Hosted by veteran communications strategist and leadership trainer J.Marie, Your Friend in Leadership is an inspiring and approachable podcast created to empower today’s public leaders. Each episode delivers strategic insights, transformative ideas, and actionable communication tools to help you better connect with your communities and move your mission forward. With deep appreciation for the important work of public leaders and the knowledge that leadership and communication are skills that can be built and improved, this podcast is your guide to confident and effective leadership every step of the way.
Greetings, friends. I am delighted that you have found your way here. So we're gonna explore today this idea of listening well, and something called the listening continuum, which is a little bit counterintuitive, I think for some folks when you think about a podcast that's focused on communication. You know, when we think about communication, we tend to think about the words that we say. We tend to think about it as the message that's going out.
J.Marie:And I really wanna ground us in the idea that listening well is number 1, the foundation of good communication. It's also the heart of leadership. You absolutely have to know the people that you are engaging, whether you are engaging your internal audience and seeking to motivate them towards a shared mission or speaking to your external audience, the general public or any subset of the public. You need to know them well enough to know what matters to them in order to be able to communicate to them in a way that will inspire them and motivate them to consider changing. And in order to do any of that, it means you need to listen well.
J.Marie:Listening is a critical skill for actually getting to know others. So we're gonna start there and use that as our foundation that we're gonna build other skills on over time. So one way to think about listening is through this model that is referred to as a listening continuum. If you were to imagine, you know, a straight line from not listening to expert listening and all along the way there's different levels of listening. I've seen listening continuums with as few as 3 different quote unquote levels and as many as 10 different levels.
J.Marie:I happen to like one that has 5 levels, but in the end, I'm gonna talk to you about why the number of levels actually doesn't matter so much as the idea itself. Since I like the version with 5 levels, that's the one we're gonna explore here today. So if you imagine this continuum all the way at one end would be not listening or another word for that could be ignoring. And an example of that would be standing in line, say at the grocery store, and there's a couple people behind you and they're having a conversation, but it's not particularly juicy, it's not about anything that is of interest to you. And so while technically your ears can hear their words, you are not putting any of your brain power towards processing what they're saying or attending to it in any way.
J.Marie:So while there is sound happening around you, your level of listening in under this continuum could be called ignoring. And then I'm gonna ask those of you with kids, you know, as we think about moving up to the next level of listening, those of you with kids will be really familiar with this next one, pretend listening. Right? You're driving along and your kids are in the back seat and they are talking about their favorite dinosaur for the 7 100 and 43rd time, and, you know, they are super into it. And they're like, mom, but the t Rex's arms are so little.
J.Marie:And you're like, mhmm. And they go into all these other data and you're kinda, you know, you're nodding along, but you've heard this story before and you're pretty confident that you don't need to put a whole lot of brainpower towards this topic in order to mhmm your way through it. And we do this at work too. Right? Like, pretend listening is a sanity saver for those really long meetings that mostly aren't about you.
J.Marie:And, you know, you're a grown up, so you don't get to go stand up and go draw flowers on the whiteboard while the person groans on about the stuff that absolutely has no bearing on your work. So you sit there like a responsible grown up and you hold your pen in your hand and you might even have it sort of poised over your paper and you you nod periodically. And you look around the room and you occasionally make eye contact with your colleagues. All the while you are building out your to do list. Oh, yeah.
J.Marie:I gotta swing by the hardware store on the way home, and, oh, crap. I forgot about doing such and such. Oh, and the dogs need this or that. And, you know, your brain is entirely off doing things that matter to you that have no bearing on what's happening on the outside, but view the face you're making and the body posture you're assuming makes it look like you're engaged in what's happening around you. And that's that's a really critical adult skill that many of us are very good at.
J.Marie:So we spend a lot of time in pretend listening. If we then travel up this continuum just a little further and we come to the next stop on this spot, this one we might call selective listening. And quite frankly, this is where most of us spend most of our time. And even in that example where you were in the business meeting with your pin poised and your, you know, eyebrows looking engaged, you actually were probably even a little closer to selective listening than true full on pretend listening because selective listening is where our brain where we trust our brain to automatically dial us in and out of our level of attention based on how relevant and important the content outside of our ears is compared to the content going on between our ears. And so let's go back to that meeting you were in where for an unfortunate amount of time, someone was droning on about something that was not at all relevant to you.
J.Marie:But then, say, 5 minutes into their soliloquy, they mentioned something that is exactly related to you. And then all of a sudden, your brain clicks in and sets the to do list and the hardware store and the dog treats off to the side, and you're zoomed right in on what is happening in the room. And you are ready to answer that question and share information that's appropriate. And your brain is now tuned in so that what's happening between your ears is in alignment with the conversation that's happening around the table. And selective listening, I I opened it up.
J.Marie:It is really sort of a trust exercise. It's like a trust fall that you do with your brain all the time where you're trusting that the there's some portion of your brain that's tuned in to what's happening on the outside that's automatically just dialing us in and out. And if we were to go back to that example as a parent, you know, if you're driving along and, you know, your younger kid is talking for the 90 millionth time about dinosaurs and you're mhmm ing your way through it, and then your older kid starts, you know, mention something about having their feelings hurt at lunch today, and you know there's been a pattern of something that's been going on at lunch for that kiddo, all of a sudden, you go from mhmm ing your way through the conversation to it's like your rabbit ears point up and you are ready to give your emotional your internal emotional attention to your kid's story. So that's another example where you you would kind of bump out of pretend listening over into something deeper and more connected, and your brain will do that for you really automatically. But let's continue on our path along the listening continuum.
J.Marie:We go from selective listening to when we actually when we have dialed in so that what's happening between our ears is in alignment with what's happening out in the larger room. This particular model calls that attentive listening. We are now being attentive. We are attending. What's what's going on in our brain is attending to what's happening in the world around us, and we are paying attention to it and and putting our thought processes on it.
J.Marie:And this is where we can be influential because we need to be attending to what's happening around us so that we can process it and so that what we then share back out when it's our turn to speak is relevant and thoughtful and appropriate. And maybe even in our moments of being at our best, maybe we're even inspiring. So we are being attentive to what's going on. And to be attentive listening, we do have to turn off some of that internal or at least turn down some of that internal conversation. But I think of it, you know, sometimes I joke with people in my classes, about listening, you know, and and about our inner world.
J.Marie:Like, do you have an inner monologue or do you have an inner, like, board table with a whole conversation happening? And we're all a little different on that subject. But attentive listening is when that inner world is engaged with the topic at hand with our outer world. There's alignment there. But if we were to then move even a little further along that continuum up to the very best level of listening, in this model, that listening could be called empathetic listening.
J.Marie:And the difference between attentive less listening and empathetic listening, When you are listening empathetically, you are actually seeking to understand what's being said from the other person's point of view. So in attentive listening, you are listening to the other what the what words the other person is saying to what's happening around you, but you are listening with the lens of why does it matter to me, and what do I bring to this topic? What do what am I going to need to say next? Is what the other person is saying going to affect me and my workflow and and my priorities for the day? That's attentive listening because it's about how and what I how is what I'm hearing important to me?
J.Marie:Empathetic listening is how is what I'm hearing important to them? In empathetic listening, you actually cut turn off or mute your inner monologue or dialogue as the case may be. And you are seeking, I mean, if you could actually kinda climb into the other person's brain and really experience what they're sharing with you through their perspective, that is empathetic listening. It's also a way that we express our care for one another, and I'll talk about that in just a moment. In in empathetic listening, it's like you really wanna experience it like the other person is sharing it.
J.Marie:And I wanna say, you know, when we think about listening as a continuum, it can be natural for us to misunderstand that idea as if empathetic listening, because that is the deepest, most intensive level of listening, that that must be the best and that must be what we're always striving for. And I want to clarify, and this is why I opened this episode by saying that the number of levels in a model for listening isn't so important as the idea itself because there it is not true to think that we should always be listening at the very highest level of listening all the time. We would make ourselves crazy. Our brains are not built to be constantly imagining every person's words through their lens. You know, when I order my latte down at the local coffee shop, I do not need the barista to imagine how that drink is going to taste as I drink it.
J.Marie:Selective listening is perfectly fine. I mean, I don't want her to pretend listen because I do want her to get the order right, but selective listening is just fine. If she listens to me well enough to understand the order that I've placed so that she can make it correctly for me, then we have accomplished our goals, and I do not mind if she is also thinking about that argument she had with her sweetheart this morning or has her to do list running through her mind as she foams the milk. That is perfectly acceptable, and we still accomplish what we need to accomplish. So I wanna be really clear, I am not suggesting that you as a leader need to walk around always empathetically listening.
J.Marie:But I do believe that as a leader, it behooves you to build your skills to be able to dial your listening in to the appropriate level given the significance of what's happening around you. When a friend or a colleague pulls you aside and tells you that they are facing a serious health emergency, or they have just lost someone very dear to them, or the piece of the project that they had been working on for the last 6 months just fell apart in some catastrophic way, they do not need selective or pretend listening from you. They need you to have the skills to put aside the to do list in the back of your mind and to dial up your listening so that you are listening to them at the very least attentively. And, really, in those moments of of deep humanness, it behooves you to have the skill to actually shift your gears and listen to why what they're saying matters to them, to listen empathetically. And I'll close this by saying, when you choose to listen well, what you are doing is literally giving someone a piece of your life.
J.Marie:You are in those moments that you are listening well to another person. You are sharing your time with them. And while money and toys and, you know, all there are many ways that we might measure a life. The bottom line is life is measured in the time we have. And so choosing to set aside your own priorities for a moment to listen well to what matters to somebody else is an act of love.
J.Marie:You know, the Greeks have many different words for love, but one of them and they they differentiate between romantic love and familial love. One of the kinds of love that the Greeks talk about is agape love, which is a universal kind of love. It is loving one another as people, just caring about each other for each other's humanity. And that's the kind of love that is important to embody as a leader. If you want other people to share your vision, if you want other people to work hard at something that matters to you, you have to show that you care about them, that what matters to them matters to you too.
J.Marie:Is it's not enough as a leader for you to expect other people to care about what you care about if you don't also return that favor. And learning to listen well is the foundational fundamental skill associated with demonstrating that kind of care, with building the kind of rapport that is necessary to motivate people, to work their hardest, to be their best, to live and work in a way that aligns with both their values and the shared values of an organization. Alright, friends. Well, thank you for listening today to this session about listening. Please remember that you matter.
J.Marie:What you do matters, and please take good care of yourself, friends. Until next time. Be well.