Podcast Episode 081 – How to easily listen for when people lie to you 

Chase Hughes:        

This is a newsflash, everybody lies. You get lied to all the time. Spotting them is not that big a deal because if you call someone out, you’re going to lose every friend you have. If you really want to listen better, and this is whether you’re watching The Bachelor or you’re in a business meeting, listen to the words that people are using. So if I want to communicate better with Oscar, I’m going to listen to the type of pronouns that you use.

Oscar Trimboli:     

Deep Listening: Impact Beyond Words. Good day. I’m Oscar Trimboli and this is the Apple award-winning podcast, Deep Listening, designed to move you from a distracted listener to a deep and impactful leader. Did you know you spend 55% of your day listening, yet only 2% of people have ever been taught how? In each episode, we explore the five levels of listening. Communication is 50% speaking and 50% listening. Yet as a leader, you’re taught only the importance of communication from the perspective of how to speak. It’s critical you start to build some muscles for the next phase in how to listen. The cost of not listening, it’s confusion, it’s conflict, it’s projects running over schedule, it’s lost customers, it’s great employees that leave before they want to. When you implement the strategies, the tips and tactics that you’ll hear, you’ll get four hours a week back in your schedule. I wonder what you could do with an extra four hours a week.

Chase Hughes is the leading military and intelligence behavioural expert, creating some of the most advanced behaviour skills and tactics and courses worldwide. He’s the author of the number one bestselling book on advanced persuasion, influence and behavioural profiling. He teaches elite groups, government agencies and police forces in behavioural science skills, including behaviour profiling, nonverbal analysis, deception detection, interrogation, and advance behavioural investigation techniques. Listen carefully when Chase discovers that despite him doing over 150 interviews, I ask him the question that nobody’s ever asked. In fact, it’s the only question that matters. Let’s hear from Chase.

What do you think the cost of not listening is?

Chase Hughes:  

I think the cost of not listening would be that you receive less information about other people. I think you have a downgraded empathy level and I think it makes you a poor leader. One famous one, that was in my command, was a group of expeditionary warfare guys, which this was all over the news, was driving a boat through the Middle East. And Iran captured two of these boats with the Americans on them. And it was such a big deal that Iran made a statue out of the sailors surrendering on the deck, which that’s a whole nother story. They didn’t listen to the orders of what they were supposed to do and they just were flying by the seat of their pants. And that could have been an issue that was a thousand times worse. So that could have escalated in a hundred different ways that would have been disastrous for a lot of people.

Oscar Trimboli: 

For those of us without a military background, we assume that when orders are conferred, they are confirmed.

Chase Hughes:

I think they did hear them and I think the same problem the military has is one of the same problems that civilians face. This is one where the CEO puts something out, a set of directives, and the people act like they’re hearing him. They may be echo back some of his words and do their own thing and try to make it look like his directive, but they still want to do their own thing. And one of the best pieces of advice I ever got from a commander, it’s super simple, but he said, “Bad news, never gets better with time.” And he wanted every negative piece of information immediately fed up to him. And I’ve had very few commanders that ever did that. He’s now a two star Admiral, the best leader I’ve ever worked for in my life. His name is Brad Cooper. And he grew up with a brother who was mentally challenged, who’s a younger brother to him. And I think he grew up with a different understanding of patience and tolerance and empathy that made him a better leader.

Oscar Trimboli:   

You’re there with your mom watching The Bachelor.

Chase Hughes:        

Yeah.

Oscar Trimboli:    

And you know something’s different compared to your mom watching The Bachelor. I want you to zoom in and deconstruct what you’re listening for and watching for in that episode of The Bachelor, because I’ve heard you on other interviews and you just skip over what you were listening for and how you’re listening for.

Chase Hughes: 

Yeah, I’ve been on, I don’t know, 150 podcasts or 200. You’re the only person that’s ever asked. So I’m sitting in my parents’ study. I had never seen The Bachelor before. So we’re on season one or two. These people are in a hot tub and I’m listening to this girl talk about her childhood. But earlier when they do those little cut scenes and the girl’s just looking at the camera and explaining her life, she looks a certain way to access memories. So every time she’s looking to her right to access a memory, accessing memory. Throughout the whole episode, every time she would access any memory, her eyes would go right. Sitting in the hot tub, he asked her some question about childhood and boyfriends when she was younger. And she looks to her left, her breathing rate increases as she starts talking. And then she reaches up and covers her mouth. And it was a classic cluster of deception cues.

But there are some ways that I’m not always watching these episodes for deception. I know every body language expert, they all want to say, “Oh, how do I tell when are people lying?” Here’s a newsflash, everybody lies. You get lied to all the time. Spotting them is not that big a deal because if you call someone out, you’re going to lose every friend you have. If you really want to listen better, and this is whether you’re watching The Bachelor or you’re in a business meeting, listen to the words that people are using. If I want to communicate better with Oscar, I’m going to listen to the type of pronouns that you use. And when I say pronouns, I’m not just talking specific pronouns.

I’m going to listen whether you talk about self, teams or other people. If I ask you, “Oscar, how do you like doing this podcast?” And you say, “Oh, it’s great. I set my own hours. My work is fantastic.” So that’s self pronouns. If I ask you the same question and you said “Running this podcast is great. I’m interacting with my fans on a regular basis. I’ve got a fantastic audio editor. We really work well together. My wife really lets me sit up here in the house. It keeps the dog quiet while I’m trying to record.” That’s team pronouns. And when someone uses other’s pronouns, it’s a lot more rare. I am want to persuade you later. I am not going to say if you’re a team person and I’m telling you how this is going to benefit you, I’m not speaking in your language.

Oscar Trimboli:   

This interview had to get rescheduled because Chase had an issue with the power. We were swapping emails off his mobile device, right up until 20 minutes before the scheduled interview time. And one of the things I said to Chase was, “It’s more important that we have a great audience experience than we go for the time.” And I put in brackets, sorry, I’ve just explained how you can influence me because I have a very other orientation. I think it’s a really good practical example for people about me thinking about the audience, rather than I could have got really frustrated. It’s like, “Whoa, what do you mean? He’s just making it up. He’s really doing something else.” And that’s all about me. Last week, where I was able to use the behavioural table of elements to notice where my orientation was and literally tell you where it was at, so you know what matters to me. When you’re on a quest to create a hundred million Deep Listeners in the world, you’re not going to get there with self-orientation. The Ellipsis Manual and the origin of the word, it’s really relevant for our group.

Chase Hughes:      

So I had a company long time ago called Ellipsis. That was the name of our company. And we named the company that in the book, because the ellipses are the three dots when you see any written language, when there’s three dots there. It’s not just to be continued. Those dots actually mean that there’s some removed or omitted or unspoken language there. And number one, I thought the name sounded badass. I think it speaks to the fact that just the ellipsis is in front of us all the time. And there’s language there that nobody else can see.

Oscar Trimboli:  

And it talks beautifully to level four on our Deep Listening model, which is listening for what’s unsaid. And that’s why I was fascinated by the origins of the word. Now I can shortcut unsaid to three dots. You’ve saved me so much time.

Chase Hughes:     

So we talked about me watching The Bachelor with my mom. So as we’re sitting there, we’re both drinking a glass of pinot. And I’m telling her that this girl is being deceptive on the show. And I rewind the TiVo and showing her all the little nuances. And as soon as I’m doing this, she says, “Chase, I wish I could just borrow your eyes for one episode of The Bachelor.” She wanted all of my training so she could watch The Bachelor. And I’m laying in bed later that night and I was thinking when I was a kid, I learned lots of things by just looking at a placemat. My mom had a stack of placemats. One of them had the presidents, the continents, the oceans, the states, the planets. So I thought, how can I fit all of my training, everything that I have ever taught or learned about behaviour onto a piece of paper. So now this tool that’s used to talk to terrorists, it’s at the FBI Academy now, was created because of that episode of The Bachelor, so my mom could predict who was going to win.

Oscar Trimboli:      

That’s where all great ideas start from of course. It’s in your ability to listen to what somebody else is asking you, and then codifying it into something that’s useful. And that’s what I love about my work. Everybody goes, “Oh, this is awesome. How did it come about? I was just listening to a client and they said, that will be helpful. So I did it.” And I think lots of missed opportunities come about, particularly in sales, because you’re too busy trying to sell a product. But if you listen, you can also develop a new product because it will be useful immediately there. Walk us around the behavioural table of elements at the highest level. And for each of you, I strongly recommend you take a moment and the show notes will have a link to it that you have a look at this amazingly thorough, elegant and unique piece of work.

Chase Hughes:       

The table looks like a periodic table of elements, if you haven’t seen it before. And it’s laid out to where the top of the table is the top of the human body. And the bottom of the table is our feet, bottom of the body. And there’s two rows that are disconnected just like the periodic table. And those are non-behavioural things. It’s what we do with our voice and how we interact with objects that are outside of our body. And that’s how it’s divided up, top to bottom. On a left to right scale, we have the least stressful, to this far right, which is the most stressful behaviours.

Oscar Trimboli:   

The Ellipsis Manual, or the behavioural type of elements, Chase reference is a well laid out placemat following the chemical periodic table of elements. And what Chase’s done is created a table of elements for human behaviour. Use your favourite search engine and search for the term behavioural table of elements, and you’ll see multiple versions of his behavioural table of elements. Not just referenced by him, but by thousands of other people.

Chase Hughes:   

And when people say there’s a deceptive behaviour, it’s not true. There’s no such thing as a behaviour for deception. Doesn’t exist. What we’re measuring when people say here’s the body language of what deception means is they’re talking about stress, either A, a stress signal, or B, somebody’s deviating from their baseline behaviours. It would serve your listeners a lot more, I think, instead of studying lie detection, just listening to the words that people are saying.

I teach a whole lot of techniques for linguistic profiling, all the way down to you’re about to have a meeting with someone and you can look at their online profile and determine a lot of things just from the words that they like to use. And I think that’s a great exercise, just I could do a few more, as many as you’d like, of telling yourself, “In this conversation, I’m going to listen for all the pronouns that they’re using,” and turning it into a game or turning it into something where you’re more interested, you’re more curious to hear what’s going on. I think just making that little game is easy to help you listen and be a better listener.

Oscar Trimboli:     

I love the pronoun game. We talk about this at level three listening for context, what are the patterns in people’s languages, and whether they talk about the past or the present consistently, whether they talk about self or other, whether they talk about problem or solution, whether they speak internally or externally as they describe the issues that they go through, when you find your mind drifting in attention during the conversation. The pronoun game is one game. Chase, when we think about the head, the face, the body, the voice, and then the linguistics, because linguistics is for me, it’s so nuanced. There’s tone, there’s speed, there’s whether they pause, whether they’re using metaphors and how impactful those things are.

Chase Hughes:    

If we’re starting a Zoom call, for instance, as you’re recalling information, I’m going to find out what I call home, where your eyes typically move in one sense or another. And I’m just going to put that down as a mental note. It’s not something that’s written in stone, but I’m going to confirm it three or four times and see where your eyes typically move to call home. I’m watching your shoulders as we speak right now, go up and down. I’m monitoring how often you’re breathing. So you’re breathing rate and that’s important. So I’m just getting a general sense for a few things. Third, and probably most importantly, is something called blink rate. And this is just how often we blink per minute. And this is the number one indicator of how interesting you are, or your listeners are, as a speaker. And this is one-on-one or to a group. So if your blink rate is low, you’re more focused, relaxed, and interested. If your blink rate’s high, that means stress. That’s a stress indicator, unless it’s allergy season or something.

So for instance, just to show you how dramatic the difference is, the last time you did something stressful, like for me when I took my algebra exams in high school, my blink rate was probably an 80. We don’t really pay attention to that. That’s so unconscious that about 99% of the time, it’s very honest and it’s accurate. So the last time you watched a movie that had all of your attention for me, probably Interstellar was the most interesting movie I’ve watched in a long time. And my blink rate watching that movie was probably around a four per minute, four times per minute. If I’m in a conversation, I’m going to do the same thing. If I have that low blink rate, I can continue on that topic for a little while because that person’s interested. And especially here on Zoom, since we’re on Zoom all the time, if I’m saying something that’s exciting for me, I want to make sure that even the smallest hint of recognition shows in someone else’s face.

If my eyebrows go up and I’m explaining something awesome, I want the other person’s face to mirror that. And we can also do the same to show that we’re really empathetic and we actually are listening. If someone’s talking about something that they enjoy or something that they like, you’re going to hear adjectives 90% of the time. What is actually going on here is they’re revealing the words that they need to be persuaded. If someone’s talking about how much they love their job, and they say “Fabulous,” and then they use, as they’re describing another part of their job, they say “Interesting.” So we know those two words really speak to them. So I know if I’m persuading this person, even if I’m just trying to build rapport, I might describe something else as fabulous. And then when they say something to me that they’re interested in, or that they like, I’ll say, “Wow, that’s interesting.” So I use the same adjective.

But what if I’m talking to a guy about a crazy ex-wife and he’s talking to me about his ex-spouse. And when you’re a good listener, I think it can be a bad thing sometimes. If you’re next to somebody on a plane, who knows that you’re a good listener, they can sense it and they’ll just unload. But in that instance, anytime someone mentions something negative, I think there’s an opportunity there to pick out the adjectives of that too. So if someone says “Horrible” and “Stupid,” just those two words. What if I’m in sales or what if I’m a therapist and I need to convince my patient not to do something. What adjectives can I use to describe the consequences of inaction? So now, if I want to push this person away from making a certain decision, over a course of a conversation, you’re going to get 10 to 15 of these adjectives. I might use all of those in sequence to describe the process of not acting in the way that this person’s supposed to. If I’m an interrogator, and I want you to confess, this is how I’ll illustrate the consequences of not confessing.

Oscar Trimboli:     

The pronoun game and the adjective game, all about listening. At level three, listening for the context. And when people tell me that they drift away or they’re easily distracted during a discussion, I invite them to move from listening to the content, to listening for the context, moving away from what people are saying and starting to notice how they are saying it. How well are you noticing the adjectives and pronouns that Chase and I are using during this episode? A quick way to improve is by visiting the listening quiz.

Would you like to learn a bit more about what gets in your way when it comes to listening? What are the barriers that are stopping you from completely listening to yourself and to the other person. Go and visit listeningquiz.com, that’s listeningquiz.com, and take the seven minute assessment and you’ll receive a unique report with three tailored actions to help you move from a distracted listener to a deep and impactful listener.

Speaker 4:         

Wow. This quiz is like magic. It takes just a few minutes, but the results make it feel like Oscar’s been listening to me for a lifetime. It’s hard to believe how accurately these quiz highlights the seemingly small things that I do. They get in the way of me being a better listener. And already, I’m starting to notice when my listening villains begin to creep into my work conversations and I can now recognise when I’m not listening as well, or as deep as I could be. Thanks Oscar.

Oscar Trimboli:      

Let’s come back to Chase, where he explores the impact of the pause. What’s the pause telling you when you’re listening?

Chase Hughes:      

I think the person who is comfortable pausing is somebody that automatically generates respect in other people. There’s a study that’s done at the University of Texas at Austin, where the people that paused more often, people would, strangers would automatically assume that that person was the leader of a small group, just because they were willing to pause. These pauses are where people are comfortable pausing instead of filling it with sound by saying “Uh” and just filling the noise up because they may have a fear of being interrupted. And I think that’s typically where a failure to pause comes from, is a fear of being interrupted. And the people who are comfortable doing it, typically are seen as the leaders on a social perspective. But as we’re speaking, if we are comfortable pausing, especially after we make a point, that is fantastic for the person that’s listening to us because we don’t really fully digest what someone says until the pause arrives.

Oscar Trimboli: 

How do you fight the urge when you are the listener, Chase, to jump in on the pause? What are the techniques you use to be okay with a pause?

Chase Hughes:      

I try, anytime I hear a pause, I’m not often tempted to jump in. But I think that’s after a decade or two of practise. When I hear a pause and I’m conscious of it, I try to use that pause to make sure I’m in front of my eyes and I’m processing what’s going on. Because a lot of times, especially when I was growing up, I had social anxiety. All of my conversations, I was behind my eyes the whole time I would speak to people. And over time, the better I got at conversations and social skills, I was able to get out there in front of my eyes. But when you notice a pause, that’s a great spot to do a quick checkup on yourself and just take that little breather. You can break eye contact, it’s perfectly fine. Take a breather and say, “Am I still here in the conversation?”

Oscar Trimboli: 

Coming up by us, Chase for his top tips, with regard to listening during video conferences. Some are practical and some are just cheeky. I’m enjoying this masterclass with Chase at level two and level three, listening for patterns, listening for adjectives, listening for pronouns. I love this game, his set up. Chase also does a lot of listening at level two. Did you notice he listens for their breath? He listens for their head position. He listens to a where their eyes are. And he’s listening for congruency between the words and the body position of the speaker.

We cover many of these techniques and reinforce this with the 90 day challenge, as well as our community of practise, where people come into the listening dojo and practise these techniques with other people who are trying to improve their listening. I’ve created lots of free complimentary tools for you to improve your listening, this podcast, the listening quiz, the 90 day challenge. All of these resources are completely free for you to make the move from a distracted or drifting listener to a deep and impactful one. I want to say thanks to Ruth who contacted us via Oscartrimboli.com/contact. And she’s from Oregon, and she wanted to share her experience with the 90 day challenge, the 13 weeks of building and growing her listening muscles.

Ruth:    

Hi Oscar. This is Ruth from Oregon. The biggest difference for my listening that I’ve observed after the 90 day deep listening challenge is that now I’m actively and intentionally focusing on improving my listening. Through doing that, I increased my general awareness of my listening, which has translated into improved habits. So an example would be just allowing a little bit more time in grounding myself with breathing. It wasn’t something that I ever did before. When I noticed myself becoming distracted or when I’m triggered to interrupt, I just take a few deep breaths and now that’s a habit and it really helps.

I’ve also noticed that the questions I ask have become better tools in my conversations. I have always been able to have long conversations with people I supervise or collaborate with. I have a new repertoire of exploratory questions that have been really effective. And I enjoy that challenge to think about what’s not being said and do my best to support someone with an open ended, authentically curious question. But also, I’ve felt completely supported by your approach. So thank you. Your ability to connect and share insight is extraordinary. I have told so many of my colleagues and friends to check out your work and I’m convinced that everyone should spend time enhancing their ability to listen.

Oscar Trimboli:  

So if you’d like to learn more, visit Oscartrimboli.com/90days. That Oscartrimboli.com/90days. Hi to all the new members of the Deep Listening community. We’re well over 300 members now, and I wanted to welcome some of our new members, to Anu, to DeAnn, to Ingi, to Margi, to Lauren, to Ronnie, to Nancy, to Sam, to Gordo, and to Joel. Joel, thanks for your post about the we are all bats community, otherwise known as the listening arts channel in the United Kingdom. If you visit Oscartrimboli.com/community, you’ll be able to see that post from Joel. Thanks, Joel. I’ve registered for two of those events already and looking forward to them. Hi to Sophie from Zurich in Switzerland, who asked the question, “Oscar, I’d like to thank you for the podcast. I love the Australian accent too.”

Well, we’ve all got accents no matter which part of the world we come from. “I’ve been listening to the podcast for some months now and now it’s time for me to start the 90 day challenge. I’d like to also get my kids, who are between seven and 11 years old, onto the same journey. Would you be able to provide any tips, any feedback, maybe counterintuitive recommendations of what not to do with them? Any pointers would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.”

Well, Sophie, I would highly recommend episode 62, how to get your kids to listen, with Dr. Justin Coulson. He does a spectacular job of setting up the role of the parent, the primary listening teacher. And it’s what you do as the parent that’s going to set up the listening success of your children between seven and 11 years old. Thanks for the question. And I know you’ll enjoy the interview with Dr. Justin Coulson.

Thanks to Julien. He also took the time to send me a message via Oscartrimboli.com/contact. And he left a message for me with three great guest recommendations for the Deep Listening podcast. Thanks Julien, I’ll be following up on the suggestions. Really, really appreciate it. And I also want to thank the whole group of people who decided they would want to ask me anything, to Alex, to Ilene, to Anna, April, Barb, to Craig, Fiona, Nicole, George, Graham, Guillaume, to James, to Jessica, two Jessicas in fact, to Joe, to Julien, to Karen, to Marie, to Marium, to Michael, Nicole, Olga, Paul, Rup, Sarah, and to Susan, to Tia and to Ronnie.

Because of your overwhelming responses to the ask me anything message that I sent out, I’ve decided I need to create a dedicated episode just to answer your questions. So please keep the questions coming. If you haven’t had a chance to ask me anything yet, please visit Oscartrimboli.com/contact and you could ask me a question there and record it, or you can just type a message and send it to me, which will arrive as an email. Some people have been asking me questions about video conferencing. Some people have been asking me questions about how they pay attention in big team meetings, where we’re all doing those via video conferences at the moment. So if you’ve got questions about video conferences or in fact, anything else, whether that’s listening to your manager or listening to your customer, please feel free. Keep the questions coming.

What have I been up to? We’ve been updating the Deep Listening playing cards, Oscartrimboli.com/cards. This is all based on your feedback. And one of the big pieces of feedback we got and incorporated it into the cards was make them a little bit smaller please, Oscar, so we can fit them in our hands and much easier to play with. So the Deep Listening playing cards that will now fit into the palm of your hands. And there’s a bigger focus on level one listening, where most of you said you’d like more content. Our listening quiz has now passed 2000 people. And what surprised me the most is how few people are relating to themselves as the interrupting listening villain. Based on the feedback from 10% of participants, I’m going to try something different in 2021. 10% participants of asked, requested, “Oscar, would there be a way that other people could break our listening?”

Wow. I thought that was an interesting question. So we will commence the process of prototyping for 2021. If you’re interested, visit Oscartrimboli.com/contact and let me know if you’d like to have other people rating your listening in 2020 rather than just taking the listening quiz at listeningquiz.com and having yourself assess yourself. I think, it’s fair to say, that when it comes to assessing ourselves with regard to our listening, we often think we’re much better than what we are.

So where have I been in the last couple of months? Wow. A lot of world travel going on for me at the moment. C-19 has meant that I’m doing more international work than ever from my very own office. I haven’t moved, but during the last two months, I’ve been in workshops in Auckland, London, Singapore, Mumbai, San Francisco, Seattle, Singapore, New York, Chicago, Atlanta. I’ve done interviews about listening to Melbourne, to the National Broadcast, or the ABC, about deep listening. I’ve been to Cape Town. I’ve been to Vancouver, London, and Vienna. It’s just exhausting, but it’s better than jet lag. I’m really grateful for all the opportunities that have emerged. Thanks to you for listening. Now, let’s go back to Norfolk, Virginia, that’s on the Atlantic East Coast of the USA, to get those little listening tips from Chase about how to listen during a video conference. To all of you, thanks for listening.

What are the three tips you’re thinking about when it comes to videos and listening in there?

Chase Hughes:   

There are two amazing benefits of this. The first benefit of this is that all of our conversations nowadays are planned in advance. I know before the conversation happens, I’ve got almost my whole day is planned out with all these conversations. Even if it’s just a tiny note in my Google calendar, I want to write a desired outcome from that conversation. And for me, as a listener, I’ll write down a little homework assignment. I’m going to play the pronoun game on this phone call. And maybe I’m going to try to look at the camera more often instead of stare, watching my own face on the screen.

The second thing also has to do with a pen and paper, is that we have no idea what someone’s taking notes on nowadays. I can’t lean over the table and see like, “Oh, what’s Oscar drawing over there?” So we can take notes on what people are saying. Not only are we practising  listening better, we’re taking notes on what is that person like. I go into my phone after a lot of these calls, I keep those little notes and these are notes that we can take now that we used to have to memorise. On the Zoom calls a great way to listen is just to watch the person’s face. And if you want to try and exercise, and I’ll make Oscar do this, you guys are on audio, but I’m going to make him do it too.

So Oscar try to just non-verbally, see if you can say thank you, but just with your eyes. If you had to look at someone 20 yards away and tell them, thank you, but only with your eyes. But your eyes look like that all the time almost anyway. It will help you to focus on the person because our brain focuses more when we squint just a little bit like a little happiness, but just up in your eyes. It helps us to focus a little bit more and it makes us look a lot more tuned into the story.

Make a little less eye contact because I think it helps people when I’m talking, if I want to convey something emotional, I might look down at the floor as I’m recalling this memory, because these cameras pointed in our faces now at Zoom make us feel like I need to stare at the screen the whole time. And actually, good listeners, make eye contact about 50 to 70% of the time. So it’s okay to look away while you’re processing it. And that’s typically the best time to look away. So someone’s trying to get into the end of a point and you kind of look off camera as you’re nodding, maybe processing the information. So remove that urge to stare into a camera or at the screen for the whole call. Being a better responder. We can listen all we want, but how can we respond better when somebody talks?

Oscar Trimboli: 

Tell me more.

Chase Hughes:   

Someone is telling us about their aunt who just passed away, or a friend who just got diagnosed with cancer. It’s one thing to really hear them. But if we’re staring at them like a terminator, if you’re the best listener on earth and you heard everything and you have a tonne of empathy, if we don’t show some kind of reaction, we’re not seen as a good listener. And I think being seen as a good listener or thought of as a good listener is just as important as how good of a listener you are. So those small things like tilting our head or squinting our eyes a little bit when somebody is saying something we’re curious about, or to show some empathy where our chin’s going up, this chin boss here, or somebody’s telling us something bad, and her hand goes over our heart automatically, or somebody is explaining something and we’re just, “Wow,” our hand touches our head. We can do all that stuff on Zoom. So being a good listener and a good responder go hand in hand, I think.

Oscar Trimboli: 

I’m really excited that nobody asked you the question about deconstructing The Bachelor episode, because I listened to three of your interviews and I just went, “Oh, you missed the gold.” That’s that’s the thing you want to go in on. So I’m so excited that you acknowledge that nobody had asked you that, because to me, that’s the essence of listening. It’s like, that’s your expertise, why didn’t they go there?