December 11, 2024 • 48 mins
What emerges in between?
This episode is an 'experiment' between Claire Pedrick and Oscar Trimboli as a result of an introduction by Shaney Crawford from Japan.
They explore the role of second languages, the value of silence, and the importance of understanding the past.
What does a group listening audit sound and look like?
The experiment will continue for the next few episodes as they see what emerges in between episodes.
how to listen – fundamentals – workplace edition
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:06):
- Listening happens inthe space in between,
in between two people,in between two ideas,
in between two teams, inbetween two organizations,
in between two generations,
in between opposing ideas.
This is an experiment,
(00:27):
to explore what can happen in between.
(slow violin music)
(fast-paced violin music)
(00:54):
Good day, it's Oscar,
and what you're about to hearnext, I'll call an experiment.
In March, one of the DeepListening ambassadors,
Shaney Crawford from Japan,
Shaney suggested to Claire Pedrick.
Now Claire, leads an organization
called 3D Coaching, in England.
(01:16):
And Shaney said to Claire,"I think it'd be worthwhile
to get Oscar as a gueston your podcast, Claire."
The podcast, it's called The Coaching Inn.
And this is a reason Icall it an experiment.
I call it an experimentfor a couple of reasons.
The first reason,
you'll get to hear, see, and sense,
(01:38):
how somebody else listensto me for a change,
rather than me being in the traditional
role of being the host.
The next reason that Icall this an experiment,
is because, Claire and I
offered some copies of "How to listen",
in exchange for the perspective,
(01:58):
and the thinking that changed,
as a result of peoplelistening to our conversation.
Now, what happened next is,
Claire received a series ofreflections from her listeners.
And,
she was touched by,
how many, and the depth ofthe reflections that happened.
(02:22):
Now, the episode you are aboutto hear was published in May.
Claire took some time offfor a vacation around Europe,
and then in July,
I sent Claire an email,with the subject line,
"I have an idea to honor their feedback."
As the emails moved backand forth, we decided,
(02:43):
let's record,
our reflections of whatthe listeners noticed,
how they made sense of our conversation.
How could we honor what they had sent us?
How could we honor what they heard?
What they saw, and what theysensed in our discussion?
(03:05):
And to close the loop off,we invited Shaney Crawford,
the person who introduced us originally,
to be part of this recording.
In September, we recorded a conversation
with Shaney, Claire, and myself.
And we recorded what changed for us
(03:25):
as we listened to those who'd heard us
in the original interview.
The experiment continues,
Claire is publishing,
the entire three partsof the conversation.
Part one, the initial discussionbetween Claire and Oscar.
Part two, the listeners' reflection.
(03:46):
And then part three, what changed for us
as a result of listeningto those who heard us.
Claire's built that intowhat she calls a masterclass.
What you're about to hear next,
is what I think of as partone of this experiment.
In the show notes, there'slinks to the original interview
(04:11):
on 3D Coaching's podcastas well as the video.
If you'd like to improve yourlistening in the workplace,
maybe consider applying for our next
online group training course.
You can visit, that'soscartrimboli.com/fundamentals
(04:31):
And there, you can apply to be part of
the next quarter's cohort.
The cohort, it is limited in size,
a minimum of 8, and amaximum of 12 participants.
We do this because listeningis a contact sport,
and it is improved fasterby playing well together.
(04:55):
In this course, you'lllearn the art, and science,
of listening in the workplace.
So if you'd like to apply,
visit oscartrimboli.com/fundamentals.
For now, it's time to explore,
part one of this listeningexperiment with Claire and I.
(05:17):
(water drop plopping and echoing)
- You are at The Coaching Inn,
3D Coaching's virtual pub,
where we enjoy conversations with people,
who engage in the world of coaching.
(bright music)
- Hello and welcome to
this week's edition of The Coaching Inn.
I'm your host, Claire Pedrick.
(05:38):
Today I'm in conversation withOscar Trimboli in Australia.
I was introduced toOscar by Shaney Crawford,
who sent me a message on LinkedIn
and went, "You have to meet this man,
he has to come to the Coaching Inn."
So, welcome Oscar.
- Thank you Shaney, and thank you Claire.
(05:59):
I'm looking forward to listeningto your questions today.
- Well, and thank you forthe copies of the book
that you've sent to me,
which we'll be sharing with listeners who-
You and I can work out together,
how we're going to sharethem with our listeners.
But, really great tohave a look at your book.
So,
(06:19):
I love it.
Oscar's book's called "How to listen",
and there are sound bites in it,
that sound like they'vecome from me, which I love.
'Cause, I always like it whenI agree with somebody's book.
(Claire and Oscar laughing)
I love the bit about seeing,and hearing, and sensing.
But my question to you,
(06:40):
is what started you out inthe journey to listening?
- I have to kind of go to April, 2008.
I'm in a boardroom at Microsoft.
We were on a video conference,18 people across Sydney,
Seattle, and Singapore.
And there's a lot of people in the room,
lots of people with laptops,
(07:03):
furiously doing unnatural things to excel
to try and bend budgetsinto political context,
growth context, market context.
And, the meeting's supposedto go for 90 minutes.
And at the 20 minute mark, myVice President, my boss Tracy,
looks me straight in the eyeacross the boardroom table,
and says,
"Oscar, we need to talkimmediately after this meeting."
(07:25):
So Claire, from that moment on,
I did not listen to another word,
in what happened in the budget meeting,
because the only thing thatwas going through my head was,
I'm about to get fired.
How many weeks of salary have I got left?
And who are the fivepeople I need to call,
to kind of find paid employment?
(07:48):
I think the answer waseight weeks' salary.
And by some miracle of nature,
the meeting finished atthe 70 minute mark, not 90,
and everybody kind ofpacked up their equipment
and started to head out of the room.
And Tracy said, "Oscar,make sure you close the door
because what I have to sayto you is very important."
(08:08):
And I went, oh, great.
And as I stepped backonly half way towards
the boardroom table, Tracy said to me,
"You have no idea what youdid at the 20 minute mark,
do you?"
And I thought, I'm gettingfired, and I don't even know why.
And I sat down and Tracy said to me,
"Oscar, if you could code how you listen,
(08:30):
you could change the world."
What I heard was,
woo-hoo! I hadn't been fired.
And honestly, I didn't think anything
of this listening stuff forabout three weeks because,
I'd got this huge uplift in my budget,
'cause I didn't pay attention.
And then the chief financial officer
asked me to come and audit his listening,
(08:50):
in his team meeting, to which I agreed.
And I started to takenotes and I realized,
oh, I'm coding how to listen.
The difference between hearingand listening is action,
I hope I've honored Tracy.
And,
you know, we've got 32,000 people
(09:12):
who've participated in our research study
about what gets in their waywhen it comes to listening.
We've coded it into jigsaw puzzle games,
and we've coded it into ahundred odd episodes of podcasts,
we've coded it into three books.
Tracy, did want me tocode it into software,
and that'll be the nextstep in the journey.
(09:34):
So that's how it got started Claire.
I thought I was getting fired.
And for leaders out there whomight be listening or coaches,
what you say,
and what they hear are twocompletely different things,
as I proved.
(Claire and Oscar laughing)- Yes.
I love that story on many levels.
- Oh!
(09:56):
which level should we chat about?
There are other backstories
in my heritage.- Yeah, yeah.
- There are backstories in, growing up in,
and going to a schoolwith 23 nationalities.
There are stories about how I,
would have team meetings in ourcontact center at Microsoft,
(10:16):
and everybody had tolisten to customer calls
for an hour before we came in.
There's many stories,
but I think that's the momentwhere I went, oh, okay.
This is something I can go towards,
rather than go away from.
- It's the irony that makes me smile,
that your breakthrough in listening
came through (laughs)when you didn't listen.
(10:38):
(Claire laughs)
Nice.
- Well, life has a wayof teaching us things
in ways we don't anticipate.
And I think, if you have,
I think my lesson was the curiosity
when Brian, the CFO asked me,
"Hey, can you come andlisten to my team meeting?"
And there's a whole backstory there
(10:59):
where I fought him for about,
three times in ourcommunication, but he said to me,
"Hey Oscar, I can't fix thetop line of your budget,
but we can invest for growth."
And he was speaking my language then,
and I went, well, okay, ifhe's gonna invest for growth,
the least I can do is goand audit, he's listening.
So yeah, that's where the journeystarted, where we at 2008,
(11:22):
yeah, we're a good nearly15 years down the track now.
- So what did audit listening look like?
Sound like, feel like?
- It was,
an A4 piece of paper.
And when I started off,what I was always doing
in group context is,
(11:43):
map the room.
Like literally where is everybody sitting,
on a piece of paper?
If you speak, you get a dot.
If you ask a question,you get a question mark.
And if you ask a clarifying question,
you get an upside down question mark.
And what I notice is, where's the gravity?
(12:05):
So, that map will really quickly show you
that who's not being listened to,
who's not speaking up,
in that map that we draw.
And what I also map is,
each third or quarter of the meeting.
So, if it's a half an hour meeting,
we'll map each 10 minutes.
(12:27):
And if it's a one hour meeting,we will map each 15 minutes.
And what I map is, howmany people haven't spoken,
at each of those time sequences,
and see if that number'sstatic, or increases,
or is complete by the timethe conversation completes.
The other thing I wasauditing back then was,
(12:50):
how long or short the question is.
Meaning, sometimes they ask double barrel,
triple barrel questions,and you just kind of like,
I'm not even sure what the question is,
let alone the answer.
So I was always curious,who attempted to answer it,
versus, who wanted to clarify.
Did you mean the first bit,the second bit, the third bit?
(13:12):
how's A, B and C connected?
Or is that-
And those kinds of things.
So,
and that is how, in a veryrudimentary way, we noticed,
or I noticed.
Because Tracy said to me, ifyou could code how I listen,
and what I did very quickly was,
okay, so what does the literature say,
(13:32):
whether that's academic orpractitioner literature about
how people listen.
If I get into a topic, I gopretty deep pretty quick and,
there didn't seem to be a deep overlap
between practitioner, orientations,
and academic orientations.
Academic orientations tendto come from a therapeutic,
(13:52):
psychology, psychiatry,
some modality, that was from a therapy
rather than a necessarily
a commercial or organizational outcome.
And I speculate, my hypothesis is that,
listening needs to progress,rather than just being,
(14:15):
what people might see in a Netflix video
of what a psychologist,or a psychiatrist can.
'Cause I always joke to people, you know,
listening in the workplace is not therapy.
And if you're trying to do therapy,
you are not serving yourself or them,
unless you're certified.
And if you're certified in therapy,
then you'll be choiceful, inwhether that's useful or not.
(14:39):
But in exploring all the literature,
there's talk aboutlistening being situational,
relational, and contextual.
It's such a dynamic orientation.
You have to be about listening,
and in the book we talk about,
what distinguishes goodlisteners from great listeners,
is their situational andrelational flexibility,
(15:00):
their orientation to noticewhat's going to be useful,
not just for the other,
but for the system, or thegroup that they're operating in.
And for me, my nerdy parts, you know,
that was the fun in doing, you know,
nearly a thousand qualitative surveys
(15:21):
and reviewing them lineby line in spreadsheets,
and the quantitative.
And, my favorite statistic is,
three quarters of people think
they're well above orabove average listeners.
But if you ask the questionthe other way, as a speaker,
how would you rate theother people's listening?
Only 12% of them rate somebodyabove, or well above average,
(15:43):
when it comes to listening.
So there's a verydifferent self-awareness,
because we don't have,
as we do in math, you know,
we have four operators add,divide, subtract, and multiply.
It's really clear.
And in language context,whether that's English
or other languages, we havesyntax that helps us in music.
(16:07):
There's sheet music, andthe way notes work together.
In chemistry, we have theperiodic table of elements.
In communication, there'snothing as concrete as that.
So, it's little wonder,we're not great at listening.
- How many- (laughs)
(16:28):
How long have you got?(Claire laughs)
- I, as my wife says, Oscar,
you could talk about listeningfor the rest of your life.
I said, well, that's the plan.
(Oscar laughing)- Yes.
I've been doing some work aroundthe sound of conversations,
and the sound of how peoplepass from one to the other.
- Mm.
- And I'm definitely going to go away
(16:49):
and think about your,
your dots, and your upsidedown question marks.
- Yeah, I've got a little video
that I talk over,
I'll share that with you-- Thank you.
- that's got an example ofthat happening over time,
where I'm coding atheoretical conversation.
- Oh, amazing.
- Tell me more about thesound of conversation.
(17:11):
I'm fascinated.
- It connects to whatyou've said in your book.
So,
for me, there's something about the offer,
about the handing over the conversation
from the listener, to thefacilitator of the conversation,
hands the conversationover to the other person,
as they listen.
(17:31):
And then only takes it back,when that's appropriate.
So you've got a bit inyour book about, okay,
(laughs) not being agreat way of responding.
And, okay isn't a great way of responding
for a lot of reasons.
And one of the reasons I noticed from,
watching lots and lots ofrecordings of dialogues,
(17:53):
in gallery view.
So, you can see the eyes of the-
Of both people.
And so you can watch toing and froing.
- Hmm.
- Offering sounds,
sound like a comma.
So and,
so, they leave the soundwith the other person,
(18:15):
whereas, okay is a stopping sound.
So if I say, okay, you're gonna go,
is she waiting to say something else?
And there's some really simple
and very interesting stuffabout the music of coaching.
And I'm just about to engagein dialogue with a musician,
(18:41):
who takes notes about conversations,
like you do and completely differently
from how you do I'm sure, tosee what that can teach us.
- Can we kind of playwith something together?
- Please.
- I have,
(19:01):
a sense.
And, if I won a lottery and hadthe opportunity to do a PhD,
this is what I'd do it in.
I sense that people whohave a second language,
listen with a different granularity
to people who are onlydialoguing in one language,
and they've only ever had one language.
(19:21):
And I want to be careful abouthow I explain a language.
So a language may be music,a language may be math,
a language may be chemistry,
and a language may be yournative tongue as well.
And, because of where I'm located
and no doubt where youare located as well,
we operate across multiple cultures.
We operate across multiple contexts,
(19:44):
and people who may nothave the same home language
that we speak in a dialogue.
And often I'm in situations,particularly in group work,
where the person is struggling
to find the words in the system language.
Typically it's English,
but it may not be, it may be French.
Particularly in global NGOs,
(20:06):
and sporting systems and all of that,
French, and Spanish, and other languages.
And when I'm in that situationand a person is struggling,
I ask them to pause,collect their thoughts,
and then say it in their home language.
Because once they do, theysense it very differently.
(20:28):
And I find the spoken languagesystem works really quickly.
So, 'cause they go andconnect with a feeling
of when they said that before.
But I also believe, like sedimentary rock
in a archeology dig,
because you've got these extra layers
through other language context,
you listen in a completely different way.
(20:50):
That's my speculation.
What do you hear, What do you see,
what do you feel, when I say that?
- I think that's so interesting.
I'm just thinking about,
watching people listening inlanguages I don't understand.
(21:14):
I'm also thinking as you're talking about,
if we listen, so that theother person understands,
which is often the purpose of listening,
that's a beautiful descript-
'Cause they don't,
well they don't need to beseeking the same language as us,
(21:36):
to understand it.
So that makes me think about that.
And the other thing itmakes me think about is,
if really deep listeningis about what we see,
and hear, and sense,
we can see, and hear, and sense,
when we don't understandwhat they're saying anyway.
That's what I was thinking.
(21:59):
- Yeah, and in the book,there's an example where,
somebody says to me, be prepared,
I'm just gonna vomit on you,
and they did.
And it went for about 25 minutes
where I was literally present,
but halfway through there wasa shift in their body state.
And I could have missed it
(22:20):
if I was just fixated on thewords, but there was a shift.
And when they complete, they go,
"Oh, wow, glad I got that out."
And I said,
"Oh, I just noticed somethingabout halfway through."
And they go, "Oh, what did you notice?"
I said, "Oh, your bodyshifted and you did this."
And they go,
(22:40):
"Yeah, that's when I decidedI'm sick of my own excuses,
and I actually made a decision."
And I thought,
wow, if they didn't havethat reflected back to them,
how more convicted theywere about that decision,
with somebody else noticing.
Meaning,
that, as we work with people,
(23:04):
when they feel seen, heard and valued,
it's because you'velistened to what they think
and what they mean, not what they've said.
What they've said is aseries of ingredients,
what matters is the recipe, and the menu,
that ultimately that places.
And that's why I think,
for people who have multiple languages,
(23:27):
they just have this incredible richness,
that someone like me whohas a monolingual approach,
can never seek to understand.
Although, both my stepchildrenwent on exchange in,
and had to learn German,and French, and later Hindi.
(23:47):
And I see how they processthe world differently.
But they process the world differently,
'cause they learned music first,
and that gave them a way to think about,
learning a language that wasn't something
that they grew up with and their parents,
and their extended family taught them.
So I have these, you know,
(24:09):
the sedimentary rock matters to me.
I often want to go a lotfurther down into the layers
that people may bestaying at the surface on.
- What a beautiful story,
the vomiting for 20 minute person.
(Claire and Oscar laughing)
(24:29):
- That was their words, not mine.
And they said put your hazmat suit on,
which was pre-COVID days too.
So it always stick sticks in my head.
And, the example I was thinking about,
the person,
in the most recent example,was speaking in Hebrew,
(24:51):
and their language flowin a written format,
goes from left to right,
from from right toleft, not left to right.
And I often wonder withSanskrit, and with Japanese,
and other languages where theorientation is very different,
how much nuance we miss,
(25:14):
because we have a language orientation
from an individual perspective,
rather than a collective perspective.
As an example, when you lookat multi-layered cultures,
that are high contextcultures like the Japanese,
or the Korean, or the Chinese.
Or the indigenous aboriginalcommunities of Australia,
as an example as well.
(25:34):
I have lots,
that the aunties and uncles have taught me
about their ways of Dadirri, which means,
listen to your lands,listen to your people,
and listen to yourself.
The thing they talk about is,
Oscar, it's not those separate parts,
it's all completely integrated.
You can't think of onewithout the other two.
(25:55):
And again,
in my way of thinking,
I value the deconstruction,
'cause then it makes sense to me.
But in collective cultures,it's the integrity,
and the integration ofall of those things,
that we're necessarily unconscious of,
when we are listening across cultures,
(26:15):
that we need to be much more conscious of,
particularly to check in for,
what they heard, rather than what we said.
- Just made sense of something, thank you.
- Say more.
(26:36):
- So, we have
run some of our training in Australia.
So we have Australianson lots of our training,
but some of our training we'verun in Australian time, and,
working with a colleaguewho is in Australia,
we felt that we should respect
that it was an Australian course,
(26:56):
even though people were on it globally
because it was in Australian time.
So we use theacknowledgement of the lands,
and the context that is used in Australia.
Respecting those who've come before.
- Hm.
(27:18):
- And, it made something different
for delegates from other places.
So, we still do that.
So I'm running a course at the moment,
doesn't have any Australians on it.
It's slightly different,
because we've taken outespecially the peoples of,
which was in the acknowledgement
that we used when we wererunning it in Australia.
(27:39):
But I think there'sbeen something different
about those courses,
because,
I wonder what because,
I'm just thinking, you're avery good listener by the way.
(Claire laughs)
(28:01):
We're encouraging everybody,
to acknowledge conversations, and systems,
and everything that have come before,
in a very,
in a very human way.
'Cause you can get veryorganizational development
about systems, can't you?(Claire laughs)
But there's a humanity-
- North system, the southsystem, the west system,
(28:22):
and all those other kindof mechanical overlays.
And yet our organizationalsystems are nothing more,
than the oral traditions that we pass on
through the culture, which is no different
from 60,000 years of dreaming.
And the wonderful gift that my indigenous
(28:43):
brothers and sisters give us, to go,
the story helps youmake sense of your past,
your present, and your future,
and how you, and thosearound you fit into that.
And the best storytelling cultures
are the best listening cultures,
(29:04):
because they're trainingmultiple generations,
on how to be present tolisten to their elders,
and in the context that I'm talking about.
Our indigenous communities in Australia,
and our Maori cousins, andour Polynesian cousins,
there is a tuning that the elders do,
to bring silence to thecircle before it commences.
(29:25):
And it's much longer,
than what you would at thecommencement of any meeting,
in an organizational system,
because they're bringingthe presence of history,
and the stories they'regoing to tell from the past,
which have all been handed down.
And in organizationalsystems, I think we, you know,
(29:46):
we get overly sophisticated,where we're trying to map it,
and put it into software,
and create hierarchies, or diagrams.
And the only way you makesense of all of that,
is the tradition of telling stories.
And the tradition in a workplace is,
how do things get done here?
Why do people get promoted?
(30:07):
Why do people get fired?
They're all stories.
You can put all the organizational values
you want on the wall,
yet a story brings them to lifeand helps people understand
how it makes sense.
So, I'm very grateful.
I'm on (indistinct) country
and it's a river system,
and there's a additionalelement of the lands,
(30:30):
that the aunties and uncles have taught me
about the traditions of the fish,
and how they keep the landsfor the next generation.
And I think in organizational systems,
we orientate closely to the present,
and we forget our past and our future,
and we miss a big opportunity.
The flip side is,
(30:51):
if you look at the reallyhigh performing systems,
in terms of financial ROI,
they always have longevityin the leadership team,
that they're not swappingthem out all the time.
And it's those ones thatswap it out all the time,
because they're only in the present,
they're not acknowledgingpast, and future.
(31:14):
There's a sense,
a tradition that they're notlistening to in the past,
or for, in the future.
So,
yeah, I'm delighted thatit's helped you make sense
of what's really powerful.
The Inuit communities in North America,
(31:34):
the Eskimo communities havethese traditions as well.
The tribal elders in the Amazon and,
in the first tribesparticularly that I'm aware of
in Tanzania and thecommunities around that,
they have great traditions, where silence
(31:57):
is a sign of wisdom,respect, and authority.
Whereas in the west, silence is a cue to,
lack of understanding,insight, quality, speed,
whatever they may overlay onthat, but it's a false overlay.
(32:19):
We have all this negativelanguage around silence
that's called, the awkwardsilence, the pregnant pause,
the deafening silence.
There's no language in an English context
that showcases and gives honor
to the power of silence.
It's continuously viewed in acontext that's not productive.
(32:44):
- I agree, and when I was writing-
I've just got another book out called,
"The Human Behind the Coach",
which I co-wrote with Lucia Baldelli.
And we've got a chapterin there about silence.
And one of the things that
I felt really strongly needed to be,
in the chapter on silence was that,
(33:04):
just 'cause you're not talkingdoesn't mean it's silence.
And you've just described,
cultures, who in their tradition have got
a deep silence.
(33:28):
Not just an, I'm not talking silence.
(Claire laughs)
- And I'll,
bring in the meta-point.
So I'll give you a really simple example.
I'm part of a process whereI'm handing over some work,
to other people.
And tomorrow, they will be presenting,
(33:51):
I've set them up for success.
I'm very comfortable thatthey're gonna do an amazing job.
And on Friday, I justsent both of them a text
and said, "Do you want me to be present?"
And the reply back from bothof them near instantaneously
was, "No, we don't want you topresent, we are presenting."
(34:18):
And I went back, and I said, okay.
(Oscar laughing)
We had a phone call today.
And I said, you know,
"Is there anything else I can do
to set you up to be successful tomorrow?"
And they said, no, no, we're great.
We're all good.
I said, just last Friday I sent you a text
(34:40):
that said, do you want me to be present?
And you came back and said,no, I'm okay to present.
I said, my only invitationfor you and my wish,
is that tomorrow when youpresent, you are present.
And we had a very long laugh about that.
- That's gonna make itinto a book, isn't it?
(35:02):
(Claire and Oscar laughing)
- Maybe, maybe not.(Claire laughs)
Earlier on you said, "Oh,you're a good listener."
What am I doing that'ssignaling that to you?
Because not everyone can see us.
(35:25):
- We are co-creating this conversation.
So, I'm listening to youand you are listening to me.
Some things are emerging from that space.
And can I be really honest?
Not everybody engagesin podcasts like that
(35:47):
when they're a guest.(Claire laughs)
- Meaning, to by dialogue,- Yeah.
- or something else.- Yeah, yeah.
Because if you've cometo promote your whatever-
- Yep.
- The quality that comesout of the co-creation,
(36:10):
that comes out of thesilence isn't always present.
- Hm.
And if you imagine a coupleof people you know who listen,
what do you think they're takingaway from our conversation?
If they were, kind of gonnasummarize it in a sentence or-
- To answer that,
(36:30):
I could respond to (laughs)what I've just noticed.
I'm going to come-
I'm to answer your question,
but I am going to justmake an observation.
I don't think you know whatyou're going to say next.
I think that your resp-
(36:50):
That's the listening is demonstrated,
in the responding to what's emerging.
If that, there's a tiny littleanswer to your question.
what do we think?
- And I think it answers both questions
to some extent too, doesn't it?
(37:11):
- Yeah.
- But you are gonna build,so let me not interrupt.
- Well, my build is,
to encourage the listenersto build actually.
- Hm.
- And to join in the conversation,
because-
- So, what should they email to you?
(37:31):
And we've got some books to give away.
- We have got some books to give away.
I think I would loveto hear from listeners,
what's your biggest insight from this?
Not from what we've said,
but from what you've builtout of what we've said.
So no books,
if you say, Oscar said this.
(37:53):
(Claire laughs)
So that's my-
That's the task.
Are we in agreement Oscar?
- Kinda.
- Kinda, build, build.
- No, clarification.- Yeah.
- If you were to say thatagain, for the audience,
(38:15):
what is your expectation,that they would email you?
you've been very clear on what not to say.
- Email us info@3dcoaching.com
with the heading, "Listening."
And we would love to hear one thing,
(38:36):
that you know now,
that you didn't knowbefore, as a result of
something that you've builtout of this conversation.
- Mm.
Thank you.- Well, thank you.
(Claire laughs)
And I've got some lovelycopies, to send out.
- As you can see,
Claire, I could talk aboutthis for the rest of my life.
(38:59):
And, my wish for all ofthese conversations is that,
hosts notice that I'm justpresent to the dialogue.
And, thanks to Dame Evelyn Glennie,
somebody from the north of England,
who I interviewed profoundly deaf,
she taught me how tolisten with my whole body.
(39:20):
It took a while, but when I listen
even through a mediatedenvironment like the video
that we're on right now,
when I bring my presenceand I connect my whole being
to the conversation, yes,listening is a skill.
Yes, listening is a strategy.
Yes, listening is a practice.
(39:41):
But for me, when I'm being, listening,
I can change many perspectives.
And the most importantone is to change my own.
So when I always leave these conversations
with my perspective changed.
And the perspective you changed for me,
is to reinforce and continue this,
(40:03):
curiosity about the role of language,
as a way to unlock,
more potent ways of listening.
When by being present toyou, Claire, you change me.
I know it's a great conversation.
So thanks for listening.
- Well, thank you for coming
(40:24):
and thank you everyone for listening.
And Oscar's book is
"How to listen, Discover the hidden key
to better communication."
So get those emails coming in.
Thank you Oscar, thank you everybody.
Bye-Bye.
- If you've enjoyedwhat you've heard today,
we'd love you to sharethe podcast with a friend,
or leave a comment on social media.
(40:46):
And if you'd like to become aregular at The Coaching Inn,
you can subscribe on Podbean,
and all major podcast channels.
We look forward towelcoming you next time.
You've been listening to The Coaching Inn,
3D coaching's virtual pub.
For more information,check out 3Dcoaching.com
(bright music)
(41:10):
(water drop plopping)
- Well, what did you make of that?
What did you hear?
What did you see?
What did you sense?
During the discussion with Claire,
around the 11 minute mark,
you heard Claire and I discuss,
the process of what I callgroup listening audits.
(41:32):
If you'd like to learn more about process,
I have a seven minute video,
that takes you through the process.
You can visitoscartrimboli.com/grouplisteningaudit.
That's all one word,
oscartrimboli.com/grouplisteningaudit.
And you can hear, and see,
(41:53):
how I code listening in a group setting,
for face-to-face meetings.
So what's my takeaway?
What did I love about thediscussion with Claire?
Well, for me,
it's fascinating to be there live,
in the original recording, thenlistening to the recording,
then watching the recording,
(42:14):
then hearing listenerfeedback about the recording,
and ultimately, reflectingagain with Claire about,
what we heard and what'sprogressed since then.
What I love about theconversation with Claire,
it was two way, somethingemerged in between.
Other hosts that I get interviewed by,
sometimes it feels like an interrogation.
(42:38):
The questions are just one way,
despite asking them for their perspective.
And, for me, it creates areally limited connection
with the host and theiraudience as a result.
This discussion with Clairewas quite the opposite.
There was lots of opportunityfor back and forth
between the two of us.
(42:59):
And as Shaney reflects on much later on,
she says there was a volleying
happening between the twoof us like a tennis match,
where we were, happyto hit back and forth,
and it was a very mucha shared back and forth.
Did you notice the length of our pauses?
(43:19):
Claire was quite proudof the space created,
and the pauses there.
I think these pauses, forme during the conversation,
gave me time to process,gave me time to think,
gave me time to reflect,
and ultimately to respect whatwe were creating together.
(43:41):
This definitely createdhigher quality conversation
between Claire and I.
As a result, I felt trustedenough to take risks,
and discuss issues
that I rarely bring upin other conversations.
So thanks Claire, for creating that space.
(44:01):
One of my most curious knowing,
and non-knowing if that's a word,
was when Claire describesthe difference between,
offering sounds and words,
and words that sound like commas,
like and, versus wordsthat sound like full stops.
(44:25):
I'm curious how Clairewill play with this idea.
Hearing, seeing, sensing.
Based on the listeners'reflections, and their feedback,
some of them watched theoriginal part one video,
some listened to the audio,
(44:46):
some listened and watched,
and some of the listenerslistened to the audio,
watched the video more than once.
And what they all commented on is,
depending on the number oftimes they watched or listened,
(45:07):
they took somethingcompletely different away
from the conversation.
Although it was therelive during the recording,
I made a point to listento the recording first,
then I watched the video.
And each time,
I heard, I saw, and I sensed,
very different elementsof the conversation
(45:30):
that wasn't conscious to meduring the live discussion.
Watching is a reallyunderestimated part of listening,
and this is something Claireis very passionate about.
Claire's face, if you watch the video,
amplifies what she's sensing,and processing, and thinking,
(45:51):
which is highlighted,only when you're engaging
your ears, and your eyes,
as well as your heart in the conversation.
(water drop plopping)
I'm providing a link to the video
in the show notes on the website,
as well as the podcast appyou're probably listening on now.
(46:11):
So if you want to, you can scroll down,
and you can watch the YouTubevideo at your leisure as well.
Now, if you'd like to emailClaire with your reflections,
that's great, no doubtshe'll share them with me.
But if you want to shareyour reflections with me,
you can email podcast@oscartrimboli.com
with the subject line, "Listen."
(46:32):
And for 10 people, you'llreceive 20% off your enrollment,
into the fundamentals course,
where we spend eight weekslearning, practicing, reflecting,
and improving on our workplace listening,
with the very techniques wediscussed during this episode.
(46:53):
We'll give you two weeks to digest,
and provide your feedback.
What's changed in yourthinking, not what we said,
as Claire says,
before we publish to youwhat the listeners said
based on the original episode.
I'd love to share yourthoughts in there as well.
Email podcast@oscartrimboli.comwith the subject, "Listen."
(47:18):
and 10 people will receive20% off their first enrollment
in the fundamentals of listening course.
I hope this experiment of
hearing me, in a differentrole from the host,
creates a different perspectivefor you on listening.
I know it did for me.
(47:40):
Because of the wayClaire created the space,
she changed my mind,about the role of seeing,
about the role of sensing.
And she allowed me to take risks
I don't normally take in conversations,
and for that, I'm really grateful.
I'm Oscar Trimboli,
and along with the DeepListening ambassador community,
(48:00):
including Shaney Crawford,we're on a quest to create
100 million Deep Listenersin the workplace,
and you've given us thegreatest gift of all,
you've listened to us.
Thanks for listening.
(slow violin music)
(48:23):
(fast-paced violin music)
- Listening happens inthe space in between,
in between two people,in between two ideas,
in between two teams, inbetween two organizations,
in between two generations,
in between opposing ideas.
This is an experiment,
(00:27):
to explore what can happen in between.
(slow violin music)
(fast-paced violin music)
(00:54):
Good day, it's Oscar,
and what you're about to hearnext, I'll call an experiment.
In March, one of the DeepListening ambassadors,
Shaney Crawford from Japan,
Shaney suggested to Claire Pedrick.
Now Claire, leads an organization
called 3D Coaching, in England.
(01:16):
And Shaney said to Claire,"I think it'd be worthwhile
to get Oscar as a gueston your podcast, Claire."
The podcast, it's called The Coaching Inn.
And this is a reason Icall it an experiment.
I call it an experimentfor a couple of reasons.
The first reason,
you'll get to hear, see, and sense,
(01:38):
how somebody else listensto me for a change,
rather than me being in the traditional
role of being the host.
The next reason that Icall this an experiment,
is because, Claire and I
offered some copies of "How to listen",
in exchange for the perspective,
(01:58):
and the thinking that changed,
as a result of peoplelistening to our conversation.
Now, what happened next is,
Claire received a series ofreflections from her listeners.
And,
she was touched by,
how many, and the depth ofthe reflections that happened.
(02:22):
Now, the episode you are aboutto hear was published in May.
Claire took some time offfor a vacation around Europe,
and then in July,
I sent Claire an email,with the subject line,
"I have an idea to honor their feedback."
As the emails moved backand forth, we decided,
(02:43):
let's record,
our reflections of whatthe listeners noticed,
how they made sense of our conversation.
How could we honor what they had sent us?
How could we honor what they heard?
What they saw, and what theysensed in our discussion?
(03:05):
And to close the loop off,we invited Shaney Crawford,
the person who introduced us originally,
to be part of this recording.
In September, we recorded a conversation
with Shaney, Claire, and myself.
And we recorded what changed for us
(03:25):
as we listened to those who'd heard us
in the original interview.
The experiment continues,
Claire is publishing,
the entire three partsof the conversation.
Part one, the initial discussionbetween Claire and Oscar.
Part two, the listeners' reflection.
(03:46):
And then part three, what changed for us
as a result of listeningto those who heard us.
Claire's built that intowhat she calls a masterclass.
What you're about to hear next,
is what I think of as partone of this experiment.
In the show notes, there'slinks to the original interview
(04:11):
on 3D Coaching's podcastas well as the video.
If you'd like to improve yourlistening in the workplace,
maybe consider applying for our next
online group training course.
You can visit, that'soscartrimboli.com/fundamentals
(04:31):
And there, you can apply to be part of
the next quarter's cohort.
The cohort, it is limited in size,
a minimum of 8, and amaximum of 12 participants.
We do this because listeningis a contact sport,
and it is improved fasterby playing well together.
(04:55):
In this course, you'lllearn the art, and science,
of listening in the workplace.
So if you'd like to apply,
visit oscartrimboli.com/fundamentals.
For now, it's time to explore,
part one of this listeningexperiment with Claire and I.
(05:17):
(water drop plopping and echoing)
- You are at The Coaching Inn,
3D Coaching's virtual pub,
where we enjoy conversations with people,
who engage in the world of coaching.
(bright music)
- Hello and welcome to
this week's edition of The Coaching Inn.
I'm your host, Claire Pedrick.
(05:38):
Today I'm in conversation withOscar Trimboli in Australia.
I was introduced toOscar by Shaney Crawford,
who sent me a message on LinkedIn
and went, "You have to meet this man,
he has to come to the Coaching Inn."
So, welcome Oscar.
- Thank you Shaney, and thank you Claire.
(05:59):
I'm looking forward to listeningto your questions today.
- Well, and thank you forthe copies of the book
that you've sent to me,
which we'll be sharing with listeners who-
You and I can work out together,
how we're going to sharethem with our listeners.
But, really great tohave a look at your book.
So,
(06:19):
I love it.
Oscar's book's called "How to listen",
and there are sound bites in it,
that sound like they'vecome from me, which I love.
'Cause, I always like it whenI agree with somebody's book.
(Claire and Oscar laughing)
I love the bit about seeing,and hearing, and sensing.
But my question to you,
(06:40):
is what started you out inthe journey to listening?
- I have to kind of go to April, 2008.
I'm in a boardroom at Microsoft.
We were on a video conference,18 people across Sydney,
Seattle, and Singapore.
And there's a lot of people in the room,
lots of people with laptops,
(07:03):
furiously doing unnatural things to excel
to try and bend budgetsinto political context,
growth context, market context.
And, the meeting's supposedto go for 90 minutes.
And at the 20 minute mark, myVice President, my boss Tracy,
looks me straight in the eyeacross the boardroom table,
and says,
"Oscar, we need to talkimmediately after this meeting."
(07:25):
So Claire, from that moment on,
I did not listen to another word,
in what happened in the budget meeting,
because the only thing thatwas going through my head was,
I'm about to get fired.
How many weeks of salary have I got left?
And who are the fivepeople I need to call,
to kind of find paid employment?
(07:48):
I think the answer waseight weeks' salary.
And by some miracle of nature,
the meeting finished atthe 70 minute mark, not 90,
and everybody kind ofpacked up their equipment
and started to head out of the room.
And Tracy said, "Oscar,make sure you close the door
because what I have to sayto you is very important."
(08:08):
And I went, oh, great.
And as I stepped backonly half way towards
the boardroom table, Tracy said to me,
"You have no idea what youdid at the 20 minute mark,
do you?"
And I thought, I'm gettingfired, and I don't even know why.
And I sat down and Tracy said to me,
"Oscar, if you could code how you listen,
(08:30):
you could change the world."
What I heard was,
woo-hoo! I hadn't been fired.
And honestly, I didn't think anything
of this listening stuff forabout three weeks because,
I'd got this huge uplift in my budget,
'cause I didn't pay attention.
And then the chief financial officer
asked me to come and audit his listening,
(08:50):
in his team meeting, to which I agreed.
And I started to takenotes and I realized,
oh, I'm coding how to listen.
The difference between hearingand listening is action,
I hope I've honored Tracy.
And,
you know, we've got 32,000 people
(09:12):
who've participated in our research study
about what gets in their waywhen it comes to listening.
We've coded it into jigsaw puzzle games,
and we've coded it into ahundred odd episodes of podcasts,
we've coded it into three books.
Tracy, did want me tocode it into software,
and that'll be the nextstep in the journey.
(09:34):
So that's how it got started Claire.
I thought I was getting fired.
And for leaders out there whomight be listening or coaches,
what you say,
and what they hear are twocompletely different things,
as I proved.
(Claire and Oscar laughing)- Yes.
I love that story on many levels.
- Oh!
(09:56):
which level should we chat about?
There are other backstories
in my heritage.- Yeah, yeah.
- There are backstories in, growing up in,
and going to a schoolwith 23 nationalities.
There are stories about how I,
would have team meetings in ourcontact center at Microsoft,
(10:16):
and everybody had tolisten to customer calls
for an hour before we came in.
There's many stories,
but I think that's the momentwhere I went, oh, okay.
This is something I can go towards,
rather than go away from.
- It's the irony that makes me smile,
that your breakthrough in listening
came through (laughs)when you didn't listen.
(10:38):
(Claire laughs)
Nice.
- Well, life has a wayof teaching us things
in ways we don't anticipate.
And I think, if you have,
I think my lesson was the curiosity
when Brian, the CFO asked me,
"Hey, can you come andlisten to my team meeting?"
And there's a whole backstory there
(10:59):
where I fought him for about,
three times in ourcommunication, but he said to me,
"Hey Oscar, I can't fix thetop line of your budget,
but we can invest for growth."
And he was speaking my language then,
and I went, well, okay, ifhe's gonna invest for growth,
the least I can do is goand audit, he's listening.
So yeah, that's where the journeystarted, where we at 2008,
(11:22):
yeah, we're a good nearly15 years down the track now.
- So what did audit listening look like?
Sound like, feel like?
- It was,
an A4 piece of paper.
And when I started off,what I was always doing
in group context is,
(11:43):
map the room.
Like literally where is everybody sitting,
on a piece of paper?
If you speak, you get a dot.
If you ask a question,you get a question mark.
And if you ask a clarifying question,
you get an upside down question mark.
And what I notice is, where's the gravity?
(12:05):
So, that map will really quickly show you
that who's not being listened to,
who's not speaking up,
in that map that we draw.
And what I also map is,
each third or quarter of the meeting.
So, if it's a half an hour meeting,
we'll map each 10 minutes.
(12:27):
And if it's a one hour meeting,we will map each 15 minutes.
And what I map is, howmany people haven't spoken,
at each of those time sequences,
and see if that number'sstatic, or increases,
or is complete by the timethe conversation completes.
The other thing I wasauditing back then was,
(12:50):
how long or short the question is.
Meaning, sometimes they ask double barrel,
triple barrel questions,and you just kind of like,
I'm not even sure what the question is,
let alone the answer.
So I was always curious,who attempted to answer it,
versus, who wanted to clarify.
Did you mean the first bit,the second bit, the third bit?
(13:12):
how's A, B and C connected?
Or is that-
And those kinds of things.
So,
and that is how, in a veryrudimentary way, we noticed,
or I noticed.
Because Tracy said to me, ifyou could code how I listen,
and what I did very quickly was,
okay, so what does the literature say,
(13:32):
whether that's academic orpractitioner literature about
how people listen.
If I get into a topic, I gopretty deep pretty quick and,
there didn't seem to be a deep overlap
between practitioner, orientations,
and academic orientations.
Academic orientations tendto come from a therapeutic,
(13:52):
psychology, psychiatry,
some modality, that was from a therapy
rather than a necessarily
a commercial or organizational outcome.
And I speculate, my hypothesis is that,
listening needs to progress,rather than just being,
(14:15):
what people might see in a Netflix video
of what a psychologist,or a psychiatrist can.
'Cause I always joke to people, you know,
listening in the workplace is not therapy.
And if you're trying to do therapy,
you are not serving yourself or them,
unless you're certified.
And if you're certified in therapy,
then you'll be choiceful, inwhether that's useful or not.
(14:39):
But in exploring all the literature,
there's talk aboutlistening being situational,
relational, and contextual.
It's such a dynamic orientation.
You have to be about listening,
and in the book we talk about,
what distinguishes goodlisteners from great listeners,
is their situational andrelational flexibility,
(15:00):
their orientation to noticewhat's going to be useful,
not just for the other,
but for the system, or thegroup that they're operating in.
And for me, my nerdy parts, you know,
that was the fun in doing, you know,
nearly a thousand qualitative surveys
(15:21):
and reviewing them lineby line in spreadsheets,
and the quantitative.
And, my favorite statistic is,
three quarters of people think
they're well above orabove average listeners.
But if you ask the questionthe other way, as a speaker,
how would you rate theother people's listening?
Only 12% of them rate somebodyabove, or well above average,
(15:43):
when it comes to listening.
So there's a verydifferent self-awareness,
because we don't have,
as we do in math, you know,
we have four operators add,divide, subtract, and multiply.
It's really clear.
And in language context,whether that's English
or other languages, we havesyntax that helps us in music.
(16:07):
There's sheet music, andthe way notes work together.
In chemistry, we have theperiodic table of elements.
In communication, there'snothing as concrete as that.
So, it's little wonder,we're not great at listening.
- How many- (laughs)
(16:28):
How long have you got?(Claire laughs)
- I, as my wife says, Oscar,
you could talk about listeningfor the rest of your life.
I said, well, that's the plan.
(Oscar laughing)- Yes.
I've been doing some work aroundthe sound of conversations,
and the sound of how peoplepass from one to the other.
- Mm.
- And I'm definitely going to go away
(16:49):
and think about your,
your dots, and your upsidedown question marks.
- Yeah, I've got a little video
that I talk over,
I'll share that with you-- Thank you.
- that's got an example ofthat happening over time,
where I'm coding atheoretical conversation.
- Oh, amazing.
- Tell me more about thesound of conversation.
(17:11):
I'm fascinated.
- It connects to whatyou've said in your book.
So,
for me, there's something about the offer,
about the handing over the conversation
from the listener, to thefacilitator of the conversation,
hands the conversationover to the other person,
as they listen.
(17:31):
And then only takes it back,when that's appropriate.
So you've got a bit inyour book about, okay,
(laughs) not being agreat way of responding.
And, okay isn't a great way of responding
for a lot of reasons.
And one of the reasons I noticed from,
watching lots and lots ofrecordings of dialogues,
(17:53):
in gallery view.
So, you can see the eyes of the-
Of both people.
And so you can watch toing and froing.
- Hmm.
- Offering sounds,
sound like a comma.
So and,
so, they leave the soundwith the other person,
(18:15):
whereas, okay is a stopping sound.
So if I say, okay, you're gonna go,
is she waiting to say something else?
And there's some really simple
and very interesting stuffabout the music of coaching.
And I'm just about to engagein dialogue with a musician,
(18:41):
who takes notes about conversations,
like you do and completely differently
from how you do I'm sure, tosee what that can teach us.
- Can we kind of playwith something together?
- Please.
- I have,
(19:01):
a sense.
And, if I won a lottery and hadthe opportunity to do a PhD,
this is what I'd do it in.
I sense that people whohave a second language,
listen with a different granularity
to people who are onlydialoguing in one language,
and they've only ever had one language.
(19:21):
And I want to be careful abouthow I explain a language.
So a language may be music,a language may be math,
a language may be chemistry,
and a language may be yournative tongue as well.
And, because of where I'm located
and no doubt where youare located as well,
we operate across multiple cultures.
We operate across multiple contexts,
(19:44):
and people who may nothave the same home language
that we speak in a dialogue.
And often I'm in situations,particularly in group work,
where the person is struggling
to find the words in the system language.
Typically it's English,
but it may not be, it may be French.
Particularly in global NGOs,
(20:06):
and sporting systems and all of that,
French, and Spanish, and other languages.
And when I'm in that situationand a person is struggling,
I ask them to pause,collect their thoughts,
and then say it in their home language.
Because once they do, theysense it very differently.
(20:28):
And I find the spoken languagesystem works really quickly.
So, 'cause they go andconnect with a feeling
of when they said that before.
But I also believe, like sedimentary rock
in a archeology dig,
because you've got these extra layers
through other language context,
you listen in a completely different way.
(20:50):
That's my speculation.
What do you hear, What do you see,
what do you feel, when I say that?
- I think that's so interesting.
I'm just thinking about,
watching people listening inlanguages I don't understand.
(21:14):
I'm also thinking as you're talking about,
if we listen, so that theother person understands,
which is often the purpose of listening,
that's a beautiful descript-
'Cause they don't,
well they don't need to beseeking the same language as us,
(21:36):
to understand it.
So that makes me think about that.
And the other thing itmakes me think about is,
if really deep listeningis about what we see,
and hear, and sense,
we can see, and hear, and sense,
when we don't understandwhat they're saying anyway.
That's what I was thinking.
(21:59):
- Yeah, and in the book,there's an example where,
somebody says to me, be prepared,
I'm just gonna vomit on you,
and they did.
And it went for about 25 minutes
where I was literally present,
but halfway through there wasa shift in their body state.
And I could have missed it
(22:20):
if I was just fixated on thewords, but there was a shift.
And when they complete, they go,
"Oh, wow, glad I got that out."
And I said,
"Oh, I just noticed somethingabout halfway through."
And they go, "Oh, what did you notice?"
I said, "Oh, your bodyshifted and you did this."
And they go,
(22:40):
"Yeah, that's when I decidedI'm sick of my own excuses,
and I actually made a decision."
And I thought,
wow, if they didn't havethat reflected back to them,
how more convicted theywere about that decision,
with somebody else noticing.
Meaning,
that, as we work with people,
(23:04):
when they feel seen, heard and valued,
it's because you'velistened to what they think
and what they mean, not what they've said.
What they've said is aseries of ingredients,
what matters is the recipe, and the menu,
that ultimately that places.
And that's why I think,
for people who have multiple languages,
(23:27):
they just have this incredible richness,
that someone like me whohas a monolingual approach,
can never seek to understand.
Although, both my stepchildrenwent on exchange in,
and had to learn German,and French, and later Hindi.
(23:47):
And I see how they processthe world differently.
But they process the world differently,
'cause they learned music first,
and that gave them a way to think about,
learning a language that wasn't something
that they grew up with and their parents,
and their extended family taught them.
So I have these, you know,
(24:09):
the sedimentary rock matters to me.
I often want to go a lotfurther down into the layers
that people may bestaying at the surface on.
- What a beautiful story,
the vomiting for 20 minute person.
(Claire and Oscar laughing)
(24:29):
- That was their words, not mine.
And they said put your hazmat suit on,
which was pre-COVID days too.
So it always stick sticks in my head.
And, the example I was thinking about,
the person,
in the most recent example,was speaking in Hebrew,
(24:51):
and their language flowin a written format,
goes from left to right,
from from right toleft, not left to right.
And I often wonder withSanskrit, and with Japanese,
and other languages where theorientation is very different,
how much nuance we miss,
(25:14):
because we have a language orientation
from an individual perspective,
rather than a collective perspective.
As an example, when you lookat multi-layered cultures,
that are high contextcultures like the Japanese,
or the Korean, or the Chinese.
Or the indigenous aboriginalcommunities of Australia,
as an example as well.
(25:34):
I have lots,
that the aunties and uncles have taught me
about their ways of Dadirri, which means,
listen to your lands,listen to your people,
and listen to yourself.
The thing they talk about is,
Oscar, it's not those separate parts,
it's all completely integrated.
You can't think of onewithout the other two.
(25:55):
And again,
in my way of thinking,
I value the deconstruction,
'cause then it makes sense to me.
But in collective cultures,it's the integrity,
and the integration ofall of those things,
that we're necessarily unconscious of,
when we are listening across cultures,
(26:15):
that we need to be much more conscious of,
particularly to check in for,
what they heard, rather than what we said.
- Just made sense of something, thank you.
- Say more.
(26:36):
- So, we have
run some of our training in Australia.
So we have Australianson lots of our training,
but some of our training we'verun in Australian time, and,
working with a colleaguewho is in Australia,
we felt that we should respect
that it was an Australian course,
(26:56):
even though people were on it globally
because it was in Australian time.
So we use theacknowledgement of the lands,
and the context that is used in Australia.
Respecting those who've come before.
- Hm.
(27:18):
- And, it made something different
for delegates from other places.
So, we still do that.
So I'm running a course at the moment,
doesn't have any Australians on it.
It's slightly different,
because we've taken outespecially the peoples of,
which was in the acknowledgement
that we used when we wererunning it in Australia.
(27:39):
But I think there'sbeen something different
about those courses,
because,
I wonder what because,
I'm just thinking, you're avery good listener by the way.
(Claire laughs)
(28:01):
We're encouraging everybody,
to acknowledge conversations, and systems,
and everything that have come before,
in a very,
in a very human way.
'Cause you can get veryorganizational development
about systems, can't you?(Claire laughs)
But there's a humanity-
- North system, the southsystem, the west system,
(28:22):
and all those other kindof mechanical overlays.
And yet our organizationalsystems are nothing more,
than the oral traditions that we pass on
through the culture, which is no different
from 60,000 years of dreaming.
And the wonderful gift that my indigenous
(28:43):
brothers and sisters give us, to go,
the story helps youmake sense of your past,
your present, and your future,
and how you, and thosearound you fit into that.
And the best storytelling cultures
are the best listening cultures,
(29:04):
because they're trainingmultiple generations,
on how to be present tolisten to their elders,
and in the context that I'm talking about.
Our indigenous communities in Australia,
and our Maori cousins, andour Polynesian cousins,
there is a tuning that the elders do,
to bring silence to thecircle before it commences.
(29:25):
And it's much longer,
than what you would at thecommencement of any meeting,
in an organizational system,
because they're bringingthe presence of history,
and the stories they'regoing to tell from the past,
which have all been handed down.
And in organizationalsystems, I think we, you know,
(29:46):
we get overly sophisticated,where we're trying to map it,
and put it into software,
and create hierarchies, or diagrams.
And the only way you makesense of all of that,
is the tradition of telling stories.
And the tradition in a workplace is,
how do things get done here?
Why do people get promoted?
(30:07):
Why do people get fired?
They're all stories.
You can put all the organizational values
you want on the wall,
yet a story brings them to lifeand helps people understand
how it makes sense.
So, I'm very grateful.
I'm on (indistinct) country
and it's a river system,
and there's a additionalelement of the lands,
(30:30):
that the aunties and uncles have taught me
about the traditions of the fish,
and how they keep the landsfor the next generation.
And I think in organizational systems,
we orientate closely to the present,
and we forget our past and our future,
and we miss a big opportunity.
The flip side is,
(30:51):
if you look at the reallyhigh performing systems,
in terms of financial ROI,
they always have longevityin the leadership team,
that they're not swappingthem out all the time.
And it's those ones thatswap it out all the time,
because they're only in the present,
they're not acknowledgingpast, and future.
(31:14):
There's a sense,
a tradition that they're notlistening to in the past,
or for, in the future.
So,
yeah, I'm delighted thatit's helped you make sense
of what's really powerful.
The Inuit communities in North America,
(31:34):
the Eskimo communities havethese traditions as well.
The tribal elders in the Amazon and,
in the first tribesparticularly that I'm aware of
in Tanzania and thecommunities around that,
they have great traditions, where silence
(31:57):
is a sign of wisdom,respect, and authority.
Whereas in the west, silence is a cue to,
lack of understanding,insight, quality, speed,
whatever they may overlay onthat, but it's a false overlay.
(32:19):
We have all this negativelanguage around silence
that's called, the awkwardsilence, the pregnant pause,
the deafening silence.
There's no language in an English context
that showcases and gives honor
to the power of silence.
It's continuously viewed in acontext that's not productive.
(32:44):
- I agree, and when I was writing-
I've just got another book out called,
"The Human Behind the Coach",
which I co-wrote with Lucia Baldelli.
And we've got a chapterin there about silence.
And one of the things that
I felt really strongly needed to be,
in the chapter on silence was that,
(33:04):
just 'cause you're not talkingdoesn't mean it's silence.
And you've just described,
cultures, who in their tradition have got
a deep silence.
(33:28):
Not just an, I'm not talking silence.
(Claire laughs)
- And I'll,
bring in the meta-point.
So I'll give you a really simple example.
I'm part of a process whereI'm handing over some work,
to other people.
And tomorrow, they will be presenting,
(33:51):
I've set them up for success.
I'm very comfortable thatthey're gonna do an amazing job.
And on Friday, I justsent both of them a text
and said, "Do you want me to be present?"
And the reply back from bothof them near instantaneously
was, "No, we don't want you topresent, we are presenting."
(34:18):
And I went back, and I said, okay.
(Oscar laughing)
We had a phone call today.
And I said, you know,
"Is there anything else I can do
to set you up to be successful tomorrow?"
And they said, no, no, we're great.
We're all good.
I said, just last Friday I sent you a text
(34:40):
that said, do you want me to be present?
And you came back and said,no, I'm okay to present.
I said, my only invitationfor you and my wish,
is that tomorrow when youpresent, you are present.
And we had a very long laugh about that.
- That's gonna make itinto a book, isn't it?
(35:02):
(Claire and Oscar laughing)
- Maybe, maybe not.(Claire laughs)
Earlier on you said, "Oh,you're a good listener."
What am I doing that'ssignaling that to you?
Because not everyone can see us.
(35:25):
- We are co-creating this conversation.
So, I'm listening to youand you are listening to me.
Some things are emerging from that space.
And can I be really honest?
Not everybody engagesin podcasts like that
(35:47):
when they're a guest.(Claire laughs)
- Meaning, to by dialogue,- Yeah.
- or something else.- Yeah, yeah.
Because if you've cometo promote your whatever-
- Yep.
- The quality that comesout of the co-creation,
(36:10):
that comes out of thesilence isn't always present.
- Hm.
And if you imagine a coupleof people you know who listen,
what do you think they're takingaway from our conversation?
If they were, kind of gonnasummarize it in a sentence or-
- To answer that,
(36:30):
I could respond to (laughs)what I've just noticed.
I'm going to come-
I'm to answer your question,
but I am going to justmake an observation.
I don't think you know whatyou're going to say next.
I think that your resp-
(36:50):
That's the listening is demonstrated,
in the responding to what's emerging.
If that, there's a tiny littleanswer to your question.
what do we think?
- And I think it answers both questions
to some extent too, doesn't it?
(37:11):
- Yeah.
- But you are gonna build,so let me not interrupt.
- Well, my build is,
to encourage the listenersto build actually.
- Hm.
- And to join in the conversation,
because-
- So, what should they email to you?
(37:31):
And we've got some books to give away.
- We have got some books to give away.
I think I would loveto hear from listeners,
what's your biggest insight from this?
Not from what we've said,
but from what you've builtout of what we've said.
So no books,
if you say, Oscar said this.
(37:53):
(Claire laughs)
So that's my-
That's the task.
Are we in agreement Oscar?
- Kinda.
- Kinda, build, build.
- No, clarification.- Yeah.
- If you were to say thatagain, for the audience,
(38:15):
what is your expectation,that they would email you?
you've been very clear on what not to say.
- Email us info@3dcoaching.com
with the heading, "Listening."
And we would love to hear one thing,
(38:36):
that you know now,
that you didn't knowbefore, as a result of
something that you've builtout of this conversation.
- Mm.
Thank you.- Well, thank you.
(Claire laughs)
And I've got some lovelycopies, to send out.
- As you can see,
Claire, I could talk aboutthis for the rest of my life.
(38:59):
And, my wish for all ofthese conversations is that,
hosts notice that I'm justpresent to the dialogue.
And, thanks to Dame Evelyn Glennie,
somebody from the north of England,
who I interviewed profoundly deaf,
she taught me how tolisten with my whole body.
(39:20):
It took a while, but when I listen
even through a mediatedenvironment like the video
that we're on right now,
when I bring my presenceand I connect my whole being
to the conversation, yes,listening is a skill.
Yes, listening is a strategy.
Yes, listening is a practice.
(39:41):
But for me, when I'm being, listening,
I can change many perspectives.
And the most importantone is to change my own.
So when I always leave these conversations
with my perspective changed.
And the perspective you changed for me,
is to reinforce and continue this,
(40:03):
curiosity about the role of language,
as a way to unlock,
more potent ways of listening.
When by being present toyou, Claire, you change me.
I know it's a great conversation.
So thanks for listening.
- Well, thank you for coming
(40:24):
and thank you everyone for listening.
And Oscar's book is
"How to listen, Discover the hidden key
to better communication."
So get those emails coming in.
Thank you Oscar, thank you everybody.
Bye-Bye.
- If you've enjoyedwhat you've heard today,
we'd love you to sharethe podcast with a friend,
or leave a comment on social media.
(40:46):
And if you'd like to become aregular at The Coaching Inn,
you can subscribe on Podbean,
and all major podcast channels.
We look forward towelcoming you next time.
You've been listening to The Coaching Inn,
3D coaching's virtual pub.
For more information,check out 3Dcoaching.com
(bright music)
(41:10):
(water drop plopping)
- Well, what did you make of that?
What did you hear?
What did you see?
What did you sense?
During the discussion with Claire,
around the 11 minute mark,
you heard Claire and I discuss,
the process of what I callgroup listening audits.
(41:32):
If you'd like to learn more about process,
I have a seven minute video,
that takes you through the process.
You can visitoscartrimboli.com/grouplisteningaudit.
That's all one word,
oscartrimboli.com/grouplisteningaudit.
And you can hear, and see,
(41:53):
how I code listening in a group setting,
for face-to-face meetings.
So what's my takeaway?
What did I love about thediscussion with Claire?
Well, for me,
it's fascinating to be there live,
in the original recording, thenlistening to the recording,
then watching the recording,
(42:14):
then hearing listenerfeedback about the recording,
and ultimately, reflectingagain with Claire about,
what we heard and what'sprogressed since then.
What I love about theconversation with Claire,
it was two way, somethingemerged in between.
Other hosts that I get interviewed by,
sometimes it feels like an interrogation.
(42:38):
The questions are just one way,
despite asking them for their perspective.
And, for me, it creates areally limited connection
with the host and theiraudience as a result.
This discussion with Clairewas quite the opposite.
There was lots of opportunityfor back and forth
between the two of us.
(42:59):
And as Shaney reflects on much later on,
she says there was a volleying
happening between the twoof us like a tennis match,
where we were, happyto hit back and forth,
and it was a very mucha shared back and forth.
Did you notice the length of our pauses?
(43:19):
Claire was quite proudof the space created,
and the pauses there.
I think these pauses, forme during the conversation,
gave me time to process,gave me time to think,
gave me time to reflect,
and ultimately to respect whatwe were creating together.
(43:41):
This definitely createdhigher quality conversation
between Claire and I.
As a result, I felt trustedenough to take risks,
and discuss issues
that I rarely bring upin other conversations.
So thanks Claire, for creating that space.
(44:01):
One of my most curious knowing,
and non-knowing if that's a word,
was when Claire describesthe difference between,
offering sounds and words,
and words that sound like commas,
like and, versus wordsthat sound like full stops.
(44:25):
I'm curious how Clairewill play with this idea.
Hearing, seeing, sensing.
Based on the listeners'reflections, and their feedback,
some of them watched theoriginal part one video,
some listened to the audio,
(44:46):
some listened and watched,
and some of the listenerslistened to the audio,
watched the video more than once.
And what they all commented on is,
depending on the number oftimes they watched or listened,
(45:07):
they took somethingcompletely different away
from the conversation.
Although it was therelive during the recording,
I made a point to listento the recording first,
then I watched the video.
And each time,
I heard, I saw, and I sensed,
very different elementsof the conversation
(45:30):
that wasn't conscious to meduring the live discussion.
Watching is a reallyunderestimated part of listening,
and this is something Claireis very passionate about.
Claire's face, if you watch the video,
amplifies what she's sensing,and processing, and thinking,
(45:51):
which is highlighted,only when you're engaging
your ears, and your eyes,
as well as your heart in the conversation.
(water drop plopping)
I'm providing a link to the video
in the show notes on the website,
as well as the podcast appyou're probably listening on now.
(46:11):
So if you want to, you can scroll down,
and you can watch the YouTubevideo at your leisure as well.
Now, if you'd like to emailClaire with your reflections,
that's great, no doubtshe'll share them with me.
But if you want to shareyour reflections with me,
you can email podcast@oscartrimboli.com
with the subject line, "Listen."
(46:32):
And for 10 people, you'llreceive 20% off your enrollment,
into the fundamentals course,
where we spend eight weekslearning, practicing, reflecting,
and improving on our workplace listening,
with the very techniques wediscussed during this episode.
(46:53):
We'll give you two weeks to digest,
and provide your feedback.
What's changed in yourthinking, not what we said,
as Claire says,
before we publish to youwhat the listeners said
based on the original episode.
I'd love to share yourthoughts in there as well.
Email podcast@oscartrimboli.comwith the subject, "Listen."
(47:18):
and 10 people will receive20% off their first enrollment
in the fundamentals of listening course.
I hope this experiment of
hearing me, in a differentrole from the host,
creates a different perspectivefor you on listening.
I know it did for me.
(47:40):
Because of the wayClaire created the space,
she changed my mind,about the role of seeing,
about the role of sensing.
And she allowed me to take risks
I don't normally take in conversations,
and for that, I'm really grateful.
I'm Oscar Trimboli,
and along with the DeepListening ambassador community,
(48:00):
including Shaney Crawford,we're on a quest to create
100 million Deep Listenersin the workplace,
and you've given us thegreatest gift of all,
you've listened to us.
Thanks for listening.
(slow violin music)
(48:23):
(fast-paced violin music)
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