114. Communication Means Paying Attention: The Four Pillars of Active Listening
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hi， mathere， our goal at thinkfasttalksmart is to help you own and develop your communication skills where curious if were hitting the mark web talked about feedback and listening many times on the show and now wed like you to share your thoughts about thinkfasttalksmart wewant to make sure were bringing you the topics and guests that are of interest to you knowingmore about you and the reasons you listen will help us a lot weve created a listenersurvey that would like you to complete will take no more than 5 minuteinit will be very useful the survey can be found at fastersmarderdodio slash feedback， while the survey can be taken anonymously if you do choose to provide your email address， we will enter you into a randomdrawing where three people will win assignedbookeanotherthinkfasttalksmartswag we look forward to hearing your ideas in inputsoon thank you and advance for sharing your feedback and helping us and most importantly thank you for listening again go to fastersmarter dodio slash feedback thebestwaytobeheardostofirstlisten myname is mataborhands in itstrategic communication at stampered graduate school of business welcome to think fast talksmart the podcast， today i am really excited to speak with Julian treasure Julian is an expert on listening speakingandsound he is presented five ted talks that have been viewed over one hundred million times he is a speaker coach and author of how to be heard secrets of powerful speaking and listening Julian thanks for being here whatthank you for having me？

yes， i i have to admit that im a bit of a fanboy for your content ive used your talks in my classes for years and i look for to our conversation shall we get started， please our right over the course of our mini episodes the importance in value of listening in our personal imperfessional lives has been mentiontimeantime again can you share why listing is so important and can you distinguish among different types of listening like what you term partial and conscious listening crucialbecause conscious listing always creates understanding and i dont think id have to persuade many people listing to this of the importance of understanding in in the world today and indeed the importance of listening！

never have we needed it more than we do the absence of listing the absense of conscious listing tends to put us on a slippreslope， which is enormously accelerated i think by the current technology that surrounds are so you see more more people descending into silos of entrenched opinion and not listening in a way thats actually going to create some new ideas or challenge their opinions Barack Obama said a good thing in his acceptance speech， he said i will listen to especially when we disagree， i think thats quite simple attitude to have in the world， but we dont really very much these days so listening is the basis of four human understanding its the basis of relationship after all， whatsthemost common complaint in relationships he or she never listens to me its the way we learn pythagoris， it said in ancient Greece used to direct a screen in front of the lecturea， so that the students who he called accruss matoy were not distracted by seeing the person speaking from the important business of learning， which of course is listing， so he considered vision to be very distracting from the real business of listening listingis how we can sale or persuade or enroll people as well of course， any great sales person will tell you the most important part of a sales conversation is not a speaking its the listening because how can you select somebody if you dont understand exactly what the problem is and how you can solve it the web all had the experience of somebody batttering us with sales stuff that really isnt relevant at all and that simply because theyre not good listness so in all sorts of errys of human life leadership as well of course， its very difficult to lead people and inspire people and if youre not listening to them if you dont understand them and understand what makes them take so its crucial at every level of human endeavor really and particularly human relationships i think youhave made a very persuasive casefor the importance of listing its about understanding！

connecting， influencingandtheabilityforus to be successful one of the skills that i make sure my studentslisten to when they watchyourtalks istheforstepprocesyouteachtobeamoreeffectivellisteneryoucalletrasa would you be willing to walk us through those？

4 steps even giveexamples about how we can implement them in our lives and Russell again actually that came in the talk on listing。

but it struggles both sides of the communication， so its very much also about speaking so Russell the sanskidword for juice as i discovered when i was crazy the cycling its stands for receive appreciate， summarize ask so four steps and its a very good way to be in a conversation if you bear it in mind and kind of work， these four steps so receive means what we were talking about but before really paying attention to the person whos speaking now in the westomworld， i mean that this difference cultually， but in the Weston world， it tends to be the person speaking will glance around and from time to time glance back at the listener to make sure that they still listening， but they wont maintain constanticontact you see people doing that on tvhdm thats how it works people stand roughly a foot apart nosed nose talking to each other unlooking at each others it looks fine on tv but if you try doing that in real life， its very intimidating and unnatural actually so tends to be when youre speaking you looking around， thinking maybe looking out but having ideas checking in， but the listener needs to be maintaining i contact we all know the feeling of speaking to somebody whois gazing out of the window or thinking about what they gonna have for lunch or everythonly distracted even was falling asleep before giving a talk or something like that looking interested is really helpful in a a conversation， so that would be paps leading slightly forward as opposed to lolling back it would be definitely looking at the person who speaking your whole body i mean theres a lot of body language stuff here youre not having your feet pointing as a door not having your your body angled away from the personas if youre trying to get ready to flee， so all of these little symbols in signs can indicate that you with them or youre not with them and if you really switch on this receive， it makes the conversation far more powerful， and it makes the other person feel more comfortable， which is particularly important if they are not necessarily a practice or powerful speaker。

listening only to us， but as im speakingi noticeyoudoing， all of the thingsthatyouvementions， mentiondasyouspeakso younot only explaining it but youpracticing it and i invite you to continue now。

pleasewiththeother three steps well thank you and it has to be qualified in different environments with different contexts i talk about speakin listing that circle happening in a context and theres always a context it might be terrible acoustics we dont have that right now but in radio for example， if we couldnt see each other， then you have to be a little bit more careful if theres an interview its very irritating if the interviewers constantly doing what im about to suggest we do now， which is appreciation so they appreciate is the little noises that we make to oil conversation oh， really well， mm that kind of thing， which youre not doing because it would be irritating for the people listening to this to have that constant interruption from you， and i woulddont you either so what we can do also， is visual signals anats little nods bobs of the heads raises of the eyebrows smiles all those kind of little visual signals that say im listing im with you thats interesting and so forth so again the nonverbal side of this the visual side of this is quite important if you can see somebody and if you cant you cant so that doesnt matter and in which case something typically in a podcast if i cant see the person im talking to then its of question of listing more intently and more carefully radio and procasting this night dead air as you cant have great big silences， but equally you dont want this cut up thing going on medium so it is a question of context im thinking carefully youre in a very noisy place for example， then you may need to really be more the ciference in your appreciation so thats the a Russia， the s is summarizing and i want from a society for precivation of the words so which is a sorely abused word now so is a way to summarize and shut doors as you go down the corridor of the conversation in shut doors behind you unlock things down so what i understood you to say is this is that right yeah， OK lets move on or the meeting if you dont have a so persona meeting， it can be a very very long meeting indeed so what we will will agree is this and can we take it that thats right？

yes， OK， well， lets move on to the next item in the agenda what is that they say about meetings places where you take minutes and waste hours？

which can absolutely be the case if you dont have a so person you near round around is it so can we all just summarize what we believe in this so we can move on its a very important word in a conversation so thats the word so am i did use it to me therefore there， and then we have the a at the end， which is ask thats questions ideally openended questions why what where？

which who those kind of questions， which dont permit the answer yes or no？

one thing actually， i get us to locked by people who perhaps feel its difficult for them to make themselves heard is how can i do that how can i engage when people dont listen to me well asking questions in a conversation is a very good way of engaging people making a connection and particularly if im talking to somebody whos going on about something i know nothing at all about i am thinking how about how could i bridge this but its a really good way of trying to build a bridge in the conversation and to offer something you do know something about or to take it on to territory you feel a bit more comfortable with so thats a receive， appreciate， summarize， ask it sounds complicated now that ive gone into it in a bit of detail， but its really simple and its a great thing just practice with friends， family。

colleagues people will whoever it might be that you will find it makes a big difference in communication so thankyou very much i purposely wanted to throw the sow in there i have found this over the yearstobe very helpfultome its been very helpfultomy studentsnotionabreceive， appreciate， summarize， and ask i love the idea of having a so person not just in meetings but in life and i think many of us can examine the situations wherein and determined if we need to be that person to help summarize， and i just want a note for our listeners into complimentyouon the fact that you do a very nice job at the end of each answers doingyourownsummary inthatsomething that i think many of us failtodowejusrattleoff all of our points hoping that our listeners can aggregate them in somewayonmake sense of them， but often especially when speaking for a little bit summarizing for our audience for our listener can be helpful one of the most important lessons that is emerged from the mini experts iveinterviewed on this podcast is that we must be audientcecentric in our communication you have your own spin on this that i really really like you ask what is the listening？

i am speakinginto can you should light on what you mean by this and how can we adapt our communication depending on the type of listening that we expect well this comes from my observation that every human beings listing is unique its as unique as your font fingerprints are the reason for that is that we listen through a set of filters and those filters develop as we grow in mature in life from we have experiences so they start with things like the language we learn to speak the culture we born into which might be family it might be tribor group it might be local it might be city it might be region might be national whatever， it is might be all of those things theres a culture we born into and these things shape are listening， and then you have the values attitudes and believes that you gather along the way from parentsteachersfriends role models you you pick some up， you discard up as and the ones youve picked up will be the different from the ones ive picked up and then in any situation， we might have expectations， we might have intentions， we might have emotions going on we might have assumptions about particularly whats going on another peoples heads， which is so big area and those things change our listening， so i dont think he likes me then youlistening a different way， so the emotional stuming do you listen in a different way if youjust had fabulous news from if youve just had some terrible news of course， you do so peoples listing changes of time listing changes from person to person， so its very important to ask that question whats the listing im speaking into because youre always speaking into somebodyeslisting and that listening is unique to them now whether its one person or a thousand if you put a thousand people in a room， you get a kind of guest， and it is perfectly possible if you simply ask this question over and over again to yourself becomes a practice then you become more， more sensitive to it and its possible to sense the listening i cant give you any more for more scientific explanation than that， but i continue from my experience that when i will constage in a whole bit tad or ten thousand people off 50 people or im talking to an individual， im thinking whats the listing， im speaking into and that makes me sensitive to it it will change thats why anybody whos a public speaker is a very good idea to be there early and to make sure that youve understood what the audience is just experience before you they might have a brilliant speaker who made them life and crying so for the oh well Ive got ready got to raise my game he or they might have had somebody whos really pass them off and they might be seething and very upset so you need to know those things otherwise youwalking on and you really dont know what youre walking into so sensing it asking that question whats the listing i speaking into is how you hit the boss i instead of missing the target all together with your speaking im talking here about what you choose to say and how you choose to say it as well pacing energy the vocabulary you use and the topics you are going to cover and how you roll them out all of those things a very different if you are talking to an audience of septegenerians has opposed to an audience of kids or anaudience perhaps who dont speak your language very well and theyre happened to translate simultaneously， Ive seen people in that situation go on stage and rackla very fast English and the people in the audience are just slicking what is it or i cant keep up right？

so its very important to ask that question whats the listing im speaking into ilovetheperspectivechangesitthatquestion requires itforces us to really think about what were bringing to the audience in how we can help them DIGESTWHATISWERESAYTOOFTENWECOMEINWITHTHEAPPROACHESAIDITSALABOUTWHATIWANTTOSAYITSREALLYWHATYOURAUDIENCENEEDSTOHEARENBYOUSKINGYOURSELFABOUTTHELISTENING yourspeakinginto it really has us focus on that and i appreciate that very much and thankyouforsharing what causeitsneverabout you is it and thats one of the most important things to understand its not about me。

its about the gift im giving to those people and thats where the four foundations that i talk about coming and so forth of powerful speaking so its giving them a gift and the more youre involved in that and whats happening is getting the ball over the net does it get received because if not your wasting your time and these right and i love that analogy of a gift becausemany people have a great fear of speakinginfront of others and a lot of that has to do with ourselffocus and when we remind ourselves that we have valued to bring a gift to go incanchange our own internal assessmen of our confidence in anxiety。

and i appreciate that inadditional listening youfocus a lot on speakinginin particular yougiveguidance on how to nurture enhone our voice can you give us a few examples of things that we can do with our voice and activities that we can practice so that we can tune our voice to maximally be listen to well a couple of things i would see yes first of all breathing now in most peoples lives unless you are very strong on exercise for example。

breathing tends to be something we do very little of actually， we breathing a very shallow fashion most of the time and its not a conscious pursuit now thats not the case for everybody there are people who got breathing practices says yoga， which focuses entirely on breathing even all yoga uses breathing but if the people listing to this， havens a breathing practice that would be a strong recommendation of mind if you want to speak， powerfully develop a breathing practice that can be a simple as conscious breathing， which is breathing in through the nose out through the mouth so in through the nose is sign out through the mouth as if youwistling and count it， so that you start to extend the length of time that you can breathe in for and the link of time you breathe out for and just take that honest you dont have to do it all the time but just a few times a day if you spent five minutes， ten minutes doing this you start to become more exasted with your lungs you become conscious of whatgoing on there because your voice is just breath also breath is very important if you ever feel nervous because you when you come on the stage in your voice， a little bit like that then a big deep breath is the thing that will settle your voice right down so its its a powerful tool as well in stress situations， but its also very important to be able to breeds effectively， and thats without getting into the technicalities of diafranc control and all that stuff that singis no a great deal about so thats the first thing id say in terms of improving anybodyesvoices isdgetstoknowbreathing i think the other thing would be to take on some of the tools in the vocal toolbox that i talk about， which may be presidior presidentionbeing a big part of that or it might be volume or it might be pacing and to start to play with them and extendyour range now that requires perhaps a quiet place to practice where youre not going to bother other people i used to do similar work with groups of people i have people in those similar going i am shouting thats as live as i can go no really thats not true thats your perception but we can all extend our range in terms of how loud we can go and how quiet we can go just get a book a novel whatever it might be and start to read to yourself and extende your range really exaggerate the intination so you really guide em added about this kind of thing， which you would necessarily do on stage but its like training muscles and if you do a lot of pull ups or push ups or barbell things or whatever it might be， you get your muscles get stronger and youre your more capable to lift something when you need to and lets exactly what its like a game with pace being able to slow writedown when you need to perhaps thats the listing the time speaking into， but also being able to go foster from faster when you need to and that crucial for avoiding monotony as is changing the tone monotone of course， is where the world monotity comes from boarding， comes from somebody whos got very little infection or internation than just speaks on one tone the whole time well， if thats you workat， it practicing extending your range with all these things and be able to stop the those threewords extendyourrange is my strongest hint to anybody who wants to become a more powerful speaker miniminyverypracticalbits of advice therenthankyou when i lookat this kind of work！

i remindpeople that are brains are wiredforvarietyforchangewhenthingsbecomes stagnet we stop paying attentiontothemin the same way in yourpoints alllead us to have variation in varietyone of the things i encouragethestudents， iteachtodois totakechildrenspoitriorchildrensbookswhichereoftenment to be read inavery exaggeratedway to doexaclywhatyouretalking about to extend that range into buildwhat i call vocalstaminoutheabilitytosupportyourvoiceforlongperiods of time in those exercicumany of us focus somuchonourcontent we dont think about how to use ourvoicewelltodeliverthatcontentinthetipsyougave can helpus to do that sir julianbeforeweandiliketoask you the same threequestionsiask everyonewhojoinsmeareyouupforthat i am if you were to capture the best communicationadvice， youhave ever received an a five to 7 wordpresentationslidetitle what would it be whatsthelisting？

yes！

yes， simply that is so crucial when its the thing that so many people overlook to do， because it all becomes about them， it becomes about the sender and the receiveristhepersonthatmatters always whether its one person or another matter so ask what the listing is absolutely the most important thing i would put in huge lettuce across the slide absolutely and certainly not a surprising answer yet of very important one question number two not be very curious to get your answertothis who is a communicator that you admire and why had the great pleasure of meeting can Robinson at a lunch break at ted they in Vancovera some years ago his steadtalk is number one for a reason when when you see him live， he is a master when i see in a lot of great talkers， i was in the room for brand Stevenson amazing talk bernate brown， Susan Cain Ive seen a lot of people who been very very good and i mean or of the people who dont need notes and we can just rattle things off memory but i think and because he combines human often very selffacing humor and storytelling in such a logistic way i mean he does it naturally can would be sadly missed now but a wonderful rack on her boolion speaker and a wonderful communicator excellent and that is an amazing talk question number 3 finalquestion what are the first threeingredientsthegointoasuccessful communicationrecipe content has to be number one i ask this question to Chris Anderson actually， when i interviewed him for my bookhow to be heard and i said him which funds more important contentor delivery and he said well， must be content because if somebodyisdeliveringearthchattering content in a boring way， ill stay with them but if somebodys delivering absolutely nonsense， brilliantly is just irritating and i think theres a lot of truth in that so content has to come first and theres a great deal in thinking about what it is that youre going to put across the biggest question i think with content has got to be so what thats what news paper editors beat into the theydrum into their training journalists you have to have first paragraph should say everything and it has to say why would you want to read the rest of this so what wiesthereader can be interested wisethelisting to be interested whats init for them so content first then delivery yes， i mean thinking about the vocal toolbox or the amazing tools we got him in the human voices an execution ary thing and most people take it as a given this is the voice ive been given no obviously there is physiological aspects to this some people have got deep of voices otherstone we are different shapes we have different vocal cords， different resonating chambers but you can do so much with whatever youve been given to extend it and when i hear any great great amazing singer， i just think my goodness what human voice can do and that ive done quite about a training but im not scratching the service of it so content first nn delivery and then the third thing i would say is taken from my four foundations of powerful speaking hail， which is honesty， authenticity， integrity， and let me the fourth one of those， which is love that is to say wishing people well that comes back to giving the gift so if youre actually wishing somebody well and giving them， a gift of something theyre much more likely to receive it and appreciate it than if your all about how important， you are understanding on your hill above them and bestirring pulse of wisdom down to the swine below and thats not going to go down so well， so yes！

i think content delivery and love would be the my three ingredience superpowerful contentdeliveryendlove sojulienthankyousomuchforyourtimetodayitwasfantastictospeakwithyouyoucertainly didndisappointyouprovidedwonderfulinformation， insight and specific practicalintacticaltoolsthatwecanusethankyoufreyourtimeiencourageeverybodytolistentyourtidtalxintogetyourbookhowtobeheardsecretsofpowerful thank you very much well！

thanks for having this been an absolute pleasure！

thanks for listing to another episode of thinkfasttalksmartthepodcast to gain more insights in information， please follow us on LinkedIn an Instagram you can also help a spread the word by rating and reviewing our show on apple or Spotify you can find transcripts for all of our episodes via the link in the shownotes and on the Stanford gsb website this episode was produced by Jenny Luna Ryan campus podium podcast and me matabrahams if you like our topic， today， we have more interviews the dive deeply into listening our episode listen！

listen how to build deep connections from earlier the spring shares tips on being a skilled conversation list and in April a last year， i sat down with one of my code teachers for an episode we called are you listening how does stay open and curious to other peoples ideas in it Kristen Hanson and i talk about the importance of reallyhearing whereothers are coming from another you might enjoyisforgiveness how the right communication repairs relationships this episode features Fred Lessken and we look at research showinghowforgiveness affects our psychological， relational and physical health our music was provided by floyed wonder for more episodes finance on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts。