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Podcast Episode 054: The Five Levels of Listening – Listening to Yourself (Part 2)

Oscar Trimboli:

What do you think you struggle with when it comes to listening?

 

Nell Norman-Nott:

Keeping my mind focused on that person that I’m talking to and not the other things around me.

 

Oscar Trimboli:

Deep Listening, impact beyond words. I’m Oscar Trimboli and this is the Apple Award winning podcast, Deep Listening. Designed to move you from an unconscious and distracted listener to a deep and impactful listener. Did you know you spend 55% of your day listening yet only 2% of us have had any training in how to listen. Frustration, misunderstanding, wasted time and opportunity, along with creating poor relationships, are just some of the costs of not listening. Each episode of the series is designed to provide you with practical, actionable and impactful tips to move you through the five levels of listening.

I invite you to visit oscartrimboli.com/facebook to learn more about the five levels of listening, and how to learn from others who are listening better. Joining me is our co-host, Nell Norman-Nott who will ask the questions that you’ve been asking and asking me the questions I haven’t considered to help make you a deep and impactful listener.

In this episode, we explore distraction. It’s the number one barrier to listening. And when you connect and understand with distraction, you’ll see its present in every single one of the four villains of listening. The lost listener, the dramatic listener, the interrupting listener, and the shrewd listener, are all characters you’ll be familiar with if you’ve read the Deep Listening book.

Distraction is present in every one of these four villains in a very different way. The lost listener is distracted before the conversation, they’re lost in their own thoughts. That dramatic listener is distracted by what the speaker is saying. The interrupting listener, they’re distracted by what’s on their mind and what they’re desperate to say before the other person finishes. And finally, the shrewd listener, they are distracted by the solution that they formulating in their head based on what the speaker is saying, and maybe what the speaker is not saying. You might be distracted right now. And to be honest, I’m distracted right now by thinking about my recent trip to India.

Nell Norman-Nott:

Tell us about India because I just have this image that it must be such a different kind of place when it comes to listening, and culturally they must just be so different to here in Australia. 

Oscar Trimboli:

Yeah. And I think different to the UK, different to the US, different to Canada, different to Singapore, to New Zealand, different to China. And yet in that difference, there’s so many similarities. Could I see distraction everywhere in India, there’s distractions from traffic. There’s distractions from the physical location of how closely people are sitting compared to in the west where there seems to be a little bit more space. So that creates another level of distraction as well. To continue on the theme of distraction, I had the opportunity to do four podcast interviews while I was there. So I know it’s not answering your question, but I get distracted because I was so excited about the interviews. 

I got to interview a retired major general from the Indian Armed Forces who was trapped in the Himalayas for nearly 21 days with a Sherpa. I had the opportunity to interview the former Ambassador of Iceland who was also the chief judge of the court of the high seas, I never even knew there was such a thing. And it was fascinating the way he talked about listening across cultures and across the seas. And then I had the opportunity to interview the form of Syrian ambassador. The way an ambassador has to listen piqued my curiosity because you have to influence through listening as an ambassador as much as you have to influence through speaking. 

Again, sorry, Nell to distract from the topic. But these are all coming up in future episodes of deep listening, where we’ll put these podcast episodes together. The last one, I interviewed a journalist who went into the north of India to interview somebody who’d taken two Italians as hostages, and he and the cameraman became hostages in the process of meeting with the captors. The journalist got into this very journalistic approach was asking lots of antagonistic questions of their captors. And then at night, sleeping literally two inches from each other, the cameraman and the journalists were facing each other.

The cameraman said, we are going to die unless you start asking different questions. Because they have guns and we don’t. So if they don’t like the kinds of questions you’re asking, and I can tell because I’m looking into the camera while you’re asking these questions, we may well die. And it was that bit of advice about listening differently, that this journalist said literally not only save their life, but also save the life of the hostage. Anyway, where were we?

Nell Norman-Nott:

I’m totally distracted now, Oscar.

Oscar Trimboli:

In this episode of Deep Listening, we’re talking about distraction. What happens when we get distracted?

Nell Norman-Nott:

It builds on our last episode, Oscar, where we talked about the barriers to listening.

Oscar Trimboli:

Nell, you’re right. In the last episode, we talked about a lot of the barriers that are getting in people’s way. What people are really struggling with, whether we heard that in the Facebook group or the research. Even today, Nell, I’m getting lovely pieces of feedback from people listening to Deep Listening podcast. Thank you, to the people who are sending me audio messages. They’re recording them on the phone or going to the podcast website. And there’s a little button there where you can record an audio message.

Malanie:

Hi, this is Melanie in Michigan, and I’ve noticed that my communication challenges are directly tied to technology and specifically, my cell phone. I’ve noticed that if I’m on my phone doing something for fun or even for work, that when people talk to me or interrupt me that I still tend to look at my phone. I’m aware that that’s poor communication. I don’t appreciate it when that happens to me when I’m trying to talk to somebody and they’re looking at their phone. So my challenge and my question would be, really how can we balance using technology and being productive but still being present and available for communication with our co-workers and also the people in our lives that we love? So, thank you very much.

Oscar Trimboli:

Whether in the research or the Facebook group distraction, distraction, distraction is the biggest barrier to listening. And if distraction is the villain, then attention and focus are the superheroes of listening. 

Nell Norman-Nott:

We saw that exact fact very clearly in the research, Oscar. We conducted research with Audience Insight and Heidi Martin to 1,410 people. This listening research was all about evidencing some of the things that you’ve seen Oscar in your conversations and your work with clients and your work with organisations, and about the level that people are at when it comes to listening. What we found was that in alignment with what you’ve said to me, since we’ve been working together is that most of us, me, I know for sure, struggle at level one and level two listening. 

It came through loud and clear in the insights that we got from these people that gave us feedback, was that 95% of the people who completed the surveys struggle at level one and level two listening. So those are the really foundational things and distraction, as we’re talking about today is clearly at level one.

It shouldn’t surprise me that much that 95% of people struggle at this level one listening because I know myself, I get to distracted and clearly you due to, Oscar, talking about India. I’m not alone because 81% of people in our research struggle with that particular facet of distraction, and they get lost when they’re listening to someone else in the conversation. The research also showed that having to repeat ourselves because someone else is distracted and they’re not listening to us is the biggest frustration. So distraction frustrates us about ourselves, and it frustrates us about others.

Oscar Trimboli:

Have you ever been in a situation like that, where you kind of had somebody that you’ve worked with completely distracted? In my consulting work when I listen to the leadership teams, the biggest complaint their staff always have is, “My leader has the attention span of a goldfish.” 

Nell Norman-Nott:

I have definitely heard that one before. I worked with someone called Mike who was … He was in MD, busy advertising company, and lovely, lovely man, really kind, enthusiastic. People loved him, people genuinely really got along with Mike. Mike struggle with distraction was not, should we say subtle. In fact, Mike actually received feedback in their reviews, in their engagement surveys.

Oscar Trimboli:

You mean those famous employee surveys?

Nell Norman-Nott:

To be fair to Mike, he wanted to do something about it.

Oscar Trimboli:

Good for him.

Nell Norman-Nott:

But he received feedback from the employees about his lack of listening skills. So just like you said, attention span of a goldfish. But what Mike would do, he’d be sat in the team meeting and he drift off, and then he would physically move and change his position on his seat because he realised that he wasn’t listening to what somebody had been talking about. Whether it was the marketing plans that were coming up or whatever else it might have been. He would sort of shake himself. This made it very apparent to the room and everybody there that he hadn’t been listening. So Mike’s tendency to be distracted frustrated himself, but it also frustrated the room and the employees enough that they gave that kind of feedback.

Oscar Trimboli:

I think I’ve met Mike’s and I think I’ve met Michelle’s and I think I’ve met Mark’s and I think I’ve met Mary’s in all kinds of similar situations. But while I was listening to you talking about the research, I reckon we should get Heidi on. What do you reckon? 

Nell Norman-Nott:

Absolutely. I think we should get Heidi Martin on. She would add a lot of value. 

Oscar Trimboli:

I think of Heidi’s superpower is her gigantic brain. The way she can synthesise very complex sets of data into very simple sentences is amazing. She’s so powerful. She’s so potent. I’m really excited. Did we just decide that real time?

Nell Norman-Nott:

I think we just made a plan. So Heidi, I hope you listening because …

Oscar Trimboli:

I think, Nell, let’s come back to distraction. I think we’ve joke a bit about distraction, and probably that’s a good posture to adopt with distraction. Let’s be light with distraction. I always say when I speak on the topic of listening, the difference between a distracted listener and a deep listener, isn’t that a deep listener is never distracted. It’s that a deep listener knows and notices they’re distracted and does something about it. Where’s the distracted listener just continues on.

So for all of us, let’s think about distraction really simply. Is it my own distraction or is it distraction that’s been created outside of me? Is it distraction in my own head? Is it distraction created by the speaker? Is what they’re saying actually distracting and drifting the off as happened earlier when I was talking about India? I’m supposed to be good Deep Listening role model now. What have I done? The external distraction can just be noise in the coffee shop. It can be noise that exists in the ambient noise. Coming up in a future episode we interviewed Caroline from Seek who’s the head of their market research, and she talks about how ambient noise alone distracts her.

Caroline:

It’s interesting I was in New Zealand a few weeks ago and conducting some qualitative research, these lovely one on one interviews. I think pretty much all of them I set up and they were meeting in a café. Now, I’m just recording these interviews for my benefit so that I have an opportunity to not be listening in the moment but also have the opportunity to go back and remind myself and refresh myself. I just use my iPhone and mic system on that. I was surprised at the level of background noise. I mean, the audio from me and the other people was fantastic. Like it’s crystal clear, but there’s that just base harm, that habit of …

It almost sounded like a sound engineer or recording artists had put in tingles of cups and plates. It’s only when I listened back to it in retrospect that I realise how much extraneous noise we must constantly be filtering out to tune into the salient message and really connect with the person that we’re trying to speak to, or trying to listen to. And all this cacophony.

Oscar Trimboli:

But Nell, I think a lot of people think about distraction only as it relates to when we’re in the conversation, and we can get distracted before as well as after the conversation too.

Nell Norman-Nott:

Hang on a minute. I’m really curious. How can you get distracted after?

Oscar Trimboli:

Distracted after is really simple. Do you take notes when you’re in a meeting?

Nell Norman-Nott:

I always take note.

Oscar Trimboli:

And you take verbatim notes, meaning you’re literally writing words?

Nell Norman-Nott:

Yeah. All the time.

Oscar Trimboli:

Of all those notes in all those meetings, have you always actioned all of those actions from the meetings?

Nell Norman-Nott:

I would love to say yes, Oscar, probably not.

Oscar Trimboli:

We get distracted after the meeting because we have all good intentions, that what we heard, we will go into action. But because we’re not listening, we’re not actually accepting them. So coming up in a future episode, we talked to World Memory Champion, Boris Konrad, who encourages all of us to take fewer more graphical notes that are more around the meaning and the actions required from the meeting. So we can get distracted after the meeting quite significantly. You can get distracted not only in the conversation, but you can get distracted before and after the conversation. 

Nell Norman-Nott:

How are you distracted beforehand?

Oscar Trimboli:

It could be a hangover from the night before, it could be a hangover of information rather than just alcohol. It could be the hangover from the previous meeting. It could be a hangover from a phone call we’ve just taken. It could be a hangover from an argument we just finish off. It could be a hangover from all kinds of things. But I think for a lot of us, we’re distracted before we even get into the conversation because we’re not present in the dialogue. We’re thinking about all the things rather than being present and in the moment.

Andrew:

Hi, Oscar. It’s Andrew from Orange County, California. And after a bit of thinking, I’ve realised that I struggle with allowing silence, especially when I’m in client meetings, when I feel like I need to be in the driver’s seat the whole time. So do you have any suggestions on how to make a bigger impact with my listening when I’m running these meetings? Thanks.

Oscar Trimboli:

Nell, as much as I can go with my gut feel, as much as I can go with my consulting experience, as much as I can go with what people come up and talk to me after I’ve spoken on a big stage about the topic of listening. As much as I get text messages from people. I think the evidence is always in the research and what people actually say. So thinking about those, listening to yourself, and then getting distracted by what else is outside of you. What is the research say?

Nell Norman-Nott:

Basing from the research reflects exactly that. So people are distracted by themselves, and they will face also distracted by things that are external to them. So for example, we heard from someone who said, focus, elimination of daydreaming while listening. Someone else said, my focus, my mind tends to drift to what I’m going to say next or what I need to do later. So they’re distracting themselves. People were also distracted by something that’s external, that’s happening in their environment. So being able to focus on the speaker, and not my phone, that’s going to be key. I mean, phones are just everywhere now.

Oscar Trimboli:

Look, they have their place. But please, can we switch them to flight mode? That’s the simplest thing I’ll encourage everybody to do. If you’re in a conversation that matters, honestly, all of them do. If you’re in a conversation that matters, switch the phone to flight mode, and show the person you’re speaking to that you’re doing it. You will set the tone for them to probably do exactly the same.

Nell Norman-Nott:

Such a great tip and something I don’t think I do often enough. Also, it’s not just phones, someone here said, how to block outside noises and focus better on the conversation that I’m present in. I mean, go back to your story about India, I suppose Oscar, you mentioning all the distractions there and the noise.

Oscar Trimboli:

That’s one of the beautiful contrast of India’s is amazing cacophony of noise. I didn’t worry about it, it was just there. And after a while, you do tune out to it. Where we focus our attention matters and our environment sets that up. I’m really excited to be interviewing a professor from the Netherlands, who’s written a book on How Attention Works. That’s going to help us. It’s booked in, we haven’t done the recording yet. But I’m really excited about what that means for everyone to improve where their attention focus is at.

Nell Norman-Nott:

I got to read the first couple of pages of that book today, Oscar, and background in marketing and just knowing how challenging it can be to get people’s attention in our society today. That’s an episode I can’t wait to listen into.

Oscar Trimboli:

The reality, Nell, for probably a good 86% of our audience is listening right now, they’re distracted. And that’s okay guys, come back in. Welcome back. 

Nell Norman-Nott:

What tips would you have for people to overcome distraction.

Oscar Trimboli:

The important thing is just know you’re distracted. Just noticing is a huge step forward from where you want to be. If the neuroscience has taught us one thing, our mind can adapt to complexity really well, as long as we’re conscious of it. But there’s always those three key tips. Number one, switch the phone off. In best case scenario, switch into flight mode, if you’re really addicted, and switch it to silent if you’re a complete addict. Tip number two, a hydrated a brain is a listening brain. 

So for me, one of the things I make sure that I do is make sure that if I go and visit a client, I ask for a glass of water, not just for myself, but for the person I’m meeting or the table. And if I’m really stuck, I always carry a bottle of water in my bag as well. And then finally, because the brain consumes 26% of the blood sugars and is only 5% of the body mass, is really hungry task to undertake. Listening is hard work. So when you’re listening, some people literally say to me, my head hurts.

Nell Norman-Nott:

I can totally relate to that, Oscar. In fact, I remember one of the first times you and I spoke, you talked me through what deep listening and I was like, yeah. Okay. Cool. Sounds fascinating. Tell me more, tell me more. And then I started trying to put it into practise. I caught up with you about a month later and I said, I’m really tired. You were like, yeah, that’s because you’re flexing your muscles, you’re learning something new. It was a good learning, actually, because I thought, maybe I’m not as bad at this as I thought I was. I’m tired from it, so maybe I’m doing something right.

Oscar Trimboli:

So for me, Nell, when I go from swim season to run season, swim season, the body’s pretty comfortable, it’s really working the lungs. But when I go into run season, suddenly the calf muscles are sore, the hip flexors are sore, the back’s sore. And then by week five, the muscle memory comes back from last year. So, I think it’s a practise.

Nell Norman-Nott:

Thing I can relate it to the most is, I do Pilates. I’ve been doing it now for a couple of years pretty regularly or as often as I can. I know that that’s a practise. I do Pilates on the reformer bed. So have you ever had to go of those Oscar?

Oscar Trimboli:

Reformer beds. I don’t even know how those two words go together?

Nell Norman-Nott:

Let me explain it a little bit. So don’t think of a normal bed.

Oscar Trimboli:

I’m definitely not.

Nell Norman-Nott:

It’s a frame with a moving platform that’s connected to the platform with the series of springs and so-

Oscar Trimboli:

So how big are these springs?

Nell Norman-Nott:

They’re pretty long. About the length of your arm, and you’re lying down. You can put your feet on a platform and the number of springs that are connected to the frame of the bed from the platform that you’re lying on, which can move up and down determines the resistance that you’ll feel. Therefore the higher the resistance, the more strength you end up building up in your muscles eventually. So it’s a practise. It’s like you mentioned with your running and with listening, ultimately, over time you’re building up those muscles. What I found is that even, I had a holiday recently, after having … Had a bit of time off, three weeks off, I’ve gone back to it.

And yes, there’s those aches and pains. But there is that muscle memory and there’s that familiarity there. I think it’s the same as listening because you continue to practise listening as much as you possibly can. Sometimes I surprise myself that I actually do, do a good job of it, and other days I think, yeah, maybe I was getting distracted in that moment. And Oscar was rabbiting on about his trip to India again. But definitely it’s a practise and I could totally relate to that. I’m curious, Oscar, what does it mean for you in terms of the rules and the rituals and the practises that you’ve put in place for your listening?

Oscar Trimboli:

Well, for me listening is pretty intense. So particularly in one on ones, you called yourself out as the deep listening guy, you want to make sure you turn up completely present. I looked at my calendar about two weeks ago and I realised that based on the week, I was spending 93% of my week listening. So it’s pretty intense. And not everyone’s there, most people around 55%. And if you’re a manager, 60%. If you’re an executive, it’s up to 83%. But what I know, whether it’s one on one or group work, I do my best work in the morning. And when we want to focus on the big impact things that we’re planning for, we’re always doing that first thing in the morning. 

Now, it also means for me that I have a really simple ritual when I walk into a client building. So from the time I get to the lobby, to the time I get to the lift, I make sure that my phone is in flight mode. I make sure I take three deep before I press that button to the elevator, and I have a clear intention for what’s going to happen in the next meeting. It’s funny, I spoke about this at a public event about three months ago, and I got a text message from someone who attended only last week. His name was Brian and he said, “I’ve been doing that thing in the lift.” I had to send him a text because that was the text message.

Nell Norman-Nott:

Nothing to do with reformer beds. 

Oscar Trimboli:

So I sent him a text message back with three question marks. And he said you know that thing you do between the lift and the lobby and going to reception. Brian’s in a sales role and he was always perpetually distracted. He was checking his phone, literally he would put his phone down to announce himself to reception. He said in that moment, from the time he stepped into the building, he was in a place where he could listen to himself first. He said I heard so many more new things in the first 10 minutes of a meeting that I never heard before. Because although I was physically present before this practise, mentally I wasn’t there. 

So I it know works for me, I know works for Brian, and I don’t know it’ll work for you. Whether you work in a cafeteria, whether you work in a shopping centre, whether you work in a construction site, whether you work in a school. It’s the practise to prepare for listening, that is one of these key foundational elements. The other thing I do that’s really deliberate for me is, and I can’t stress it enough, is just reinforce the role of water in the meeting and drinking lots of water because a hydrated brain is a listening brain. And a hydrated brain will get the blood sugars to the brain. If you doing listening, well, it’s not going to be hard and taxing on the brain. In fact, it’s quite light and easy to do.

Nell, those three areas of practise one way to do it. That takes my mind back to a moment where I was in North Sydney doing a workshop and someone came in at the afternoon break. I’d send everybody outside the room. And we’d done this exercise with listening cards, imagine sticky 3M notes on a wall. What I’d ask people to do is write down the one thing they needed to focus on to become less distracted. Alice came into the room and said, “Can I keep my card.” And she literally went to the board and pulled off her sticky note, and she held it almost to her chest as she looked at it again. 

I was talking to Kelly, my book editor at the time about what I noticed in what happened there. Kelly said, “Why did you even notice that Oscar?” And I said, “Well, I guess that’s not the point. It’s the value and the meaning that Alice put on that card.” And then in that moment, the playing card series was born. Kelly said to me, “Well, why don’t you make a playing card series? You’ve got all the tips and tricks already in the training courses, why wouldn’t you put those in people’s hands?” And so the Deep Listening playing cards were born.

Nell Norman-Nott:

Oscar, thanks for sharing that because one of the things you asked me to do when you invited me on to be co-host with you was to think of the questions that the listeners might have, and to be that voice of the listeners that are out there. What is behind the playing cards and understanding where they come from, it’s certainly something that I’ve often thought about and just never had the chance to ask you. So thanks so much for sharing that. I mean, I can see that 50 cards and they’re organised into those five levels. There’s 10 cards in each suit and for each level. Each card is very consistently laid out. I can see the concept, its explanation, a tip about the concept and questions that you can choose to explore them. One of the cards that is really relevant today is the card about self-talk.

Oscar Trimboli:

Yeah, and the self-talk cards, again, came out of the workshop. There was a term multiple people used. In fact, you’ve heard it today in the research, and we saw it throughout the research that self-talk is one of those key concepts. The explanation is it’s the story in your mind, the listener’s mind when they’re waiting for the speaker to finish. So on the card itself is a tip. And the tip says drifting to self-talk is normal. My point that I even a deep listener will be distracted. But then it says, notice you’re drifting off and then reset your focus to the dialogue. So below that is a question that opposes, and it comes back to a point we made earlier on, Nell, is now the right time for this discussion? Time of day matters as much as the environment.

Nell Norman-Nott:

Yeah, they’re a great reminder for me that listening, as we mentioned before, is a practise. It’s like my Pilates practise. You can practically use these cards every day or in team situations, right now you’ve you’ve used them for your workshops, and obviously they’ve had this fantastic evolution to practise. It can be there every day or every week. I can really relate to Alice that you mentioned having that card that relates to them because-

Oscar Trimboli:

It was hers. She’s probably still got it. If I know Alice.

Nell Norman-Nott:

We should check. I can see the fact that the cards are something that help with practise, such as Pilates is a practise for me three times a week as much as I possibly can. How do you see the cards being used as a practise for listening?

Oscar Trimboli:

Nell, there’s a lot of parallels where you actually make a place and a space for yourself to practise. You prioritise it, you put it in the calendar. So what I’d ask you to do, Nell, is before you get on that reformer bed, please have a Deep Listening card with you. 

Nell Norman-Nott:

So, I need to be reminded of you when I’m doing my Pilates. Might be a distraction.

Oscar Trimboli:

It could be a very big distraction, Nell. So whether it’s being used in prisons or with principals, whether it’s been used in corporate organisations, whether it’s been used by nurses, whether it’s being used by law enforcement agencies, if you look in the deep listening box, which the cards come with, there’s four other cards, they’re explainer cards to say, how do you use it by yourself? How do you use that in a one-on-one with somebody else? How do you use that into meetings and how do you use them in bigger trainings sessions as well?

So it’s quite handy that there’s 50 cards because you can use one card of week to focus on or you could focus on one card a day. But I would say that would be extremely ambitious to do one card a day. Most people do one card a week. It’s about the practise. It’s about practising regularly. That’s the critical thing. And what the cards do, they make an abstract concept very, very tangible. It’s the tactile nature of the cards that people comment on. I’ve heard people who have literally given a card to their manager, and said to their manager, I’m working on this, this week. If you notice me doing, well, please tell me. And if I don’t, please tell me. 

Equally I’ve heard situations where managers have given the cards to the staff. I’ve heard of sales meetings, where once a month, I have sales meetings, and they bring the listening cards out to us understand what question I could ask the customer that they haven’t asked already. So it becomes a bit of a running joke. They call it the card moment in that organisation. We’re going to bring out the cards. Initially, a new employee joined that organisation and they thought they were like going to have a tarot reading or that in the moment, and they were quite pleasantly surprised when they were listening for context at level three in the particular situation with this sales call. It unlocked something that they hadn’t even considered because they were only asking questions from their own perspective. 

So whether it’s you, whether it’s someone else, whether it’s in a group, the Deep Listening cards are something I’d invite you to explore. You just need to visit oscarTrimboli.com/cards. That’s oscarTrimboli.com/cards. For some people, you can move from distracted listener to a deep listener in 30 days. For some people, it’s 90 days. And for some people, it’s years. For me, I know I’ll never get there. It is a practise. But if you’re committed to the practise, you’ll continually get better and better every day. I’m sure you’re using bigger springs on your reformer bed than when you started. And even if you go on holidays, the spring you come back to is never the spring you started at.

So for all of us, we want to make a commitment to building the foundations to getting distraction as something we notice rather than something we remove. I’m really excited. Nell, we’ve recorded an episode coming up soon, with the World Sniper Champion. Christina from Sweden is an amazing role model to what it takes to stay focused and not get distracted. She has to focus on a target the size of your thumbnail when she’s shooting. And she has to do that with great precision, taking in all variables around her, the weather, the wind, the conditions, they shoot in different countries. When you listen to that episode, there you’ll get some amazing insights in how Christina will help us focus on our attention, and make sure that we notice when we’re distracted. Thanks for listening.

Hi, it’s Oscar. I think if you’re listening this far into the episode, I’d say you’re a loyal listener. So I’ve got an ask. The Ask a simple. Are you in a manager? Specifically, are you in a manager that’s part of an organisation that has more than 500 employees? I’m looking for three managers who can provide feedback on an online course I’m developing and launching before the end of this year. It’s called Deep Listening, The Manager’s Masterclass, and it’s designed for them manages the cycle of the year. 

It’s going to help you understand how to listen better during your one on ones with your staff, how to listen better to your manager during your one-on-ones with them. It’s designed to help you understand how to listen to your peers across the organisation. How to listen during performance reviews, and have a listen during business reviews as well. So if you think this is you, it will require a little bit of effort. I’ll be grateful if you could offer me 30 minutes of your time. So I can hear from you and listen to the feedback you’re going to provide so we can improve the course for you.

I’m asking you this because you’re a loyal listener. I’m asking you this because I would rather develop a course that’s useful to you, rather than one I think is useful to you. If you think this is you, send me an email, podcast@oscarTrimboli.com with the subject line, The Manager’s Masterclass. That’s podcast@oscarTrimboli.com with the subject line, The Manager’s Masterclass. What’s in it for you? You’ll have a lifetime access to the The Manager’s Masterclass by participating in this programme. Thanks for listening.