In this episode of the Being Human is Good For Business Podcast, Trilogy Effect partners Heather Marasse, Wendy Appel and Mary Beth Sawicki discuss listening skills as a ‘superpower’ and explain how learning to listen generously can transform a good leader into a truly great one.
“Like everyone who is lucky enough to have their sense of hearing, most leaders have been listening all their lives,” explains Managing Partner Heather Marasse. “But that doesn't mean they’re actually listening well. It takes a certain openness and curiosity as well as the patience to let things unfold naturally.”
Listening is automatic for most people, and what an individual actually takes in is based on the filters they use to process and understand the world around them.
Partner Wendy Appel explains, “When a colleague is talking, you might think, ‘I already know what you're going to say. Can you just get to the point? Hurry up so I can talk’, for example. This is listening in order to speak. But great leaders listen actively beyond their filters and encourage their team to share their ideas and opinions. This is how they fuel innovation and create new possibilities.”
The profound impact of this superpower is often realized quickly as leaders put their generous listening skills to work.
“One recent coaching client told us that she was convinced she didn’t have the right people on her team,” says Partner Mary Beth Sawicki. “She had some very clear ideas about these individuals and what they could and, more importantly, couldn’t do. Practicing generous listening allowed her to more clearly see the people she’s at work with, and to understand them better. Now she leads a high functioning team that’s delivering wonderful results. She loves them.”
The good news is that, like any skill, you can learn how to be a generous listener and you can constantly improve through practice. Listen to this podcast to find out how.
You will also learn:
Practical leadership tips you can put to work right away
How to make meetings better and more valuable for everyone
How to develop your listening skills to become your best as a leader.
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MACHINE GENERATED TRANSCRIPT
What follows is an AI-generated transcript. It may contain errors and is not a substitute for listening to the podcast.
Leadership & Listening
Sherrilynne: Hello. I'm Sherrilynne Starkie and welcome to Being Human is Good for Business, the podcast for business leaders who want to build high-performance teams. Today I am joined by the Leadership Experts at Trilogy Effect, Heather Marasse, Wendy Appel and Mary Beth Sawicki, welcome to the show ladies.
All: Hello.
Sherrilynne: We launched this podcast to help people, who manage people, to discover who they are, as a leader and as a human being, and how they can unleash the full potential of themselves and their teams. This is something that the team at Trilogy Effect have a lot of experience in.
Among their clients are many household names, such as Johnson and Johnson, GlaxoSmithKline, Proctor and Gamble and many other Fortune 500 companies. They've also helped lots and lots of technology executives build leadership capacity and high-performance teams.
Today, we're going to talk about one of the most important skills any leader should have. It's something most of us do every single day, but you'd be surprised to learn that almost everyone could improve on how they do it. I'm talking about listening. Why is listening such an important skill for leaders?
Heather Marasse: It's a good question and I think one of the reasons it's so important is because it is something that we so take for granted. The other good news is that we're all fully equipped for it, but that doesn't mean we're maximizing the potential there.
Sherrilynne: So leaders aren't even aware that it's a skill that they can develop and improve upon because they've been doing it their whole lives, right?
Heather Marasse: Well yes, and it goes beyond leaders, like humans, we've all been doing it our whole lives, those of us who are lucky enough to have our hearing, but that doesn't mean we're listening. I think that distinction is missed, and I think what's important about listening isn't knowing how to do it, it's practicing it at a level that opens up possibility, connection and innovation. That's the part that I think gets underappreciated and probably isn't well understood.
Mary Beth Sawicki: Yes, for me, one of the things that you've said in the past, Heather, that's so resonated for me, is that listening is the most underutilized form of communication. It's at least as important as speaking and probably more so, as human beings, beyond just as leaders, we want to be seen, heard, and understood, and listening is a huge contributor to that happening.
Wendy Appel: I think that often leaders are afraid to listen and really hear. There's the listening and there's the hearing, right? My ears are open, but am I actually taking in what people are saying? I think there is this fear that, if we listen and really hear what people are saying, we're going to have to do something about it. Especially if a leader has already made a decision, about a direction, getting additional input, or hearing what people have to say, that might want to modify that decision or change the course in some way… this is just one example, one context for listening, but I think our desire to really hear what people are saying is kind of shut down because we’re already moving forward in that direction.
To the point the Heather was making, is it shuts down possibility. So, there can be an aversion to listening, to hearing what people are saying, both in that context and in that there is a sense of a need for control that is really paired with all of this. If you’ve ever watched a leader develop an agenda for a meeting, there's very little time for discussion. Everything is pack, pack, pack, pack, pack, because it feels like a sense of control. There's no sort of white space or free space for discussion, which includes both the talking, the listening, the taking in and the hearing. I think it’s one of the reasons that people hate meetings, frankly.
Sherrilynne: Yeah.
Heather Marrase: It limits room for co-creation, there's no creativity, so everything comes to the meeting pre-digested, pre-prescribed, and then it's all about just, ‘Can I get this through, can I get this through? Can I get this decision passed so that we can keep moving,’ all the while, not paying to attention that we might be on autopilot and in several different directions, and heading for a crash.
Sherrilynne: That was going to be my question. Wendy, is it a conscious decision that I am definitely plowing ahead here and not going to take time to listen, or do you think it's just the habit of a lifetime?
Wendy Appel: Probably both, and I think that there's a fear of having white space and in that agenda. Like, ‘What, if something happens? I don't know how to deal with sort of the unknown.’ The agenda, with five minutes, 10 minutes or 15 minutes for each section provides a level of structure and certainty and can we live with the white space? Can we work with the white space, for the unknown to emerge? There’s a fear around that for a lot of people.
Sherrilynne: Fear of the unknown.
Wendy Appel: Fear of the unknown, what's going to happen, what's going to come out of this meeting and what's going to get said and whatever and, ‘I’ve got agenda, I need to plow through, we’ve just got to tick all these boxes and get it done, move forward.’
Heather Marasse: Sometimes that is indeed the case, it’s not an either or, and there are times where in portions of meetings, it really is about just getting stuff out the door. It’s pushing through the deliverables and milestones, and that’s just the way human beings are wired and we are really comfortable in that mode. It takes a lot more to pause intentionally and grounding and, honestly, just being a bit more mindful, and a little more relaxed to open up space for the creativity and innovation and more strategic thinking. Really the more strategic thinking is when you sit back and pause and take a longer view and get out of the panic-delivery mode. I am not saying all delivery-mode is panic, but it starts to ratchet up to that pace pretty quickly. And we don't even notice we’re there, because it's so ingrained in our habitual way of operating.
Wendy Appel: One of the greatest gifts you can give someone, is your presence and your listening. People want to contribute and make a difference and if you're not willing to hear what they have to say, and there's no time and space given to that, people just kind of put their head down and they do the minimal. It’s just about ‘Okay and tick the boxes, I just have to fulfill on commitments, but I don't really feel like I'm able to contribute what I have to offer here.’
Meetings are often overloaded with agenda items that could be done via email and reading. It's about delivering content and people get discouraged about that. What is the purpose of bringing people together? It's for conversation it's to share ideas. Often that space isn't allowed and people don't really feel like they can contribute when, in most of those meetings, that content is going kind of one way. There’s so much to say about that, but listening is a key component in all of this and to provide the opportunity for the leaders to listen so that they can actually know what's going on, as well.
Mary Beth Sawicki: And we catch ourselves in this all the time. We will design an agenda and there's so much that we want to cover within a two-hour or four-hour chunk of time. So, we have to be very deliberate about allowing time for conversation, for engagement, because that is really where the magic happens and so, all this to say, if we don't have it perfectly handled, ourselves, it is a constant practice engaging with listening.
Wendy Appel: We do this work with ourselves, and with our clients, around understanding our own listening filters and what's our automatic way of listening. Then, how can we catch ourselves and pause and do, what we call “generous listening”, which means the ability to set aside those filters, that we now recognize that we have, so we can really be present to what's being said.
So for instance, I could be sitting there listening and going, ‘I already know what you're going to say, can you just get to the point or I'm ready to fill in the blanks for you. Or I could be listening in a meeting, to look good, so I'm just going to hear what they have to say and then throw out my own point of view without building on what they had to say.
It's like, ‘I want to look good now too, I want to show up and show myself as smart, wise, capable, competent,’ whatever it is. So there's all these different ways that we listen in order to speak. That makes sense and so the generous listening is ‘I'm really going to be here and hear what you're saying and set aside what it is I am going to say next.’
Heather Marasse: Yeah and to stay curious and open to what wants to happen here, instead of my agenda.
Mary Beth Sawicki: To Wendy's point earlier, about meetings, where you’re driving, driving and driving, to get things done, but when you're listening generously, it can feel like it's going to take more time, right. It can feel like it's slowing things down and in a lot of ways, it is, because it does take more time.
What it can do, though, is actually help to make things, move more smoothly and move more quickly. I know that when I'm listening from an automatic view like, ‘I already know, I know what my business partner is going to request of me.’ Then I'm off getting started on something and I haven't fully listened, I'll often make a mistake, because I’ll have assumed something that wasn’t intended at all. I’ll be three days into a project and
find out that, ‘Oh, wait a minute this isn't exactly what we wanted here.’ So I will have, at the front of the line, assumed that I have saved some time because I already know and it's really cost me time on the backend of something. So, the pausing, the slowing down and again, it can feel like really long, especially if there's those of us who want to drive toward goals and achievements, it can feel like, ‘Oh God, really, we're going to put the brakes on,’ and it will actually save you some time in the end.
Sherrilynne: And do you find that helped the work that you're doing recently, now that your clients and leaders are often generally working from home with a workforce or team? How is the allowing time for listening different, when we’re not all together in the same room and we’re staring at a Brady Bunch type screen on your console?
Heather Marasse: I guess I have to check in on my own experience of the virtual way of working versus being in person and the impact, if it's affected listening and one way or the other and I don't think it's changed. I think fundamentally, practicing listening is, as Mary Beth said, it's an ongoing, never ending thing to focus on, there's not a destination here. And Zoom is kind of nice because it does enforce a certain protocol and linearity around the person still speaking, so I have to listen.
I'm not sure, though, that it means I'm actually listening, it might just be I'm waiting my turn. So there's that, but what the video connections don't allow for and audio conference calls, is what we like to call the “field funnel”. That is what happens when you get human bodies together in a space and there's just something magic that can happen, interactively, in the moment, that allows for communication to arise beyond the spoken and listened word.
There's an experience that gets added that is really quite, hard to pin down and put words around and it does show up also in Zoom and in video calls too. It's just not as easy for it to manifest there, as it is in person, but practically speaking it's gotten so much better, but that is as much a function of listening as it is co-location actually. It really comes back to, ‘What am I listening to? Is it all this stuff going on inside of me or it our here it’s emerging?’
Sherrilynne: Can you give me an example of a client that you've worked with on listening that was able to achieve a solid business outcome?
Wendy Appel: All I can say is when every time we come out of the back end of a meeting, or a series of meetings with a client, they do refer constantly back to the generous listening, as it's something that made a big difference for them. They talk about it amongst themselves and they start using the phrase generous listening. So, we know that it has a lot of stickiness and it becomes part of their culture and part of what they practice with each other, and with themselves, and catching themselves when they're not with saying listening, generously.
Heather Marrasse: Yes, and there are some clients who will speak to, actually, we've had a couple on our podcast, they speak to the impact this practice has on innovation, and creativity, in their work. One of our clients has pulled us in numerous times, as he's taken on new teams and has one of the things that, of any organization, is critical to their future, is having an innovation pipeline. One of the first things he brings in to the teams around innovation is listening, upping the ante on where we listen from, because especially in today's fast paced world, we're busy producing output, to sell, and we get so caught up in the production of what we already know how to do, and it is critical that we don't employ a different tool kit in our innovation work. It does require a little different tool kit than just the continued production mindset. It requires a way of listening and trust and, honestly, some self-reflection. It feels like we have to slow down, so that we can go fast again, so we have to get past some internal barriers to, ‘this doesn't feel like real work,’ so that we can get to the real work of inventing what hasn’t been thought of yet.
Generous listening also applies to ourselves, in terms of what we're listening to that's going on inside ourselves. Are we actually listening to the voices that are inside of us or are we listening to when our bodies are saying, ‘I need a rest,’ because we get a lot of body signals that we often ignore in an effort to push forward, and to push ourselves forward. So, the generous listening, really, it's not just for out to other people, it's to what is going on inside of us, and what's needed inside of us.
Mary Beth Sawicki: One example that I had been thinking of earlier, a woman we were working with and, very early on in the engagement, in the first or second call, she let us know, that her team, the people on her team, were not the horses for her course, they are not the right people. She clearly had some judging and assessing going on with her people. A bit of ‘I already know who this person is and what they can and can’t provide.’
So, we did work with her using listening and some other tools as well, which really allowed her to just see who she really was at work with, versus who she had been judging when she was at work with because it, truly… People endlessly surprise me, even though I've been in this business and have been fascinated by people since I was a child, I am always so humbled by, who I am a work with, and in life with. So by her practicing with generous listening with others, and really hearing them, it turned out she had a very high functioning team and they got some really wonderful results together and she loves them and they love her.
It was quite a shift and a quick one for her. This didn't take months and months and years. It was a very quick shift in how she listened to them and how they showed up for her. So, I think that this is, to go back to practice, this is the kind of tool we practice every day and honestly, practicing at home with this tool, with the people that we are really in life with, for decades, it can be really revealing. Because, I know, I know the people in my life, right? Except do I really? So, it's a fundamental core tool that, as Wendy said, it's kind of hard to tease out maybe exactly what the direct results are from working with it.
Sherrilynne: I think what you've just said is so topical and on point right now, because everyone is talking about people quitting. I think almost fifty percent of people are seriously considering a job changes as they come back to work. And I feel that leaders can maybe stem that flow by employing some of what we talked about today.
Wendy Appel: It creates more of an engaged workforce. Someone that we’ve all worked with, his belief was that, people come to work to contribute, to make a difference and if we don't allow them to make a difference and feel like they're making a contribution because we're treating them like children, we start infantilizing our workforce. It's like, I'm the parent, and you're the child and people are tired of it, they don't want it anymore.
They want to come to work, they want to make a difference, and they want to be engaged. One way to do that is to treat them like adults and listen to what they have to say, and hold them accountable when they're not stepping up and doing what they're expected to do and I think listening is huge part of that.
This goes back to something Mary Beth was saying, we think we know people and we don't give people a chance to grow and change. We put them in a box and we hold them in a particular space and time, and no matter what they say, no matter how they show up and no matter what they do, we're still listening through a filter that says, ‘I already know who you are, I already know what you’re capable of, I already know what you’re going to do and how you're going to behave. So, I'm not giving you the opportunity to grow and evolve into the person that you can be.’ So we freeze into your box, and I certainly know I'm guilty of it and I've been at the affect of it. It’s like, ‘hello, you’re not seeing me, you don't see who's here in front of you anymore and you've stopped listening.’
Heather Marasse: Yes, I remember one of our earliest teachers had a phrase, in a question, which is always a great way to phrase something because it opens up space, and she would say, ‘what if listening is what grants speaking?’ It puts the onus on me to create the place that you get to show up in. So, if I'm not feeling like the full potential is manifesting here, where am I listening from and who do I think this person is? What's the story I'm telling myself about them, and about me, because I live in my own stories and I need to look at that too.
‘What’s creating this opening here, this interaction, and why is this interaction going this way?’ So, I think what Wendy and Mary Beth said, what everything is pointing to is the power of listening is so underestimated. It's like a secret weapon that none of us knows that we have.
Wendy Appel: Yes, have you ever been in a meeting where the person's silent for a really long time, and you have no idea of whether that person's actually engaged or not engaged, whatever? Then suddenly they come out with something where everybody just sits up and takes notice. It means they've been really listening, intently and processing it, and it's fed their own creative juices to come out with something that captures and enhances what has been happening in the room.
It’s deep listening and I think both Heather and Mary Beth mentioned this notion of curiosity. There's this, not listening, that's going on in the world right now, and people are in boxes, people just want to get their point of view out and they have no interest in hearing what other people's viewpoints are. There's a like a block to wanting to understand and learn, and I think maybe there's a belief, underneath that, that says, ‘if I really listen, I'm going to have to take on your point, if I really listen and understand I am going to have to agree.’
I would ask people to check out that assumption or belief. It doesn’t mean you have to change your point of view, but to respect, as a willingness to see again, offering the respect to somebody, to actually listen and hear what they're saying and evoking that curiosity, trying to understand where they're coming from.
So it is setting aside our filters and evoking curiosity and saying, ‘Sherrilynne, can you tell me more about that, I don't really understand it, I don't see it that way, but I want to know how and why you see the situation the way you do.’ But, then not getting ready to just marshal my defenses, or marshal my counterpoints, or anything, but really trying to understand where that person is coming from. It doesn’t mean I have to agree with them, and it doesn’t means that I have to see it that way, but I can afford them the respect to listen, and maybe, just maybe, I might learn something.
Heather Marasse: Listening really is a super power, it’s very healing.
Sherrilynne: Listening really is a superpower, if you do it with a generous heart, well said, Heather, thank you. Thank you also to Wendy and Mary Beth who joined us in this fascinating discussion about the power that being able to listen brings to leadership.
In this episode of the Being Human is Good for Business podcasts we’ve learned so much that you, as a leader, or as someone who manages people, could put to work right away.
We learned how to improve your meetings by creating time and space for creativity and innovation. All it takes is to make a little commitment to listening to the people at the table without relying on those automatic filters that we all use.
We also learned how, that by stepping on the brakes now, and taking the time to discuss and listen to the thoughts and concerns of your team members, you can unleash the energy and invention that actually will save loads of time in the long run.
We found out that being able to listen generously is a skill that can be learned and is honed through practice, and that doing it well can be transformational for individuals, teams and for the whole organization.
So, what are you going to do differently with what we learned today? Will you structure your meetings differently? Will you work to identify your own listening filters and habits? The team at Trilogy Effect would love to know what you took away from this episode and how will it will change the way that you work.
You can reach us by visiting our website@trilogyeffect.com or by pinging us through social media. I will include links to our socials in the show notes. We'll also include links to helpful information and resources to help you be your best leader, including our new free Leadership Guide Book.
Please make sure you never miss an episode by subscribing to this podcast. Please leave a rating or review that really does make a difference and makes our podcasts a lot easier to find and please do recommend us to your friends and family who want to learn how to become a better, stronger and more effective leader. Thank you for listening, I’m Sherrilynne Starkie, and this is the Being Human is Good for Business podcast.