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The Build a Vibrant Culture Podcast explores the real-world strategies behind building strong work culture, improving organizational culture, and leading with clarity in today’s fast-changing business environment.
Hosted by leadership expert Nicole Greer, this podcast features conversations with business leaders, executives, and entrepreneurs who are shaping modern business culture through effective communication, leadership development, and intentional management practices.
Each episode delivers practical insights into leadership and business, including topics like team communication, project management, career growth, and creating workplaces where people perform at their best.
You’ll gain actionable tools, frameworks, and leadership skills you can apply immediately through coaching concepts, real-world examples, and professional development strategies, whether you’re a manager, executive, business owner, or emerging leader.
If you're looking for guidance on building a thriving organizational culture, improving communication, or advancing your leadership career, this podcast is designed for you.
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Oscar Trimboli and Nicole Greer, Build a Vibrant Culture Podcast: The Leadership Skill That Fixes Workplace Culture and Saves You Money.
[00:00:00] Nicole Greer: Welcome everybody to the Build A Vibrant Culture podcast. My name is Nicole Greer and they call me the Vibrant Coach, and I have an amazing guest all the way from down under. I bet he gets introduced like that every time. His name is Oscar Trimboli. And look what he sent me all the way from Australia.
[00:00:17] I've got my little document here, how to listen, discover the hidden key to better communication. And guess what he sent me. Three extra copies. And so here's what I know. If you'll make a comment down below and like this episode, and then email me at Nicole@VibrantCulture, I'll get this book to you.
[00:00:35] I'll put it in your inbox. That's what I'll do. So I wanna share the love today because he shared it with me. We're gonna pay it forward. Lemme tell you a little bit about Oscar. Oscar is an award-winning author and host of an Apple Award-winning podcast, deep listening, and is a sought after keynote speaker.
[00:00:51] His third book, the one I just showed you, is How to Listen, Discover the Hidden Key to Better Communication, the most comprehensive book about listening in the workplace. And how many of you are thinking My boss needs this book? See, it's gonna be good for Christmas, birthdays, anniversaries, along with the Deep Listening Ambassador community. He's on a quest.
[00:01:11] Please don't miss this on a quest to create 100 million deep listeners in the workplace. Oscar, I'm so glad you're here. Welcome.
[00:01:20] Oscar Trimboli: Good day, Nicole. Looking forward to listening to your questions.
[00:01:25] Nicole Greer: Well, I think what we're gonna do is we're gonna take a little trip through the book. So tell us first of all about the first two books. What, what did, what are the two books, first two books about? 'cause we're probably gonna wanna buy all three. That's what I'm thinking
[00:01:36] Oscar Trimboli: Well, it won't surprise you that they're all about listening. And the third, third book brings together research from, at that stage 14,000 workplace listeners. We're up to 36,000 workplace listeners now. So that book brings together the art and the science. And more importantly, or what the people say in the reviews is practical tips to improve listening at work.
[00:02:06] Nicole Greer: And that's what we want. We want some practical tips. Yeah. And so on page six, you have this quote and it says, listening is a skill. A strategy and a practice, a way to balance how you communicate. Will you tease that apart for us? How? How is listening a skill, a strategy, and a practice?
[00:02:27] Oscar Trimboli: When we think about listening, most of us aren't formally taught how to listen yet. We were taught to listen by our parents through role modeling, by our teachers at schools, by musical teachers or theater teachers or sporting teachers. We all discovered a way to listen that didn't have any ad subtractive vibe multiply to it.
[00:02:56] It didn't have any structure around it. So when we think about listening, the first thing you want to do is just build some listening muscles, that is the skill, that basic foundation. 'cause what we, what we know from the, from the research we've put together, two in three people are struggling even to get their mindset into the conversation.
[00:03:22] So they're not even ready to listen. They're distracted, they're lost, they're thinking about other things before they get there. So getting that foundation in place is the skill that we talk about there. When we move towards it being a strategy,
[00:03:41] Nicole Greer: Mm-hmm.
[00:03:42] Oscar Trimboli: about how do you bring in the workplace an approach that about listening all the time, but it's who am I not listening to? What are the stakeholder communities or the people in my team or the customer sets that I haven't listened to? What's missing? What are the barriers that we haven't thought about is the frequency of the way we ask for feedback relevant to the kind of change we're trying to drive in the culture of the organizations we're part of.
[00:04:18] And then finally, it's a mindset to go, how do you role model this? Kind of listening to other people and how do we as leaders who are trying to build cultures role model that not just to our staff and to our customers, but to our suppliers, to our regulators.
[00:04:40] Nicole Greer: Hmm.
[00:04:40] Oscar Trimboli: are many stakeholders when we think about the ecosystems that listening and communications impact.
[00:04:48] Nicole Greer: So good. All right. You have this other great thing that you have on page 10. Like we might not get through the whole book in an hour because I love it so much.
[00:04:56] Oscar Trimboli: if we're gonna four pages a.
[00:04:58] Nicole Greer: We went four whole pages, but like, it's, it's so good. It says, Ima Okay, everybody do this. Close your eyes. Everybody close your eyes. Imagine operating in a world where there are shorter, more productive meetings, fewer mix ups and misunderstandings, healthier relationships at work, higher employee trust...
[00:05:20] "what?" ...reduced unnecessary rework, sustainable organizations, this one, the last one, so important, opportunities to think, hear, and see your most complex challenges differently. You may open your eyes. I mean, like we couldn't skip over that, right? Like this is a game changer: listening.
[00:05:50] Oscar Trimboli: For you, Nicole, do you see that in the workplaces you're working with?
[00:05:56] Nicole Greer: There's, there's pockets of it,
[00:05:58] Oscar Trimboli: Meaning? No, not the positive, but I mean the, the reality of
[00:06:03] Nicole Greer: No, I said there's pockets.
[00:06:07] Oscar Trimboli: what are those pockets have in common, do you think?
[00:06:10] Nicole Greer: Good listeners and, and the mindset and the skill maybe that you just talked about.
[00:06:17] Oscar Trimboli: And is that about great listening from the employees or from the leaders or both? How, what sets them apart do you think? That little pocket, because I think where we see it rarely we want to shine a light on it and kind of go, oh wow. What can we learn from that?
[00:06:35] Nicole Greer: Yeah. Well, I would, I would say it's probably an enlightened leader whether that leader's formal or informal,
[00:06:42] Oscar Trimboli: Mm-hmm.
[00:06:44] Nicole Greer: somebody is, as you said earlier, demonstrating it and people are having a wow experience because the listening is going on, and so they're like leaning in. You're like, wow, we're listening to each other.
[00:06:58] This is fantastic. Yeah. What, what do you think, Oscar? Do you see it?
[00:07:06] Oscar Trimboli: yeah, I do. And, and pockets also.
[00:07:09] Nicole Greer: Yeah.
[00:07:09] Oscar Trimboli: I think the biggest challenge we face with listening is this. Mindset that listening's hard, it's difficult, it's straining because a lot of people think that listening is something that you do, like a therapist on a Netflix show where someone's on a couch and you are wisely stroking your chin while they, you know, expand out and explain all the issues they're trying to overcome.
[00:07:37] That's not the kind of listening I'm talking about. That's therapeutic listening. That's got a place, I'm not qualified for that. And I see a lot of leaders in the workplace trying to mirror that. And I, I also say, you know, be careful. That's malpractice unless you are a certified psychiatrist.
[00:07:58] Nicole Greer: Right.
[00:07:58] Oscar Trimboli: And reality is I go back to 2008, I was in a board meeting at Microsoft.
[00:08:06] Nicole Greer: Mm-hmm.
[00:08:06] Oscar Trimboli: was a budget setting meeting between Sydney, Seattle, and Singapore. So there's 17 people on this intergalactic video conference to set the annual budget for the year. And you can imagine there's lots of positioning, posturing, politicking, and all that, sitting under the numbers as you do in any kind of complex system like that. And then 20 minutes into the meeting, my SVP, my local CEO, Tracy, she's sitting across the table from me. She says, Oscar, we need to speak immediately after this meeting. Now, I dunno about you, Nicole, but when someone says, honey, we need to talk. I'm thinking all kinds of bad things I did. I did not listen, I did not listen for the rest of the meeting.
[00:08:52] Now the meeting was scheduled for 90 minutes and from minute 20 to minute 70, the minute the meeting finished early. All I was trying to do was with a pen and piece of paper, trying to figure out how many weeks of salary have I got in my bank account and who are the five people I need to call after this meeting?
[00:09:16] Nicole Greer: I gotta get networking.
[00:09:18] Oscar Trimboli: Yeah. Yeah. So the meeting finishes and everybody packs up their stuff and video machine shut down and all kinds of things like that. And I, I, I try and avoid my execution and I pack up my things and move my way to the door and Tracy says, Hey, Oscar, please close the door because what I have to say to you is really important. It's like, okay. So I start walking back and she says, as I get about halfway towards the boardroom table, she goes, you have no idea what you did at the 20 minute mark, do you? And I thought, Hmm, I'm getting fired, and I don't even know why. And Tracy sat me down, looked me in the eye and said, if you could code how you listen, you could change the world.
[00:10:02] Now for leaders out there, this is the really important bit. What I heard was, woo-hoo, I haven't been fired. I did not care what she was going on about listening. So as leaders, sometimes we say things, but what the other person hears is completely different because they're listening through their own set of filters. Now the point of the story is at the 20 minute mark, I asked a question that reduced the length of the meeting by 20 minutes, which multiplied by 17 people is a lot I like because I didn't pay attention. I got a huge increase in a growth number that I didn't really like, but I wasn't paying attention.
[00:10:50] So it was my own fault. And two weeks later, the chief financial officer, Brian said to me, Hey Oscar, can you come and audit my listening in my next team meeting? I said, oh, Brian, you've been talking to list Tracy about this listening caper thing, right? I haven't got time. I didn't pay attention. I've got this uplift.
[00:11:10] And then Brian said those magic words that you'll want to hear if you carry a revenue target, Oscar, we can't change the top line, but we may be able to invest for growth. I said, Brian, what time is it and where do I need to be? then two weeks later, I'm sitting in a meeting with Brian with his nine directs and writing down like he's asking a lot of triple barrel questions.
[00:11:34] He's only engaging with about a third of the people, and, and all of a sudden I realize I'm coding how to listen. So let's make sure that we understand that great listening is focused not only on what's said, but what's not said. It's focused. Not only in what's said, but what is meant. And when we understand what people mean, rather than merely what they say, we can get to the root cause quicker on systemic cultural challenges.
[00:12:09] We can get to make step changes that bring people along in the journey rather than resist. Because the number one issue in cultural change isn't ability of the leader to articulate the change. It's the inertia of people who don't believe they've been heard in the change journey. We have too much cheerleading and not enough funerals.
[00:12:36] Nicole Greer: Mm, and that is the end of this episode. Mic drop.
[00:12:45] Oscar Trimboli: See, it
[00:12:46] Nicole Greer: That's fantastic.
[00:12:47] Oscar Trimboli: just proves everything can be shorter. Right.
[00:12:50] Nicole Greer: That's exactly
[00:12:51] Nicole Greer: right. That's exactly right. Yeah. And so
[00:12:54] Oscar Trimboli: is that a mic drop moment, Nicole?
[00:12:58] Nicole Greer: because it's, I don't know, I believe you, I think it's what you just said is true.
[00:13:04] Oscar Trimboli: Hmm.
[00:13:04] Nicole Greer: You know, like there's, there's the story that tells you you need to listen, but I guess we should ask you, how do we do that? Should we do, should we go into how we should probably go into how? Right. And, and I love the, the story, so don't miss that everybody, Oscar went into this story that took four or five minutes or whatever it was.
[00:13:23] And you can illustrate a ton of things, ton of techniques, a ton of strategies, a ton of learning points in story storytelling. When's your storytelling book coming out? That's next book number four. You gotta, you gotta get busy. Oscar, I don't know what you're doing with your life.
[00:13:40] Oscar Trimboli: Well, well, it was funny. 2018, I'm talking to a colleague Dan Gregory. And I was like, yeah, a hundred million deep listeners were on this quest, blah, blah, blah. He goes, yeah, and how are you gonna do that? And , he goes, I hope you're not gonna listen your way to a hundred million deep listeners. And it's like, I'm scratching my head going, where's this going?
[00:14:00] Where's this going? He goes, Oscar, you're gonna have to get really uncomfortable and you are gonna have to become an exceptional storyteller. You're
[00:14:09] Nicole Greer: Yes.
[00:14:10] Oscar Trimboli: learn how stories make a difference, because stories are where meaning are created in the context of the culture in which people operate. Now I need more than one story is just, that's.
[00:14:24] Story we were talking about shorter meetings. That was a, a, a simple illustration of, you know, a 70-minute meeting rather than a 90-minute meeting multiplied by 17 people.
[00:14:34] Nicole Greer: Who get very large salaries. Yeah.
[00:14:37] Oscar Trimboli: Dan pointed out to me a, a a blind spot for me in my communication style and any it's, when we think about storytelling, we, we think about what I've just done. It's, it's the anecdote the person says one-on-one or maybe in a group setting or, or maybe from a stage or a broadcast or something like that. But what Dan said to me was really interesting. And, and, and again, he was role modeling exceptional listening on his part. 'cause he'd observed me in action.
[00:15:09] He says, Oscar, you're a black belt one-on-one. You are a master. But that's not gonna get you to a hundred million. You need to be able to create artifacts, systems, questionnaires, all kinds of artifacts to help many people that you'll never meet and you'll never touch. He says you're gonna need to write books, you're gonna need to create assessment tools where people can figure out what kind of listening gets in their way. We've built jigsaw puzzle games. We've got, you know, we've interviewed 120 of the world's most exceptional workplace listeners that you know,
[00:15:51] Nicole Greer: How do you get on that list? How do you know that? That's amazing.
[00:15:55] Oscar Trimboli: well. Often it's word of mouth where people will say to me, oh, you know, you really need to speak to this. Justice judge or this air traffic controller, or this hostage negotiator or this dolphin trainer. All right. So it's like a whole different way of
[00:16:13] Nicole Greer: Cool.
[00:16:13] Oscar Trimboli: language or, or, or, or people who are deaf and people who are blind.
[00:16:21] And, and, and we've interviewed all, all those kinds of things because they will have a different perspective on listening and more importantly, for our audience and your audience, which is really rich and diverse. You know the story I told about a boardroom meeting with a intergalactic video conference?
[00:16:39] Not everyone's gonna relate to that. A certain group of people in corporate world will, but will someone on a manufacturing floor or in a pharmaceutical company relate to that? Maybe, maybe not. So we've gotta find ways to do that, and I think as leaders who are trying to move cultures forward. The difference between hearing and listening is action. The difference between what Dan said to me was, I took it and did something with it,
[00:17:13] Nicole Greer: That's right.
[00:17:13] Oscar Trimboli: Nicole Nicole's commented on, was like, oh, you know, that story was, was helpful.
[00:17:19] Nicole Greer: Absolutely.
[00:17:21] Oscar Trimboli: as leaders, do you spend your time hearing or do you spend your time listening? Do you take action? Do you communicate action? can very quickly go into an organization and know their systemic approach to listening to employees because I only need to ask three questions.
[00:17:40] Nicole Greer: Oh, what are they? Yeah.
[00:17:42] Oscar Trimboli: you ask your employees for feedback in a systemic way? That's a yes no. Most people think it's a survey, but it doesn't necessarily need to be one.
[00:17:52] Nicole Greer: Okay. Don't go any further. Wait, what could it be besides the survey?
[00:17:56] Oscar Trimboli: Oh, it could be a simple question during a meeting. ,
[00:18:00] Nicole Greer: Okay.
[00:18:00] Oscar Trimboli: imagine we've got a one hour meeting. Now. I don't recommend that because I'm all about shorter meetings, but just for maths, we'll just say one hour, 20 minutes before the end of a one hour meeting. Imagine it's a team meeting, but it could be a one-on-one meeting. Go around the room given the time remaining. What's the best use of our remaining time?
[00:18:27] Nicole Greer: Oh, that's good. Write that down everybody.
[00:18:29] Oscar Trimboli: and the reason we ask that is to shortcut the following, which is what most people say in here. Crickets. I would value your feedback about how I'm going as a leader.
[00:18:47] Nicole Greer: That was so Australian. I loved it.
[00:18:54] Oscar Trimboli: At
[00:18:55] Nicole Greer: Yeah,
[00:18:55] Oscar Trimboli: dunno, you don't know managers who ask for feedback in, in, in your world like that, you know?
[00:19:01] Nicole Greer: no, the way you said it was just fantastic. No, no.
[00:19:05] Oscar Trimboli: So, because you know, there's always a power differential between a leader and, and, and other people. So some people may feel comfortable speaking up, most won't. If you say, given the time remaining, where should we focus? It's gonna signal something to you. Hey, what's been useful so far? And what needs to change
[00:19:24] Nicole Greer: Right.
[00:19:26] Oscar Trimboli: This helps the system becomes self-regulating. This is really important.
[00:19:32] Nicole Greer: Mm-hmm.
[00:19:32] Oscar Trimboli: beginning of those meetings, ask this question. To everybody in a meeting. So I'm gonna visualize six people for this meeting. 'cause on, on, on average, a leader will probably have six people in a room, whether it's a project meeting or direct reports or something like that.
[00:19:50] Ask every person in one sentence, what do you want to get out of today?
[00:19:56] Nicole Greer: Excellent.
[00:19:58] Oscar Trimboli: Now you are not asking that question for you as a leader. Remember, this is about systemic listening. We're doing this. A good host gets everybody to listen to the active speaker, a great host, get everybody to listen to each other. The use of that question is a conversation compass that goes, oh, now that Nicole said that, when I get bored and drift away, maybe I can listen on her behalf.
[00:20:23] Maybe I can listen in a way that notices when she's included or excluded from the conversation, or prompt Nicole to speak up during the meeting. So. These adjustment mechanisms are ways that you can listen in a systemic way where you're building this muscle up. Any questions about that before we move back to the employee engagement survey, which we started the conversation off
[00:20:51] Nicole Greer: I know, but I had to know because. You said it doesn't have to be an employee engagement survey. And only reason that like tricked my trigger Oscar is because everybody loves these employee engagement surveys, but I find they are disastrously executed and disastrously handled after the fact. So I'm not a huge, huge advocate of an employee engagement survey unless you know what you're going to do with it.
[00:21:16] Which I think like they send it out and they're like, oh, look what people said. And, and then nothing happens or it's not addressed, not listened to, and therefore now it's like, well, don't send me another employee engagement survey because you didn't do anything about the stuff I wrote on the first one like that.
[00:21:33] I see that everywhere I go.
[00:21:37] Oscar Trimboli: Or, or worse yet, in year two they, they bribe people with, with cupcakes and celebrations and email reminders. Fill in the survey, fill in the gift cards you, yeah. And so around the world, the, let, let's go back to first principles and talk about cultures. When I interview, when I interview anthropologists about these standardized questionnaires, they make two points that are very important.
[00:22:11] Number one, do not compare cultures. Each culture is unique. And academically insane to think that you can compare cultures. Yet everybody buys a standard off the shelf questionnaire on the vague hope that they can get an industry comparison. How am I going compared to my industry, my organizational size, my geography, my, my whatever.
[00:22:52] It's like the anthropologists I've talked to go. That's total insanity. Some organizations are in growth phase and some organizations are in maintenance phase. They obviously have two different cultures in the same industry, yet you're comparing them. Some could be founder led, some could be public companies, some could be owned by private equity, yet you're comparing them insanity.
[00:23:17] But that's not worst bit. Here's the worst bit. Anthropologists say if the people who are being surveyed were not involved in the creation of the question, how do you know? They even understand the question,
[00:23:37] Nicole Greer: Oh, that's good too.
[00:23:43] Oscar Trimboli: and there's always a hint that people don't understand the question. You most consistent You know, on a scale of one to five, they answer three. What's the question gives three on everything from everybody. That's probably a question they don't understand. Are you involving your staff in the creation of the survey? Are you even aware that it's possible? They couldn't even understand some of the questions you're asking them. What are you listening? Happens before, during, and after. Conversation and an event where I see leaders fall down consistently is the before piece and the after piece.
[00:24:26] And Nicole's already beautifully articulated that the biggest issue with employee engagement surveys isn't the collection because we collected and then we segmented by department and tenure and there's a whole bunch of things, and we generate these endless reports and no action plan, or we have an action plan that we don't communicate to the staff. The final part of building powerful, sustainable cultures from employee engagement surveys, from the people who do it well, and this is an exceptional piece of listening on their behalf. They will send out a communication plan to go, thank you for your , responses. This is what we took out of it. This is what we're doing about it.
[00:25:17] So they'll have a three point action plan and we'll communicate that to you on a consistent basis. Here's the bit that counts the most though, because they treat their staff as adults and not as children
[00:25:30] Nicole Greer: Don't miss that.
[00:25:32] Oscar Trimboli: yeah, because they treat their staff as people who are as responsible for the cultural change they're undertaking as the leaders.
[00:25:42] They say to them, these are three things we heard, and unfortunately we can't resource that change until we get the first three done. So they're signaling back to the group what they can do and what they can't do. Signaling to the group that we're gonna do. Everything you ask for is commercial insanity is a fantasy.
[00:26:09] Please. The thing that separates crook good listening from great listening is being explicit about what you will do and what you won't do. And it's often the not communicating. What you won't do is where we get tripped up because people consistently say, yeah, I filled in the form, they did nothing with it.
[00:26:29] I filled in the form and for the third year in a row, it's still the top issue when we haven't made any progress on that, why should I bother?
[00:26:38] Nicole Greer: That's right.
[00:26:38] Oscar Trimboli: three, your survey responses move back towards the midpoint and consistently more people are answering dead on the middle because you have got the worst thing possible.
[00:26:51] You've got employees who don't care.
[00:26:54] Nicole Greer: Right. Apathy for the whole process, which means not on the path to help you apathy. Right? Oh, I couldn't agree more. And the part that you said, Oscar, about number three, and we can't do anything about X because it's not changing. That's how, this is how it rolls. Right? And I think that's so important because there are certain things and it's like sometimes the employee survey is like this Pandora's box.
[00:27:23] You've opened up this whole issue and you're never going to resolve it. You know, like, you, you all have to come back to work. Sorry, we're not letting you work remote anymore, or whatever the big hairy thing is, you know, that's the hairiest one out there still is. Can I work from home and blah blah. It's getting very old, but. It's out there. So go ahead. I'm listening.
[00:27:49] Oscar Trimboli: Well, well, enough. Enough, enough about the doom and gloom. It's like, okay, so what are we, what are we
[00:27:55] Nicole Greer: Yeah, let's fix it. Right? Let's fix it. Yeah.
[00:27:58] Oscar Trimboli: And, and as you mentioned earlier on, it's, it's all gonna come down to enlightened leaders who are gonna go, what we're doing now as I'm working. So, so let's think about how, how we do change
[00:28:11] Nicole Greer: Yeah.
[00:28:12] Oscar Trimboli: when we go back to the 36,000 listeners that were surveyed, and we collect all kinds of dimensions from them about what industry they're in, their tenure in the organization, their seniority, their age, their gender, whether they're neurodiverse or not what their geographic location is.
[00:28:32] But we ask them one question. That's the only question where you get to write a freeform answer and that there's 20 questions you've gotta fill in on a scale of one to five. The one question we ask 'em is, what do you struggle with when it comes to listening or work? For most people, they don't struggle with the person they're trying to listen to or the group they're trying to listen to. , They aren't even at the fancy pants. Active listening stage. Most people aren't listening to themselves. They turn up in a conversation with so many browser tabs open in their head that their memory is overflowing.
[00:29:21] Nicole Greer: Yeah.
[00:29:21] Oscar Trimboli: about the last conversation, the next conversation, what they gotta have for lunch. What do I need to put the trash out tonight? Have I gotta pick up my kids from from school? What's going on on the weekend? Oh my goodness, I forgot to pay that bill. Right? It's just
[00:29:36] Nicole Greer: That's right. That's right.
[00:29:38] Oscar Trimboli: available to listen. So for most people, they live in this false assumption that listening commences by focusing on the person speaking, that's missing a huge step. Step number one, you need to be ready. To listen. So for many of us, again, we're in back-to-back meetings or for the meetings we have control on. A very simple thing you can do, don't start your meeting at the top of the hour. Why? 'cause the person coming from the last meeting is gonna finish their meeting at the top of the hour. So when I work with my clients, they know every meeting starts at 10 after the hour. And what they say to me is, oh, so look forward to your meetings. Oscar. I can go to the bathroom. I can grab a cup of tea or coffee. I, I can get something to eat. I can collect my thoughts before I come into the conversation. And at 10, after the hour, they're ready. To have the conversation. Yet, if you're in back to back meetings, this is what happens. You know, half the people turn up on time, the rest drag will end. The last one comes in at about five after the hour.
[00:30:49] Sorry, sorry, Nicole just finishing up with the last meeting, but I'm here now and I'm ready. No, they're not. They're not even close to being ready, as opposed to if you start at 10 after the hour and they're ready at five after the hour, well you've got a fighting chance that we're actually gonna start the conversation off well, but most people won't have the courage to do that.
[00:31:11] Now, you can't go to your boss and say, start your meetings 10 after the hour or five after the hour. But if you start a meeting, you can control that start at five after the hour or 10 after the hour. And that's just creating enough space to get everybody ready. You'll be surprised how those meetings have a completely different energy and finish sooner because everybody's ready to have the conversation when they get in the virtual room or the physical room. Have you
[00:31:41] Nicole Greer: Yeah.
[00:31:42] Oscar Trimboli: with starting off the hour, Nicole?
[00:31:44] Nicole Greer: , No, but I have a a mentor. Her name is Ann Ette, and she's been my mentor a very long time. She's like mid seventies, 80 pounds, soaking wet. Forced to be reckoned with woman. She's amazing. And she brings people into a meeting and I'm in lots, I've been hundreds of meetings with her and she actually practices centering before we all get started.
[00:32:10] She's like, just, everybody straighten your back. Put your feet flat on the floor. Take a deep breath, you know, and, and then she says this great thing, which I think you'll appreciate, Oscar. She says, let's be here now, and somewhere else later. That's her famous line. And, you know, and it just kind of just tells everybody, whatever you just left or what's going to ahead of you, let's just, let's focus right here.
[00:32:36] So she just kind of calls you to attention in such a beautiful way. What do you think about her technique?
[00:32:42] Oscar Trimboli: Well, I'm curious for you, how is that different from other meetings once, once that's happened, what? What's different in the meeting
[00:32:50] Nicole Greer: Oh.
[00:32:50] Oscar Trimboli: and for others?
[00:32:52] Nicole Greer: Well, everybody's heart rate goes down. , You know, they're not as panicked as when they first walked in. And it's kind of the opposite of what you described. You know, people come running, rushing in at the last minute, everybody's apologizing and every, you know, there's all this frenetic, it's an energy thing.
[00:33:08] To me it's just that it's a calmer butter thing, you know? So I, I love the way she starts out a meeting, so it's good.
[00:33:18] Oscar Trimboli: for you personally, what does it do for you in how you show up in those meetings?
[00:33:24] Nicole Greer: Oh, well, it gives me peace is what it gives me. That we're, we're gonna be focused, we're gonna get work done, we're going to do the right thing. You know, it just sets the appropriate tone. , And, you know, that's, that's the, what leaders are supposed to do. Set the tone, set the example, you know, lead by example.
[00:33:42] We've heard that one a hundred thousand times. , And, and she does that. And, you know, in terms of. I have this question I ask leaders when I coach a Oscar, and it's a really important question, what is it like to experience you?
[00:33:56] Oscar Trimboli: Mm-hmm.
[00:33:56] Nicole Greer: That's my question. I ask leaders and with Anne, like she's in control, but she's not controlling 'cause she's like bringing, I'm bringing this meeting to, to order per se, but does it in such a gentle, kind, respectful and it's really about caring about us.
[00:34:19] Like, I want you to just relax.
[00:34:21] Oscar Trimboli: Right.
[00:34:21] Nicole Greer: It's gonna be fine. So it's a, it is a bit of caretaking. Yeah.
[00:34:26] Oscar Trimboli: controlling the container, not controlling the conversation.
[00:34:30] Nicole Greer: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
[00:34:33] Oscar Trimboli: for a lot of leaders, their stadium moments are team meetings. That's, that's where cultures are built and they're built in one-on-ones. But team meetings is where you're gonna build the cultures the most. And how deliberate are you about building a container where a conversation can take place rather than being controlling about the content of the conversation? If you control the container, you can curate the culture within it. If you're trying to control the content of the conversation, you are in a hurt locker of pain,
[00:35:11] Nicole Greer: Yeah. Good luck.
[00:35:13] Oscar Trimboli: deeply. Deeply, deeply draining energy sapping not just for you, but also for the team, and very difficult to sustain and scale beyond that hat.
[00:35:25] Nicole Greer: Yeah.
[00:35:25] Oscar Trimboli: to Anne, and thanks for highlighting what she does. Well, have you stolen one technique from her in any other meetings?
[00:35:37] Nicole Greer: , Well, yeah. Lots of techniques from Manette. Yeah. She's big about having people talk 2, 2, 2 to two, turn to the person next to you and talk about it for a minute. You know, get your, get your thinking out of your head you know, out outta your head, outta your mouth to the person next to you. Yeah.
[00:35:55] She's very powerful. Very powerful gal. Yeah. She is a spiritual director and she owns a retreat house in Statesville, North Carolina. And her main clients are pastors and, and pastors are paid to talk. She brings them, uh, into a couple of programs. One is called School of the Spirit. I helped her with it for like 14 years.
[00:36:21] And in that program, you would have, you know, five pastors all from, it's really, really beautiful, ecumenical, you know, Lutheran Baptist Methodist. All the flavors would be in that group, you know, but it wasn't about, you know, what they're trying to put out into the world. It wasn't about following Christ, it was about listening to each other and helping each other get, you know, focused on what they wanted to do in terms of being a leader, right?
[00:36:49] Mm-hmm. And so we would practice this thing called she calls it holy listening. And so one person speaks and they speak for however much time. We have like seven to eight minutes, and then there's silence. And you think about. Spirited question you're gonna ask. It's open-ended, it's full of curiosity and wonder, I wonder why he said this.
[00:37:15] I wonder why he's worried about that. And then that person receives the questions in a very gentle, amazing way, right? Like, so we model it for them, and then the, the focus person responds. So it's based on like the Quaker. You may know the Quaker meeting ritual of oh, it's not, it's not. Do you know what I'm talking about?
[00:37:39] Oscar Trimboli: Unfortunately no.
[00:37:40] Nicole Greer: Okay. It'll come to me in a minute Anyways, the shakers have this thing where the person is the focus and they get asked a question and then, and then at the end there's silence. And then you go to the next person and they share what's going on in their ministry and everybody in the room is silent.
[00:37:58] There's no interrupting, there's no crosstalk, just listening. And then question period comes silence again. And it repeats for the whole group and very, very powerful listening. And there's a rhythm to it. There's timing. And I, one time I worked with a guy named Dave Cowen and he, he's a master certified coach guy and he had this thing called the magic of dialogue and it almost was the same thing.
[00:38:28] I think Parker Palmer, I don't know if you know his book, let Let Your Life Speak, but I think he's the one that came up with the holy listening thing. But it was very similar to what Dave Cowan did, but it was this thing of actually presenting the issue in the middle. Everybody gets a chance to talk.
[00:38:45] Nobody crosstalks. There's questions and then there's dialogue. So I've participated in both of those things. Listening is huge, solves a lot of problems,
[00:39:00] Oscar Trimboli: Well, given our time remaining, where would you like to focus? You may
[00:39:05] Nicole Greer: okay. Yeah, yeah. Well, I, I'm still on page 10, but I wanted you to talk about the five levels of listening. I thought that that was really I important. And on page 11, you have kind of this, uh, diagram that says yourself, the content, the context, the unsaid, and then the meaning. I was like, wow, these were so good.
[00:39:28] If you could understand these things. So the five levels of listening, the first one is, uh, yourself, get ready to listen. You talked about that. Give and pay attention. Do you wanna say more about that? But give and pay attention part.
[00:39:43] Oscar Trimboli: Yeah. Well the, the first thing about the five levels is they're foundational and progressive. It's very difficult to sustain level two if you haven't done the work for level one.
[00:39:55] Nicole Greer: Yeah.
[00:39:57] Oscar Trimboli: So when we get to level five in our database, we see half of 1% of people are thinking about how do I listen for their meaning
[00:40:08] Nicole Greer: Mm-hmm.
[00:40:09] Oscar Trimboli: than.
[00:40:10] Listening for what it means for me, right?
[00:40:13] Nicole Greer: Right.
[00:40:13] Oscar Trimboli: big, that's the big distinction at level five because what separates good listeners from great listeners, a good listener listens to what somebody says and tries to comprehend and make sense of it for them. Great listeners help the speaker understand what it means for them
[00:40:31] Nicole Greer: Mm-hmm.
[00:40:32] Oscar Trimboli: understand what it means for them. In the example you talked about going around the room,
[00:40:37] Nicole Greer: Yeah.
[00:40:38] Oscar Trimboli: layered approach where you keep going around and around and around and eventually you get to understand as the speaker, what does it truly mean for me, not just today, but for the next decade and for my life and my legacy. I, I suspect that's what the process is about.
[00:40:57] So I think when we think about the five levels of listening, the first thing to keep in mind is two thirds of people in our database are at level one.
[00:41:08] Nicole Greer: Wow.
[00:41:09] Oscar Trimboli: for the, for the vast majority of people, this is where the work is,
[00:41:14] Nicole Greer: Mm-hmm.
[00:41:14] Oscar Trimboli: getting your state ready. That's why I love that you explained about and creating a container where people can become present to themselves
[00:41:25] Nicole Greer: Mm-hmm.
[00:41:27] Oscar Trimboli: as a leader.
[00:41:28] If you invest a five minutes in a 50 minute meeting to do that, you would have completely different meetings. Now, there was many different protocols in what Anne explained and the no crosstalk is a one and in some cultures that won't work and it's how do you work within. Organizational culture and a international culture as well. So there's some dynamics to
[00:41:57] Nicole Greer: Sure.
[00:41:57] Oscar Trimboli: there. So let's think about, that's level one. It's working on yourself and you know, three simple things. Manage your time. So you start off the hour. Number two, water. So you send a signal to your parasympathetic nervous system, the part of your body around your heart and your lungs.
[00:42:15] The signal. Slow down, everything's okay, right? And if you really wanna reset and if it's possible, 'cause it's not possible for everybody, but just to listen to 30 minutes or , 30 seconds of music before you get into a conversation where that's fa fast music, slow, it doesn't matter. The music will reset and close down all those browser tabs to get you present to what's going on. And in the book we talk about three different tempos of music and how that creates different energy and the kind of energy you need to bring to the conversation, uh,
[00:42:49] Nicole Greer: Mm-hmm.
[00:43:06] Oscar Trimboli: your own emotion at level one.
[00:43:09] Nicole Greer: Right.
[00:43:09] Oscar Trimboli: If you're dealing with a bunch of emotions yourself at level one and you come into the meeting and you go, oh, that person's really frustrated. Well, they're actually not. You are the one that's frustrated. You're just projecting on them. So it is very difficult for you to hear, see and sense at that level.
[00:43:30] So again, we, we get to 30% of people, so remember we got 66 and change coming in at level one. We've got about 30% coming in at level two that the all they're about is just processing. You know what they say most common here is I really struggle to not interrupt or I consistently interrupt or they talk too slow, which is another code for, I wanna interrupt. So, and some other signals that people send here is I, I, I really struggle with body language. Like, uh, I hate video conferences 'cause it's difficult to read body language. So these are the kinds of phrases people are using here. And then this is a level two, a level three context is how they say it. So a lot of people will say something about accents, for example, or the complexity of jargon this level, highly technical or I don't like details or I hate storytellers. This is all about the how of communication. Listening to context is really crucial. Uh, the most important thing to listen at context is backstory. An example might be somebody comes in, ah, I've got a big issue, Nicole, with this project and it's, it's driving me nuts and blah, blah. of a sudden people wanna either ask a whole bunch of questions, you know, try and interrogate you or get their, uh, question machine gun out and start mowing you down with all kinds of questions that they've probably already thought about. And they come into the conversation. Nicole, I'm really struggling with this project, and what will be the first question you would ask there, Nicole?
[00:45:33] Nicole Greer: What's the struggle?
[00:45:35] Oscar Trimboli: Okay.
[00:45:35] Nicole Greer: Why is it a struggle?
[00:45:37] Oscar Trimboli: Okay. Here's, so Nicole's got her question. Machine gun ready
[00:45:41] Nicole Greer: That's right. That's right. That's, I'm going to use that. I'm, can I, can I steal that from you shamelessly? Question? Question. Machine gun, that is so good, because that's exactly what it is.
[00:45:56] Speaker 3: Yeah,
[00:45:56] Oscar Trimboli: people inhale and you reload. You know, you put more bullets in that you're going right,
[00:46:03] Nicole Greer: that's exactly right.
[00:46:05] Oscar Trimboli: people confuse questions and listening as they're definitely not the same thing. And we, we talk about it in the book, if
[00:46:11] Nicole Greer: no.
[00:46:12] Oscar Trimboli: questions of more than eight words, it's probably an unproductive question.
[00:46:17] Nicole Greer: Well, it's probably a little, it's probably got a little, like I'm telling you the answer as I'm asking you the question.
[00:46:25] Oscar Trimboli: Yeah. Just 'cause I've got a question mark at the end doesn't make it a question.
[00:46:28] Nicole Greer: That's right.
[00:46:30] Oscar Trimboli: Here's the question, to understand context instantly. When somebody says, I've got a X with X, I've got a problem with a project, I've got a problem with a coworker, I've got a problem with a customer. , I really need your help. How long have you been thinking about this?
[00:46:50] Speaker 3: Oh, I love it.
[00:46:52] Oscar Trimboli: Now, it's a content independent question. operating at a context to understand not how long they've been thinking about it, but to get them to think about how long they've been thinking about it, right? So if I say, oh, you know, well, it's come up today. I've been thinking about it for a month.
[00:47:15] I've been thinking about it for two years, is a very, very different context
[00:47:20] Nicole Greer: That's right.
[00:47:21] Oscar Trimboli: because that then gives you permission to say, can we start at the beginning? Now what will happen is sometimes people will start from the beginning of the issue when they realized it was an issue, not necessarily when the issue started, right? So that, that gives you a chance to do that. So at context, the thing you wanna understand is the backstory. Once you understand the backstory, a whole bunch of things open up for them.
[00:47:58] Nicole Greer: Yeah.
[00:47:59] Oscar Trimboli: And as a lead building a culture, you're gonna have a very different conversation with somebody who says, oh, I've been thinking about it for five minutes. Versus somebody who's been thinking about it deeply for two and a half years with your question, machine gun. If you don't ask that question, you're gonna miss fire.
[00:48:17] You're gonna miss the target.
[00:48:19] Nicole Greer: Murder.
[00:48:19] Oscar Trimboli: a lot of energy right
[00:48:21] Nicole Greer: Yeah. Yeah. I said And murder the guy who's asking the, who's got the problem. Yep.
[00:48:28] Oscar Trimboli: There's a level, level four. We listen for what's not said and let me bring you into the neuroscience of speaking 'cause this is crucial. Have to begin to, Dan earlier on who told me I need to get better at speaking and what are things I discovered is, although I speak slightly slower than this, like a hundred to 125 words a minute.
[00:48:51] On average, most people speak 125 to 150. Unless you're an auctioneer or horse race caller, you're speaking at 200 words per minute and you can hear everything I'm saying and still understand it at 200 words per minute. Right? Can can you do that for extended length of time? You betcha. That's why YouTube's got a 202 times speed audible.
[00:49:10] Two times speed podcast players two times speed. And maybe even your compliance training in the organizations you're part of allows you to speed up the compliance training videos while you are trying to complete the annual compliance surveys. As a speaker, although I can speak at 125 to 150 words a minute, on average, I can think at 900 words per minute. If I can think at 900 words per minute, that means the first thing that comes outta my mouth is 14% of what I'm thinking. Lemme say it another way. If you ask a question about the first thing they say, you're missing 86% of what they're already thought about it. Four out of five things they're thinking about you haven't even heard. That's why it's critical to listen to what's not said and you gave away a huge tip earlier on when you were talking about how am works
[00:50:19] Nicole Greer: Mm-hmm.
[00:50:20] Oscar Trimboli: silent and listen, have the same letters. The most powerful way, the, the most magnetic way to get people to say what they haven't said is to just pause in the West.
[00:50:35] English speaking countries especially, we have a negative relationship with silence. We call it the awkward silence, the pregnant pause, the deafening silence. Yet in high, high con, high, high context cultures, of North America are a great example of this. The Japanese in North Asia, the Polynesian cultures, the Australian indigenous cultures, tribal cultures in Africa and South America.
[00:51:08] Silence is a sign of wisdom, respect, and authority, and most gatherings commence. Not with the announcement of this is the agenda, but they commence by bringing everybody to presence with silence. And when you become comfortable with silence, you'll be stunned what other people tell you. If you've got safety issues, if you've got quality issues, if you've got cost overrun issues, that is because you are not taking the time to listen to what's not said.
[00:51:39] 'cause people don't feel safe enough to speak up because you are not clever and capable when it comes to the use of space and silence. Now, I'm not saying use that extended period of silence that I just offered. All I'm saying is if you're uncomfortable with silence, flex your muscles to use silence for one second longer than you're comfortable with. And once you've mastered that, move it out one more second and you'll be surprised. Because if you go from waiting, if you normally wait half a second and all of a sudden you're waiting for 10 seconds, people will just come across as like, whoa, is Oscar not taking his medication today?
[00:52:30] Nicole Greer: Yeah, it was weird.
[00:52:32] Oscar Trimboli: It's a bit bit weird. So, so make the change gradual, but make it also perceptible to the other person. They will feel that silence. I guarantee you. Do you have the courage to use it
[00:52:49] Nicole Greer: Yeah.
[00:52:50] Oscar Trimboli: Now, finally, finally sorry, Nicole. Sounds like you had a question about unsaid.
[00:52:55] Nicole Greer: No, I just, I just wanted to, to share just quickly, I'm, I'm curious what you think. I work with a lot of leaders. Some of them are have a personality that's outgoing. They have a strong opinion. They care deeply. They're passionate. They're quick. They're fast. They talk a lot. I love those people. But then I also have people that I coach that are quiet, typically good listeners, more reserved, more cautious.
[00:53:25] And, you know, when these two pair up, it can be disastrous if they don't love and respect each other, right? And so oftentimes I'll tell my more quiet, cautious, listener thinking types, you know, well, he was asking me questions so fast and I didn't, I didn't know what to say. And I will tell them, well just say, hold on a second, I wanna think about that.
[00:53:49] So let's, let me just think a minute. And so I just say inter, you know, slow the person down so that you can think, because that person that's kind of using their machine gun, maybe in this case is, is not allowing the other personality type to have a moment to do what they need to do to participate fully.
[00:54:08] So what do you think about me telling my cautious risk, non-risk taker people to ask for silence for a minute? What do you think about that? Is that crazy?
[00:54:20] Oscar Trimboli: Yeah. And, and, and let's look. Look, communication is a simultaneous equation.
[00:54:27] Nicole Greer: Yeah.
[00:54:27] Oscar Trimboli: from speaker to listener in, in microseconds in the dialogue,
[00:54:32] Nicole Greer: Mm-hmm.
[00:54:33] Oscar Trimboli: shift and change. Some people think by verbally processing,
[00:54:40] Nicole Greer: Right.
[00:54:40] Oscar Trimboli: person who's asking lots of questions, they're just throwing it out there because that's the way they make sense of their world.
[00:54:50] It doesn't make that bad or poor,
[00:54:54] Nicole Greer: No.
[00:54:55] Oscar Trimboli: but it's back to the container.
[00:54:58] Nicole Greer: Yeah.
[00:54:58] Oscar Trimboli: help those two people acknowledge the difference in their communication styles? So this simultaneous equation can balance
[00:55:08] Nicole Greer: Yeah.
[00:55:09] Oscar Trimboli: rather than saying, you know, hey quite introvert person, tell them to give you time to think. It is like there's a simple conversation that both of them can have, like in.
[00:55:21] The, in the past, you know, you, you ask a lot of questions. I sent you a verbal processor. I, I need time to think. So, as we approach this difficult conversation today, I think we both need to acknowledge we've got different styles
[00:55:36] Nicole Greer: Mm-hmm.
[00:55:37] Oscar Trimboli: we need, we need to support each other with these different styles. It's okay to ask for permission to pause the, uh, verbal processor yet. Nicole, I sense if there's a significant political or power differential,
[00:55:54] Nicole Greer: Yeah, that's a problem.
[00:55:56] Oscar Trimboli: very difficult for someone, Hey, hey, hey, slow down, slow down. It's like, can I really say that to the chairman of the board? Can I really say that to the person who runs the audit committee?
[00:56:09] Can I really say that to my chief financial officer without thinking they're gonna be consequences? Or can I just
[00:56:16] Nicole Greer: Wouldn't it be wonderful if that's true?
[00:56:20] Oscar Trimboli: But can I really fumble my way through the way I'm going? Look, the fumbling and like in the West, we think that
[00:56:31] Nicole Greer: I.
[00:56:32] Oscar Trimboli: of response is a measure of our ability to cope. Yet the reality is, and this is why I talk about length of meetings, reality is that it's the quality of our responses to the systemic or cultural issues we're trying to navigate.
[00:56:55] It's the quality of our thinking that will create sustained transformational change. And the important word there is sustained, not something that's going to go backwards the minute you step out of the system. So to your. Scenario, Nicole. I, I think it's very brave for somebody to say
[00:57:19] Nicole Greer: Yeah.
[00:57:19] Oscar Trimboli: likelihood they will, if there's a power differential or perceived political difference as well, it's probably gonna be pretty low.
[00:57:30] So it's gonna take a lot more courage to have a conversation before the meeting commences or slightly
[00:57:40] Nicole Greer: Or circle back around, right? Yeah,
[00:57:42] Oscar Trimboli: just, and just say, Hey, next time we deal with something like that, I, I'm gonna be more useful in the conversation if I've got more time or if we can kind of agree how to prioritize the three questions you ask to, 'cause I sense you are thinking out aloud and they might say, yeah, I, I never thought about the fact I'm thinking out aloud.
[00:58:05] Thanks for
[00:58:06] Nicole Greer: that's right. That's right. That's right.
[00:58:11] Oscar Trimboli: Listening is situational. It's relational and it's contextual. It means you'll listen differently to your mother than you will to your manager. You'll listen differently to a boss than you will to a barber. You'll, you know, you'll listen differently to a peer than you will to a customer.
[00:58:26] You'll listen differently to the head of quality than you will to somebody who's in marketing. It's just the reality of it. You'll listen differently to somebody more junior to you than somebody more senior from you as well. So the reality is we need to adjust all the way along. But back to Anne, what
[00:58:46] Nicole Greer: We love you, Ian.
[00:58:48] Oscar Trimboli: to create the container?
[00:58:49] To have the conversation
[00:58:51] Nicole Greer: That's right.
[00:58:52] Oscar Trimboli: obsessed about making that conversation productive.
[00:58:56] Nicole Greer: Yeah. All right. Level five, bring it home.
[00:58:59] Oscar Trimboli: five is, is really simple. I've, I, I have dyscalculus, which means I have a relationship with numbers. That means I transpose, if I say nine, eight and one nine or something like that, I'm more than likely to type or write 1, 8, 9 instead of 9, 8, 1, or something like that. So forgive me if I say things like three is half of eight, right?
[00:59:22] Nicole Greer: You're forgiven. Grace, grace, grace.
[00:59:26] Oscar Trimboli: So Nicole, when you hear me say three is half of eight, what's going through your mind?
[00:59:34] Nicole Greer: I, I just found humor in it. That was it.
[00:59:36] Oscar Trimboli: Mm-hmm. Anything else? If
[00:59:40] Nicole Greer: Well, it's, it's, it's incorrect. It's incorrect, but I know that, you know, it's incorrect. So
[00:59:47] Oscar Trimboli: oh, tell me more. What's incorrect?
[00:59:50] Nicole Greer: half of eight is four.
[00:59:52] Oscar Trimboli: Mm-hmm.
[00:59:54] Nicole Greer: So I could be curious and say, I wonder why he thinks half of eight is three. Right. And then I might get back to the place where I'd ask you a question and you would share with me, what did you call it? I have a what? You said I have something. didn't, I, it was the first time I heard it.
[01:00:13] Just calculus. Yeah. I've never heard of that before. You're educating me.
[01:00:18] Oscar Trimboli: Yeah. It's a
[01:00:18] Nicole Greer: Yeah.
[01:00:19] Oscar Trimboli: dyslexia. That's around numbers.
[01:00:23] Nicole Greer: I have never ever heard of that. Thank you for teaching me today. Just calculus.
[01:00:28] Oscar Trimboli: Some people can see this and some people can only hear this. Nicole, when I say three is half of eight, I want you to close your eyes and draw the figure. Eight in your eyes.
[01:00:39] Nicole Greer: Oh, I see it. That's so good. That's so good. Two little threes. Boop.
[01:00:53] Oscar Trimboli: yet, if I was to say to you, zero is half of eight now.
[01:01:02] Nicole Greer: I see it.
[01:01:04] Oscar Trimboli: Mm-hmm.
[01:01:05] Nicole Greer: No, that's wrong. Help me. Oscar.
[01:01:10] Oscar Trimboli: say three is half of eight, we have these conversations in the workplace all the time. People come into a meeting and you go, oh, they're wrong. You know, based on your training, your history, your education, your life experience, you, it's like you've got all these filters on. It's like, ugh, what are they talking about?
[01:01:30] Three is half of eight, and you are having three of half of eight moments all the time in your workplace, yet zero is also half of eight.
[01:01:39] Nicole Greer: Yes.
[01:01:40] Oscar Trimboli: zeros on top of each other. You got an eight. So you've got people in team meetings all the time saying, three is half of eight and four zero is half of eight, and you are there going, no.
[01:01:49] It's like, no, what do they mean? I was like, four is half of eight on the earth, on the moon, on Mars in the Milky way, four is half of vape. They're wrong. They're wrong, they're wrong. You
[01:02:01] Nicole Greer: Yeah,
[01:02:01] Oscar Trimboli: to what they say. Are you taking the time to fully comprehend and understand what it means for them?
[01:02:08] Because when you do, you won't waste time. Think about all the time you just wasted Nicole going no. That is incorrect. It's about disc calculate and it was about none of those things.
[01:02:20] Nicole Greer: it's about perception.
[01:02:22] Oscar Trimboli: Your
[01:02:23] Nicole Greer: Yeah.
[01:02:23] Oscar Trimboli: that filter the way you listen to things. So when it comes to listening, the quickest way to help a verbal processor in the previous example,
[01:02:35] Nicole Greer: Yeah. Tell me.
[01:02:36] Oscar Trimboli: could you put that in a subject line in an email? If you could, what would it say? Hey Nicole, if you could put that in one sentence, what would it be? And that helps them shorten it. And typically they get closer to what they mean. And when they do, they'll say, well, code words. They'll say, well, actually, what I meant to say was, now that I think about it a little longer, what I meant to say was, and, and you'll hear all these code words if you are listening at that level, sometimes it can be as simple as what does that mean for you? does that mean for your team? What does it mean for our organization? What does it mean for the budget? These are very simple shortcut questions. Again, questions with eight words or less are going to get closer to meaning than word. , Questions that are longer to that, questions that are longer than that are typically bias questions.
[01:03:37] And I'm not saying bias questions are incorrect, but if you're trying to solve complex problems in human systems where zero four and three are the possible answers and all you do turn up to your gunfight with four in your pocket, but zero, three and four are all possible, and a combination of all three of those are also possible as well.
[01:04:03] If
[01:04:04] Nicole Greer: Yeah.
[01:04:04] Oscar Trimboli: listening and communicating at that level, we can move cultures forward. We can create sustainable change that people wanna lead themselves. Rather than relying on their leaders.
[01:04:17] Nicole Greer: Hmm. Another mic drop moment. Loved it. I'm gonna, I'm gonna tell everybody, or ask everybody that question. What is half of eight? This is fantastic. All right. I love your five levels of listening. I like your diagram on page 11, and I like your whole book, but we spent an hour getting to page 11, but I had a great time.
[01:04:39] Did you have a great time? I had a really good time. Oscar. If, if people wanna,
[01:04:44] Oscar Trimboli: that, I think the big question we wanna ask is, do we think the audience had a good time?
[01:04:50] Nicole Greer: yeah. 'cause you taught us a lot and we talked about Anne, which Joyce makes my heart happy. My listeners hear about Anne all the time. Yeah,
[01:04:58] Oscar Trimboli: good.
[01:04:59] Nicole Greer: yeah.
[01:05:00] Oscar Trimboli: Rather than getting in contact with me, get in
[01:05:02] Nicole Greer: Yeah.
[01:05:03] Oscar Trimboli: with your own listening. Visit listening quiz.com. Take the 20 question assessment and the one. What do you struggle with when it comes to listening question and, uh, connect with your own listening? You'll get a report, and that report will give you three practical tips based on where you're at, about what to do about your listening in your next workplace interaction.
[01:05:25] And then if you want to get in touch with me, the report will have all the coordinates there. But visit listening quiz.com. Understand your own listening, and if you want to connect with me after that, that's, that's okay too.
[01:05:37] Nicole Greer: Okay, we'll put it all in the show notes down below anyways. Okay, Oscar, it's early in the morning in Australia and it is 4:11 PM in North Carolina. And guess who's coming to see me? Oscar, my son from is coming from Montana, and so I gotta go. I gotta go cook dinner for my my boy. And so I wish you were here.
[01:05:58] You could join us, everybody. Thanks for listening to the Build A Vibrant Culture podcast. It takes a second. Go click the like button and leave some love for Oscar and take the quiz. He's trying to hit a number everybody. Thank you, Oscar. I'm grateful.
[01:06:14] Oscar Trimboli: Thanks for listening.