How to be Heard by Improving Your Listening Skills

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1:33There's no safe like SimpliSafe. From Entrepreneur Media, this is Problem Solvers, a show in which entrepreneurs do what entrepreneurs do best, solve unexpected problems in their business. We were completely wrong. And I'm just like, it's not selling. It was like, we have to start from scratch. I'm Jason Pfeiffer, the editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur Magazine.

1:59Jonathan B. Smith has been involved in a lot of businesses at a very high level for a long time. And as a result, he'd picked up and really taught himself a lot of skills, including the skill of negotiation. He had to negotiate many a deal with many a person. And then Jonathan actually got involved in the business of negotiation, which I'll explain more about in just a moment. But the funny thing is that once he did that and he started learning the specific tactics related to negotiation, he realized, wait a second, wait a second. A lot of times I'll use the skills and I don't know what the skill is called because I've done lots of negotiation, but I didn't know like formally what the skill was called.

2:37Which is to say that he was doing a thing and not realizing it was a thing. He had learned through his own negotiations a way to handle something. And he didn't realize that it was actually something that had a name and a practice and had been refined by professionals who just think about negotiation all day. And this maybe has happened to you. It certainly happened to me, where maybe I developed some way that helped me write or communicate. And then later on, I would realize, oh, this is actually something that people teach. And this is satisfying, but it's not invalidating to learn this stuff better, right?

3:18Because yeah, fine, maybe you figured out some of it on your own. But once you discover that the thing that you figured out has actually been perfected, has been examined, has been explored, well, the more you dig into it, the more you can optimize it, the more you can realize that this thing that you found, it's part of a system. And that was a revelation. to Jonathan. People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. And if you listen, they understand that you care or they feel like you care. And that is the thing that now Jonathan is very committed to helping people understand.

3:55He says that people fall short in their listening skills. And if you really want to be heard, you have to be a better listener. So that's what we're going to talk about. But wait, before we hit the break, I should explain a little bit more about who Jonathan is, right? Because he's a pretty impressive guy. So let's just take that from the top for a second. I'm Jonathan Smith, expert EOS implementer and negotiations trainer with the Black Swan Group. And let me just break all that down. So expert EOS implementer. EOS is Entrepreneurial Operating System. It describes itself as a complete set of simple concepts and practical tools that has helped thousands of entrepreneurs around the world get what they want from their business.

4:39A way to think about it is that it is a coaching system, but of course it is more than that. And an implementer is the person who helps implement that in organizations. So Jonathan is a person who helps many entrepreneurs get their business focused and profitable and thriving. And then Black Swan Group. So maybe you're familiar with Black Swan Group because maybe you're familiar with a guy named Chris Voss. Chris Voss is the many times over bestselling author of a book called Never Split the Difference. He is a former FBI hostage negotiator. He has built a huge online presence and is just all around very impressive.

5:19Also has the Black Swan Group, which is a negotiation consultancy. And you know who the strategy genius behind all that is? I mean, aside from Chris, it's Jonathan. So I met Chris Voss in DC when I lived there before he had the book Never Split the Difference. And I am his coach and business architect. So we've been together for like 10 years at this point. Jonathan B. Smith, the guy behind the guy, and also a guy who has a lot of really useful insights about how to connect, how to build, how to make sure that you listen to others. Because when you do, just like Jonathan, you can build amazing things too.

6:02On this episode of Problem Solvers, Jonathan B. Smith is going to help us develop our listening skills in ways that we don't even think we're missing. All coming up after the break. Are you sick and tired of scrolling through social media and not seeing your business show up in the feed? On the new Restaurant Influencers podcast, you will learn how to tell your story online and how to be found. My name is Sean Walcheff, and I will be interviewing the top leaders in the restaurant and hospitality space to help you with your smartphone storytelling people have to get that it is not just about what's on the plate anymore we have teamed up with entrepreneur magazine yelp and toast our primary point of sale partner to bring you this weekly video series please subscribe so you do not miss an episode and if you'd like to learn more about the show visit us at cali bbq.media all right we're back i'm talking with Jonathan B.

7:04Smith of the Black Swan Group about how to be heard by improving your listening skills. That is the exact language that Jonathan sent to me in an email when proposing this conversation. Jonathan and I have become friends this year. And it really struck me because it feels like opposites. Well, how do you get heard if you're listening? How do you get heard if you're not speaking, if you're letting other people speak. So that's where we're going to pick up. And where this goes is just a really insightful conversation about how to understand people, how to connect with people, and how to do that all important job of sometimes just being quiet.

7:46So where do people fall short in their listening skills? We at Black Swan Group have five levels of listening. And where we fall short is on number two, typically. And number two is listening to respond. So the first one is listening for the gist. That's like you're on your cell phone and you're going, uh-huh. Oh yeah, I heard you. Oh, oh, by the way, I have to go somewhere. And yeah. Yeah. The second is listening to respond. And I find that often in my facilitation with EOS clients, there's lots of people listening to respond as opposed to listening to understand the other party's point of view.

8:22Okay. So we're going to dive into that listening to respond, but just because I'm sure it begs the question, there are five kinds of listening. We've heard two of them. What's three through five? Number three is listening for logic. Number four is listening for emotion. And number five is listening for their point of view. And you can stay in listening for logic. Like your brain can stay there. Listening for emotion, you cannot stay there forever. You can't just stay there for hours and hours and hours on end. I think I liken it to being in, if you do yoga, it's like being in Shavasana and you can be there for a period of time focusing on your breath, but at some point your brain gets bored and moves on somewhere else.

8:59And then you got to go back to listening for logic as opposed to listening to respond. That's what we have to avoid. In other words, to listen for emotion, which is not a place that you can stay in front of it. The reason for that is because it's too taxing. Yeah, it's really intense. So you're listening to the other party's emotion. Where are they coming from emotionally? And you can't just sit there and listen for their emotions and not think about the logic of what they're actually saying. Right. I totally hear that. So in other words, sometimes we can recognize that the thing that somebody's saying isn't the thing that they mean.

9:36There's something happening underneath it. And if we can address the thing that's underneath it, the thing that is emotionally driving them, we can reach a better place of understanding. but we don't often do this. And this is the reason why there are so many fights in the world, right? Because people stop trying to understand each other's actual emotional needs and just start reacting to whatever they're yelling, which are different things. And then people just go back and forth and yell. Is that right? You got it right. Yeah. Okay. All right. So totally get how there are these different things that we're listening for.

10:11So let's go back to listen to respond. What is the reason we often miss that? Why is that the thing that we're lacking the most? I think everyone wants to feel important. Everyone feels that they have a point of view. They want to appear smart. Like that's what I find in my sessions with people. They're like, oh, I have something to add as opposed to let me acknowledge what you just said, and then acknowledge the logic, and then maybe I'll respond later, but I'm not going to just cut you off by just responding with something else and maybe taking us in a different direction. Listening to respond is I want to put my point of view on the discussion as opposed to I'm responding to what you're actually saying in a logical sense.

10:57I'm already decided. I'm waiting for you to pause your breath at two minutes in so I can respond as opposed. I'm not responding to you, I'm responding with what my point of view. Oh, I see. It's interesting. This reminds me of something I'm just going to share with you so that you can react to it, which is I've taken on this interesting new role in some of my work, which I have no formal training in, which is a kind of advice giver counselor role, right? It almost feels like therapy, but I am not a trained therapist, which is sometimes I do it in one-on-one consulting that people book my time on.

11:35Sometimes I do it on another show that I have called Help Wanted, where we bring on people who have work problems and then I talk them through it. And I have found that engaging with these people is less in a way about me giving advice, like finding ways to jump in and tell them what I think, and more about listening to them and then asking these guiding questions that in a way help them verbalize a solution that they almost have within themselves. It's really interesting. Like yesterday, I was talking to a woman who doesn't think that she's a leader, but she's she's good at something. And I asked her what she's good at.

12:13And she was telling me about how she's good at bringing people together and understanding their needs and cohering them into a vision. And then I said, but is that not leadership? And she said, oh. Oh, and anyway, I feel like what I have had to learn to do in these situations is to let other people lead and to be the person who follows and guides them, but does not control where they're going and does not constantly look for moments to take the conversation away from them and bring it to me. Is that what we're talking about? So it's really interesting. I was writing down as you were talking where I've worked on this particular issue.

12:56So the definition of a facilitator is an observer and an intervention. But you only intervene when appropriate. Most of the time you observe. And tactical empathy, we describe it as I have an intuition, like I think something, and then I vocalize that observation. And by vocalizing that observation, that's what we call tactical empathy. And if I'm wrong, you'll tell me I'm wrong. And if I'm right, you'll say that's right. And so there's a book by Edward Schein called Humble Inquiry. It's all about coaching. So what I've learned over time being a coach or this advisor you're talking about is it's a lot less about me.

13:37And it's a lot more about asking the right questions and inquiring. And they'll take me where they want. How do you learn to ask the right questions? Lots of practice. 10 ,000 hours. I mean, it's a, so we say that, uh, tactical empathy is a depreciable skill. Facilitation is a depreciable skill. Spending time in those kinds of scenarios, coaching or facilitating is the only way to really get there. It's a craft, not a profession. So for someone, you know, I mean, we're having this conversation because ultimately what we're both trying to do here is get people to think differently about how they're listening.

14:17people. And we haven't even gotten to the second part, which is to then how to be heard better as a result, but to stay on listening, to have people reflect more on how they can be listeners and how to engage in the act of drawing out something from someone so that they can be a listener. Now, not everybody is going to do that in the kinds of roles that you and I occupy, both of which, though they are different, involves sitting down with people and helping them in some kind of direct way. So what's your suggestion to people in a kind of wide range of industries and life paths for how to start thinking differently about how they're listening, how they're asking those questions so that they can guide, but not step in too often?

15:04What I would say is like, my mantra is to stay curious. I've been to my office, you know, there's the sign on the board. And the idea is there's a reason someone just said something to you. So there's an interesting way instead of saying, why did you just say that to me? Say, we would say, it seems like there's a reason you're asking, or it seems like there's a reason you just said that. And then you use what we call dynamic silence. So dynamic silence means we just stop talking and we wait five to 10 seconds maybe for them to respond. But we drop that seems like there's a reason you're asking.

15:37And all of a sudden people start telling you, oh yeah, I'm asking because I need to to find a parking spot or my meter's going to run out or whatever the issue is. But as opposed to telling them, it doesn't feel like we're interrogating them. It feels like we're just having a conversation. There seems to be a reason you're asking, reminds me of another phrase, a friend of mine who is a therapist tells me she uses all the time, which is, tell me more about that. She says, tell me more about that is a magic phrase in a therapy session, because somebody will say something and they're not consciously doing this, but what they're really doing is they're testing whether this is a door that someone wants to open.

16:19Someone will follow them through. You know, you mentioned something and maybe you don't want to go into it unless you know that somebody else is interested or is willing to engage with it. Tell me more about that. It goes a long way. And it makes me think that for people for whom this doesn't come naturally, or maybe that they could use some prompts or some ways to navigate a moment in which someone's talking, they would like to draw more out of them, they don't know how to do it, that having a couple of these little phrases or these little guideposts can be a really helpful way for someone to learn a different way of engaging.

16:56It's almost as if it's not necessarily natural, Jonathan, for people to just listen. We're kind of trained to just keep talking, aren't we? Yeah, it seems to be that way. I'll tell you a little trick. Yeah. The trick we have is if you go to a networking event, and you know, you probably go to a networking event yourself, and you just go and use this one simple trick. A simple trick is what we call a mirror. A mirror is you basically say the last one to three things that someone said to you, or pick something in a sentence and say the most important thing or the thing you're interested in them responding to.

17:34And you use an upward inflection when you said Colorado, Colorado to you, and you tell me something about Colorado and only respond to people with a mirror. And you could walk around the party and be the most interesting person in the party. We've had people do that. So it's a really good thing to practice. That's really fun. Wait a second. Just repeat back that whatever it is that they said that sounded most interesting, like literally the phrase. One to three words. One to three words. Yeah. So like, and it has to be like, ideally like in the last sentence, simplest way to say the last three words.

18:08But the reality is sometimes you want to highlight something in the sentence and I would say Colorado. You go, yeah, by the way, Colorado, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then we would take this, the whole conversation would go somewhere different. And you wouldn't even know I just did that. Just a quick note here. This is me outside of the interview, just talking to you listening. Right at that moment, the connection that Jonathan and I had went dead. whatever software we were using. So we had to reconnect. We reconnected on Zoom. The audio quality is a little different. So you might notice that.

18:36Okay. Okay, Jonathan, so far what we've talked about is really making sure that other people feel heard and feeling as engaged as we can in someone else's thoughts and being useful to them as a result. But when you came to me, you said that this is also about you being heard, not you. But the person, you know, if we want to feel heard, we have to be better listeners. We've talked about being better listeners. How does this make us feel heard? Well, once they know that you care about them, they're much more willing to engage in listening to you. So now they're actually committed. So once they understand, like, well, we've done really interesting things where we get someone engaged.

19:22I had a friend who needed to lost her bag and got the whole hotel looking for her bag by engaging the person at the front desk who never got heard. That person was never heard, but they could provide her with the implementation of how to get the security team to help her find her bag. Because no one else listens to this woman. It's like going to the Starbucks. And I know my buddy Michael, when I walk there, I fist bump him, ask him how his grandmother was and how was the barbecue over the weekend. And I always get whatever I want. No problem. It's easy. Right. By being liked, you get heard. I don't even have to order when I walk in.

20:03Because so many people walk around with the expectation that others will just listen to them. But who might not? They have other things to do. and you haven't shown your value just by saying something. It's almost like you show your value not by saying something, but you show your value by allowing others to say something and you being a willing recipient of it. We say don't piss someone off who can hurt you by doing nothing. Don't piss someone off who can hurt you by doing nothing. One of Chris's jokes is that the person that upsets the Starbucks barista gives them decaf instead of caffeinated coffee.

20:43The person would never know the difference. So, you know, if you're on the phone with Comcast, I'll start with, seems like you guys are really busy today because I waited online for five minutes and they'll tell me what's going on in their day. And all of a sudden it's much easier to get whatever solved I need solved because then they'll listen to me because I heard them. And all they hear is people yelling and screaming at them all day long. It reminds me of a sales trick that I've started to use, which is that at the beginning of a sales call with a client, I will talk to them about how good they are at whatever it is.

21:18I'm talking to an email newsletter platform. I'll tell them about people I know who use that email newsletter platform. If I'm talking to somebody at a technology company and I happen to have a piece of that technology, I'll start by showing it to them. Whatever it is that can show them. I'm not just here to sell you something. I understand what you're putting out in the world. Is that the same thing? Well, you're certainly creating rapport with that person. So the same kind of rapport you're doing. And that's part of tactical empathy. It's part of any good communication. People will listen to you if they know that you, if they like you, they're much more likely to.

21:53How do you make that transition from being a great listener, drawing people out, mirroring them to then saying what it is that you need to say? Well, first and foremost, I think you have to be authentic. So when you show up and you say you like their email platform, my hope is that you like their email platform using the right tone. Because people can read right through that also. And then, you know, there are things where we have skills where you can actually, once you've dropped the skill, use the skill, and we're not afraid to make the ask. When we make the ask, you might think I'm being greedy.

22:34You might think I'm asking for too much. We would actually use an accusations audit and say to you the things that you might be thinking in your head about your counterparty, but we're neutralizing those negatives. And then people are like, they'll either say that's right or you're wrong. I think you're right on the mark. And the idea is you have to have the guts to make the ask. And a lot of people don't make the ask or they make the ask sort of not easy. To understand. But if you have been a good listener, I think it makes the ask easier. Because in a way, you've built a foundation of trust.

23:07I mean, the ask is a whole lot easier. It's not like you're walking in the room and going, give me the special coffee. Like, it didn't take much for me to build. Like, literally with my buddy Michael at the coffee shop, I saw him really early in the morning. I'm like, it's not really early. I start here and then I go to this other job and he tells me his whole life story. and like i always get my coffee before i even order it and and i just like to live my life that way but you could that's a low stakes practice you could do it with with high stakes practice something that as if your life depends and make a huge difference in your life i think it's mindset it's about mindset it's about the fact that speaking first doesn't actually necessarily we don't need to do that if we can just sit back and listen and understand where people are coming from, what their perspective is, we're going to get a better outcome for all parties.

23:58Do you think you were the kind of person who chatted up Michael at the coffee shop before you started learning these specific tactics? Like the reason I ask that is because I feel like some people are naturally good at connecting with strangers and some people are not. And some people are the person who's going to develop that rapport with someone at a coffee shop and some people are not. And I wonder what we say to the folks who aren't as drawn naturally to that kind of engagement, but who still want to connect with people or particularly people when it matters. So I'm an ambivert, introvert and extrovert.

24:40Depending on the day where I'm at, I might have done it, but not likely. It's like early in the morning, usually when I see him, I didn't do it on purpose. Like it wasn't a manipulation. It was just like, I had a conversation with him and then I used a skill that just came to mind and all of a sudden I had a relationship with him. I'm like, oh, light bulb goes off. Skills really work. We need to actually make the skills work. You actually have to use them in a low stakes environment. Like you're at a networking event. You really don't want to be at. I was at a political networking event. My wife wanted me to come to, and I really didn't want to be there.

25:17And I just use the skills. And she's like, how did you make friends with that guy? He told you about his entire life. And you said like three words. Yeah. And so I think I'm just fascinated with how they work and how it changes the way you engage with the world. I say I use the skills for good and not for evil. My intention is always for good. But that's a really, really valuable starting point and an answer to what I was asking, which is like, look, if it doesn't come naturally to you, then try it in incredibly low stakes environments. Because just trying to get a little something out of someone, which is probably not even the right way to say it, right?

25:56It's really how to connect with someone in a small but meaningful or enjoyable way. It's not that hard. It doesn't take that much. And if you can get really good at doing it on the fly at the coffee shop, then you can apply it to the sales call. You can apply it to the difficult conversation with your boss. You can apply it in all sorts of ways. Yeah, but you have to start with low stakes. Right. So just to return one more time to the phrase that you had emailed me, how to be heard by improving your listening skills. The answer, Jonathan, is really that when you improve your listening skills, you create an environment where other people want to hear you, which is not often the environment that we feel like we're in.