560: How to Resolve Conflict and Boost Productivity through Deep Listening with Oscar Trimboli

Pete Mockaitis
Oscar, thanks for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Oscar Trimboli
Good day, Pete. I’m really looking forward to listening to your questions today.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I’m looking forward to listening to what you have to say. So, we’re talking listening and I want to sort of start off with a real strong why. Could you give us sort of like the case or a study or an example that reveals really what’s at stake when we listen well and what can be possible, and when we don’t listen well and how we’re suffering?

Oscar Trimboli
30th of December, Wuhan, China, Dr. Li has said to a group of his medical professionals, he’s an ophthalmologist, that he’s worried that the patients he’s seeing at the moment have SARS-like symptoms showing but it’s worse. And he publishes that on the local social media app that they use, and that gets seen by the Chinese government. And the next day, he’s visited by the Chinese government officials and told to recount what he said and everything he said is wrong.

And everybody ignored him, nobody was listening to him. And, as a result, we have the coronavirus that’s completely changed the world in 2020. That’s one of the costs of not listening. So, the costs of not listening can be quite significant. And in a lot of workplaces, Peter, people whose opinions are different, who may be seen as far out or different, they’re ignored, whether it was on the Deepwater Horizon’s oil rig in 2012 where a whole bunch of people, 11 got killed because engineers weren’t listened to.

But, also, the global financial crisis. Dr. Rajan was presenting a paper at Jackson Hole, Wyoming in 2005 and actually predicted where the global financial crisis would play out but, again, he was ignored. He wasn’t listened to. Millions of jobs, billions of dollars of savings, and all of that variety. They are some of the big costs of not listening. In our workplaces, it creates confusion, it creates chaos, it creates conflict, it creates projects that go overtime, it creates lost customers, and it creates great employees who leave because their managers don’t pay attention to them. So, they are just a couple of the costs of not listening.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow! Oscar, you are nailing it. Yeah, those are huge costs. And so, we’re looking at listening then in a pretty broad perspective in terms of not just you and I in a conversation, and me absorbing what you’re saying, but the extent to which I am even accepting, adopting, choosing to acknowledge your views as valid, true, and possible.

Oscar Trimboli
Yeah, listening is the willingness to have your mind changed. Listening is the openness to hear what’s unsaid. Listening is making sure you’re listening with your head as well as your heart. And I think a lot of us think of listening as one-dimensional. We think of it as monochrome. We think of it as a very, very simple thing, but listening has got lots of nuance to it.

And, for many people, one of the exercises we always talk about in our workshops is go and listen to and consume media, it’s a podcast, it’s a TV show, go and read a blogpost from somebody you fiercely disagree with, and notice what’s happening in your mind while you’re fiercely disagreeing with them, because for a lot of us we get blocked by our own assumption filters.

My daughter-in law, when she was 21, she’s a Judo player, and Judo players have this incredibly high tolerance for pain, Peter, in a way I can never understand, that you would literally have to choke them before they would stop fighting on the mat. And Jen got hit by a car while she was riding her bike to training, and she was completely devastated because she had spent a lot of money saving for that bike, and that bike was her means of transport in an Olympic year. And she literally picked up the bike, put it on her shoulder, with a broken ankle, by the way, and went to a local emergency room and was treated by a doctor.

And the doctor was confused why Jen brought the bike into the ER because that bike was more important to her than her ankle at that moment. But what I’m curious about right now, Peter, is in your head, describe the doctor.

Pete Mockaitis
Describe the doctor. Well, I guess I was really visualizing the scene of your daughter with the bike and kind of limping, and so I’ve got very little on the doctor. The doctor, I guess, is inquisitive, it’s like, “Hey, why did you bring your bike?”

Oscar Trimboli
Yeah. But, physically, gender-wise, height, weight, what sort of doctor are you visualizing right now?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, boy, not much. He’s kind of faceless, I saw just more sort of like the white robe. But I guess if I were to kind get more into the picture, well, I kind of see my buddy, shoutout to Johnny, he’s a doctor, and so he looks like my buddy Johnny, who’s in his late 30s. He looks a little bit like the Property Brothers if you’ve ever seen that TV show, so that’s what I’m picturing.

Oscar Trimboli
Yeah. And the doctor that saw Jen was 5’4” and an Indian woman. And, again, so the point of the story is, yeah, the bike and all of that, but a lot of us go into conversations where we have our own assumptions from our own experience base that filter how we listen, and we’re not even conscious of these things that are getting in our way when it comes to listening. And a lot of that is really initially caused by our internal distractions as well as our external distractions. A lot of us have our cellphone going, or a laptop, or some kind of tablet, something like that. So, we got all these external distractions but we’ve also got these internal distractions as well.

And, for a lot of us, we don’t even know it’s happening. We just aren’t even at that point of consciousness because we’re so distracted coming into the conversation. So, for most of you listening right now, it’s happening now. You’re distracted while you’re listening to Peter and myself. You might be commuting. You might be preparing a meal. But your mind is wandering in a completely different direction.

So, I wanted to give a commercial break to the neuroscience of listening, if that’s okay, Peter. Right now, I speak at about 125 words a minute. You’re a little quicker, about 150, and if you’re auctioning cattle, you’re at about 200 words per minute. But you can listen at 400 words per minute so you fill in the gaps because your mind gets bored and your mind is distracted. So, this is the 125/400 rule that says, “I speak at 125 words a minute, you listen at 400.” And if you don’t notice this gap, you’re going to drift away.

Now, it’s okay. I do it myself when I spend all day training people on how to listen, but the big difference between me and anybody else is I know when I’m distracted before you do, so I come back into the conversation much faster. So, it’s really, really important if you understand the neuroscience of listening, that I speak at 125-words a minute, you listen at 400, you’re going to get bored and distracted. It’s okay. You just come back in. And we’ll talk about some tips later on about how to notice and what to do about it when you drift away.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s intriguing. And I heard another stat about how we can think even faster than the 400 words per minute. And I guess when we’re thinking, we’re not even thinking in subvocalized words there.

Oscar Trimboli
No. You’re absolutely right.

Pete Mockaitis
Because I’ve tried that in prayer, like I would think the Rosary prayer as fast as I can think the words, and it’s quick. It’s quicker than like a talk, yeah. But it’s still maybe it is around 400. It’s not much beyond that.

Oscar Trimboli
On average, it’s 900 words a minute you can think at. That’s nearly double your listening speed. Some people can do up to 1600 words a minute think, and right down at the other end of the Bell curve is about 600 that, welcome to the speaker’s problem. And this is why it’s critical that everybody understand the most important thing you need to listen to is what’s not said. I know it feels like Yoda just stepped onto the podcast. How do you listen to what’s not said? But it’s really critical.

If you understand the neuroscience of speaking, you speak at 125 to 150 words a minute, you’ve got 900 stuck in your head, that means the likelihood that the first thing that comes out of your mouth is what you mean, that’s 11%. One in nine chance that what you say as a speaker is what you mean. Therefore, if you want to have a powerful conversation with somebody, you want to get the next 125 words out, and the next 125 words out. And if you can get to about 300 words out of their thoughts, you’re probably getting closer to what they mean.

And this is another distinction, Peter, when it comes to listening. As a listener, it’s not your job to make sense of what they say. It’s your job to help them make sense of what they’re trying to say. Now that’s a really big difference, and what that means is most of us, our mind is like a closed washing machine. We’re in wash mode when we’re thinking, and it’s sudsy, and it’s agitated, and it’s like the water is dirty, and we’re moving but we’re not making progress. And the minute the rinse cycle comes on in a washing machine, out flushes all that wonderful clear water, and that’s exactly what it’s like when you speak.

Your mind is wired differently while you speak, while you think, and you make much more sense of what you say by saying it aloud than saying it inside your own head. So, powerful listeners will use these magic phrases. Michael Bungay Stanier did a wonderful job of talking about a couple of these on past two episodes ago for you. And he talked about the phrase “tell me more,” “what else,” and, “use silence.” These are three powerful techniques in that moment where you ask somebody “What else?” Something magic happens to the human mind.

And, Peter, tell me if it’s happened for you. People kind of tilt their head, they’ll breathe out, and they’ll say, “Well, actually, you know what we should talk about?” or, “Peter, you know what’s really important for us right now? Not what we’re talking about. I need to talk about this.” And for a lot of people, they’re out there nodding because it’s a real-life experience. But most of us just talk to the first thing they say rather than trying to understand what they really want to mean.

And if you’re in your role, whether you’re a manager or you’re working with your manager, making sense of what people mean, not what they say, makes work quicker. You work on the important things that have impact, not the transactional things, and listening helps you get to the result in a much quicker way, with a much bigger impact.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s powerful. And so then, the points you’re making with those numbers associated with the first 125 word in the first minute, there’s 11% chance that that’s what I really want to say, you’re saying it’s so important to not just respond to that and we’re off to the races. “You’ve spoken for a minute therefore I know what we’re talking about and I’m going,” but rather draw it out for a few more minutes, and then we’re going to get at the good stuff. And we save time because instead of spending, I’m just going to make up numbers, instead of spending 15 minutes talking about the thing that’s not the thing, we can spend five minutes listening to get the real thing, and then go from there.

Oscar Trimboli
Yeah. And in a lot of modern workplaces, we’re dealing with issues that are really complex, that don’t have just single or binary responses that are possible. Whether you’re in a creative role, or you’re in software development, or you’re in professional consulting, it doesn’t matter what profession you’re in, if you’re in the medical profession right now, there’s so much complexity and multiple and exponential vectors that you’re dealing with on a topic.

The likelihood that the very first thing that either of you talk about is the result or the possibilities. Whenever you’re stuck in these binaries, if you’re arguing A versus B, or one versus two, or red versus blue, the critical thing to ask yourself the question is, “What’s the third possibility? And what’s the fourth possibility?” And that’s only going to come about by listening.

On the days where we’re just doing tasks that require us to think one step ahead, we have to anticipate many things today in the imagination economy, because we’ve kind of moved from the information economy to the imagination economy, and our imagination can open up so many more possibilities. And that’s why one of my favorite quotes from Peter Drucker is, “The most important part of communication is listening to what’s not said.” And if we spent some more time there, the confusion, the conflict, the chaos in our workplace would go away.

Pete Mockaitis
So, let’s get after a little bit more how one does that effectively. So, there’s not jumping at the first minute, there’s kind of more encouragement of “tell me more” and “what else.” What are some of the other best practices that can get us to identifying and listening for what’s not said?

Oscar Trimboli
Yeah, I think we have to wind this way back, Peter, and start at the very foundational part of listening. And you can’t listen to anybody else till you listen to yourself. So, the very first part of listening is listening to yourself. Most of us turn up to a conversation with a radio station playing in our head that’s a completely different frequency to the conversation we’re just about to go into. We’re going from a meeting to a meeting, we’re going from a phone call to a phone call, and we’re still processing the last thing that was in our head.

So, getting ready to listen is more important than actually listening. In our database, we do proprietary research ourselves, 1410 people who are listeners, who have put up their hands, and said, “Help! Help! We need help in improving our listening.” We’ve been tracking them for two and a half years. And 86% of them say the thing that gets in the way of listening is not how they’re having a conversation with the speaker. Eighty-six percent of them say what’s getting in the way is the distractions before the conversation commences.

And some of those distractions are a story that they might have in their head about, “Oh, well, the last time I had a conversation with Peter was really wacky and the conversation didn’t go so well. And what’s he going to show up here because he’s a really unpredictable character?” or, “The last time I had a conversation with Peter, it was really, he is really dense and detailed, and I really didn’t make sense of it.” And you’re turning up to that conversation in that posture, and that’s your internal distraction, let alone your external distractions.

Most people walk in with their electronic devices of some sort, whether it’s a phone call, whether it’s a meeting, whether it’s a team meeting, we’re distracted internally and externally. So, I would always encourage people to do three things to get ready, to get that foundation right, when it comes to listening.

Step number one. Remove the electronic devices. And if that sounds like cold turkey, then put them in flight mode, that’s my big request. Just put them in flight mode so you remove the dings, the bings, the buzzes, the beeps, all those notification things that are going to come across your devices. Tip number two, drink water. Most of us turn up to a conversation with a cup of coffee only. I’m not anti-coffee, I’m not pro-coffee. I don’t have a position on coffee. Drink water. A hydrated brain is a listening brain. Or Red Bull, I don’t have a position on Red Bull either, Peter.

A hydrated brain is a listening brain. Now, why does it matter? The brain is only 5% of the body mass, yet it consumes 26% of the blood sugars. The best way to get your brain operating in a place that’s optimal for listening is to drink a glass of water every half an hour. So, a hydrated brain is…

Pete Mockaitis
Is it 8 ounces, 16 ounces, or how big is this glass of water we’re drinking every half hour?

Oscar Trimboli
However big your glass is. Most people don’t even drink water, Peter, so I’m not really worried about the size of the glass.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m thinking if you’re awake for 16 hours, are we talking about 32 glasses of water?

Oscar Trimboli
Yeah, so a properly hydrated high-performing corporate athlete should be drinking about two liters of water a day.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Oscar Trimboli
So, most people go, “Wow, that’s quite a lot of water.” But if you’re exercising effectively and you’re moving through the day, two liters of water is enough. So, a standard can of whatever your favorite soda is about the size of the glass I’d be thinking about right now for anybody there. So, hydration is really critical because a lot of people say when they concentrate during the process of listening, their brain hurts. They walk out of a conversation, they literally hold their head, and that’s got nothing to do with the act of listening. It’s got to do with the fact that they’re dehydrated. So, if we’re hydrated, we’re going to be in a better position.

And the third thing is just it sounds so basic. Take three deep breaths. And I’m not talking yoga pose kind of breaths. I’m just saying, in through your nose, down the back of your throat, all the way down to the bottom of your diaphragm, and then back out through your mouth. And for me, the way I make this practice simple for me, if I’m going to see a client, Peter, when I cross the lobby in a building, I’m going to switch off my phone the minute I cross the lobby, put it in my bag, go into the elevator, put my back against the elevator wall, take three deep breaths. And by the time I come out, I’m going to reception, they offer me a refreshment, so I always ask for a glass of water for me and the guest.

And in that moment, my mind is ready to start to listen. We’re going to get onto the techniques of what happens during the dialogue shortly. But it’s so critical that we all understand you need to be ready to listen. Most of us aren’t.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, some hydration, some deep breaths, and you’re sort of prepping the…I’m kind of imagining like if you’re painting a wall, it’s like there’s the prep, and then there’s the application of the paint. So, in the prepping, you support or else you’re not going to get a great end result there. All right. So, let’s say we’ve done that. Good news, we’re ahead of the game. What do we go forward with in the actual conversation?

Oscar Trimboli
Yeah, a lot of us spend too much time in the first kind of conversation thinking about what we’re discussing. And one of the things that sets up a great conversation is how.

Pete Mockaitis
How we’re discussing it?

Oscar Trimboli
How we’re discussing it. What would make a great conversation for us today? By the time we’re finished, what would you like to do? Now, all the research we’ve done, Peter, is on the workplace. I always put this by “Beware” announcement, “Please do not try this at home with your loved ones. They’ll see right through it.” It’s really critical. When I speak, most people come up to me or ask me questions from stage, saying, “Oscar, how do I get my wife, my husband, my partner, my loved one, to listen to me?” And men tend to listen to fix, and women tend to listen to feel.

Pete Mockaitis
Fix? I’m going to fix this?

Oscar Trimboli
Yes. So, men are very solution-orientated. So, a “how” question is, if you come home during the day, like this is a thing that transformed my relationship with my wife. In the early days, she’d go, “Oh, this is what happened in my day,” and I’d go, “Oh, yeah. Did you try this?” And she’s like she would get so furious because I was trying to fix it. She just wants to be listened to. And what I do now is I simply say, “Is this a conversation where you want me to listen or is this a conversation where you want some suggestions?” And 99 out of a 100, it’s just to listen, but in the odd case, she goes, “Yeah, I’d like some alternatives.”

And the same is true in the workplace. Most of us don’t agree out front how the conversation should be orientated. Is it a brainstorming conversation? Is it a conversation where we’re looking to make progress? That context is always king. But most of us don’t take the time to create the context at the beginning. What would make this a great meeting for you? What’s an outcome you would like to achieve from this meeting? Then we can actually get into the dialogue and explore the five levels of listening that we can kind of sequence as we go into that conversation, around listening for context, and listening for content, listening for the unsaid, and, ultimately, listening for meaning.

I would say this, there’s a lot of big people out there saying really important things about it’s crucial to understand the why. And when it comes to listening, why can feel judgmental. When you ask a lot of why-based questions at the beginning of a dialogue where you have low trust or low relationship with somebody, please be careful. Whether it’s FBI hostage negotiators I’ve spoken to, or telephone-based suicide counselors, why questions are loaded with judgment where when you ask somebody, “So, why do you do that at your company?”

You can achieve exactly the same result by simply asking them, “How does the approval process work at your organization?” as opposed to, “Oh, why does your company do approvals that way?” Same question, very different orientation. And I think, for a lot of us, what we’re not listening to is the actual way we’re dialoguing ourselves, and we need to be asking more how- and what-based questions, and a lot less why-based questions as well, Peter.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. You know, it’s so funny, as we were talking, my phone is sort of buzzing, and it’s like, “What? I’ve got it on Do Not Disturb,” but it was an emergency notification about fixing clothes with the coronavirus. So, anyway, even when I’ve set it to Do Not Disturb, distractions, interruptions can emerge. But point well-taken with the why question puts you on the defensive, it’s like, “Well,” you feel like you need to justify it, and you’re more likely, you kind of dig into it, so excellent. Well, then, can you bring us deeper, then, into these five levels of listening?

Oscar Trimboli
Well, a lot of us are taught to listen to content level two. So, level one is listen to yourself. Level two is listening to the content, and that’s interesting. Most of us are listening for words and, occasionally, body language, but a lot of time we’re not listening for state, we’re not listening for where people’s energy is at. And I’m not doing that from a woohoo perspective, but I was working with Peter who was…complex merger he was undertaking about two and a half years ago, and he was just going on and on about how frustrating it was, how unfair it was, that he shouldn’t be running the integration. The company being acquired, why are they asking him to do that?

And something just shifted in his head, and his shoulders moved a little bit more upright, and he just kept going on and on and on and on. And I went back, and I said, “You know, Peter, when we’re talking about that, you did this with your body.” And he looked at me, and he went, “Wow, I didn’t think you noticed.” And I said, “Well, when you shifted, your whole body moved.” And he said, “What I did in that moment, Oscar, was I realized I was listening to myself, and I couldn’t stand what I was saying, and I made a decision that I have to take responsibility for the merger.” And I said, “So, what decision have you made?” And he said, “I’m completely responsible for everything going forward.” I said, “But you spent the next seven minutes still complaining.” And he said, “Yeah, I guess I’m habituated into that right now.”

But for most us, our heads are buried in our laptop, or our cellphone, we wouldn’t have noticed that. So, looking at somebody from pretty much from the shoulders up is really critical when it comes to listening to content. When I talk about listening for context, this is really critical. Most of us don’t understand the backstory to any conversation. We turn up like we walked into a movie theater 35 minutes into the movie, and we’re trying to figure out, “Who are these characters? And what’s the plot? And when they’re all laughing, what am I missing out on?” And most of us don’t take the time to simply say, “Can we get back to the beginning? When did this all start?”

And, slowly, by putting those pieces of context into place, it’s not important for you. Yes, you’ll make sense of it, but it’s more important for them. So, one of the powerful questions that you always want to ask is, “When did this start?” But for a lot of people, whether you’re in sales, or professional consulting, and all of that, most of the time you’ll take a brief, but you only take the brief at that point in time, “What we’re looking to do in the future is X, Y, Z.” That’s interesting. But what’s really important is, “How did they get there?” And if you just take one moment to ask that question, that context will create a beautiful landscape for you guys to dialogue on that makes sense for everybody. You know all the actors in the movie now, and you can make sense and laugh at the punchlines like everybody else does.

We spent a bit of time at level four talking about what’s unsaid. And then level five is listening for meaning. What’s the meaning that they’re making from the conversation? I was working with a pharmaceutical company about four years ago. Have you ever walked into a building, Peter, where you feel the tension dripping out of the elevator ducts, out of the air-conditioning ducts? It’s like there’s just this tension in the room. So, that’s the organization I was walking into. I was asked to speak to the people leader community in this organization, and 20 minutes in, I just felt the room. There was this tension. And I turned to the managing director of this manufacturing pharmaceutical plant, and I said, “Look, with your permission, I’d just like to try something different.” And he gave me the most dismissive look, and said, “Well, if you must.”

Pete Mockaitis
If you must.

Oscar Trimboli
Now, I said, “I’d prefer to do it with your permission,” and he said, “Oh, go ahead.” And all of this is going through my head as well, “I’m not getting paid for this.” And I said to the room, “Hey, look, just turn to the person next to you and tell the person next to you what movie is going on in this manufacturing plant right now.” And the room explodes into laughter, and they’re all chatting away, and the tension is completely broken.

And the CEO steps up on stage next to me, puts his hand behind my back and switches off my lapel mic, and basically looks me straight in the eye, and said, “This is not on brief.” And I said, “Mark, can’t you feel what’s going on in this room?” And he says, “I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.” I said, “Look, just give me five minutes. We’re going to bring the room back and we’ll try to make sense of what’s going on because something is going on here. There’s a lot of tension in this room. And if not, just kick me offstage.” And he goes, “All right. Look, I’ll trust you.” And he went back down and sat down.

Now, what you’re going to imagine, it’s like popcorn in the room, everybody is bouncing off each other. And every time somebody announces what movie is going on, the room explodes into laughter like popcorn in a stove. And the movies they were coming back with was like Die Hard and Titanic and Towering Inferno. You imagine the disaster movie that we’re talking about. And what happened next was amazing. That CEO, who looked at me with disdain and disgust, came up, pointed at me, and told me to go and sit down in the chair in the corner, and I thought, “Oh, wow. This is a bit of a moment. I’ve never been told to get offstage.”

He stood up there in front of the room and did something that completely changed my perspective on leadership. He stood up and said, “I’m really sorry that coming to work feels like a disaster movie for everybody here. We’ve been trying to solve this problem for three weeks. I need your help. I don’t know all the answers. What I’ve learnt today is something that changed my mind. And for the balance of our time together, I’m going to invite Oscar back up on stage to see if he can help us navigate through this issue.”

And I was stunned in the humility, I was amazed in the eloquence, and the invitation for me to come back was exciting, and I simply said to the room, “Who aren’t we listening to right now?” Peter, honestly, I didn’t even know what the issue was. All I knew is they thought it was a disaster. And it was that permission slip to say, “What movie is going on?” that helped the room create meaning for what was going on.

Now what they discovered was there was a pipe that a frontline worker had told the business about six months ago that required maintenance but he was ignored. And in our discussion about “Who aren’t we listening to?” they said, “People in the production line,” because these were all pansy-pants, Six Sigma, chemical engineers, Masters, PhDs, and they were all trying to solve a problem that was seemingly solved within a couple of days, and then it would come back a couple of days later. But it was a 35-year old line veteran who had worked on exactly the same line for 35 years who had pointed out six months ago, “This pipe needed maintenance,” and he got frustrated because he got shot down, and said, “We can’t afford to slow production down for just that pipe.” That was costing them tens of millions of dollars in backed-up stock because they couldn’t go through quality assurance because of impurities there.

So, I think, ultimately, for all of us, every conversation is not going to be a $10-million conversation, Peter, every conversation is not going to be the coronavirus, every conversation is not going to be the global financial crisis. But if we go in with a willingness to have our mind changed, there’ll be less conflict, chaos, and confusion in our personal lives and in our work lives. And that’s something worth fighting for.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, there’s a lot of great stuff there. And I love those particular questions in terms of “Who aren’t we listening to?” and “What movie is playing right here?” because then I think that can, you’re right, that is like a lighthearted way to get after…

Oscar Trimboli
Tell the truth.

Pete Mockaitis
What do you see? Is it a disaster? Is it a romantic comedy? Is it Office Space? Like none of us are really doing anything. Is it Up in the Air? It’s funny because that can spark a lot of things. And so, I’m curious, and I wanted to ask this at the beginning, but I’m glad you brought it up again. When listening is the willingness to have our minds changed, and you’d say read something from someone you completely disagree with and notice what’s happening in your brain. Well, so, let’s say we do conduct that exercise, or we are just talking in real time with a real person saying something we wildly disagree with, what’s the right way to run our brains to manage it in terms of it’s like, “Oscar is full of malarkey. That’s ridiculous. Has he been to my workplace?”

Oscar Trimboli
It’s even simpler. We’ve all got an uncle or an aunt at Thanksgiving table that we know we’re going to disagree with. Every year they say the same things, and we all think they’re crazy, and they all think we’re crazy too. And simply asking them this question, “When did you   form this perspective? When did you first form this opinion? When did you first…?” whatever it is. It will short-circuit their mind because their mind is literally on a rotating play. It’s that list in your music play that just is on repeat over and over and over again, and nothing is going to break that circuitry unless you go, “When was the first time that happened to you?”

So, I was talking to a family officer. So, a family officer works in very large private companies, typically with the founders, and they were very frustrated with the founder around the way they thought about cost control. To say they counted the pennies would be wrong. They want to make sure that we’ve not only counted the pennies, but we’ve stored the pennies. That was the kind of description we’re getting about the founder. And I simply said to the family officer, “Go back and ask them when they first formed this opinion.” And they went back to the story and explained that in the ‘50s there was a rationing in the UK, petrol wasn’t easy to find, there was no fresh fruit, and there was this whole story.

And the founder, in that moment, said, “Times are very different now.” And then he smiled, and he said, “Times are very different now. Maybe it’s time for me to loosen up a bit.” And in that moment, that family officer was able to change his mind by going back and asking him the question, “When did you first form this perspective?” Because in helping people go back in time, they can notice the distance between that event and now, because a lot of those events that create that play track, Peter, they’re very seminal, they’re very foundational, they’re very emotional. They’re in the part of the brain that’s in the primitive part of the brain and they’re stored really deeply.

And us arguing with somebody about why they’re wrong on that topic, you’ve got about as much chance as flying as a human without a plane as convincing somebody who’s got a deep-seated emotional experience that they’re wrong. You have to ask them the question when did they form that opinion, and it will take them back to that moment. And give them permission to pull that memory out and choose. They might choose to keep it, but in a lot of times they’ll throw it away and go, “Hey, time to change,” or, “This situation is different,” or, “Maybe we can explore something a little bit more.”

So, when you get frustrated with someone you deeply, deeply disagree with, and you’re lucky enough to have the opportunity to just speak to them, just ask them when did they first form this perspective. That will help change your perspective but, more importantly, theirs.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s beautiful. Thank you. Well, Oscar, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Oscar Trimboli
Look, I just always want to reinforce that if you just focus on removing the electronic devices, if you hydrate and drink a glass of water every 30 minutes, and if you breathe deeply, you’ll be ready to listen. And when you’re ready to listen, you’ll be able to make a big impact, and impact beyond words, because for most us, we’re trying desperately to listen to the other person while there’s a big, big radio station playing on in our head, Peter. So, devices off, drink water, take three deep breaths, and that’ll put you in an awesome position for the conversation.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. And now, how about a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Oscar Trimboli
Consistently, it would be Peter Drucker’s quote around communication is an illusion, and the most important thing we don’t listen to in communication is what’s unsaid. And that kind of triggered a whole bunch of research for me, and started the journey for 1410 people to go, “What am I not hearing?” when it comes to my research around listening. And he passed away about three years ago, but he was a prolific writer, he was a prolific person who led a lot of corporate thought, and he’s somebody who thought about things deeply.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Oscar Trimboli
My favorite research was where in 1993 in Ottawa, Canada, they discovered that if you breathed and if you listened, they had 414 students paired off, and they had a little device connected to their fingers to measure their oxygen, their current O₂ rate. And what they noticed is that people with a higher O₂ rate were having more productive conversations, which was interesting. But what was the most interesting was, the most productive conversations, so they were self-rated by the students, the most productive conversations, the O₂ level was synchronized. So, people were literally breathing at the same rate. So, that was something for me.

That’s why I always say to people, in one of our listening exercises, “Hey, how did you go with your breathing?” And they always go, “Oh, yeah, I did the three deep breaths and it was great.” And I said, “Did you notice the breathing of the speaker?” And most times they’ll say no, but those at a high-level of consciousness might say yes, and they go, “I realized I had to slow down the speaker’s breathing.” And I said, “How did you do that?” And most people will say, “Well, I just asked them to slow down.” But the really expert role model, great leaders, literally just slowed their speaking down, which slowed down the heartrate in the body, which got the oxygen up.

So, those kinds of studies where you’re integrating both the physiology of listening with the actual impact of listening from Canada in 1993, that research to me is just amazing.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite book?

Oscar Trimboli
I’m a big James Clear fanboy at the moment. I’ve been reading Atomic Habits probably once a month at the moment for the last 14 months.

Pete Mockaitis
A habit itself.

Oscar Trimboli
Yeah. And he’s got a quote in there that you don’t rise to the level of your goals. You’re pulled to the level of your systems. I’d say James’ book is a well-put together book, but it’s also, I’ve read a lot in 35 years, probably one of the best written nonfiction books I’ve read.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Oscar Trimboli
It’s really a basic one, it’s one called TextExpander, Peter.

Pete Mockaitis
I love it. They’re our first sponsor, and I use it daily.

Oscar Trimboli
Oh, I would say eight to 12 times a day, TextExpander is saving me five to 10 minutes a day. And whether it’s a quick comment or reply to something, or just common phrases that I use, and things like that, it’s just a brilliant tool to kind of automate my brain. I love TextExpander.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite habit?

Oscar Trimboli
My favorite habit is really simple, and it’s changed dramatically in the last three weeks because of what’s happening. But on a Wednesday night, I swim or I run. I run in winter. I swim in summer. And Saturday morning, I run or I swim. I don’t meditate but I think running and swimming is my meditation. these physical habits are really important keystone habits to everything else that happens in my life.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a particular nugget you share, that you’re known for, and people quote back to you often?

Oscar Trimboli
Yeah, but it’s a quote from Yoda, “Try not. Do or do not. There is no try.” and it’s something that can either set you free or frustrate you because sometimes I work really hard on the wrong things, and I have to realize later on that they weren’t the right things. And sometimes it’s the right thing to do and I just need to try a little harder to break through.

Pete Mockaitis
And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Oscar Trimboli
Just go to the ListeningQuiz.com where you can figure out what kind of listening villains get in your way, and a very personalized three-step plan what to do about it as well at ListeningQuiz.com.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Oscar, it’s been a ton of fun. I wish you lots of luck and many enjoyable conversations.

Oscar Trimboli
Thanks for listening.