i thought that needs to go inmy pile
I see.
Yeah, there's more nerve endings in our gut than there is in our brain, for example.
(32:09):
So, you know, when people talk about their gut feel, it's also a metaphor because, youknow, our parasympathetic nervous system, which sits around and protects our lungs and our
hearts also is a nervous system in itself as well.
So when we feel threatened or joy, that's expressing itself in...
(32:31):
in the way we use our breath or the way we color our face and things like that as well.
So I have no doubt there's more than five senses and the reading you just made justbeautifully expresses something we talked about, I think in our third experiment where we
(32:54):
talked about we're not here to learn what we know, we're here to explore what we don'tknow.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Shall we check in?
I love the build from Mark and Lizzie in the chat.
yeah, Mark, think it's for me, the way I process it is, is the order useful rather than isit a rigid rule?
(33:23):
That's how I process it.
Claire says that about models, some, some, how is it?
Some models are useful and that's it.
That's it.
That's it.
Right.
So shall we check in and then, oh, sorry.
everything lightly, isn't there?
(33:44):
Mmm.
Mark said hold the sensing lightly, there's some, there is absolutely, but, but the, thinkthere's something about being open to be changed.
That's about the partnership that we're talking about in this way of engaging with people.
(34:10):
So shall we check in?
Where are we now in our experiment?
And where do we want to go next?
I know that last time, for example, we had some questions last time and we didn't get allof them.
One of them that I thought was interesting was the one about how do you help people listenlike trampolines rather than like sponges?
(34:36):
And this, Oscar, you said you mentioned where this idea comes from.
Yeah, it's sourced from Falkman and Zenga who touch on in their management consultingpractice, executive impact.
And what they have touched on in some of their research is, I've got a research piece thatI've quoted in my book around about four and a half thousand workplace executives and
(35:07):
they're listening and...
The article that this is sourced from, which is a subset of their research, is trying tocontrast listening at work versus listening as therapy.
So a lot of the article talks about listening is heavy, listening is draining, all theseimplications of therapeutic listening.
(35:31):
But again, just be careful of the false binaries.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
the sponge versus the trampoline.
So the sponge is the therapeutic listening where you're taking it all in and you're takingit all in and you're taking it all in, but they aren't getting anything back.
And the trampoline is about energy and how does it help create height for an idea?
(35:53):
How does that create distance for an idea?
How does it provide energy for both participants in the dialogue?
So I think again, back to the point I made earlier on, it's
It's not about is listening like a trampoline correct or incorrect, is listening like asponge incorrect or correct.
(36:14):
It's in that moment, what does the conversation need to make the progress or not on thecontract that we've engaged to have a conversation to.
So I think I would recommend if you get a chance and we can definitely link it in the shownotes.
(36:34):
This eventually became a other business review article, but the original research that itwas sourced from is about four and a half thousand listeners where they make some highly
speculative points about gender-based listening, which I can't see the evidence in theirresearch to actually support it.
(36:54):
Interesting.
Claire, I saw you go off into dreamland there for a moment.
Can you share with us where you went?
Yeah, I did.
I went back to the last conversation that we had when we talked about three people, threeparts of the conversation, you, me and the thing.
Mm-hmm.
and it made me start thinking about, where's the sponge?
(37:21):
Where's the trampoline?
Mmm.
where's the stuff going?
And, you know, what choices do we have about where the stuff is going and how the stuffreturns back?
Because for me,
For me, the purpose of listening deeply is for the other person to be heard, not for me toremember.
(37:51):
And one of the things that I notice a lot when I'm working with really experienced coachesactually listening to recordings is how easy it is to miss the mood in service of
remembering the facts.
So if you listen to a piece, and I find working with recordings an extraordinary thingactually.
(38:15):
So you'll listen to a piece.
and they'll have been live in the room and they'll have picked up on the facts and whenthey listen back to the recording and I say, don't forget the facts because they know the
facts.
What do you notice about the mood?
They almost always are really, they can really notice it.
(38:35):
And it's very easy to suddenly go into they're distressed and I'm going, no, that's adiagnosis.
What are you noticing about the mood?
it's very quick.
It's very high.
It's very low.
It's very slow.
And there's something there about cadence, the pace and the pauses and all those otherthings.
(38:58):
So there's so much in the noticing.
And I wonder and I think now, I think I listen much more to the pace and the sound andvisual than I do to the content.
because I think that's where the, for me, that's where some amazing things can happen.
(39:24):
to me that sounds less like a trampoline or a sponge and more like kind of a sieve, likecollecting the good bits, letting things sort of pass through.
It might sound like a bad analogy or a bad metaphor that you're letting things go, but Idon't know, what does...
(39:45):
It's helping them hold the sieve and notice what's going through themselves rather thanyou holding the sieve for them.
Mmm.
So your listening is the sieve for them, no?
they're holding the sieve.
(40:05):
The sieve is the third, part of the conversation.
Your job is to be a witness.
Your presence will unlock more than any question you ever ask because it's your presencethat's helping them process whatever it is out into their own sieve.
They're holding it themselves and they're noticing what's staying in and what's goingthrough and they
(40:30):
need to make the meaning from that.
If we make the meaning from that, they don't have agency on deciding what to do about it,especially if we're holding the sieve for them.
Especially if we're telling them, I have a sieve and I'm going to pick out the gold foryou.
But the gold is, for them, the gold is what they see in the sieve after the things thatthey know have dropped down, isn't it?
(40:57):
uh huh, uh huh.
I have a question I've been playing around with.
I don't like standard questions, but I have got a question I've been playing around with.
it sounds like you've done lots of thinking about this.
How do we need to be different today so that we get...
(41:19):
So that's the kind of invitation.
And it might be that we need to think about the same thing again.
That's fine.
But it's an invitation to...
Be different.
Is the way deliberate there, Claire?
How do we need to be different?
(41:40):
Yes, because I think that when we're the three of us...
you, me and the thing, the conversation, then I think we're we.
That's true for me.
then when they leave, they're them.
(42:01):
And I'm me.
Oscar, you think that, do you have a different view on the Wii?
Do feel that that's inviting you into a space that, inviting yourself into a space thatyou shouldn't be in?
(42:24):
I was, the curiosity was about making explicit choices with language and had Claireconsidered that.
And the answer was definitely yes, because it's in service of that.
so yeah, I'm, I'm now curious about my choice of when I use we and how conscious am I ofwe.
(42:51):
because it's rare for me to use it.
Is that connected to it being more of a workplace situation than a coaching situation?
Yeah, I don't distinguish between the two because they're all in service of a thing tomove forward.
(43:13):
No, it's just about my consciousness about it's how am I clear that one, it's not my thingversus it's definitely their thing versus a shared thing.
Now, don't get me wrong, there are times where I'm weeing in the conversation and it'salso deliberate and conscious, but I'm just conscious right now of the frequency of the we
(43:48):
and am I holding something?
right now very hard versus very light and how can I play with that?
As you're talking, I was thinking in the workplace would I use we as much as I use we whenI'm not going to see anybody between today and next time.
(44:19):
And I think I might make different choices.
I need to think about that.
It makes me think about the power differential and yeah.
(44:44):
very interesting shall we go on to a new question or and i don't see any my goodness iapologize that's my alarm telling me to go to bed sorry about that it's quite all right
(45:09):
it's riveting conversation
Shall we?
We've got about 15 more minutes, so I would love it if we could make amazing use of thattime and perhaps we can go to one more question.
See if we can take a stab at one more question.
(45:31):
Okay, how do you offer information and ideas when they are useful and still listen deeplyand fully?
(46:03):
I wonder whether we've now got a fourth thing.
you, me, the conversation and the good ideas.
Mmm.
And as I said that, it made me feel, know, sometimes they can have their equal share atthe table, which is where it gets very, very skewed.
(46:32):
Mm.
I think for me, it's a deep noticing about the dialogue between my ego in that moment andhow conscious am I?
(46:54):
And this requires a lot of practice to get your state right for the conversation thatyou're in.
And you've got to do the work before you get into the conversation to be present enough tonotice that duality playing out.
because I have to tell you, like my ideas are so sexy.
(47:18):
It's like when I'm talking to myself about my ideas, my God, they are the supermodels ofideas.
They have shape and height and they're spectacular.
They're like fireworks and they're so seductive.
(47:39):
and I have to ask myself.
Is it my idea?
Is that a useful idea that's coming through me at the moment because it's in service ofthe conversation?
More often than not, it's just me trying to sound, you know, kind of useful, right?
(48:03):
And so that, I always think about a couple of heuristics.
it, it,
A useful idea is that my ego, right?
That's the first screen.
Is now the right time for me even to bring it up?
That's my second screen.
And by the time I've got through all of that, they've moved on and who cares, right?
(48:27):
And I've missed something by not being present because I'm having sex with my own ideasand that creates nothing because it takes two parties to create something.
That's a
really bad analogy Oscar, but that's what was coming to me in the moment.
Mm-hmm.
(48:50):
I like that.
Yeah, I have a sense checking question that says, this, where's this coming from?
Is it is it coming from what I see, hear and sense?
Or is it coming from my preference, opinion, da da da da da?
(49:10):
Do you have sexy ideas, Claire?
I brilliant ideas, amazing ideas.
brilliant.
They're not sexy
But there is something, isn't there, that actually, I think for me, there's somethingabout learning that when you wait long enough, often the thing that you were thinking
(49:32):
comes out from them much better than it was creating itself in your head.
And I think when you see that happen enough times, for me, that makes me go, I don't evenbother going.
yeah.
(49:54):
Where this shows up in the most unproductive way for me is in the conversation wheresomebody wants to contract my services as opposed to a coaching conversation.
The overwhelming need to be sexy at that part often will repel a subset of potentialclients for me.
(50:18):
you
So they've come.
that is the thing we do about listening.
that's easy.
When a minute something's at risk or, you know, there's a reward.
Wow.
You know, sex sounds pretty good to me.
Hahaha
(50:42):
Yeah.
Paul Mark, he's got no idea.
He's laughing his head off right now.
Hahaha
I'll be interested in your written reflection on this one, I can't wait to...
Mark and Sue Finch, I'm waiting for your prose.
(51:06):
Yeah, definitely.
So we do have some comments in the chat and it's hard for me to watch for the comments andtry to make sense of them while also listening to the two of you.
So let me just have a quick look over there.
this, is a really good illustration of the container shiny.
(51:27):
Mm-hmm.
Same.
signal to the room that you're going to pause and look at the chat, which should be asignal to the participants to also pause.
Don't try and do this real time kind of multitasking thing.
It's not going to help you.
(51:48):
just like, okay, there's important input in the chat.
We need to pause.
So we all pause.
So take your time, mate.
Will this still be here?
That's an excellent idea.
Thank you for saying that because I have been trying to keep an eye on the chat andsometimes the chats are coming in too fast and too furious and can't get to them.
(52:12):
So that's excellent advice.
Okay, then let's pause for a moment so I can have a look at the sexy comments that arecoming in here.
What are the best, so Lizzie says, what are the best context for we versus not we, giventhe conversation is about two people to build on the content.
(52:38):
That sounds very black and white.
It's not meant to be.
I think we played a bit of Wii vs.
I ping pong earlier on.
I'm suspecting Lizzie asked that question before we dived into it.
If we didn't, Lizzie, we will honor you and come back if something's not clear.
(53:04):
Thank you.
There's something for me about the I and we about being in company versus feeling alone.
And I think sometimes we can accidentally isolate the person that we're listening to sothat they feel as though we're not really there.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
(53:25):
there's something about being present and not being on top of it sorry I'm really caringabout language now okay let's just leave that one shall we
hmm.
So we have about six more minutes, six or seven.
(53:47):
can't get the analogy out of her.
Yeah.
So we've got about six more minutes as Claire likes to say.
What do we need to do with that six minutes to get to where we want to get to today?
Well, just to close it out completely, I do have a confession to make.
(54:09):
I did do a keynote in South by Southwest Sydney, which came to Australia two, three yearsago now.
And my talk was, why is listening like comedy and sex?
So I do have form in this department.
Do we have a recording of that that we can share in the podcast?
(54:32):
I'm afraid not.
But because I was listening to the audience, some of the suggestions they came up with islistening and comedy is all about timing.
It's all about listening to the audience.
(54:53):
It's all about pacing.
And so is sex.
and don't try too hard.
feedback.
Yeah.
Don't try too hard.
It was interesting.
So we had a speaker briefing.
like a speaker kind of.
(55:17):
And I turned to somebody who was another speaker.
said, what are you speaking on?
And she said, I'm talking on diversity in the workplace.
I said, that's fantastic.
Tell me more about that.
She says, no, no, I want to hear about your session.
I said, it's about listening, comedy and sex.
And she goes, sounds like my life.
(55:37):
I'm not getting any of all of the above.
And I said, that's way too much information.
She said, when you're
When you get to my age, there are some things you need and some things you want.
And yeah, so I think timing.
But as we did the Q &A in the session itself, somebody picked up the mic about halfwaythrough.
(56:04):
And I don't do Q &A at the end.
I always go just pick up the mic when there's a pause.
We'll have the conversation.
And she said, if somebody said something really powerful to you, is it okay to usenonverbal language?
And I said, what will be an example of that?
And no joke, she grabs the mic and goes, mm hmm.
(56:27):
huh.
Mm hmm.
And the whole audience is just cracking up laughing because they've joined the dotsbetween the title and what's going on.
And she has no idea.
So I have to give her a very deadpan kind of response about nonverbals and all of that.
And then about two minutes later, she bursts out laughing at the table because somebodyexplained to her what she'd said.
(56:54):
Hehehehe
So yeah.
That's so funny.
I don't think we can top that.
Well, shall we wrap up for today on that note?
Sounds good.
I just, can I just notice something?
(57:17):
When you said, Oscar, that you don't take Q &A at the end and you take, and people say it,like questions as you're going through, what a beautiful example of timing.
Because at the end the question's meaningless.
And there's also very selfish reason why you don't want Q &A at the end.
(57:41):
If you're delivering a keynote or a workshop, you want to be deliberate about the energymanagement and the state of the room and be deliberate about how they exit.
And if you hand the mic over to somebody else and they ask a naft question, it's likepeople's like, get me the hell out of here.
And that's all they remember of what was created for the previous 55 minutes, as opposedto
(58:05):
If they ask you that question at the 15 minute mark.
Great question, Sue.
I really appreciate that.
When we get to the appropriate moment in our talk, I'm going to refer to your question.
And if not, I'll speak to you at the end kind of thing.
And then you're really deliberate about that.
(58:26):
But for me, it's always the biggest challenge I have with events.
They always want me to do a 45 plus a 15 Q &A and I say I don't do that This is what I doand it's in service of the audience not me because the audience gets more value from their
questions than they do from my speech and consistently the event Organises after the factgo I'm so glad you did Q &A all the way along I wish more speakers had the courage to take
(58:52):
questions because it's all about being present to the audience, right?
It's it's listening from
stage or from your position as a host that's really critical and I love the way I seeClaire do that in some of the videos she's shown about the workshop she does as well.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
One of the things I learned from being doing really big events was if you're out on thefloor with Q &A, never let go of the microphone.
(59:18):
But that's about timing too, because actually that's about saying once the questionsarrived in the flow, the person needs to stop because everything that they say after that
is interrupting the flow.
(59:38):
Lovely.
So does this conversation continue?
Have we said everything we need to say about listening?
Or is there more to say?
to the audience, not to us.
If they want more, they'll let us know, and if they don't, they'll let us know.
(59:59):
And we'll be listening either way.
Perfect, perfect ending.
Thank you, Oscar.
Thank you, Claire, for being with us today.
And for the fifth episode in this series, which I've been enjoying very, much and I hopeeveryone else is too.
Thanks for listening.
Yeah, thanks for listening and thank you, Shaney, for the idea.
(01:00:20):
I'll take credit for that.
bye bye.
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.