Oscar Trimboli:
G’day, it’s Oscar, and I wanted to update you on our annual Deep Listening Ambassador survey. Thanks to everybody who provided their input over the last month.

And first off, congratulations to our prize winners, to Katie, to Rachel, and to Jason, who’ve all excitedly received an email overnight and replied with their postal address so I can send out the copies of How To Listen, the most comprehensive book about listening in the workplace, to them, and thanks to everybody who completed the survey.

Each year, we seem to grow the number of respondents by about 30%, and this year’s no different. It kind of mirrors the growth in what we can see in terms of podcast downloads. Year on year, we’ve been growing about 30%. When you’re on a quest to create a hundred million deep listeners in the world, I know I’ve got a lot of work to do.

Today, I quickly wanted to summarize the findings from the research, and more importantly, what we’re going to do about it.

The difference between hearing and listening is taking action.

What we’ll cover off today is a bit about you, the people who completed the survey. Thank you.

We’re going to talk about, what were your favorite episodes, some areas for improvement, and we’ll wrap up with me explaining some things that we’ll adapt, we’ll change, we’ll alter to create a better listening experience for you.

So who’s listening and when do you listen?

Well, most people are listening during the week. 94% of you listen to the podcast during a weekday.

Who’s listening? 64% of people identify as female, and 87% of listeners are above 40 years of age.

When it comes to your listening, one of the questions I asked is, “What do you struggle with when it comes to your listening?”

This is a question we ask at the beginning of the 90 Day Deeper Listening Challenge www.oscartrimboli.com/90days and you’ll get one email a week for 13 weeks to keep you on track when it comes to your listening.

What are the biggest struggles when it comes to your listening?

Of the hundreds of responses here, I can safely say nine out of 10 were at level one.

Here’s some simple quotes.

“I struggle to be present in the moment without being distracted.”

“I struggle to concentrate for extended periods of time.”

“I struggle with distractions, especially listening to myself. Listening to myself creates interference. It interferes with me being a deep listener.”

“I feel I don’t have enough time to really listen, focusing on the task at hand right now rather than what just occurred or what will occur. I struggle to be present in the moment.”

I guess you are getting a pretty good picture about what people are struggling with, and that’s okay, because I think we’ve done a good job on creating content that addresses a lot of these struggles.

One of the questions I ask is, “What’s the most practical tip that you’ve applied from the podcast?”

A lot of comments on How to Listen During a Video Conference. People feel that was a really relevant and useful tool; episodes or 101, 102, and 103, or www.oscartrimboli.com/videoconference

Some of the other practical tips are,

“Just pausing to notice my breath, Oscar. This impacts not only how I listen, but all aspects of my working life.”

What were your favorite episodes and guests?

There’s a bit of a recency bias here, because 80% of the episodes that were referenced here are in the most recent categories.

Some of the ones that were mentioned were

Episode 99 with Christopher Mills about listening for conflict;

Episode 97 with Commander Peter Scott. It said, “I never thought of listening in that perspective before. It really opened my eyes, my ears, and my mind to what a story of failure can teach me about the way I’ve thought in the past.”

Episode 96, Emergency Listening with Natasha; “Honestly, I found it really interesting how listening changes our cognitive focus.”

A lot of mentions for episode 90 with Michael Bungay Stanier, and a number of messages there with Heather Morris, the author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz. One of my favorite quotes here is, “Deeply emotional and raw recount of their stories, making the power of listening so evident, [the extra4] story about the hospital visit and how listening can make such a huge impact.” Capital letters, impact.

A number of mentions for Listening for Disagreement. episode 95 with Simon Greer; episode 84 with Juliana Tafur, who’s an award-winning documentary filmmaker. And both of them dive deeply into how to listen when you disagree with somebody.

Daniel Kirsh gets a number of mentions. He’s the echo locator, and, “His hearing must be very pristine”, is one of the quotes here as well.

James Nestor from episode 74;

and a series that I did, includes episode 68, All The Listening Villains Explained, and then episode 52 through to 59, which is The Fundamentals of Deep Listening, including an episode 54 with Heidi Martin, where we deconstruct the research.

A big good jump then down to the early episodes in the series, episode seven with Ken Cloke, an amazing mediator; Christina Bengtsson , a world champion sharpshooter and Ebohr from episode 24.

I love this quote here. It’s pretty personal for me at the moment. “I love the story Ebohr shared about his father.”

And then Elise Barry from episode 35, Listen First, Come Up With Solutions Later, got a number of mentions here.

An unexpected mention here also for a YouTube only video I did, How To Listen.

Big thank you to a number of people mentioned podcast episodes that I was interviewed on and the impact it had when they were listening to me being interviewed rather than me doing the interviewing. I always want to listen in your words, not mine.

So I asked the question, “How would you explain the Apple Award-winning podcast to a friend?” Here’s some things that people have said.

“If you really want to learn what high fidelity listening is, go here.”

“Listen to this podcast if you want to start to understand why people are not hearing you, an area we all need to develop in, and how it can lead to different perceptions of a problem.”

What topic would you like to hear more about in the future?

37% “I want to hear more from Oscar and his very specific and practical tips.” 28% said they want to hear more from other people who listen to this podcast. Shout out to Shaney recently in the episode 106, where we did a little experiment and we listened to Shaney’s question. Good news is that was really well received and we’ll be doing more of that.

“What should we improve in the podcast?”

A little caveat here. I’m often quoted as saying all feedback is valid, not all feedback is useful.

That means, when you receive feedback, you need to contextualize that for where you are at in your journey, how much time you’ve got available, if you can prioritize that, but I do want to acknowledge the feedback.

There was lots of comments where people were just cheering and encouraging me, saying,

“Keep going, Oscar. You’re doing great. It’s fine as it is. You don’t need to make any changes. Just keep going.”

There was a very consistent thread of feedback though, that also said,

“Oscar, can you make fewer and shorter episodes?”

“Can you make them more bite size?”

“Can we have fewer tips that are more impactful?”

I also got feedback about the length of the episode. There were people who were saying, “Keep the episode length where they are”, and there was a strong thread of feedback that says people wish that the episodes were shorter; or said another way, “Sometimes, Oscar, your episodes are just a bit too long. I’ll still listen to the end, but I have to do that in two different settings.”

Some feedback I’m curious about how to bring to life is … It says, “Oscar, how do you create a space in the middle of the podcast where you’ve made an important point? Help me to pause, contemplate, reflect, and understand how I can make sense of this in my day to day life. Sometimes I just have to press pause on my player so I can make sense of it and come back to that later.”

I want to mention two comments here that says,

“Please put the guest names and their titles into the episode.”

Now, I’m not sure if that means into the episode title on the website and on the podcast app, or put their guest names and their title in the recording itself.

I’ve gone back to those people just to seek some clarification.

I want to reflect on this comment, which says, “I love the uniqueness of each podcast that I listen to, Oscar. Just keep doing your own thing.”

Hmm. Interesting.

Finally, I always ask, “Anything else?”, and I want to say thank you to Andy, who said, “Oscar, I still remember your handwritten thank you note from four years ago.”

A big thank you to everybody who’s completed the survey. The survey runs annually, but you can visit www.oscartrimboli.com/survey at any time throughout the year and provide feedback.

Listening isn’t always on activity.

The difference between hearing and listening is action, and this survey, and you, the Deep Listening ambassadors, keep me accountable.

What will be different going forward?

We’ll be doing one episode a month with a listening expert in their workplace; we will be doing an episode once a month where we will answer one of your questions. Maybe we’ll even answer one of your questions live.

I’ll need your help. If you want one of your questions answered, send me an email: podcast@oscar trimboli.com

I’ll commit to making the episodes shorter and more bite size for the Q&A or the Deep Listening Ambassador episodes.

In terms of interviewing deep listening workplace experts, I think sometimes we need to go deep to really understand their expertise.

Congratulations again to Katie, to Rachel, and to Jason, our prize winners.

I’m Oscar Trimboli, and along with you, the Deep Listening Ambassador community, we’re on a quest to create a hundred million deep listeners in the world, and you have given us the greatest gift of all: you’ve listened to us.

Thanks for listening.

PS. People have asked me, “What’s with the water drop, Oscar?”

You’ll notice the water drop sound to break up the episode and introduce the episode.

The water drop is the graphic on the front cover of “how to listen”, the most comprehensive book in the workplace, and this represents the ripple effect you can have, not only on yourself and those you are listening to, but also to your community and to future generations.