Kris Safarova  00:45

Welcome to the Strategy Skills podcast. I’m your host, Kris Safarova. And our podcast sponsor today is StrategyTraining.com. If you want to strengthen your strategy skills, you can get the Overall Approach Used in Well-Managed Strategy Studies. It’s a free download we prepared for you and you can get it at firmsconsulting.com/overallapproach. You can also get McKinsey and BCG-winning resume, which is a resume that got offers from both of those firms. And you can get it at firmsconsulting.com/resumePDF. And lastly, you can get a book that we co-authored with some of our amazing clients. It’s called Nine Leaders in Action. And you can get it at firmsconsulting.com/gift. And today, we have with us two amazing guests, Dr. Christian van Nieuwerburgh. I hope I pronounced it right, beautiful last name, who is academic consultant, and he currently teaches at the Center for Positive Health Sciences at the RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences in Ireland. And then we also have Dr. Robert Biswas-Diener, who has published more than 70 academic papers and has a citation count in excess of 20,000. Robert and Chris, welcome.

Christian Van Nieuwerburgh  02:06

Thank you. Nice to be here. Really looking forward to our conversation.

Kris Safarova  02:11

And you recently co-written a book called Radical Listening. What made you both so interested in this topic?

Christian Van Nieuwerburgh  02:20

Well, you know, Kris, it’s such an interesting question to get us started. In my case, anyway, I was actually more interested in working with Robert Biswas-Diener, you know, my area of interest has always been in supporting people to be at their best. And Robert Biswas-Diener, that’s his area of research, you know, positive psychology and coaching, getting the best out of people. So I remember thinking, Oh, it would be so amazing to work with Robert. I would learn so much by working with him on any project. And then we were very lucky that a publisher that Robert had been working with was saying, Well, what we would love to have a book on listening. And that’s when Robert and I thought, well, there’s a good project. We both do it professionally. So it’s something where both of us thought being able to really sharpen our own listening skills would be valuable, and it gives us a shared interest to work on. So that’s my perspective of how we got to this.

Robert Biswas-Diener  03:28

Yeah, I would agree with that. Christian as executive coaches, we’re both very interested in effective communication, how communication can motivate, how you communicate clearly and effectively, and a huge part of that is listening. I will say that listening doesn’t come naturally to me. I think Christian is a much more natural listener. I’m a natural speaker. So we each sort of had a different approach to the topic, and we just tried to join both of our strengths and look at the topic from multiple perspectives.

Kris Safarova  04:09

And how do you define radical listening?

Robert Biswas-Diener  04:13

Well, in some ways, radical listening is just listening, but we thought that listening sort of needed a brand refresh, because most people are familiar with active listening, and active listening has some decent tools. You maintain eye contact, you check for comprehension and clarity, you read back what the person said. You know, by summarizing their language, those are okay, but I don’t know that that those apply across all cultures. I don’t know that they’re always effective, and I don’t know that it’s the whole story. So what Kris and I wanted to do is sort of extend beyond active listening, not dismiss it, but just build on top of it. So one of the big sort of. The takeaway theses of radical listening is the idea that it’s not just about comprehension. You’re not just trying to understand another person that’s one of your outcomes as a listener, but that you have many different intentions for listening. Sometimes you might listen in order to validate someone’s experience. Sometimes you might listen in order to learn from someone. Sometimes you might listen in order to argue with someone. And no matter what your specific intention is that’s going to narrow your attention, you’re going to pay attention to only select aspects of the conversation, those that are the most relevant to the outcome you want to achieve as a listener, and in that respect, your listening becomes far more targeted, far more efficient because you’re really paying attention just to those little bits of the conversation that are going to be the most useful.

Kris Safarova  05:59

So, intentions. What are the most common intentions related to radical listening?

Christian Van Nieuwerburgh  06:05

You know, there’s quite a few intentions. We actually were able to identify three broad kind of categories of intention. Radical listening, for me, is mostly about pro social intentions. In other words, radical listening is about listening to people in a way that makes them feel seen, heard and valued. So really, that’s what we’re aiming for. So therefore, for example, the three motives of wanting to rate relate. So Kris, you and I were having a little talk, even before we started about shared interests. So it’s possible to listen to somebody with the purpose of, I want to build a relationship with this person, you know, a professional relationship, for example. Or it’s possible, for example, to have the motivation of, I’m going to listen to someone with the purpose of appreciating them. Now, if I’m in a work context, and let’s say I’ve got a management role or a leadership role, that’s a pretty effective way of building a strong relationship is simply listening to someone with the intention of I want to show them that I value and appreciate them. Now, to look at the anti social, believe it or not, Kris, it’s possible to have anti social motives for listening. And initially we might think, well, that that would be strange. Why are you listening to someone then? But you know, I’m an academic, and one of the ways that we’re trained to listen sometimes, is listen for weaknesses in an argument. So I’ll go to a lecture, for example, and I’ve been trained to listen critically. I’m listening for what hasn’t been said, what’s not been covered, what might not be clear. So it’s strange to call it anti social, but the purpose isn’t to try to connect with someone. The purpose is to try and critique something. So that’s what we would call anti social. And then there’s some self focused motivations where the purpose of listening is mostly about ourselves. And Robert already mentioned learning, for example. So hopefully your listeners now that’s the intention. They’ve got. Their intention is, what can I learn from listening to this conversation? And like Robert said, if that’s your intention, your intention that your attention is drawn to what useful things are being said, how does it relate to my context? What practical things can I take away? So those are some of the intentions of radical listening. But one thing that’s important for us, Kris overall, and this is the subtitle of our book, which for me, is maybe even more important than the title, the title, of course, radical listening, but the subtitle is the art of true connection. So that’s one of the things Robert and I were interested in, is how can we use a skill that most of us already have to really supercharge our ability to build meaningful connections with others.

Kris Safarova  09:22

And in fact, I think that just before we started recording, both Kristy and that I were early, so we had a discussion, and without thinking about radical listening, I think we were both practicing radical listening, and that allowed to create a strong connection, even though we just met.

Christian Van Nieuwerburgh  09:40

That’s true, Kris, and you know, I was also just thinking in your professional role, which you’re actually doing right now, you are a radical listener. Because one of the other ways we can tell if radical listening is happening is the person who’s being listened to, feel. Details that the listener is interested. That’s a really important point, and this is where I want to add to what Robert said about active listening. I think active listening, while being fair to it, it’s really about how do you show that you’re interested? How can you convey interest when somebody else is talking the ways of demonstrating it. And we would say in radical listening, it goes beyond showing interest, it’s really being interested. And so let’s say your conversational partner is talking about something that maybe isn’t your favorite topic. What do you do then? Well, in radical listening, you turn your attention to the person. So maybe the topic isn’t my favorite topic. They might be talking about Star Trek, for example, but I might be interested in them as a person. So well, what is it about Star Trek that interests you? And when did you become interested in this and what is it about that that really resonates with you? So it’s almost turning our attention from the topic to the person.

Kris Safarova  11:09

I think this is a brilliant point, because all of us had experiences when we are speaking to someone and the topic is just completely not interesting, and they go on and on and on and on. And every time you meet them, they talk about this, and you’re not interested at all. In your opinion, there are so many more important things we could have been discussing with this very limited time we have on Earth. But I agree with you paying attention this other person cares about this topic, and then paying attention to them.

Robert Biswas-Diener  11:36

Kris, I’m so glad that you are bringing this up, and Kris Jen you as well, because I think we can be honest about this, and this lets us off the hook to a certain extent. I know, as an executive coach, sometimes I’m bored by what my client says, and I know that’s a terrible thing to admit, because I do want the best for my client. I do care about my client. I am invested in my client’s success, but that doesn’t mean that I’m interested in every aspect of their job or their their day to day projects, but really I am interested in their motivation, their values, their processes, their communication style. So as long as you can just focus on the person. I think you really can. Can sort of stay a good listener.

Kris Safarova  12:26

In writing this book. Do you feel that it helped you become even better listeners?

Christian Van Nieuwerburgh  12:33

Yeah, well, I think Robert’s the first to admit. He’s already said it. Now I’m gonna say it in a more positive way, which is that Robert is a natural storyteller. That’s one of the things that made me want to work with Robert. You know, I saw him giving presentations, and he’s mesmerizing as a storyteller, but, but that kind of means that Robert enjoys being the one who’s talking right, and he does it in a way that’s highly engaging. So Robert has a particular perspective on what does a storyteller need in order for them to tell a good story? So he understands from that perspective. And I would say Kris that I came at it from a slightly different perspective. Is I’m somebody who loves to listen to stories. I’m super curious. And so you can see we’re a great partnership already. So just so I can say what I’ve learned Kris to answer your question, I’ve actually learned some of Robert’s skills. So one of the skills that we talk about in radical listening is called interjecting. And in fact, when we were working on this book, the first word that came up to describe this was interrupting. And I just found that so difficult as a word that we agreed that we would use interjecting, which is just jumping into the conversation briefly to give praise or to show excitement, those kinds of things. And I’ve learned that for sure, Kris, I do that much more now. Whereas previous, before I wrote the book, the reasons I would interrupt were very, very, very minimal, whereas now I’m a little bit more confident, because now I’ve realized that in radical listening, we want to show the listener we’re with them. So this idea of waiting until somebody finishes everything they have to say before responding that delay might make the speaker think. Kris not that interested. He’s so quiet. So that’s one example of what I’ve learned. Robert.

Robert Biswas-Diener  14:41

Yeah, and I’ve learned exactly the flip side of that coin. So I don’t know if it made me a better listener working with you on this book, I think it probably did, but it certainly has expanded my toolbox. Christian is very respectful listener, as he mentioned. He you know. He kind of grew up learning you take turns, you know one person speaks then the other. And I grew up kind of believing that you can just jump in, you can steer the conversation, you go back and forth. And so I just became a little bit more comfortable with being silent, taking a back seat, kind of doing what I think Christian would call respectful listening, not to suggest that I’m a disrespectful listener, but but it is. It’s really given me just just more permission to back off a little and sit in silence and make a little bit more room for the speaker, and that’s been wonderful to see how that affects the people I’m speaking with.

Kris Safarova  15:43

And did you learn something about listening that really surprised you that you didn’t realize was the case before you started writing this book?

Christian Van Nieuwerburgh  15:51

Yeah, Kris, I’ve actually learned a huge amount about listening and the value of being intentional. Because, you know, even in the examples we just gave, I was reverting to my preferred style of listening, always as if that’s always the best thing for my conversational partner. So one big realization for me is matching the kind of listening that I want to provide with the kind of listening that’s needed by my conversational partner. So my so called respectful listening is great if the other person is confident in what they’re saying. They love to have lots of time and space, but in some circumstances, me just going quiet for long periods of time was making other people uncomfortable. So I think my big learning is the importance of matching that style of listening that is helpful for the client, rather than starting with uncomfortable like this. So always going to listen like this. So again, for your listeners right now, I think just an awareness of what’s your preferred listening approach, that’s step one, so that we, I do think we all have a preferred listening approach, and then thinking with each person, is that the right approach? But maybe Kris also, culturally speaking, in this place that I’m in now, is my natural style welcome or unwelcome, or is it adding or is it taking away? So I think I’ve become much more curious about what type of listening is best for. And then not only with each person, Kris, each person in each situation, depending on what they’re telling me, they might need me to listen in slightly different ways.

Robert Biswas-Diener  17:50

I think I would add to that, the thing that was most surprising to me had to do with obstacles to listening. And if you Kris, if you’re listeners, just think about what do you consider an obstacle to listening? Some of them will be pretty obvious. Oh, we’re distracted. Sometimes we’re looking at our phones, those kinds of things. Everyone’s familiar with that. But there were some that were quite surprising, and these were usually something going on internally. So for example, being right or the sense that you’re right about something is a major obstacle to listening, because if you feel that you’re already right and you already know better than the other person, you’re not that invested in taking on board what they have to say. Similarly, being polite can be an obstacle to listening, and this was a real aha moment for me, because we think politeness is great. It’s sort of something that makes relationships run smoothly, but in this case, being polite sometimes means I’ve just checked out I disagree with what you’re saying, but I don’t want to be rude. I don’t want to push back on you, so I’m just going to nod, but I’m not really engaged in the conversation. And there were a whole bunch of these, half a dozen of these, that are sort of well intentioned things that we all do that actually serve as a barrier to listening. And once I became aware of them, I just started noticing, oh, this could go off the rails. This could disconnect me from the person speaking, and it’s helped me to pay a little bit better attention.

Kris Safarova  19:29

Let’s talk about the roles silence plays when it comes to radical listening.

Robert Biswas-Diener  19:35

Yeah, silence is fantastic. I, as I mentioned before, it’s not something that comes naturally to me. One of the research articles that that we read either had the title or the phrase that I really liked, and it was like silence anything, but that is silence is something. It’s not nothing. And so, so. Silence can be so many things. Silence could be a pause where someone is thinking of something to say. Silence could be someone disagrees with you but they don’t want to say it. There could be silence where they’re leaving out something. They’re they’re just not saying something. There could be silence where the conversation just sort of comes to a natural end, but you’re both together, like silence occurs in so many different forms, and being able to read the silence and understand and use the silence as a tool becomes an amazing skill. One more thing about that and Christian you might want to add, but cultures interpret silence very, very differently. So I’m I’m American, and we tend to be less comfortable with silence. We like to fill in silences. We feel silences are awkward, so we do a lot of talking. And that’s not true around the globe and many other cultures, silence is a sign of respect. It’s a display of thoughtfulness. So I also was very intrigued by silence being culturally distinct.

Christian Van Nieuwerburgh  21:14

Yeah, thanks Robert for saying that. You know Kris again, we were just chatting about this. But I love traveling, right? And I’ve lived in many different parts of the world. I grew up in Lebanon, I’ve lived in Germany and Japan, and now I live in the United Kingdom and Spain. So I love observing and kind of noticing. And I have a funny story I would just want to tell about use of silences. And then I have some practical ideas I want to share as well, but if it’s okay to just share a humorous anecdote. I grew up in Lebanon, and one of the ways you communicate in the Middle East is very, very actively, and everybody’s talking and using hand gestures a lot, and the more animated you are, the more respectful you’re being of the other person. It would be disrespectful in that culture to listen to somebody with no kind of response, kind of really just listening without responding. So very active, you listen in a kind of very interactive way, and you talk to everybody in that culture. If you get on a bus, you’re going to say, hey, chat to people or whatever. So then I came to England, and I was thinking, well, this is going to be the same. Everybody’s just talking to one another. And I got to London, you know, what an amazing cosmopolitan city London is. And I noticed, well, everybody’s chattering. All that people are talking to each other. This is great. So then I went onto the underground, you know, the tube, the subway. And I thought, Well, everybody’s going to be chatting. So I got into the subway, I sat down in the underground, turned to the person next to me and said, So where are you going? There was no answer. They didn’t even there’s no people don’t talk. I didn’t realize there was some kind of unspoken rule that when you get into the underground, you just look at a book or you look at your you don’t talk to one another. And the other curious thing for people everywhere, maybe is the the elevator role or the lift you know? What is that rule I’ve seen. I’ve been in big buildings with many elevators, and people are chatting. They’ve got their coffee. They walk suddenly when you’re in the elevator, no, nobody talked. I’m like, Why did they put a little sign? Why didn’t anybody tell me the special rules? But yeah, joking apart. Kris, I like to think that actually the use of silence is a skill for managers and leaders, and how can we use listening in a powerful way? Well, one use of silence, or if people aren’t comfortable with silence, we could use the word pause. Let’s think power of the pause if people prefer that. But what is the power of pausing? Well, one of the powers of pausing is it’s a great way of encouraging other people to take responsibility. So if we’re talking and people are like, Oh, I don’t really know what to do. Maybe I can just pause and not say anything, because the moment I jump in, I’m kind of taking responsibility. So that’s one the other power of the pause is to show respect and appreciation. So let’s say somebody says, Oh, my goodness, this is the first time I’ve ever been able to do that thing. That can be a nice pause afterwards, which is almost like us saying, let’s take time to just let that sink in. Or somebody’s told you about a terrible trauma they’ve experienced. Just a little pause there. And I think again, it’s fun to experiment with these things and for us all to notice if you’re somebody I’m talking to the listeners here, but if you’re somebody who’s very uncomfortable with silences, maybe there’s some missed opportunities there. Because if you’re uncomfortable, your natural tendency is, I better say something, but just to take a moment to think, are there times when maybe it’s better not to say something? And my last one, and this is a personal passion of mine, it’s about giving people a voice, you know, making sure that marginalized people groups, people who are regularly discriminated against, that they have a voice. We have to be careful. Those of us who are more confident we’re going to fill the space. So pauses also allow people who maybe haven’t got the confidence to jump in or might not be the ones who just want to immediately say something. It creates space for other people to have a voice.

Kris Safarova  26:08

Let’s build on this and speak more about as leaders. How can we use listening in a powerful way to be a better leader, to get our team energized and get involved and to have better relationship with higher ups as well. What would you like to add here?

Robert Biswas-Diener  26:24

Yeah, I think most people have an intuition that listening plays some role in effective business practices and management and leadership in particular, we can trace it back decades to the seven habits right? First, seek to understand before being understood. And the way you seek to understand is by asking questions. And although asking questions is speaking, really what you’re doing is providing an opportunity for listening. You’re trying to say, tell me about you. Tell me about the process. Tell me about the project. Tell me about the progress, whatever it is, and this is very much aligned with sort of the executive coaching orientation, which suggests people have a lot of answers within them, a lot of wisdom, a lot of professional experience. And you want to make as much room for that as possible, so that you can support it, and the way to begin making room for it is just by listening to it. What are your instincts about this project? Where do you believe we should start? What have you already done? What do you think the best strategy is? It doesn’t mean that you have to accept every single one of the answers or agree with everything that everyone says. But it is such an empowering dynamic to set up to say, I just value your professional experience. You’re a team member with a voice, and we can hash out the details as we go along. But I think sort of it starts with listening.

Christian Van Nieuwerburgh  28:03

Yeah, if I could add to that, Kris, you know, we get so much information through listening as well. So, you know, of course, there’s an expectation for leaders and managers in time of crisis to be the strong voice to come in with lots to say, but there’s also opportunities to use listening to gather data and information. And for example, we can gather information about people’s strengths, you know, so simply by asking them, hey, what sort of things do you like to do? You know, tell me about a time you were at your best. Those are invitations for the other person to speak and for you to listen, thereby building connection. But you’re also gaining valuable information, and then, by listening in this radical way, we can also pick up what motivates this person, you know, and to get over the common thinking error, which is, we’re all motivated by the same thing, which is an erroneous assumption. And again, if it’s okay to share a personal anecdote, when I was a leader, I was managing a team of people, and one of my colleagues, she was amazing. She was working all the time. She was hitting all her targets. She was collegiate. She would stay after work. And I just thought one time, you know this person, they deserve to be recognized and rewarded. So I asked them into my office. I said, Oh, I want to talk to you about something again. At that time, I wasn’t really good at noticing, right if I had been good at note saying, This person seemed a bit intimidated about coming to my office number one, but let’s forget about I didn’t notice that. I said, Hey, come to my office. Just want to talk to you about something. Came in little bit nerve. Us. And I said, Hey, it’s good news. You know, I’ve just noticed how amazing your work has been. Your colleagues have been telling me or I said, so you know what? I want to reward you. And I said, I know you’ve recently, you know, linked up with a partner. Why don’t the two of you take a long weekend. I said this weekend, Friday. Take it off. Monday, take it off. You can have a nice long weekend now. Kris, what was my mistake? That’s what I want, I love. That’s the best gift you can give me. Is, hey, it’s three o’clock on Friday, you can go now that’s you’ve given me the best gift. Now this person didn’t smile or get excited say, okay, left the room, and so that was my error of not listening. I hadn’t been really paying attention to what motivates this person. So they went away, they did go, they came back. And then I just became so curious. I went to this person. I said, you know, I hope you enjoyed that time away so, but I just noticed when I when I talked about it, you didn’t seem so enthusiastic. And the person said to me, Well, you know, if I took Friday and Monday off, my work isn’t going to get done. I’m going to come back to a lot more work on Tuesday, and that’s a lot of work. The other thing is, it sounded to me like you were saying it doesn’t really matter if you’re here or not, just take time off, it’s not going to have any impact. And isn’t that amazing that I made this my intention was to reward. My intention was to strengthen the relationship, but inadvertently, I was actually damaging the relationship. She felt devalued, and this was simply because, you know, I hadn’t been paying attention and I hadn’t had these kinds of conversations. Were suggesting, because if I talked to her, what would have been most valuable to her was recognition in a team meeting. That’s what she told me. She said, if you had said in a team meeting, you’re doing great work, that would have been like the number one reward for her. So I think I just wanted to give that example of how radical listening can give you valuable information about what motivates people and maybe how you can help them to be even more engaged.

Robert Biswas-Diener  32:27

Christian. That’s a great story. I don’t think I’ve ever heard that before. I really enjoyed it, and it’s very honest of you to say, because you’re you’re essentially saying I did it wrong. I would say this, that that what you’re talking about is backed up by research as well. So there are studies, for example, of sales people who are better listeners. And it will come as no surprise to people that they are also more productive, more effective in their roles because of exactly what you’re saying. They’re paying closer attention to their their customers, needs their customers, wants their customers motives. But even among leaders, there’s research suggesting that perceptions of leaders really matter and that leaders who are perceived as better listeners are also perceived as more influential.

Kris Safarova  33:21

Let’s talk about how to be an effective listener and radical listener. When you are dealing with situation where it feels like someone is attacking you, they they saying something that is not true about you, and so you start feeling emotions inside that make it hard to listen.

Christian Van Nieuwerburgh  33:41

I like that. And, you know, I just kind of want to split out whether they are attacking you or whether we’re perceiving it as an attack on me. And I think there’s two. Those are two different arenas. So one thing I just want to say is that we’re not saying you should be listening in every situation. You know it’s a choice, and radical listening is about being quite intentional about your listening when that relationship is important to you and when you think it’s essential for something that’s important. So if people are literally attacking you or bullying you, we’re not saying you should be listening to that. You probably shouldn’t listen to that, but let’s say that they’re not attacking you and that they’re giving you feedback. That is where radical listening might be powerful, and the perception so that would be, in this case, Kris, a barrier my perception that I’m being attacked would be a barrier. So in that case, radical listening actually trains us to become more aware of potential barriers. And if I know that, when people are talking about my performance and giving me feedback about that, I tend to shut down. On or become defensive. That’s something we can work on. And in our book, the skill related to this is called quieting. One of our skills is quieting, and that’s just being aware of the inner dialog that’s going on in our heads. And if that inner dialog is, anytime somebody talks about my performance, I’m going to take it personally. They’re attacking me. Then it’s just noticing that this is actually getting in the way of me receiving information that’s very valuable to me. So I think it’s about noticing and maybe, and I’m kind of responding as I as you’ve asked me this question, maybe one of the first skills is being able to make a distinction. Is this an attack? What is the motivation of this person? And if I realize, you know, they’re probably not trying to attack me, they’re just trying to share information with me, then developing strategies to be open to that. And that could be something as simple as saying, Actually, I’m really interested in hearing this information, but can you give me a little bit of time, or I want to go get a coffee just to kind of ground ourselves? Or it could be we find some way to calm ourselves down, to say, like taking a deep breath and saying, Well, let me hear this information first before I dismiss it. I think that’s the key. Kris, it’s we don’t want to, because of our natural defense mechanisms to block out important information that may be valuable to us.

Robert Biswas-Diener  36:36

Christian, there’s something really important, I think you said in there? Well, there was a lot that you said that was important, but one that really caught my attention, and that was, you don’t always have to listen. I think there’s an expectation that two people like us, we wrote a book on listening, that people think that we’re going to say listening is going to solve all the world’s problems, and it’s the number one thing, and you have to do it all the time, but there are instances in which you’re not obligated to listening, where listening isn’t the correct path, where, where there is another way to go, but listening is generally good and and there are good I think there’s a strong rationale to listen first and then Make your decisions, but, but I really like that you said, and every once in a while you don’t have to listen.

Kris Safarova  37:26

If you were hosting a one month training for leaders on how to be an exceptional radical listener, what would it look like?

Christian Van Nieuwerburgh  37:35

Well, that’s a beautiful question. Kris, one month, I get a full month. That’s amazing. So you know, my natural style is to start with what people already do. So I would actually probably go to listening mode, and I’d want to hear about what people are already doing. I’d like to hear about what their their their top strengths are, what they consider to be their growth area. So I wonder if we could start with a period of them being listened to. And what’s the reason for this Kris. I think one really powerful way of conveying the value of radical listening is to give people an experience of being listened to in that way. And like I said earlier, the test of radical listening is, does the person feel seen, valued and heard? So one experience we really want is of people to experience that for themselves, and hopefully think, Wow, that was a great experience. I need to do that for others, and just that being listened to is such a powerful intervention. And if listeners now are thinking not so sure about what I’m saying, I’ve got this little thought experiment I want to share is if, if listeners can just think of a time when they were sharing something and it was clear that people were not listening to them. Hopefully, it’s not just me that’s experiencing these things, but in my experience, Kris not being listened to is highly demotivating. It seems to me disrespectful, but it has another powerful impact, which is it gets in the way of our thinking. So if I’m talking to an audience and they’re obviously not listening, then the self doubt creeps in. I start doubting myself. I start falling over my words. So our argument is radical. Listening is actual opposite of that. It’s the opposite of doubting. It’s you start to believe in yourself. So, yeah, I’d love some initial thing where people experience what it’s like to be listened to. Then I think there would be a lot of practice involved as we go through the contents of the radical listening book. In fact, there’s six skills. Skills. Each of the skills could be, we could spend at least a day on the skills, but I’d love there to be time to put those things into practice, then we can reflect on motivation. So I love the idea of a one month professional learning experience, but as I’m kind of designing it in my head now, Kris, I think it might be one week off site, quiet space, where we can explore, we can play, we can experiment, then one week back in the workplace and with families and where we’re putting that into practice, because that’s where it really matters. You know, it’s we’ll all be fine if we were in a retreat all the time, all the time, but a week back, and then another week to explore, refine, develop, and then maybe another week back, something like that. Robert, what are your thoughts?

Robert Biswas-Diener  40:58

I love what you’re saying, and I like that you’re highlighting the experience of being listened to and developing the skills of listening. The only thing I would add to that are setters of the contextual or situational factors. So I would have people audit their own organization for their policies and practices that might support or interfere with learning, and this could be things as mundane is how you schedule appointments, because when you schedule appointments back to back, as you get towards the end of your hour or your half hour, your mind starts jumping to the next appointment, and that serves, then as an obstacle to listening. Do you allow people to put phones on the table during team meetings? Is what are the norms you’ve created around kind of text messaging or using phones? If you have one on ones, that would be a common practice. But what’s the expectation of a one on one? Is it, hey, I’m going to listen to you. You can bring things to me, is it a quick check in, like, what? What do people think of the role of listening within a one on one who’s doing the listening? And I think you can just audit every aspect of your your day to day operations, so that you can create more fertile ground for listening within your organization.

Kris Safarova  42:21

Stepping away from a topic of radical listening, I want to ask you my favorite question over the last few years, what were two, three aha moments, realizations that you feel comfortable sharing that either changed the way you look at life or the way you look at business?

Christian Van Nieuwerburgh  42:39

Wow. What a beautiful question. Kris, thank you for the question. There was something that popped into my mind, which is about big aha moment for me, is, how do I leverage positive experiences in my life? How do I, you know, for each positive experience. How do I get the most benefit from that positive experience? And so I’ll give it to you in the short version. But my lifelong dream was to do a motorcycle journey across the United States from Chicago right through to LA, pretty close to La Santa Monica, and I was, I wanted to be intentional about this. This has been a lifelong thing. I’ve spent four decades dreaming about doing this. I finally had the opportunity to do it, and I thought, How do I get the most out of this wonderful dream that I’ve had? So I was intentional Kris beforehand, of starting to anticipate. So I thought, I’m going to get joy even before I do it by anticipating, imagining, daydreaming, talking to people about it. So I thought, let me get as much as I can beforehand. Then during the it was a 19 day trip, I was thinking, I don’t want to be thinking about the past. I don’t even want to be thinking about what’s going to happen when I get to Santa Monica. Santa Monica, and I realized I needed to turn my attention to the present moment. That’s the best way I can get the most out of it. And then I was also thinking, how am I going to get the best out of it afterwards? So I was taking photographs here and there. I was recording little things, because I thought I want to be able to look back on this wonderful so it’s almost like I tripled right? The positive value and the surprising thing, imagine lifelong dream. I’ve been wanting to do this my whole life. Flew into Chicago that night. I was nervous. I pretty close to a panic attack, anxious. I was like, Wait a minute. It’s happening tomorrow. Am I ready for this? Have I thought enough about it? Believe it or not, I I even thought about canceling the whole trip. I thought, this is I haven’t planned this. Um, you know what? Am I doing? And so I learned about kind of embracing self doubt there. I thought, you know, this is I took a step back. I’m studying this stuff, this, this is some of the stuff I teach and I study. And I thought, you know, that’s a little voice inside me that’s just cautious. It wants to be, you know, careful. Have you thought about so I thought, how can I embrace that and appreciate it and say, you know, it’s good to be anxious, it’s good to be nervous. I’ve been wanting to do this for so long, but Kris, I wasn’t expecting it. So I really wasn’t prepared. I thought I’m gonna love it. I planned it. It’s in my mind. But, yeah, that was huge learning for me. And so I think maybe the broader message is accepting doubts and anxiety as maybe part of that. We’re human. We experience those things. And how can we almost listen to that voice as well and give it space? It’s almost, it’s almost Kris, like radical listening to oneself.

Kris Safarova  46:05

Christian. And during that trip, during you dreamed about it for so long, and you were called to do it, was this something that actually happened during that trip that explained why it was your dream, something you realized?

Christian Van Nieuwerburgh  46:19

Yeah, you know, it the it was better than I even imagined. And remember, I’ve been dreaming about it for 40 years. And maybe there’s something there about mindset Kris, because I got onto the trip saying, This is my thing. I’ve been wanting to do this. Let me embrace it. So I even I had a flat tire on my way there, and I thought, you know, a little mantra for me was, this is all part of it. This is the adventure I wanted, that I got bed bugs. I’m embarrassed to say on your podcast, terrible bed bugs all down my arm. I’ve still got scars, and I was having to ride in the heat, and the bites are all over, and it was very painful, but I loved it. So yeah, I think I’ve always been passionate about the imagining our life as a journey. So I think I did love the idea of planning starting. So you know what I said about looking forward to it, doing it, reflecting on it. Maybe there’s some you know, that applies to many areas of our life. So yeah, it was a dream trip, and now I loved it so much I’ve integrated it into my every year. So this year, for example, I’m going to go trekking in Nepal for three weeks, and it’s just such a wonderful reflective time for me. Kris, I used that time just to reflect on the last I don’t want to tell you my age, but the many decades that have already passed. And so it reminded me of how important it is for all of us to take time and take stock, and the taking stock is is the way that I’m living my life every day, aligned to what’s most important for me.

Robert Biswas-Diener  48:16

Wow. Christian, that’s pretty great. Again, some things you said there that I didn’t know. So thanks for for being so honest about all of that. I I have two one of mine sort of builds on on yours. I like the idea that you have this sort of once a year epic, take care of yourself, take stock, live a full life kind of adventure. I do something similar by way of taking care of my well being, only I do it every single day, and this came out of the wake of the pandemic, where I think we all started thinking about well being, not as something selfish, but as something necessary. And I’m naturally an early riser. I know that might irritate some people, but I get up at four, five o’clock every single morning, and I begin my day with drawing. And I’m not suggesting to your listeners that they need to take up art. It could be, you know, any anything that that takes care of their well being. For me, it is doing artwork and just drawing for an hour, I don’t meditate, but it kind of it focuses my attention. I feel centered and calm after I do it. It’s a flow experience. I feel like I’m learning and growing all the time. So it just checks so many of the boxes for me in terms of my well being, and I feel then that I start the day stronger and more able to give of myself, more able to show up and perform. So just the idea, the take home for me was prioritizing my well being is not selfish. It makes me a better contributor, basically. And then the other one, very briefly, I learned, and I learned. Relatively recently from Christian he just said is a very casual comment. One day, everyone is in the middle of something, and it was such a great sort of for forgiving thing to say. I was so impressed with it, because I can be quite impatient with people. I can be quite critical of people, and I have found myself increasingly just reminding myself, well, they’re in the middle of something, and it’s just allowed me to take a breath, to pause, to extend them a little bit more credit, and it’s made my life a little bit less anxious and worried.

Kris Safarova  50:38

Christian and Robert, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for everything you shared. Where can our listeners learn more about you? By your book? Anything you want to share?

Christian Van Nieuwerburgh  50:47

Well, for me, please have a look at coachonamotorcycle.com. That’s Coach on a Motorcycle dot Com. You’ll be able to follow my 19-day trip. There’s also a lot of free material on that website. You could also order the book from that website as well. Robert.

Robert Biswas-Diener  51:07

People can find me at intentionalhappiness.com

Kris Safarova  51:12

Thank you guys. Really enjoyed our discussion, and especially thank you for the answer to the last question from both of you, very honest, very open and these are the kind of answers that are really helpful for the listeners, because it allows us to think about them, and me to think about some other practices we can incorporate into our life to have a bigger, better life, more impactful life.

Christian Van Nieuwerburgh  51:35

Yeah. Thank you so much, Kris, Thanks, Kris. I just want as a final message to your listeners, you know that thing that Robert said about everybody’s always in the middle of something that applies to us as well. We’re always in the middle of something. So my final message is, be compassionate to yourselves as well. You know, listen to yourselves. And as Robert was suggesting, what can you do to look after your own well being? Because radical listening is not possible if you’ve got 100 other things, if you’re running on empty the whole time, if you’re on the verge of burnout. So this idea of in order to be able to give other people your full attention, you have to look after your own needs and well being too.

Kris Safarova  52:22

You cannot be an empty cup, correct? Thank you. Our guest today again have been Dr. Christian van Nieuwerburgh and Dr. Robert Biswas-Diener. I’m sure I’m mispronouncing both last names, my apologies. Check out their book. It’s called Radical Listening. And our podcast sponsor today is StrategyTraining.com. If you want to strengthen your strategy skills, you can get the Overall Approach Used in Well-Managed Strategy Studies. It’s a free download we prepared for you, and you can get it at firmsconsulting.com/overallapproach. You can also get McKinsey and BCG-winning resume, which is a resume that got offers from both of those firms. So regardless of your level, right now, it’s still good idea to have up to date resume that is very polished. So you can take a look and see what you can adapt for your resume. And you can get it at firmsconsulting.com/resumePDF, and you can also get a copy of one of our books that we co-attended with some of our amazing clients. It’s called Nine Leaders in Action, and you can get it at firmsconsulting.com/gift. Thank you everyone for tuning in, and I’m looking forward to connect with you all next time.