June 26, 2023 • 46 mins
In this episode, ADJUSTED welcomes Tim Hast, Author of "Powerful Listening Powerful Influence" and executive coach. Tim discusses why listening is important and some ways to improve our ability to listen.
Season 5 is brought to you by Berkley Industrial Comp. This episode is hosted by Greg Hamlin and guest co-host Matt Yehling, Directory of Claims at Midwest Employers Casualty.
Visit the Berkley Industrial Comp blog for more!
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For music inquiries, contact Cameron Runyan at camrunyan9@gmail.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Greg Hamlin (00:12):
Hello, everybody and welcome to adjusted. I'm
your host Greg Hanlon coming atyou from beautiful Birmingham,
Alabama, where Spring hasarrived, and the sunshine is
out. And with me is my co hostfor the day Matt yelling. Matt,
you want to introduce yourselfand say hello to everybody.
Matthew Yehling (00:29):
Hello, everyone. This is Matthew
Yaling, joining you from St.
Louis, Missouri along the banksof the mighty Mississippi.
Welcome.
Greg Hamlin (00:37):
Always glad to have you back, Matt. Thank you. Well,
I am super excited about ourguest today. With us today is
Tim Haast. And he is anexecutive coach and author of a
book called powerful listeningpowerful influence. And I first
ran into his book a number ofyears ago, and had always wanted
to do an episode with him. And Ithought, well, if I could figure
(00:59):
out how to get ahold of him,maybe he'd say yes. And so here
he is. So Tim, if you could sayhello to everybody, and maybe
introduce yourself a littlebetter than I did.
Tim Hast (01:07):
Well, thank you, Greg.
I'm Tim hesed. And I am as theysay, I'm glad to be here at my
gym. Glad to be anywhere. Butwelcome to you guys to my neck
of the woods. Since we're sinceI'm seeing you from Oklahoma
today. That's where we're at.
It's rainy and turning spraying.
And I've got tomatoes planet.
And I'm looking forward to aboutthe middle of July when the
tomatoes are nice and ripe. Sothat's where I am today.
Greg Hamlin (01:30):
You're making me feel guilty. I haven't gotten to
my garden yet. It's still got abunch of grass in it that I need
to turn over. So I need to getto get on that this weekend.
Well, Tim, I wanted to startlittle bit by just understanding
how you got into the coachingindustry. I know, obviously,
I've read your book. So I'm justcurious what brought you down
the path of one deciding towrite a book on listening? And
(01:51):
then maybe how did you end up inthe industry you're in, I'm sure
when you were a kid, you thoughtto yourself, This is what I'm
going to do.
Tim Hast (01:59):
When I grew up, I want to be a consultant. Well, I
started out Greg, I started outas a counselor, I'm a therapist,
I worked with couples, and Iworked with Angry Men. And then
the myrrh building bombinghappened back in April of ninth
and April 19 in 1995. And atthat time, I knew the chaplain
for the Oklahoma City FireDepartment. And he said I'd like
(02:20):
to send some of my firstresponders at, you know, it was
months later. And the firstresponders worked in the rubble
for about four weeks after thebombing. And this Chaplain said,
I need to send you some of mypeople. And so I started working
with first responders and DISAand just realized that I really
loved helping them. But there'sa problem when you're working
(02:42):
with trauma, I noticed that assatisfying as it can be to work
with people that are hurting, Ifound that my own bucket was
getting a little too full oftrauma, you hear stories over
and over. And we call itsecondary trauma when you're
listening to people, people'sstories. So that began to kind
of create a change in me. Andduring that time, I noticed
(03:02):
about a third of my clients werereally depressed. And about a
third of my clients were traumavictims. But about a third of my
clients were people that justdidn't know what they wanted to
be when they grew up. And theywere they would be asking me,
you know, helped me kind offigure out my direction. And,
you know, I discovered that Ireally loved I loved working
(03:23):
with all three of my mydifferent sets of clients. But
those clients that I was helpingthem with their career, I just
found that I had a reallypropensity for that. And, and it
was a way to not focus quite somuch on trauma. So I'm focused
on these people that are wantingto be better in their career.
And I discovered they have aname for that. Imagine this,
(03:43):
they call it Life coaching. AndI thought well, that's pretty
smart. That's pretty cool. So Ibegin to make the transition
from psychologist orpsychotherapist to executive
coach, actually keep mycounselling lives current my
counseling lives since say thatfast 23 times. I tried to keep
my license current and up todate, but mainly I coach and I
(04:05):
train. And I started enjoyingsuccesses as a coach. The more I
coach, the more people will saywe'll come talk to our group,
you helped me so help our group.
So I remember the first time Igot up and stood in front of a
bunch of people and got to talk.
And I realized this is reallyfun. I'm one of those really
sick people that instead ofbeing afraid of getting up in
(04:26):
front of people and talking, Ilove it. So that's kind of what
has led me to where I am rightnow. I do executive coaching and
I do training and I go in andanalyze systems I don't mean
operational systems, but peoplesystems and and really my vision
is I go into the workplace andhelp people get along and share
(04:48):
their toys. So that's where I amand that's what got me here.
That's awesome.
Greg Hamlin (04:55):
Well, I mentioned this as we were starting up, Tim
that about I think it's probablybeen seven or eight years ago, I
did a 360 review. And for thosewho don't know what those are,
they're it's a really a windowinto how others perceive you. So
you have your, your bossevaluates you, your peers, and
your direct reports. And so Imanaged a very large department
(05:17):
at the time of about 60 people.
So that that was a lot offeedback to receive, and it was
scrubbed down. And I had donethis years before and got quite
a bit of positive feedback, butprobably not as much
constructive feedback as I couldhave hoped for. And one of the
things that really stood out asI went through that was one of
the comments was the sub severaldifferent people didn't feel
(05:38):
like they were heard. And thatwas really surprising to me.
Because I always felt like I wasa really good communicator, and
the person leading the 360,probably could have done some
things different. But she'slike, well, what would your wife
say if you talk to her about it?
And I was like, I don't know,ask her if she's never said her.
And she goes, she actually waslike, Well, I think you you do a
(05:58):
good job. And I was thinking,Well, I must be missing
something. Because people areperceiving me this way, or some
people are. And so I bought abook on listening, hated it.
Whoever the author was, I don'tremember what the book was, but
it felt very condescending. So Ijust couldn't connect. And then
I picked your book up and readit. And I started doing some of
those exercises, some of thethings we'll talk about today.
(06:21):
And it was like, a switch wereon. And I've really felt like
it's impacted my relationshipswith my kids, my family, my
work. So I felt like there was alot to talk about, and really
would say, like, I've I've got awhole pile of books here. But of
all the books I've read, thatwas one of the most meaningful
so I'm really excited about thistopic of listening for you, Tim,
(06:44):
why do you feel like listeningis important?
Tim Hast (06:46):
I'm gonna answer that I'm gonna go around the block
the long way around the block toso that the answer that I come
up with is really tied to myexperience working with couples,
and also working with peoplethat were responding to the
bombing. In both of thosesituations, people are hurting.
And in that moment, life reallydoesn't make a whole lot of
sense. We learned from thebombing and, and also working in
(07:08):
other disasters, that the mostpowerful tool for helping people
move beyond trauma is to haveanother human being take the
time to really listen, listenwithout giving advice. And in
doing that, you know, as atherapist, we're trained to
listen. But I begin to realizeif I can teach my clients to
listen to each other, they wouldneed me so much if I could teach
(07:32):
them to really hear each otherin that moment when someone says
something to you. And the lastthing you want to do is listen,
the first thing you want tosmack him upside the head and
say, Stop doing that. But if Icould catch myself and remind
myself, they're hurting, andthey need to be, and they need
to be heard or hurting andheard, if I remind myself that
suddenly listening takes on awhole new dimension. So the wire
(07:58):
the rationale behind theimportance of listening, is that
it should number one tool inyour toolkit. When I begin to
make that transition intocoaching people in leadership,
people would come to me likeGreg, who had just taken a 360.
And often the 360 was say, hedoesn't listen, she doesn't
listen. And so the team would bereally ticked off of their boss,
(08:20):
because they would, they would,they would say, you know, I tell
my boss things, and he reallydoes. I'm not just using guys,
because it is not genderspecific. But the complaint was,
I'm having a problem with myteam. And after they would take
360, they would realize theproblem really was that the
person at the top was notlistening. And I realized that
(08:41):
in there that if I'm going tohelp people be better, the first
tool in their toolkit has got tobe the tool of listening more
effectively.
Matthew Yehling (08:50):
It's kind of like, when I take my dog to
training, I find out that I'mnot really training the dog, I'm
training the teacher, right?
Tim Hast (08:58):
That is so true.
Matthew Yehling (09:01):
In your, in your book, you actually outline
four reasons why people tend tobe poor listeners, maybe as we
launched this podcast you couldwalk through and those four
reasons.
Tim Hast (09:11):
Well, one of the reasons why people are poor
listeners is, first of all, andwe're going to come back to this
later, I'm sure is we make itall about us. The world revolves
around us. And if the worldrevolves around me, why in the
world would I want to listen toyou, Matthew? So that's one
reason. Another reason is whenwe're physically tired, when we
(09:34):
just want when it's the end ofthe day, and I'm worn out, you
know, even though I wrote a bookon listening, I'm just as human
as anybody else. And I have toremind myself to abide by my own
rules. So reminding myself, hey,you know, you might not be a
good listener right now. Or whenI've got a lot of stuff going on
when I'm in the office and twothings are happening at once. Or
(09:57):
when I'm thinking that I knowwhat the person and where
they're going, what they'resaying and where they're going
with that, that line of thought,and I go in one direction, and
they go in another direction,I'm adding to my reasons. And we
will probably come back to thisand talk about this more,
there's a word and the word ishalt. And the halt, halt stands
for when I'm hungry, when I'mangry, when I'm lonely. And when
(10:20):
I'm tired, when one of thosefour conditions exist, it makes
it really hard to listen, whenall I can think about is having
a Big Mac, then my ability tolisten is severely impaired. If
I am ticked off, if I've beendriving down the interstate, and
someone pulls in front of me andthrows in the brakes, and I'm,
I'm in a state of anger, thenI'm not going to be a very good
(10:41):
listener, if I feeldisconnected, or lonely, and I
don't mean lonely, like who Iwant to be married, I mean,
lonely, like, I haven't beenaround the people that bring me
joy that that encouraged me,then I have a propensity to not
really want to focus on people,or when I'm simply tired. I
can't tell you how many timesthis is a therapist, couples
would come in and sit and say,Oh, we had this terrible fight
(11:03):
the other night, and it wasterrible. And, and we said all
kinds of awful things to eachother. And they said, and then
we went to bed and the next day,we got up and we thought what
will we argued about last night,and I would look at them and say
you are simply tired, you'resuffering from halt, Hungry,
Angry, Lonely or Tired. So thereare many external variants that
(11:24):
keep us from listening. But Ithink the biggest one, and we're
going to come back to this isthat we tend to make the world
all about us. In just a littlebit, I'm gonna give you four
things that will help you be abetter listener. And we'll
revisit those things.
Greg Hamlin (11:40):
I think that's really powerful. Some of the
things you're mentioning there.
And I think probably that onecomment you just said is the
hardest to come to terms withthat we actually are thinking
about ourselves a lot. And it'sa hard thing to hear. Because
you think well, I care about allthese people. But one of the
things I've learned through myown experience, and through some
of the exercises was just thathearing somebody and having them
(12:02):
feel heard are different things.
So I might feel I took in theinformation. But if you don't
feel that I took in theinformation, because you don't
feel heard. It doesn't matter.
And I can remember, I've got sixkids. So I'm in the teenager
zone. Yeah, I got 18. One,right. My 18 year old when she
(12:26):
was about 1617. So not that longago, we were having a discussion
about kind of where she wantedto go with her life. And I was
just really trying to use mylistening skills and not my dad
lecture skills. As she wastalking, I said, so what I'm
hearing you say is I feel you'refeel really frustrated that what
I want for you and what you wantfor yourself are different
(12:50):
things. And she goes, Yes. Andthen when she said that, I was
like, You know what she feelsheard as the indicator right
there. Yeah. And I can't tellyou how many times I've had some
since I practiced it. I'm notperfect at it. But when you get
that response, whether it's froman external
Tim Hast (13:09):
response, when they go yes, when you hear the sigh in
their voice that you know, youconnected, you know, you hit a
homerun,
Greg Hamlin (13:16):
right. And it's so easy to be thinking about what
you want to say next, instead ofjust taking the time to slow
down and make sure youunderstand them and that they
feel understood. And I thinkthat's the biggest thing I've
had to keep working on. As I'mso busy. I've got six kids and I
got this job going 1000 miles aminute. Yes, slowing down. It's
hard.
Tim Hast (13:37):
I'm still stuck on you having six kids. That's crazy.
18. That's amazing.
Greg Hamlin (13:44):
That's a crazy world we live in. But talk to us
a little bit more about thedifference between hearing and
listening. I talked a little bitabout my experiences, but maybe
some of the things you've seen.
Tim Hast (13:54):
Sure. Well hearing is the psychological process of
attending to the sound in one'senvironment. I hear frogs, I
hear birds, I hear the wind blowlistening. And some people might
say well, you're making adistinction that's really not
there. But for me listening isfocused, it's concentrated, it's
an approach to understanding themeaning of the message that the
(14:16):
person is sending. We think inpictures, not words, I'm taking
the picture in my head, and I'mconverting it towards so that I
can beam it across space in yourhead where you convert it back
to pictures. And until thepicture that is in my head is in
your head, the transaction isnot taking place. So as a
listener, I'm trying to do mybest to hear what is that that
(14:40):
person is picturing in theirhead and recreate that picture
in my head.
Matthew Yehling (14:44):
Right and my shift gears on you a little bit
I know so in the work compindustry, you know we deal with
trauma everyday too. And I thinkyou know why we brought you on
and why we wanted to talk to youabout this is like for the
industry and for 10 prove ourown careers and In the careers
of our staff, right, it's, youknow, we have to be all be
better listeners. And before westarted, I talked to you a
(15:06):
little bit about, you know, thatwe're going through a big
innovation push and innovationis important. And you know, I
applaud you because you know,reflective listening was one of
the key phrases in your bookthat I picked up on, and we are
taught how to speak clearly. Andwe're not going to hear the hums
and ahhs that I'm saying in thisconversation, because Jacobs
gonna edit all that out. But,you know, we take speech
classes, we take those in highschool, we take them in college,
(15:28):
but there's no listeningclasses. So why do you think
there's more focus on the skillof speaking, and no emphasis on
listening?
Tim Hast (15:37):
Well, I think it's real simple, it's a lot sexier
to get up in front of people andtalk and make it all about me
than it is to be quiet and focuson the other person, I really
think that we can see the linebetween the action and the
results, the line of connectionbetween I'm going to get up,
stand up in front of people andspeak and communicate, and
(15:58):
success, we can see that directline, it's a lot easier to see
that line. But when we take thetime to listen, the dividends
are not quite so apparent in themoment. Sometimes they are when
you speak to your daughter, andyou're when your daughter's
speaking to you and you finallyhear her and she goes, yeah,
that is that direct connectionbetween what I'm doing and the
(16:21):
dividend, the payoff from that.
But often we don't see thatpayoff. And I just think that
it's a lot, it sounds a lot moreexciting to talk about being a
better communicator, when thetruth is, and I'm gonna preach
here. But the truth is, if Ilearn how to listen to Matthew,
If I learn how to truly hearyou, that I have a wonderful
roadmap that teaches me how tocommunicate more effectively,
(16:43):
because if I know what it takesto make you feel heard, and I
have the roadmap to effectivecommunication as well, that's
wonderful.
Matthew Yehling (16:53):
In your book, you also referenced that, you
know, even as a psychologist,you took one semester of
listening, right? And then evenin that class, you mentioned
that the focus was on how torespond to people wasn't even
like listening to them. Is thatchanged? Are we you know, like,
how is that possible? It's, youknow, it seems almost common
(17:13):
sense. But, you know, you're,you're the expert on this. Yeah.
So
Tim Hast (17:18):
I will, I'm not the expert on why people do what
they do that there's still a bigmystery to me as well. But I
simply think that it's just notas glamorous to talk about, I'm
going to sit down and be quietand listen to people as opposed
to, I'm going to get up in frontof people and communicate and
influence the minds of millions.
I know that that's, that's areductionist approach. I think
(17:41):
that's kind of big, using reallybold lines to describe something
that it's a lot more nuancedthan that. But I think the
bottom line is that we put a lotmore emphasis on what comes out
of our mouth and what goes inour ears who somebody write that
down. That was good. I don'tknow where that came from.
Greg Hamlin (18:03):
I agree. And I, you know, I think one of the things
that I've learned is that, to bea good communicator, if you want
to make real meaningful change,you need trust. And trust only
comes from showing respect andunderstanding. So whether that's
in your family or on your team,or wherever you're working with,
it's a really important key. Iwhen I started doing my own self
(18:27):
reflection, I realized one of myblockers was, I'm so busy, and I
have so many things on my listthat I want to go 100 miles an
hour. And I've had to learn toslow myself down. When people
come on my office, I turned myphone upside down, I locked my
computer, I slide away a Crayfrom my monitors, so that they
(18:48):
could see I am fully present foryou right now. And I'm not even
going to let those other thingsdistract me, even though I know
how busy I am. So that was oneof the things I worked on. But I
know there are other things thatcreate that make us bad
listeners. Tim, what are some ofthe other things out there that
you feel like are blockers thatcause us to be bad listeners?
Tim Hast (19:08):
Well, I want to mention something. One of the
things I do is I do personalityassessments and I do team
assessments so that everybody onthe team understands each other,
and people that are veryextroverted and very fast paced,
that's, that's one personalitystyle. All the personality
styles are good, there's not abad one. But because of that
nature of being really, reallyforward thinking and getting the
(19:31):
job done. They're like Larry,the cable guy, you know, get her
done. And it's like, let's getthis done. And that becomes the
enemy of listening becauselistening requires that I for a
moment, or for a few moments orfor a few minutes. I disabled
that need to move on to the nextthing and simply be present in
the moment. That's wonderful. Sowhen I revise the book, I'm
(19:53):
gonna go a lot more intosituational that what your
personality style is. There aresome things about the way you
listen and The way you want tobe heard that really impact
these different styles as well.
But that's for another book.
Greg Hamlin (20:06):
But we've as a company, I know we've looked,
we've done exercises in bothdisc and Strength Finders, and
both of those have been reallyeye opening just to kind of see
where your blind spots are andwhere your superpowers are, and
really get an idea of what okay,this is where we meet. And my
president who's now about toretire. He on the disk is
(20:26):
opposite of me. And one of thethings I learned through that is
that he likes to have all theinformation I have time to
process it before he makes adecision. So I will send I would
send him an email, explain allthe details about why I might
want to go down a path and Isaid, and then I'll I would tell
him, I'd like to meet him threedays after you've had time to
think about this. And he'd say,Greg, you know me so well, I
(20:48):
really appreciate that. I needthat. So I think there is
something to that we we processinformation differently.
Tim Hast (20:54):
We do we do. And I'm glad you all use the disc
because it makes my visual, itmakes sense to me. So good. Very
good.
Greg Hamlin (21:03):
So what are some of the filters that impact our
listening, we talked a littlebit about that, in your book, we
talked
Tim Hast (21:08):
about halt when I'm Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired.
Sometimes insecurity, if I feellike you're attacking me in and
you might do something that hasnothing to do with me, but if I
feel attacked, then I begin toleave the prefrontal the logical
part of my brain and I begin tomove down into the part of the
(21:29):
brain or fight or flight lives.
And when I'm down there, I getdefensive. By the way, when I'm
down there, I have the problemsolving capabilities of a four
year old. And as you who havehave a one year old, you've been
through this five times before,when they get to be about four,
when they get into conflict,they don't handle very well. And
that's where we go when we getdefensive and get insecure, we
(21:53):
begin to move down into thatpart of the brain that is not
equipped to listen, it doesn'twant to listen, it just wants to
go to battle and kill and maimand, and destroyed. So
insecurity. Another filter isreally, I'm gonna get trouble
for saying this, but it's moregender specific. Men tend to
have a lot more this DNA intheir their bloodstream than
(22:15):
females in my experience. Andit's that need to fix things.
When my wife comes in from workand I hear that she's had a bad
day, I can tell because I canhear it in her voice. And I know
better I wrote a book on it andand I tell people don't do this.
And I find myself doing it. Whatis it? I try to fix her? Now?
Oh, honey, don't feel that way.
It's gonna be okay. And I haveto remind myself, Tim, you
(22:37):
idiot. You wrote a book on this,you're supposed to listen and go
there with them. And then afterthey'd been heard, say you
would? Are you just wanting tovent? Or do you need me to kind
of brainstorm with you asolution on this. So fixing
things. And then physicaldistractions, I came up with a
new word Spitz, beware ofspirits, physical distractions,
(22:59):
which are spirits, which areshiny, pretty inconsequential
things. Because those thingsthat distract me I am add on the
disk, I'm a real high I and Ithink we invented add, and I get
distracted by stuff. So when Imeet someone for lunch at Panera
Bread or something, I always tryto get there early and sit where
I'm facing the wall. So we'll bedistracted by stuff in the
(23:22):
background. So those are some ofthe things that distract us. And
again, if I'm thinking about ahamburger, I'm really not gonna
be thinking about you. So whenI'm hungry, angry, lonely and
tired.
Matthew Yehling (23:34):
So I know we talked about some of these
things a little bit already. Butwhat is our listening tests? I
think that's the acronym you usein the book. And yes, we fit
some of the ar e already. Butwhat is what? What's that mean?
Tim Hast (23:49):
Well, let me give you something before I tell you that
when I wrote the book, they saythat necessity is the mother of
invention. And I had executivesthat were sent to me that had
just taken 360s. And the 360said, he doesn't listen, she
doesn't listen. And I thought,I've got to have some kind of
system, where I can give themsomething on a postcard,
(24:12):
something so simple, that theycan walk out of my office and
immediately implement it.
Because if you get people, reamsand reams and reams of stuff to
do, it's going to sit in a deskdrawer, and they're not going to
learn it, they're not going todo it. They're not going to
implement it. So I thought I'vegot to have some kind of a
system to remind them to listen.
So I thought, Oh, are youlistening? Okay? Are a that's
(24:34):
active listening. And when weengage in deep, powerful
listening, it is a very activething. It's not passive. I am
moving towards the person. I amtrying to picture everything
that I'm trying to visualizewhat they're saying. I'm
testing. So you're saying are soyou're feeling are are so that
really bothered you? And theymight say no, it didn't bother
(24:56):
me just made me mad. And so I'mstuck. going out and taking a
risk. So there's the activepart, the reflective part is
simply, in really goodlistening, we become a mirror.
So Greg is talking to hisdaughter, and she says, You
know, I'm really, really upsetby this, that you know, this
thing that you're doing. Infact, Greg, remind me what it
was that she was saying she
Greg Hamlin (25:18):
she said something along the lines of, I feel like
what you want for my future, andwhat I want for my future are
different things.
Tim Hast (25:26):
You feel like I'm trying to co opt your future.
Yeah, I feel like I'm trying totell you what to do. Yeah, I
feel like you feel like I'm theboss of you. That is reflective.
I'm going I'm reflecting notwhat exactly what they're
saying. But I'm reflecting theessence of what they're feeling.
When a human being has someoneelse reflect what they're
(25:47):
feeling, it connects at a deeplevel. And that's where you get
the Yeah, so this hurt inparentheses there saying,
Somebody actually hurt me forthe first time. So that's the
real reflective part. And theempathic part is, where you feel
where you Ooh, you know,someone's walking down the
street, and they fall down andhurt themselves. And when you
(26:11):
don't, you don't get injured,but you see them fall and go,
Oh, that hurts. There was an oldcommercial of animal Snickers.
Commercial. And there's an it'sBetty White, that guy turns into
Betty White, and there's thesome old guy that's also in the
commercial, and they and theyknock him down and he goes, ooh,
that hurts. And, you know,empathy is, it's feeling a
(26:31):
little bit of what someone'sfeeling it's, it's going there,
I will always be a short, baldwhite guy, I'll never know what
it feels like to be a female, ora person of color, or someone
really tall, because I'm sureI'll never understand those
things. But I can try, I can tryto put myself in their skin in
(26:52):
their shoes, and ask myself, ifI were going through that
experience, what would I feel.
So that's why listening is hard.
Because I'm active, I'm engagingin the process. I'm really
listening to everything so thatI can catch the emotion
reflected back. And I'm tryingto allow myself to feel imagine
what it would feel like to bethat person.
Matthew Yehling (27:13):
I've got a basically not taking your class,
but I can assume that it's goingto be like halt.
Greg Hamlin (27:22):
Ya know what, just to finish that story to end with
my daughter, after she saidthat, and we had that
discussion, then I slowed downand I said, You know what, I
think I can understand whereyou're coming from, because I
know my mom wanted certainthings for me that I didn't
want. And that was frustrating.
And you know what, you then wejust talked about it for a while
I said, you know, you'reawesome. And you're gonna do
(27:43):
some things I'm not gonna wantto do and it's gonna be okay.
Because you've got your ownpath, you're gonna have to walk.
And as we talk through it, Ithink like it was watching what
happened from her junior year toher senior year was so cool,
because she kind of found herown path. And now she's getting
ready to go to college atUniversity of Alabama with a
with a full ride. And I couldn'tbe more proud. Yeah, and it's
(28:05):
her path. But it takes lettinggo some and in trying to put
ourselves in the other person'sshoes to understand, well, what
are they feeling? Where are theyat?
Tim Hast (28:15):
That must have felt really good to be in that
moment, where instead of herbeing an adversary that she was
drawing from your, yourconnection with her. And it
Greg Hamlin (28:25):
took probably half an hour, the first 20 minutes
were a lot of her just beingupset. So yeah, that's the other
key when you're listening assometimes it takes a while to
get to that good spot, itdoesn't come right away. And you
have to do a lot of listening,
Tim Hast (28:39):
that connects with what you do. You're listening to
people that are distressed. Andeven if your job is to fix them,
you can't get to fixing themuntil you hear them. I was in
Birmingham, I just had one ofthe there's a downtown, there's
a place in downtown Birminghamthat has the best hamburger in
the world. It's a gourmethamburger place. And we're
flying home and I'm in theBirmingham Airport. And I'm talk
(29:02):
to the ticket agent at Delta.
And I said, Hey, I'm doing someresearch on customer service
satisfaction. I said, What doyou do when customers are really
upset? And she said, we'retrained to listen to them. She
said when they're really upset,they don't know what they want.
And so we just, we get them totalk and we listen to them. And
after they calm down, then wesay, What can I do for you? And
she says sometimes they'll stopoff mad, but she said, it's
(29:25):
amazing how many times if theplane doesn't leave, right, then
they'll come back a few minuteslater and say, I'm so sorry for
treating you that way. And thenthey'll ask for help. But delta
is training their people tounderstand that in the moment
when the customer is upset, youcan't fix them. The one thing
that you can do for them islisten to them and that begins
to disarm that that angst thatthey're suffering in the moment.
(29:48):
Great points. Yeah.
Matthew Yehling (29:53):
I mean, there's a there's the old nursery rhyme
I don't know if you've heardthis one. There was an old owl
that lived in an oak The moreyou heard, the less he spoke,
the less he spoke, the more heheard, oh, this man, we're all
like that wise bird.
Tim Hast (30:11):
You need to write that down and email me that because I
love it when I, when we do theEdit, we're going to want to do
a second addition that's alittle more scientific and, and
that would be a good addition tothe next version. So
Greg Hamlin (30:26):
we've talked a lot about empathy and the reflecting
piece of it. And we talked aboutwhere empathy fits into that.
Why do you think sometimes weforget that last piece to trying
to put ourselves in otherpeople's shoes, or what keeps us
from getting there?
Tim Hast (30:41):
Sometimes, and this is this is not a planned answer.
This is just off the cuff of mymy shirt. Sometimes I think the
level of intimacy that itrequires to enter into someone
else's pain is, is unbearable inthe human experience. Sometimes
we just last night, I was wornout, I had been I worked all
(31:03):
day. And I went to I'ma say, I'man elder on session at our
church. I went to a sessionmeeting, and I got home. And I
just put on my pajamas. And Iclimbed in bed. And I told my
wife, I said, I suck as alistener tonight. I just didn't,
(31:25):
I thought, I'm doing thispodcast tomorrow. And I'm
supposed to be the epitome ofgood listening. And here I am. I
can't even listen to my wife.
But I was just worn out. And howdid I get there? I got
distracted. What was thequestion? Now? I thought that I
think you're listening?
Greg Hamlin (31:41):
No, I think you're spot on on that on why we forget
to have empathy. Sometimes wejust get worn out and we just
get
Tim Hast (31:47):
worn out. And so at some point, we have to say I'm
human. And I'm going to dobetter next time. Yeah, I'm
going to do better next time.
Greg Hamlin (31:56):
I think, you know, one of the things you had in
your book was doing a listeningexercise where you kind of rate
yourself after everyconversation, how did I do on
these and I did that for a week,while I was reading it rating
myself after differentconversations. And that's I
think that helped me see some ofthe areas where I'm like, you
know, I could have done better,I should have, I should have
moved away from my monitors, orI should have locked my
(32:18):
computer, I should have turnedmy phone over. I didn't take the
time I rushed them out the doorbecause I heard what they said.
And then I don't know if Matt,you've ever had this where
someone comes into your office,and they start talking to you,
and you got what you needed fromthem and like the first minute
or two, but they're still there,and they talk for a really long
time and you're thinking aboutnine or other things you got to
(32:39):
do. It's hard to slow down andjust be like, You know what, I
need to be present in thismoment. Yeah, yeah.
Matthew Yehling (32:45):
Yeah, my technique is I stand up and walk
out of the office with them thatthey've tried out the past
probably shouldn't know that onthe podcast. You know, Tim, what
are what are some of theexercises or techniques, you
know, for, for us, but for theindustry as well the and to help
(33:05):
be better listeners to practicelistening better to be get to do
the our, I guess.
Tim Hast (33:11):
So what is the politician say? He says, I'm so
glad you asked that question. SoI'm so glad you asked that
question. Because my issue withexecutives, remember, I'm an
executive coach. And I saw thisnumber one deficit was that was
across the board was theinability to really listen. And
I thought I could have come upwith something that they can
(33:33):
remember. So I came up with fourthings. And here they are. And I
tell people write these down ona card, I've got a little
business card, I've got theseprinted on the card, and I tell
people carry the card around.
And every time you have aconversation, remind yourself to
do these four things. And if Iwere drawn a little stick
figure, I would point at thefoot and I would say listen
patiently, because when we'reimpatient, we tap our foot. And
(33:54):
then I would put another arrowat the little guy's body and I
would say listen with your body.
And then I would put an arrow athis throat. And I would say
listen with your voice. And Iwould put a final arrow at his
head and say listen with yourmind. Let's go deep, shall we?
Let's talk about the first one.
Listen patiently. All of ussuffer from a disorder that
(34:15):
happens at birth. When you're aweek old, and Greg has a lot of
experience with a baby is a weekold and they're hungry. What do
they do? They cry, they cry andwhat happens?
Greg Hamlin (34:31):
You can't feed them.
Tim Hast (34:33):
These giant hands appear out of nowhere and they
pick the baby up and they theyfeed it and when a baby is a
week old and he or she is poopygiant hands appear out of
nowhere and they take they cleanthe little baby up and they wrap
it up. And when uh you know whena baby's a week old and they're
sleeping, those giant hands showup. All the baby has to do is
(34:54):
cry and these giant hands showup. And when you're a week old
the entire world revolves aroundyou, all you have to do is make
noise. And all of your, all ofyour deepest needs are met. And
the problem is, we get to be 18,or 28, or 38, or 58, or 68. And
we never get away from thenotion that the world revolves
(35:18):
around me. Now asked thisquestion earlier, why in the
world would I ever think aboutlistening to you, if the world
revolves around me? I thinkabout that. And so we tend to
make when someone's talking tome, I tend to be in a hurry,
come on, get here, hurry up tosay what you're going to say. So
I get on down the road. Or asI'm listening to you, I'm
(35:40):
thinking, Well, I know theanswer that question, if you
shut up, I can tell you and weget this thing fixed and get on
down the road. So we tend tolisten and patiently listening
and patiently is listening andforming a judgment. Before we've
heard the whole story. Listeningand patiently is figuring out a
rebuttal. In our mind, if peoplecould read our mind, while
(36:02):
they're talking, we would be ina world of hurt, we would be in
big trouble thinking about thegolf game, or what we're gonna
do tomorrow, or I'm getting on aplane on Thursday, we're all
thinking about something else.
So listening patiently, isturning the volume down on all
that, and taking my foot off ofthe accelerator of life, and
slowing down and walking downthe road of life with that
(36:25):
person, it doesn't mean we haveto do that for three hours,
sometimes three minutes ofpatient listening means the
world to the other person. Sothe first thing I tell people to
do, is listen patiently. Andwhen someone begins to talk to
you, catch yourself in thatmoment and say, I'm going to let
go, I'm going to set my agendaaside, I'm going to go with this
person where they need to go.
(36:48):
The second thing I tell peopleis listen with your body. You
see, in communication theory,when we're really really upset
when we're in fight or flight.
Only about 7% of our listening,or our of our speaking is words,
then 30% of our speaking, or ourcommunication, when we're really
upset is the inflection of thewords, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, every
(37:08):
one of those, those is the sameword, but they mean something
completely different. So 30% ofthe communication is inflection.
And then a whopping 55% of our,of our length of our
communication when we're reallyupset, just when we're really
upset, is our body language. So738 55 7% words 38%. inflection,
(37:28):
and a whopping 55% is bodylanguage. That's how I
communicate when I'm reallyupset. Well, I've turned that
around and assume that, that forus, when I'm trying to listen to
a person that's upset that Ineed to do a lot more pay a lot
more attention to mind bodylanguage. So if they're
(37:49):
standing, I stand if they'resitting, I sit, I want to sit at
a 45 degree angle so that myshoulders are not squared, I
want to drop my hands on it, myhands are cross, I want to cross
my hands. If my legs are cross,I want to cross my legs and lean
into the conversation, I want tokeep within the four COVID-19 We
said said four feet, don't getcloser than four feet don't get
(38:13):
too much farther away than fourfeet is kind of a magic area.
And so I want to be conscious ofwhat my body is saying. The
bottom line is we want our bodyto say two things when we're
listening. The two things wewant the buyer to say is, I'm
open to what you have to say.
And you're safe with me again,and you're working with
(38:34):
customers over the phone, theycan't see your body. So that
requires that you do those otherthe other three a lot more. But
even when I'm listening and theycan't see my body, right now,
with you guys, I'm leaning intomy microphone, because when I
assume a posture of openness,research indicates that I
actually hear about 20% more. SoI tried to even when people
(38:59):
can't see my body, I still tryto hold my my arms and in an
open stance and open my body upbecause I'm wanting to
communicate to things thatyou're safe. And I'm open to
what you have to say. The thirdthing I tell people to do is
listen with your voice. And ifyou've gone to reflective
listening or some kind of classon communication, we all know
(39:20):
active listening. But theproblem is we teach people I
think I'm hearing so I thinkyou're saying so it sounds to me
like and those are all good.
Those are good places to start.
But I want you to get so good atlistening that you say that
really bothers you. You'rereally excited. You're really
upset that I where you're notsaying I think I hear because
(39:41):
they know you hear you just justmake it short, make it sweet,
toward they don't even realizethat you're you're reflecting
human beings when you begin toreflect and really hear them.
They're not even aware of whatyou're doing. They're just
feeling this sense of someone.
They're not even articulatingthat If someone is hearing me,
they're just sensing a freedomand a relief and, and a
(40:03):
satisfaction in the fact thatthey're heard, and they're not
even thinking, Oh, he's hearingme. So listening with your voice
is something that we tend tomake more of it than it really
is. When you guys leave thispodcast, when you walk out the
door, and you have aconversation with someone, just
as soon as you get done from thepodcast, remind yourself to
(40:26):
listen with your voice listeningwith your voice is listening and
restating a little bit of whatyou hear the person say, you're
really excited. You're having agood time. You're thinking about
that hamburger in Birmingham. Itreally wasn't good hammer.
That's kind of the theme today.
That's the third time I've saidhammer. It's like, why are you
making me hungry? craving ahamburger?
Greg Hamlin (40:49):
That's great. And I think the reflective part is
really important. And I lovewhat you said about your body in
that. We think that while we'reon the phone, people can't see
us. It won't, it won't matter.
And it really does. I noticed.
So before I got into claims whenI was still in college, I was
doing nonprofit fundraising forthe university, raising
scholarships for students. And Inoticed on the days that I was
(41:12):
struggling, like I was reallystruggling to connect with
people. If I just pushed mychair back and stood up, engage
more with my body, I got betterresults. And so there was
something about just it turnedon some things in my head, I
guess or my my voice, you couldhear that I had more energy,
that I was more connected andthat I was more engaged. So I
(41:32):
really do think there'ssomething to what you say about
even if you can't be next tosomebody, still how you Hi, how
you sit where you are, itmatters.
Tim Hast (41:43):
What a great discovery you just winked out on me. I'll
make sure making sure that Istill have audio. We're here.
Yeah, good, good, good, becausehe just went Max Headroom for
just a second. So listenpatiently with your body, listen
with your voice. And finally,listen with your mind. And
listening with your mind issimply visualizing what the
person is telling you. When youtold me you had six kids, I
(42:04):
pictured him, I could just seethem, you know, like the
stickers on the back ofminivans, you know, that has
mommy and daddy in thestairstep, I saw all six of the
kids. And it doesn't have to bea it can be a caricature. In
fact, the more colorful and themore outlandish the picture is,
the more it will help youremember what the person is
saying. And the beauty of when Ilisten with my mind, if I want
(42:27):
to listen with my voice, all Ihave to do is kind of look at
the picture that I've created inmy mind and just describe the
picture. And it helps me listenwith my voice. So I tell people
take these four things. Andevery time you anticipate that
you're going to have aconversation, if you've written
these things down, listenpatiently with your body with
(42:47):
your voice and with your mind.
If you've written these fourthings down on a three by five
card, or the back of a businesscard, if when you're approaching
that meeting, you're remindingyourself, okay, I'm gonna meet
with Jacob, and I'm gonna remindmyself to listen patiently, I'm
not going to make it all aboutme, I'm going to listen with my
body, I'm going to make surethat I'm open, I'm going to do
my best to hear what he's sayingand reflect back the emotion
(43:09):
that he's feeling. And then I'mgoing to just do my very best to
picture what he's saying. That'shard work. You need to know that
when you listen, and reallylisten, when you engage in our
listening, active, reflective,empathic listening, you're going
to be tired at the end of theday, because it is hard work.
But folks, the dividends are sogreat, that is worth all the
(43:32):
effort. I gotta tell you,
Matthew Yehling (43:36):
that's why I know your meeting last night was
effective. Because you came homewhen you were exhausted.
Greg Hamlin (43:45):
I think that's a great place to kind of tie
things up is, is just at one,it's something we have to
practice all the time. And it'snot something you arrive at, and
there are days that you're gonnayou're not going to be your
best, but it's just continuingto work at it. And when we do
that, the the results reallythey're there. Tim, as we wrap
things up, if people want toconnect with you, either to get
(44:07):
your book, I know I found it onAmazon. So I assume they can
find it there like I did, yes.
But if they were interested inyour executive coaching, or some
of the trainings you do, whetherthat's disk or some of the other
types of trainings that you do,how do they find you to
Tim Hast (44:22):
the world's easiest email address? I'm at
coach@att.net. That's COA CH, atsign a ti t.net. And I'd love to
hear from you. That's excellent.
Greg Hamlin (44:36):
Excellent. Well, one of the things that we're
doing this season because I it'sreally important to me that we
put good good stuff out in theuniverse. There's so much
negativity. And so one of thecommitments that I've made when
we did the podcast after we gotthrough the first season was I
wanted to end on something thatjust put some of that good stuff
back out there. And I'd like toask you this final question.
(44:59):
What's something you You'regrateful for
Tim Hast (45:01):
what am I grateful for? I'm grateful for people who
forgive me when I failed tolisten to them the way I should.
Greg Hamlin (45:09):
I think that is the most meaningful, grateful
thought this season. I lovethat, you know, and I think we
all probably could do a betterjob of forgiving each other of
our weak spots. So, what agreat, what a great way to end
Matthew Yehling (45:25):
that. Thanks, Tim. Thanks, Greg, this has been
great. We get to do thesethings. And it's a it's a lot of
fun. I always learn so much. Andthis one's been really special.
I think it speaks to me, youknow, in a management position,
I think hopefully it speaks tothose out there listening to
this adjusters or wherever youare in the in the whole worker's
comp process, you know, I thinkwe can all be better listeners
(45:47):
better communicators. Thank youvery much. I mean, halt in our
I'm going to remember that. AndI took copious amounts of notes.
Thank you very much.
Tim Hast (45:57):
Well, it's been a pleasure on my part. And I try
to listen well, but I'm an eyeon the disc. So I like to talk
to so anytime you guys want todo a podcast, give me a call and
we'll talk about we'll talkabout hamburgers or, or
effective listening or effectivespeaking or whatever you want to
talk about it. So thank you foryour time.
Greg Hamlin (46:16):
That sounds fantastic. Thanks again, Tim.
And I just remind all of ourlisteners our motto to do right
think differently and don'tforget to care. And that's it
for this week, guys. And we willsee you every two weeks as we
release on our regular schedule.
Thanks again.
Hello, everybody and welcome to adjusted. I'm
your host Greg Hanlon coming atyou from beautiful Birmingham,
Alabama, where Spring hasarrived, and the sunshine is
out. And with me is my co hostfor the day Matt yelling. Matt,
you want to introduce yourselfand say hello to everybody.
Matthew Yehling (00:29):
Hello, everyone. This is Matthew
Yaling, joining you from St.
Louis, Missouri along the banksof the mighty Mississippi.
Welcome.
Greg Hamlin (00:37):
Always glad to have you back, Matt. Thank you. Well,
I am super excited about ourguest today. With us today is
Tim Haast. And he is anexecutive coach and author of a
book called powerful listeningpowerful influence. And I first
ran into his book a number ofyears ago, and had always wanted
to do an episode with him. And Ithought, well, if I could figure
(00:59):
out how to get ahold of him,maybe he'd say yes. And so here
he is. So Tim, if you could sayhello to everybody, and maybe
introduce yourself a littlebetter than I did.
Tim Hast (01:07):
Well, thank you, Greg.
I'm Tim hesed. And I am as theysay, I'm glad to be here at my
gym. Glad to be anywhere. Butwelcome to you guys to my neck
of the woods. Since we're sinceI'm seeing you from Oklahoma
today. That's where we're at.
It's rainy and turning spraying.
And I've got tomatoes planet.
And I'm looking forward to aboutthe middle of July when the
tomatoes are nice and ripe. Sothat's where I am today.
Greg Hamlin (01:30):
You're making me feel guilty. I haven't gotten to
my garden yet. It's still got abunch of grass in it that I need
to turn over. So I need to getto get on that this weekend.
Well, Tim, I wanted to startlittle bit by just understanding
how you got into the coachingindustry. I know, obviously,
I've read your book. So I'm justcurious what brought you down
the path of one deciding towrite a book on listening? And
(01:51):
then maybe how did you end up inthe industry you're in, I'm sure
when you were a kid, you thoughtto yourself, This is what I'm
going to do.
Tim Hast (01:59):
When I grew up, I want to be a consultant. Well, I
started out Greg, I started outas a counselor, I'm a therapist,
I worked with couples, and Iworked with Angry Men. And then
the myrrh building bombinghappened back in April of ninth
and April 19 in 1995. And atthat time, I knew the chaplain
for the Oklahoma City FireDepartment. And he said I'd like
(02:20):
to send some of my firstresponders at, you know, it was
months later. And the firstresponders worked in the rubble
for about four weeks after thebombing. And this Chaplain said,
I need to send you some of mypeople. And so I started working
with first responders and DISAand just realized that I really
loved helping them. But there'sa problem when you're working
(02:42):
with trauma, I noticed that assatisfying as it can be to work
with people that are hurting, Ifound that my own bucket was
getting a little too full oftrauma, you hear stories over
and over. And we call itsecondary trauma when you're
listening to people, people'sstories. So that began to kind
of create a change in me. Andduring that time, I noticed
(03:02):
about a third of my clients werereally depressed. And about a
third of my clients were traumavictims. But about a third of my
clients were people that justdidn't know what they wanted to
be when they grew up. And theywere they would be asking me,
you know, helped me kind offigure out my direction. And,
you know, I discovered that Ireally loved I loved working
(03:23):
with all three of my mydifferent sets of clients. But
those clients that I was helpingthem with their career, I just
found that I had a reallypropensity for that. And, and it
was a way to not focus quite somuch on trauma. So I'm focused
on these people that are wantingto be better in their career.
And I discovered they have aname for that. Imagine this,
(03:43):
they call it Life coaching. AndI thought well, that's pretty
smart. That's pretty cool. So Ibegin to make the transition
from psychologist orpsychotherapist to executive
coach, actually keep mycounselling lives current my
counseling lives since say thatfast 23 times. I tried to keep
my license current and up todate, but mainly I coach and I
(04:05):
train. And I started enjoyingsuccesses as a coach. The more I
coach, the more people will saywe'll come talk to our group,
you helped me so help our group.
So I remember the first time Igot up and stood in front of a
bunch of people and got to talk.
And I realized this is reallyfun. I'm one of those really
sick people that instead ofbeing afraid of getting up in
(04:26):
front of people and talking, Ilove it. So that's kind of what
has led me to where I am rightnow. I do executive coaching and
I do training and I go in andanalyze systems I don't mean
operational systems, but peoplesystems and and really my vision
is I go into the workplace andhelp people get along and share
(04:48):
their toys. So that's where I amand that's what got me here.
That's awesome.
Greg Hamlin (04:55):
Well, I mentioned this as we were starting up, Tim
that about I think it's probablybeen seven or eight years ago, I
did a 360 review. And for thosewho don't know what those are,
they're it's a really a windowinto how others perceive you. So
you have your, your bossevaluates you, your peers, and
your direct reports. And so Imanaged a very large department
(05:17):
at the time of about 60 people.
So that that was a lot offeedback to receive, and it was
scrubbed down. And I had donethis years before and got quite
a bit of positive feedback, butprobably not as much
constructive feedback as I couldhave hoped for. And one of the
things that really stood out asI went through that was one of
the comments was the sub severaldifferent people didn't feel
(05:38):
like they were heard. And thatwas really surprising to me.
Because I always felt like I wasa really good communicator, and
the person leading the 360,probably could have done some
things different. But she'slike, well, what would your wife
say if you talk to her about it?
And I was like, I don't know,ask her if she's never said her.
And she goes, she actually waslike, Well, I think you you do a
(05:58):
good job. And I was thinking,Well, I must be missing
something. Because people areperceiving me this way, or some
people are. And so I bought abook on listening, hated it.
Whoever the author was, I don'tremember what the book was, but
it felt very condescending. So Ijust couldn't connect. And then
I picked your book up and readit. And I started doing some of
those exercises, some of thethings we'll talk about today.
(06:21):
And it was like, a switch wereon. And I've really felt like
it's impacted my relationshipswith my kids, my family, my
work. So I felt like there was alot to talk about, and really
would say, like, I've I've got awhole pile of books here. But of
all the books I've read, thatwas one of the most meaningful
so I'm really excited about thistopic of listening for you, Tim,
(06:44):
why do you feel like listeningis important?
Tim Hast (06:46):
I'm gonna answer that I'm gonna go around the block
the long way around the block toso that the answer that I come
up with is really tied to myexperience working with couples,
and also working with peoplethat were responding to the
bombing. In both of thosesituations, people are hurting.
And in that moment, life reallydoesn't make a whole lot of
sense. We learned from thebombing and, and also working in
(07:08):
other disasters, that the mostpowerful tool for helping people
move beyond trauma is to haveanother human being take the
time to really listen, listenwithout giving advice. And in
doing that, you know, as atherapist, we're trained to
listen. But I begin to realizeif I can teach my clients to
listen to each other, they wouldneed me so much if I could teach
(07:32):
them to really hear each otherin that moment when someone says
something to you. And the lastthing you want to do is listen,
the first thing you want tosmack him upside the head and
say, Stop doing that. But if Icould catch myself and remind
myself, they're hurting, andthey need to be, and they need
to be heard or hurting andheard, if I remind myself that
suddenly listening takes on awhole new dimension. So the wire
(07:58):
the rationale behind theimportance of listening, is that
it should number one tool inyour toolkit. When I begin to
make that transition intocoaching people in leadership,
people would come to me likeGreg, who had just taken a 360.
And often the 360 was say, hedoesn't listen, she doesn't
listen. And so the team would bereally ticked off of their boss,
(08:20):
because they would, they would,they would say, you know, I tell
my boss things, and he reallydoes. I'm not just using guys,
because it is not genderspecific. But the complaint was,
I'm having a problem with myteam. And after they would take
360, they would realize theproblem really was that the
person at the top was notlistening. And I realized that
(08:41):
in there that if I'm going tohelp people be better, the first
tool in their toolkit has got tobe the tool of listening more
effectively.
Matthew Yehling (08:50):
It's kind of like, when I take my dog to
training, I find out that I'mnot really training the dog, I'm
training the teacher, right?
Tim Hast (08:58):
That is so true.
Matthew Yehling (09:01):
In your, in your book, you actually outline
four reasons why people tend tobe poor listeners, maybe as we
launched this podcast you couldwalk through and those four
reasons.
Tim Hast (09:11):
Well, one of the reasons why people are poor
listeners is, first of all, andwe're going to come back to this
later, I'm sure is we make itall about us. The world revolves
around us. And if the worldrevolves around me, why in the
world would I want to listen toyou, Matthew? So that's one
reason. Another reason is whenwe're physically tired, when we
(09:34):
just want when it's the end ofthe day, and I'm worn out, you
know, even though I wrote a bookon listening, I'm just as human
as anybody else. And I have toremind myself to abide by my own
rules. So reminding myself, hey,you know, you might not be a
good listener right now. Or whenI've got a lot of stuff going on
when I'm in the office and twothings are happening at once. Or
(09:57):
when I'm thinking that I knowwhat the person and where
they're going, what they'resaying and where they're going
with that, that line of thought,and I go in one direction, and
they go in another direction,I'm adding to my reasons. And we
will probably come back to thisand talk about this more,
there's a word and the word ishalt. And the halt, halt stands
for when I'm hungry, when I'mangry, when I'm lonely. And when
(10:20):
I'm tired, when one of thosefour conditions exist, it makes
it really hard to listen, whenall I can think about is having
a Big Mac, then my ability tolisten is severely impaired. If
I am ticked off, if I've beendriving down the interstate, and
someone pulls in front of me andthrows in the brakes, and I'm,
I'm in a state of anger, thenI'm not going to be a very good
(10:41):
listener, if I feeldisconnected, or lonely, and I
don't mean lonely, like who Iwant to be married, I mean,
lonely, like, I haven't beenaround the people that bring me
joy that that encouraged me,then I have a propensity to not
really want to focus on people,or when I'm simply tired. I
can't tell you how many timesthis is a therapist, couples
would come in and sit and say,Oh, we had this terrible fight
(11:03):
the other night, and it wasterrible. And, and we said all
kinds of awful things to eachother. And they said, and then
we went to bed and the next day,we got up and we thought what
will we argued about last night,and I would look at them and say
you are simply tired, you'resuffering from halt, Hungry,
Angry, Lonely or Tired. So thereare many external variants that
(11:24):
keep us from listening. But Ithink the biggest one, and we're
going to come back to this isthat we tend to make the world
all about us. In just a littlebit, I'm gonna give you four
things that will help you be abetter listener. And we'll
revisit those things.
Greg Hamlin (11:40):
I think that's really powerful. Some of the
things you're mentioning there.
And I think probably that onecomment you just said is the
hardest to come to terms withthat we actually are thinking
about ourselves a lot. And it'sa hard thing to hear. Because
you think well, I care about allthese people. But one of the
things I've learned through myown experience, and through some
of the exercises was just thathearing somebody and having them
(12:02):
feel heard are different things.
So I might feel I took in theinformation. But if you don't
feel that I took in theinformation, because you don't
feel heard. It doesn't matter.
And I can remember, I've got sixkids. So I'm in the teenager
zone. Yeah, I got 18. One,right. My 18 year old when she
(12:26):
was about 1617. So not that longago, we were having a discussion
about kind of where she wantedto go with her life. And I was
just really trying to use mylistening skills and not my dad
lecture skills. As she wastalking, I said, so what I'm
hearing you say is I feel you'refeel really frustrated that what
I want for you and what you wantfor yourself are different
(12:50):
things. And she goes, Yes. Andthen when she said that, I was
like, You know what she feelsheard as the indicator right
there. Yeah. And I can't tellyou how many times I've had some
since I practiced it. I'm notperfect at it. But when you get
that response, whether it's froman external
Tim Hast (13:09):
response, when they go yes, when you hear the sigh in
their voice that you know, youconnected, you know, you hit a
homerun,
Greg Hamlin (13:16):
right. And it's so easy to be thinking about what
you want to say next, instead ofjust taking the time to slow
down and make sure youunderstand them and that they
feel understood. And I thinkthat's the biggest thing I've
had to keep working on. As I'mso busy. I've got six kids and I
got this job going 1000 miles aminute. Yes, slowing down. It's
hard.
Tim Hast (13:37):
I'm still stuck on you having six kids. That's crazy.
18. That's amazing.
Greg Hamlin (13:44):
That's a crazy world we live in. But talk to us
a little bit more about thedifference between hearing and
listening. I talked a little bitabout my experiences, but maybe
some of the things you've seen.
Tim Hast (13:54):
Sure. Well hearing is the psychological process of
attending to the sound in one'senvironment. I hear frogs, I
hear birds, I hear the wind blowlistening. And some people might
say well, you're making adistinction that's really not
there. But for me listening isfocused, it's concentrated, it's
an approach to understanding themeaning of the message that the
(14:16):
person is sending. We think inpictures, not words, I'm taking
the picture in my head, and I'mconverting it towards so that I
can beam it across space in yourhead where you convert it back
to pictures. And until thepicture that is in my head is in
your head, the transaction isnot taking place. So as a
listener, I'm trying to do mybest to hear what is that that
(14:40):
person is picturing in theirhead and recreate that picture
in my head.
Matthew Yehling (14:44):
Right and my shift gears on you a little bit
I know so in the work compindustry, you know we deal with
trauma everyday too. And I thinkyou know why we brought you on
and why we wanted to talk to youabout this is like for the
industry and for 10 prove ourown careers and In the careers
of our staff, right, it's, youknow, we have to be all be
better listeners. And before westarted, I talked to you a
(15:06):
little bit about, you know, thatwe're going through a big
innovation push and innovationis important. And you know, I
applaud you because you know,reflective listening was one of
the key phrases in your bookthat I picked up on, and we are
taught how to speak clearly. Andwe're not going to hear the hums
and ahhs that I'm saying in thisconversation, because Jacobs
gonna edit all that out. But,you know, we take speech
classes, we take those in highschool, we take them in college,
(15:28):
but there's no listeningclasses. So why do you think
there's more focus on the skillof speaking, and no emphasis on
listening?
Tim Hast (15:37):
Well, I think it's real simple, it's a lot sexier
to get up in front of people andtalk and make it all about me
than it is to be quiet and focuson the other person, I really
think that we can see the linebetween the action and the
results, the line of connectionbetween I'm going to get up,
stand up in front of people andspeak and communicate, and
(15:58):
success, we can see that directline, it's a lot easier to see
that line. But when we take thetime to listen, the dividends
are not quite so apparent in themoment. Sometimes they are when
you speak to your daughter, andyou're when your daughter's
speaking to you and you finallyhear her and she goes, yeah,
that is that direct connectionbetween what I'm doing and the
(16:21):
dividend, the payoff from that.
But often we don't see thatpayoff. And I just think that
it's a lot, it sounds a lot moreexciting to talk about being a
better communicator, when thetruth is, and I'm gonna preach
here. But the truth is, if Ilearn how to listen to Matthew,
If I learn how to truly hearyou, that I have a wonderful
roadmap that teaches me how tocommunicate more effectively,
(16:43):
because if I know what it takesto make you feel heard, and I
have the roadmap to effectivecommunication as well, that's
wonderful.
Matthew Yehling (16:53):
In your book, you also referenced that, you
know, even as a psychologist,you took one semester of
listening, right? And then evenin that class, you mentioned
that the focus was on how torespond to people wasn't even
like listening to them. Is thatchanged? Are we you know, like,
how is that possible? It's, youknow, it seems almost common
(17:13):
sense. But, you know, you're,you're the expert on this. Yeah.
So
Tim Hast (17:18):
I will, I'm not the expert on why people do what
they do that there's still a bigmystery to me as well. But I
simply think that it's just notas glamorous to talk about, I'm
going to sit down and be quietand listen to people as opposed
to, I'm going to get up in frontof people and communicate and
influence the minds of millions.
I know that that's, that's areductionist approach. I think
(17:41):
that's kind of big, using reallybold lines to describe something
that it's a lot more nuancedthan that. But I think the
bottom line is that we put a lotmore emphasis on what comes out
of our mouth and what goes inour ears who somebody write that
down. That was good. I don'tknow where that came from.
Greg Hamlin (18:03):
I agree. And I, you know, I think one of the things
that I've learned is that, to bea good communicator, if you want
to make real meaningful change,you need trust. And trust only
comes from showing respect andunderstanding. So whether that's
in your family or on your team,or wherever you're working with,
it's a really important key. Iwhen I started doing my own self
(18:27):
reflection, I realized one of myblockers was, I'm so busy, and I
have so many things on my listthat I want to go 100 miles an
hour. And I've had to learn toslow myself down. When people
come on my office, I turned myphone upside down, I locked my
computer, I slide away a Crayfrom my monitors, so that they
(18:48):
could see I am fully present foryou right now. And I'm not even
going to let those other thingsdistract me, even though I know
how busy I am. So that was oneof the things I worked on. But I
know there are other things thatcreate that make us bad
listeners. Tim, what are some ofthe other things out there that
you feel like are blockers thatcause us to be bad listeners?
Tim Hast (19:08):
Well, I want to mention something. One of the
things I do is I do personalityassessments and I do team
assessments so that everybody onthe team understands each other,
and people that are veryextroverted and very fast paced,
that's, that's one personalitystyle. All the personality
styles are good, there's not abad one. But because of that
nature of being really, reallyforward thinking and getting the
(19:31):
job done. They're like Larry,the cable guy, you know, get her
done. And it's like, let's getthis done. And that becomes the
enemy of listening becauselistening requires that I for a
moment, or for a few moments orfor a few minutes. I disabled
that need to move on to the nextthing and simply be present in
the moment. That's wonderful. Sowhen I revise the book, I'm
(19:53):
gonna go a lot more intosituational that what your
personality style is. There aresome things about the way you
listen and The way you want tobe heard that really impact
these different styles as well.
But that's for another book.
Greg Hamlin (20:06):
But we've as a company, I know we've looked,
we've done exercises in bothdisc and Strength Finders, and
both of those have been reallyeye opening just to kind of see
where your blind spots are andwhere your superpowers are, and
really get an idea of what okay,this is where we meet. And my
president who's now about toretire. He on the disk is
(20:26):
opposite of me. And one of thethings I learned through that is
that he likes to have all theinformation I have time to
process it before he makes adecision. So I will send I would
send him an email, explain allthe details about why I might
want to go down a path and Isaid, and then I'll I would tell
him, I'd like to meet him threedays after you've had time to
think about this. And he'd say,Greg, you know me so well, I
(20:48):
really appreciate that. I needthat. So I think there is
something to that we we processinformation differently.
Tim Hast (20:54):
We do we do. And I'm glad you all use the disc
because it makes my visual, itmakes sense to me. So good. Very
good.
Greg Hamlin (21:03):
So what are some of the filters that impact our
listening, we talked a littlebit about that, in your book, we
talked
Tim Hast (21:08):
about halt when I'm Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired.
Sometimes insecurity, if I feellike you're attacking me in and
you might do something that hasnothing to do with me, but if I
feel attacked, then I begin toleave the prefrontal the logical
part of my brain and I begin tomove down into the part of the
(21:29):
brain or fight or flight lives.
And when I'm down there, I getdefensive. By the way, when I'm
down there, I have the problemsolving capabilities of a four
year old. And as you who havehave a one year old, you've been
through this five times before,when they get to be about four,
when they get into conflict,they don't handle very well. And
that's where we go when we getdefensive and get insecure, we
(21:53):
begin to move down into thatpart of the brain that is not
equipped to listen, it doesn'twant to listen, it just wants to
go to battle and kill and maimand, and destroyed. So
insecurity. Another filter isreally, I'm gonna get trouble
for saying this, but it's moregender specific. Men tend to
have a lot more this DNA intheir their bloodstream than
(22:15):
females in my experience. Andit's that need to fix things.
When my wife comes in from workand I hear that she's had a bad
day, I can tell because I canhear it in her voice. And I know
better I wrote a book on it andand I tell people don't do this.
And I find myself doing it. Whatis it? I try to fix her? Now?
Oh, honey, don't feel that way.
It's gonna be okay. And I haveto remind myself, Tim, you
(22:37):
idiot. You wrote a book on this,you're supposed to listen and go
there with them. And then afterthey'd been heard, say you
would? Are you just wanting tovent? Or do you need me to kind
of brainstorm with you asolution on this. So fixing
things. And then physicaldistractions, I came up with a
new word Spitz, beware ofspirits, physical distractions,
(22:59):
which are spirits, which areshiny, pretty inconsequential
things. Because those thingsthat distract me I am add on the
disk, I'm a real high I and Ithink we invented add, and I get
distracted by stuff. So when Imeet someone for lunch at Panera
Bread or something, I always tryto get there early and sit where
I'm facing the wall. So we'll bedistracted by stuff in the
(23:22):
background. So those are some ofthe things that distract us. And
again, if I'm thinking about ahamburger, I'm really not gonna
be thinking about you. So whenI'm hungry, angry, lonely and
tired.
Matthew Yehling (23:34):
So I know we talked about some of these
things a little bit already. Butwhat is our listening tests? I
think that's the acronym you usein the book. And yes, we fit
some of the ar e already. Butwhat is what? What's that mean?
Tim Hast (23:49):
Well, let me give you something before I tell you that
when I wrote the book, they saythat necessity is the mother of
invention. And I had executivesthat were sent to me that had
just taken 360s. And the 360said, he doesn't listen, she
doesn't listen. And I thought,I've got to have some kind of
system, where I can give themsomething on a postcard,
(24:12):
something so simple, that theycan walk out of my office and
immediately implement it.
Because if you get people, reamsand reams and reams of stuff to
do, it's going to sit in a deskdrawer, and they're not going to
learn it, they're not going todo it. They're not going to
implement it. So I thought I'vegot to have some kind of a
system to remind them to listen.
So I thought, Oh, are youlistening? Okay? Are a that's
(24:34):
active listening. And when weengage in deep, powerful
listening, it is a very activething. It's not passive. I am
moving towards the person. I amtrying to picture everything
that I'm trying to visualizewhat they're saying. I'm
testing. So you're saying are soyou're feeling are are so that
really bothered you? And theymight say no, it didn't bother
(24:56):
me just made me mad. And so I'mstuck. going out and taking a
risk. So there's the activepart, the reflective part is
simply, in really goodlistening, we become a mirror.
So Greg is talking to hisdaughter, and she says, You
know, I'm really, really upsetby this, that you know, this
thing that you're doing. Infact, Greg, remind me what it
was that she was saying she
Greg Hamlin (25:18):
she said something along the lines of, I feel like
what you want for my future, andwhat I want for my future are
different things.
Tim Hast (25:26):
You feel like I'm trying to co opt your future.
Yeah, I feel like I'm trying totell you what to do. Yeah, I
feel like you feel like I'm theboss of you. That is reflective.
I'm going I'm reflecting notwhat exactly what they're
saying. But I'm reflecting theessence of what they're feeling.
When a human being has someoneelse reflect what they're
(25:47):
feeling, it connects at a deeplevel. And that's where you get
the Yeah, so this hurt inparentheses there saying,
Somebody actually hurt me forthe first time. So that's the
real reflective part. And theempathic part is, where you feel
where you Ooh, you know,someone's walking down the
street, and they fall down andhurt themselves. And when you
(26:11):
don't, you don't get injured,but you see them fall and go,
Oh, that hurts. There was an oldcommercial of animal Snickers.
Commercial. And there's an it'sBetty White, that guy turns into
Betty White, and there's thesome old guy that's also in the
commercial, and they and theyknock him down and he goes, ooh,
that hurts. And, you know,empathy is, it's feeling a
(26:31):
little bit of what someone'sfeeling it's, it's going there,
I will always be a short, baldwhite guy, I'll never know what
it feels like to be a female, ora person of color, or someone
really tall, because I'm sureI'll never understand those
things. But I can try, I can tryto put myself in their skin in
(26:52):
their shoes, and ask myself, ifI were going through that
experience, what would I feel.
So that's why listening is hard.
Because I'm active, I'm engagingin the process. I'm really
listening to everything so thatI can catch the emotion
reflected back. And I'm tryingto allow myself to feel imagine
what it would feel like to bethat person.
Matthew Yehling (27:13):
I've got a basically not taking your class,
but I can assume that it's goingto be like halt.
Greg Hamlin (27:22):
Ya know what, just to finish that story to end with
my daughter, after she saidthat, and we had that
discussion, then I slowed downand I said, You know what, I
think I can understand whereyou're coming from, because I
know my mom wanted certainthings for me that I didn't
want. And that was frustrating.
And you know what, you then wejust talked about it for a while
I said, you know, you'reawesome. And you're gonna do
(27:43):
some things I'm not gonna wantto do and it's gonna be okay.
Because you've got your ownpath, you're gonna have to walk.
And as we talk through it, Ithink like it was watching what
happened from her junior year toher senior year was so cool,
because she kind of found herown path. And now she's getting
ready to go to college atUniversity of Alabama with a
with a full ride. And I couldn'tbe more proud. Yeah, and it's
(28:05):
her path. But it takes lettinggo some and in trying to put
ourselves in the other person'sshoes to understand, well, what
are they feeling? Where are theyat?
Tim Hast (28:15):
That must have felt really good to be in that
moment, where instead of herbeing an adversary that she was
drawing from your, yourconnection with her. And it
Greg Hamlin (28:25):
took probably half an hour, the first 20 minutes
were a lot of her just beingupset. So yeah, that's the other
key when you're listening assometimes it takes a while to
get to that good spot, itdoesn't come right away. And you
have to do a lot of listening,
Tim Hast (28:39):
that connects with what you do. You're listening to
people that are distressed. Andeven if your job is to fix them,
you can't get to fixing themuntil you hear them. I was in
Birmingham, I just had one ofthe there's a downtown, there's
a place in downtown Birminghamthat has the best hamburger in
the world. It's a gourmethamburger place. And we're
flying home and I'm in theBirmingham Airport. And I'm talk
(29:02):
to the ticket agent at Delta.
And I said, Hey, I'm doing someresearch on customer service
satisfaction. I said, What doyou do when customers are really
upset? And she said, we'retrained to listen to them. She
said when they're really upset,they don't know what they want.
And so we just, we get them totalk and we listen to them. And
after they calm down, then wesay, What can I do for you? And
she says sometimes they'll stopoff mad, but she said, it's
(29:25):
amazing how many times if theplane doesn't leave, right, then
they'll come back a few minuteslater and say, I'm so sorry for
treating you that way. And thenthey'll ask for help. But delta
is training their people tounderstand that in the moment
when the customer is upset, youcan't fix them. The one thing
that you can do for them islisten to them and that begins
to disarm that that angst thatthey're suffering in the moment.
(29:48):
Great points. Yeah.
Matthew Yehling (29:53):
I mean, there's a there's the old nursery rhyme
I don't know if you've heardthis one. There was an old owl
that lived in an oak The moreyou heard, the less he spoke,
the less he spoke, the more heheard, oh, this man, we're all
like that wise bird.
Tim Hast (30:11):
You need to write that down and email me that because I
love it when I, when we do theEdit, we're going to want to do
a second addition that's alittle more scientific and, and
that would be a good addition tothe next version. So
Greg Hamlin (30:26):
we've talked a lot about empathy and the reflecting
piece of it. And we talked aboutwhere empathy fits into that.
Why do you think sometimes weforget that last piece to trying
to put ourselves in otherpeople's shoes, or what keeps us
from getting there?
Tim Hast (30:41):
Sometimes, and this is this is not a planned answer.
This is just off the cuff of mymy shirt. Sometimes I think the
level of intimacy that itrequires to enter into someone
else's pain is, is unbearable inthe human experience. Sometimes
we just last night, I was wornout, I had been I worked all
(31:03):
day. And I went to I'ma say, I'man elder on session at our
church. I went to a sessionmeeting, and I got home. And I
just put on my pajamas. And Iclimbed in bed. And I told my
wife, I said, I suck as alistener tonight. I just didn't,
(31:25):
I thought, I'm doing thispodcast tomorrow. And I'm
supposed to be the epitome ofgood listening. And here I am. I
can't even listen to my wife.
But I was just worn out. And howdid I get there? I got
distracted. What was thequestion? Now? I thought that I
think you're listening?
Greg Hamlin (31:41):
No, I think you're spot on on that on why we forget
to have empathy. Sometimes wejust get worn out and we just
get
Tim Hast (31:47):
worn out. And so at some point, we have to say I'm
human. And I'm going to dobetter next time. Yeah, I'm
going to do better next time.
Greg Hamlin (31:56):
I think, you know, one of the things you had in
your book was doing a listeningexercise where you kind of rate
yourself after everyconversation, how did I do on
these and I did that for a week,while I was reading it rating
myself after differentconversations. And that's I
think that helped me see some ofthe areas where I'm like, you
know, I could have done better,I should have, I should have
moved away from my monitors, orI should have locked my
(32:18):
computer, I should have turnedmy phone over. I didn't take the
time I rushed them out the doorbecause I heard what they said.
And then I don't know if Matt,you've ever had this where
someone comes into your office,and they start talking to you,
and you got what you needed fromthem and like the first minute
or two, but they're still there,and they talk for a really long
time and you're thinking aboutnine or other things you got to
(32:39):
do. It's hard to slow down andjust be like, You know what, I
need to be present in thismoment. Yeah, yeah.
Matthew Yehling (32:45):
Yeah, my technique is I stand up and walk
out of the office with them thatthey've tried out the past
probably shouldn't know that onthe podcast. You know, Tim, what
are what are some of theexercises or techniques, you
know, for, for us, but for theindustry as well the and to help
(33:05):
be better listeners to practicelistening better to be get to do
the our, I guess.
Tim Hast (33:11):
So what is the politician say? He says, I'm so
glad you asked that question. SoI'm so glad you asked that
question. Because my issue withexecutives, remember, I'm an
executive coach. And I saw thisnumber one deficit was that was
across the board was theinability to really listen. And
I thought I could have come upwith something that they can
(33:33):
remember. So I came up with fourthings. And here they are. And I
tell people write these down ona card, I've got a little
business card, I've got theseprinted on the card, and I tell
people carry the card around.
And every time you have aconversation, remind yourself to
do these four things. And if Iwere drawn a little stick
figure, I would point at thefoot and I would say listen
patiently, because when we'reimpatient, we tap our foot. And
(33:54):
then I would put another arrowat the little guy's body and I
would say listen with your body.
And then I would put an arrow athis throat. And I would say
listen with your voice. And Iwould put a final arrow at his
head and say listen with yourmind. Let's go deep, shall we?
Let's talk about the first one.
Listen patiently. All of ussuffer from a disorder that
(34:15):
happens at birth. When you're aweek old, and Greg has a lot of
experience with a baby is a weekold and they're hungry. What do
they do? They cry, they cry andwhat happens?
Greg Hamlin (34:31):
You can't feed them.
Tim Hast (34:33):
These giant hands appear out of nowhere and they
pick the baby up and they theyfeed it and when a baby is a
week old and he or she is poopygiant hands appear out of
nowhere and they take they cleanthe little baby up and they wrap
it up. And when uh you know whena baby's a week old and they're
sleeping, those giant hands showup. All the baby has to do is
(34:54):
cry and these giant hands showup. And when you're a week old
the entire world revolves aroundyou, all you have to do is make
noise. And all of your, all ofyour deepest needs are met. And
the problem is, we get to be 18,or 28, or 38, or 58, or 68. And
we never get away from thenotion that the world revolves
(35:18):
around me. Now asked thisquestion earlier, why in the
world would I ever think aboutlistening to you, if the world
revolves around me? I thinkabout that. And so we tend to
make when someone's talking tome, I tend to be in a hurry,
come on, get here, hurry up tosay what you're going to say. So
I get on down the road. Or asI'm listening to you, I'm
(35:40):
thinking, Well, I know theanswer that question, if you
shut up, I can tell you and weget this thing fixed and get on
down the road. So we tend tolisten and patiently listening
and patiently is listening andforming a judgment. Before we've
heard the whole story. Listeningand patiently is figuring out a
rebuttal. In our mind, if peoplecould read our mind, while
(36:02):
they're talking, we would be ina world of hurt, we would be in
big trouble thinking about thegolf game, or what we're gonna
do tomorrow, or I'm getting on aplane on Thursday, we're all
thinking about something else.
So listening patiently, isturning the volume down on all
that, and taking my foot off ofthe accelerator of life, and
slowing down and walking downthe road of life with that
(36:25):
person, it doesn't mean we haveto do that for three hours,
sometimes three minutes ofpatient listening means the
world to the other person. Sothe first thing I tell people to
do, is listen patiently. Andwhen someone begins to talk to
you, catch yourself in thatmoment and say, I'm going to let
go, I'm going to set my agendaaside, I'm going to go with this
person where they need to go.
(36:48):
The second thing I tell peopleis listen with your body. You
see, in communication theory,when we're really really upset
when we're in fight or flight.
Only about 7% of our listening,or our of our speaking is words,
then 30% of our speaking, or ourcommunication, when we're really
upset is the inflection of thewords, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, every
(37:08):
one of those, those is the sameword, but they mean something
completely different. So 30% ofthe communication is inflection.
And then a whopping 55% of our,of our length of our
communication when we're reallyupset, just when we're really
upset, is our body language. So738 55 7% words 38%. inflection,
(37:28):
and a whopping 55% is bodylanguage. That's how I
communicate when I'm reallyupset. Well, I've turned that
around and assume that, that forus, when I'm trying to listen to
a person that's upset that Ineed to do a lot more pay a lot
more attention to mind bodylanguage. So if they're
(37:49):
standing, I stand if they'resitting, I sit, I want to sit at
a 45 degree angle so that myshoulders are not squared, I
want to drop my hands on it, myhands are cross, I want to cross
my hands. If my legs are cross,I want to cross my legs and lean
into the conversation, I want tokeep within the four COVID-19 We
said said four feet, don't getcloser than four feet don't get
(38:13):
too much farther away than fourfeet is kind of a magic area.
And so I want to be conscious ofwhat my body is saying. The
bottom line is we want our bodyto say two things when we're
listening. The two things wewant the buyer to say is, I'm
open to what you have to say.
And you're safe with me again,and you're working with
(38:34):
customers over the phone, theycan't see your body. So that
requires that you do those otherthe other three a lot more. But
even when I'm listening and theycan't see my body, right now,
with you guys, I'm leaning intomy microphone, because when I
assume a posture of openness,research indicates that I
actually hear about 20% more. SoI tried to even when people
(38:59):
can't see my body, I still tryto hold my my arms and in an
open stance and open my body upbecause I'm wanting to
communicate to things thatyou're safe. And I'm open to
what you have to say. The thirdthing I tell people to do is
listen with your voice. And ifyou've gone to reflective
listening or some kind of classon communication, we all know
(39:20):
active listening. But theproblem is we teach people I
think I'm hearing so I thinkyou're saying so it sounds to me
like and those are all good.
Those are good places to start.
But I want you to get so good atlistening that you say that
really bothers you. You'rereally excited. You're really
upset that I where you're notsaying I think I hear because
(39:41):
they know you hear you just justmake it short, make it sweet,
toward they don't even realizethat you're you're reflecting
human beings when you begin toreflect and really hear them.
They're not even aware of whatyou're doing. They're just
feeling this sense of someone.
They're not even articulatingthat If someone is hearing me,
they're just sensing a freedomand a relief and, and a
(40:03):
satisfaction in the fact thatthey're heard, and they're not
even thinking, Oh, he's hearingme. So listening with your voice
is something that we tend tomake more of it than it really
is. When you guys leave thispodcast, when you walk out the
door, and you have aconversation with someone, just
as soon as you get done from thepodcast, remind yourself to
(40:26):
listen with your voice listeningwith your voice is listening and
restating a little bit of whatyou hear the person say, you're
really excited. You're having agood time. You're thinking about
that hamburger in Birmingham. Itreally wasn't good hammer.
That's kind of the theme today.
That's the third time I've saidhammer. It's like, why are you
making me hungry? craving ahamburger?
Greg Hamlin (40:49):
That's great. And I think the reflective part is
really important. And I lovewhat you said about your body in
that. We think that while we'reon the phone, people can't see
us. It won't, it won't matter.
And it really does. I noticed.
So before I got into claims whenI was still in college, I was
doing nonprofit fundraising forthe university, raising
scholarships for students. And Inoticed on the days that I was
(41:12):
struggling, like I was reallystruggling to connect with
people. If I just pushed mychair back and stood up, engage
more with my body, I got betterresults. And so there was
something about just it turnedon some things in my head, I
guess or my my voice, you couldhear that I had more energy,
that I was more connected andthat I was more engaged. So I
(41:32):
really do think there'ssomething to what you say about
even if you can't be next tosomebody, still how you Hi, how
you sit where you are, itmatters.
Tim Hast (41:43):
What a great discovery you just winked out on me. I'll
make sure making sure that Istill have audio. We're here.
Yeah, good, good, good, becausehe just went Max Headroom for
just a second. So listenpatiently with your body, listen
with your voice. And finally,listen with your mind. And
listening with your mind issimply visualizing what the
person is telling you. When youtold me you had six kids, I
(42:04):
pictured him, I could just seethem, you know, like the
stickers on the back ofminivans, you know, that has
mommy and daddy in thestairstep, I saw all six of the
kids. And it doesn't have to bea it can be a caricature. In
fact, the more colorful and themore outlandish the picture is,
the more it will help youremember what the person is
saying. And the beauty of when Ilisten with my mind, if I want
(42:27):
to listen with my voice, all Ihave to do is kind of look at
the picture that I've created inmy mind and just describe the
picture. And it helps me listenwith my voice. So I tell people
take these four things. Andevery time you anticipate that
you're going to have aconversation, if you've written
these things down, listenpatiently with your body with
(42:47):
your voice and with your mind.
If you've written these fourthings down on a three by five
card, or the back of a businesscard, if when you're approaching
that meeting, you're remindingyourself, okay, I'm gonna meet
with Jacob, and I'm gonna remindmyself to listen patiently, I'm
not going to make it all aboutme, I'm going to listen with my
body, I'm going to make surethat I'm open, I'm going to do
my best to hear what he's sayingand reflect back the emotion
(43:09):
that he's feeling. And then I'mgoing to just do my very best to
picture what he's saying. That'shard work. You need to know that
when you listen, and reallylisten, when you engage in our
listening, active, reflective,empathic listening, you're going
to be tired at the end of theday, because it is hard work.
But folks, the dividends are sogreat, that is worth all the
(43:32):
effort. I gotta tell you,
Matthew Yehling (43:36):
that's why I know your meeting last night was
effective. Because you came homewhen you were exhausted.
Greg Hamlin (43:45):
I think that's a great place to kind of tie
things up is, is just at one,it's something we have to
practice all the time. And it'snot something you arrive at, and
there are days that you're gonnayou're not going to be your
best, but it's just continuingto work at it. And when we do
that, the the results reallythey're there. Tim, as we wrap
things up, if people want toconnect with you, either to get
(44:07):
your book, I know I found it onAmazon. So I assume they can
find it there like I did, yes.
But if they were interested inyour executive coaching, or some
of the trainings you do, whetherthat's disk or some of the other
types of trainings that you do,how do they find you to
Tim Hast (44:22):
the world's easiest email address? I'm at
coach@att.net. That's COA CH, atsign a ti t.net. And I'd love to
hear from you. That's excellent.
Greg Hamlin (44:36):
Excellent. Well, one of the things that we're
doing this season because I it'sreally important to me that we
put good good stuff out in theuniverse. There's so much
negativity. And so one of thecommitments that I've made when
we did the podcast after we gotthrough the first season was I
wanted to end on something thatjust put some of that good stuff
back out there. And I'd like toask you this final question.
(44:59):
What's something you You'regrateful for
Tim Hast (45:01):
what am I grateful for? I'm grateful for people who
forgive me when I failed tolisten to them the way I should.
Greg Hamlin (45:09):
I think that is the most meaningful, grateful
thought this season. I lovethat, you know, and I think we
all probably could do a betterjob of forgiving each other of
our weak spots. So, what agreat, what a great way to end
Matthew Yehling (45:25):
that. Thanks, Tim. Thanks, Greg, this has been
great. We get to do thesethings. And it's a it's a lot of
fun. I always learn so much. Andthis one's been really special.
I think it speaks to me, youknow, in a management position,
I think hopefully it speaks tothose out there listening to
this adjusters or wherever youare in the in the whole worker's
comp process, you know, I thinkwe can all be better listeners
(45:47):
better communicators. Thank youvery much. I mean, halt in our
I'm going to remember that. AndI took copious amounts of notes.
Thank you very much.
Tim Hast (45:57):
Well, it's been a pleasure on my part. And I try
to listen well, but I'm an eyeon the disc. So I like to talk
to so anytime you guys want todo a podcast, give me a call and
we'll talk about we'll talkabout hamburgers or, or
effective listening or effectivespeaking or whatever you want to
talk about it. So thank you foryour time.
Greg Hamlin (46:16):
That sounds fantastic. Thanks again, Tim.
And I just remind all of ourlisteners our motto to do right
think differently and don'tforget to care. And that's it
for this week, guys. And we willsee you every two weeks as we
release on our regular schedule.
Thanks again.
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