Speaker 2
Hi, listeners. Welcome back. We have an exciting guest this week in Lake Casriel and Emily is an author of the book Deep Listening. Transform your relationships with family, friends and foes. Love that and is also the senior visiting research fellow at Kings. College in London. Welcome, Emily.
Speaker
Thank you so.
Speaker 1
Much, Julie, great to be here with you.
Speaker 2
Well, tell me about the book. What? You know, there’s so much I always kind of grim as well. Like people like you need to listen better as a leader. But you know, it’s way more complicated than that because we’re we’re not great listeners. We we tend to overestimate that upon ourselves. So I’m so curious what led you to your research for your book and. Yeah. Yeah. Get us in. In some tools and tips that can be helpful for folks that want to get better at.
Speaker 1
Deep listening? That sounds fantastic. Well, I have been an executive coach on the side in my role at the BBC and also an accredited mediator, workplace mediator. And I was running a really big season across the whole of the BBC called Crossing Divide stories about people are engaging across difference rather than the usual conflict stories we so like to tell in the news of people, you know, whatever, whether it’s race, class, religion, age and politics. We’d like to tell stories of conflict. So in doing so I had to brief like. 40 local radio producers all searching for conflicts in their own town and finding ways of gathering to people across that divide. And I realised I needed to know more. How can we have really great conversations even when we disagree, perhaps fiercely disagree. So I started doing more research and then in 2022, we did a big project for the BBC Centenary and the British Council, in which we recruited 1000 people. 100 countries and I trained them over three weeks virtually and I should say this was a disparate band of of people. They biggest countries represented were New Zealand, UK, Malaysia and Iran. One of mine, who runs the BBC Persian service, so we recruited quite a lot of people via telegram, so we had people from really different backgrounds. But after training them and deep listening and the papers just been published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology, you’re very well known bedtime read, not like epidemic Ascot, but it does demonstrate that when people feel deeply listened to. Have a. They become more open, more connected and more able to reexamine their own attitudes. And that’s why deep listening is so exciting. Because it. Gives people the understanding and the lived experience that they don’t. They are not contaminated when they listen to somebody with different views. If they listen with real curiosity and a desire to understand.
Speaker 2
I know, I know, it’s that is fascinating though, because if you can channel the time when you felt really listened to, especially by somebody might have very different beliefs. Than you and you’re more likely to reciprocate that in the conversation too. And listen back to them. So I’m curious with deep listening, what is deep? How would you describe deep listening, Emily and how is it different than just regular active listening?
Speaker 1
Well, so often when we listen, it’s performative. What we’re doing to quote this writer, Jacqueline Bussey, we’re reloading our verbal gun with ammunition. Ready to. Fire. We go through the motions of this and we say, yeah, yeah, I understand. I got it. Yeah, I get it. I that’s. Yeah. Completely right. We’re not actually open. We’re not in a state of presence. We haven’t listened to ourselves first to realise our own skin in the game. In fact, I might be listening to you, Julie, but I’m not really listening to you. I’m listening to my elder sister who I feel frustrated. About and therefore, awareness of our shadows, what’s going on for us, being able to be really present. And this is for conversations that really matter, not just for like, would you like some tea? For the conversations that matter, and particularly when we disagree, allows us to tune in at a really much deeper level to what the person is saying and what they’re not saying, and critically, what they’re feeling. And so rather than just try and kind of parrot back what they’ve said, we use our what Theodore Wright. Who is a a pupil of of Sigmund Freud called our third. Ear to tap into our unconscious to really sense what’s going on for the speaker and then crystallise these feelings. Even what you just said just now or your meta feelings of what you’ve said over the whole conversation or many conversations and offer that back with humility to the speaker so that they can say, yeah. And you know, you haven’t quite got it. Well, they say. Yeah, exactly. And if even if they do say yeah or no, not really. That allows them to then reframe and go deeper so they understand themselves more fully, you understand them. And importantly, you feel far more connected. I did. I can give you a demonstration if. You want ohh I would love. That, OK, so let me ask you, Julie and I say, I don’t know anything about you, but I’m gonna ask you live here on your podcast. What food reminds you of home?
Speaker 2
Oh my gosh. My mom used to always make like these stews on Sundays. So something in a crock pot that had meat and potatoes and probably carrots.
Speaker 1
Though I’m hearing you as you’re talking transported back to Sundays with your mum in a crock pot with meat and carrots and probably potatoes and a sense that that brings you a connection, even thinking about. It is. Is that right?
Speaker 2
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It’s a it was a good childhood memory.
Speaker 1
So it was something from when you were younger and it brings you back and it was really positive for you to think about that even now it it.
Speaker 2
Yeah. Yeah, well, that’s something I like to do with my family, too. So a tradition that you can continue.
Speaker
Yeah.
Speaker 1
And so it’s not just in the past, it’s this sense of continuity that when you provide for your family something similar, you are connecting to your past and your, you know, family perhaps good and the future and that sense gives you grounding.
Speaker 2
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, I think it gives you, like that warm, fuzzy feeling you had as a kid when you know, you’re if you’re doing something that feels familiar and is nourishing and is a, like you said, a shared experience with somebody that you love.
Speaker 1
So it’s not just the food, it’s that sense of connection with people you love and that warm, fuzzy feeling of connection that you you still have.
Speaker 2
Yeah. And you want to recreate to some degree of kind of bridge to past good memories?
Speaker 1
Yeah. So we’ll end it there, but I how did that feel like that little miniature conversation, Julie?
Speaker 2
Oh yeah, no, I can definitely see like the well, just like you said, you’re really attempting to be curious about the experience and get deeper than just the surficial what people say and pair it back. You know, we hear all active listening. Ohh repeat what people said or paraphrase what people said, but what you did was really different than that, right. You took. You kind of like took it like an iceberg, you know, saw the first thing and then dug deeper with your series of questions.
Speaker 1
Afterwards, and how many questions roughly did I ask? This roughly.
Speaker 2
Four or five.
Speaker 1
Yeah, I only asked one question. What I did you see if it was me just asking questions. I hate. I’m a journalist. I would have said to you what is a crockpot? I don’t have a clue what a crock pot is. I’m like, thinking of croc shoes that you wear. I haven’t got a clue. Is it rubbery? Haven’t got a clue. But I didn’t go down there. I instead.
Speaker 2
Right.
Speaker 1
Stayed with where you wanted to go. And tried to reflect back your thoughts, your emotions on what was underlying them, but with hesitancy to allow you to imagine, because I had a sense that you were thinking as you were speaking, because so often, especially in America, actually people are brilliant at, like, doing Vox Pops used BBC best places in the world, Nigeria in America. Ready made sound bites offering it to you on a plate? No problem. But these are superficial. We speak at the surface of our cells. We don’t actually think and say what you really mean. So, for example, in a work context, we kind of perform the act of speaking because we’re not really being heard. We don’t really say what’s import. To us, and therefore the listener leaves back, you know, leaves that conversation none the wiser.
Speaker 2
Yeah. Yeah, I appreciate that. Thanks for your vulnerability and demoing that live as an experienced trainer, I’m sure that was that and. Not your first demonstration, but I think it’s really helpful to show people what it looks like right, rather than kind of the talking points of things to say. The things to ask and I’m curious from your vantage point on listen. And we talked about what people get wrong a little bit when they think they’re listening, but what do you I think what do you what do you think the best listeners do like when you’re teaching these sessions and guiding people through this deep listening process? Like what are the things that the skills or the behaviors that really stand out to you? With effective deep listening.
Speaker 1
I think firstly. Is understanding and here I’m thinking as I’m speaking rather than just passing to you, but the understanding that they don’t already know. The speaker is going to say because so often, particularly if we’re a boss, for example, and we’re talking to our team, we kind of know we’re supposed to listen and we go through the motions, but we don’t really. We aren’t really curious, so that curiosity is super important and then using and then being able to leave some silence. I was training a group of Hollywood execs and they said, you know, we don’t do silence, you know, they’re coming up with witty retorts. They don’t have time for that sort of thing. But in not allowing somebody the space to unpack. Complicated and nuanced ideas. We are just coming up, leaving it with a very simple. Defied A simplified picture, so I think silence giving even a few seconds of space can be really, really transformative in changing a relationship, particularly a power dynamic relationship.
Speaker 2
Oh, yeah, yeah, especially if there’s power at play. I I often joke in workshops that I do on allyship and inclusive, inclusive leadership. You know, wait at 710 seconds and something beautiful happens on the other side of it, but people get so awkward and uncomfortable. And I knew I kind of knew what you were doing with the silence that you were creating. Like, should I be saying more? Should I be filling this silence? You know, we have a tendency to just feel so awkward. Even after. A couple of seconds, but if you can just kind of get. Used to that slower pace, exactly slower pace. But it’s just like you said, creating that space. The more you model it it, it becomes much more routine. But I think the first.
Speaker 1
Yeah, I think you’re absolutely right. And in fact, you know, in my book, I I illustrate my book, which is quite fun. It’s what you can do, actually, when you write a book, you can do what you like, which is really, really fun. So I said, I want my pictures, but I’ve got a picture. Here we go. Of the nine types of sin. Poet Paul Goodman talking about the, you know, dumb silence of slumber or apathy, the sober silence that goes with the solemn animal face, the fertile silence of awareness, and so on. And there’s so many different types of silence, and it’s like when people fear silence. They often fear these very negative ideas of silence. There’s in fact there’s a paper that came out in 2021 called Silence is golden, which showed in negotiations when both sides were invited to be more silent, they came up with many, many more. Win, win. And ideas rather than 0 sum. If I win you lose cause silence gives us the space to kind of calm down, to feel less defensive and be more creative. And that’s really exciting because when we listen to somebody, we want them not only not to feel judged and to feel respected that we are curious, but also for them to feel creative. That they can try and test out new ideas that they’ve not yet had and haven’t yet had the space to form. Imagine what a beautiful gift you can give to people in your team if you can provide to them that sort of listening space.
Speaker 2
Yeah, it’s just such a rare gift that you can provide, especially as a leader to create that space and getting just more comfortable with silence. And one of the things I I remember, one of the mantras that helps me to create silence is remembering when I listen, I learned something new. But when I’m speaking. Saying I’m only hearing what I’m already thinking or what I already think I know, and so wouldn’t I want to be curious and listen so that I because learning is something that’s really important to me, is that that helps me kind of get the right mindset around it. And really what what would you offer for kind of mindset prep for a more curious conversation?
Speaker 1
I think what you’ve just said is really, really beautiful. And by the way, when in my book, when I interviewed Marianne Iskander, who runs Wikipedia, what she says to help her with silence, she has a glass of water and she just. Goes up and. Has a drink which gives her that space to calm down and to listen what you said about learning something new and maybe even learning about something that challenges you, learning about some. You know, what could you learn that’s unexpected is another invitation that can help put you in a different frame. And that degree of self-awareness, which is why it’s so important to listen to yourself first. In order that you can become aware when you are judging, because so often we judge we’re, you know, we’re primed to judge. Otherwise we couldn’t tell friend from foe. It would be dangerous and we do it automatically like in a snap. As soon as we see a see somebody in microseconds. But by being aware of those judgments, particularly if the person looks sounds or. Comes from a different background to us. Can enable us to put those judgments gently aside and not judge ourselves for judging, but just return once again to presence and openness to whatever is about to unfold.
Speaker 2
Yeah, that’s the tricky mentioned earlier like that’s something I yeah, I do a lot is like, grab that glass of water, look out the window, you know, find something to distract myself, to be in that mindset and to show that I want to be curious for the other person because just because I’ve asked the question or made a comment, this is going to be the first time they’ve been asked something like that or the first time that someone. To comment like that so they don’t have a prepared response, they need time to come up with their own thought. For me to even be able to listen. So, so interesting and then.
Speaker 1
Yeah, but I’ve also no sorry. Go on.
Speaker
I was just sorry. Huh.
Speaker 1
Sorry to interrupt through the zoom. They got this latency on, you know, which is hard to to know. Quite and interrupting is of course the opposite of giving silence. So I’m very apologetic. I did used to be a serial interrupter, but here I’m blaming the latency. I’m interrupting and oops, I’ve lost my thought. Uh. So sorry, you can cut that bit out. You continue.
Speaker 2
Where you are no interruptions. I think modeling that we can.
Speaker
That’s the thing.
Speaker 2
You know, but we can make mistakes. So not that that was a big mistake by any means. Emily did not. Offend me, but the. I think the cadence knowing when to jump in sometimes though, yeah, it’s I often with interruptions. It’s just like, OK, hey, I did that like, I’m sorry and like just conversation continues. So I appreciate you modeling that it’s not. We’re not always perfect ourselves. What? What I was curious about with what you were sharing and feel free if the thoughts returned to you to re explore that, but just because you have the word foe and your book title. So curious because I think this whoever was out right now like oh, this is great, but like how do I talk to somebody that’s like completely on the other side of politics, religion and serve, you know, disagree? Able argument and So what are your recommendations for those foe conversations?
Speaker 1
Well, first of all, being aware, if we classifying somebody as a foe when it might be just one attribute that we disagree with, because all the research evidence is like in the US that we, if you are a Republican, you will see. Democrats with a whole array of sensibilities and beliefs which might be very different from what they actually are. We all have many, many different identities, and we don’t fall into one. One really good question to ask someone who we know thinks very differently or as a member of a different political party than the one we support, is to ask them what in your life experience has led you to feel what you do. Because once they explain the origins of their ideas, it can be much easier for us to connect to them. And it might make sense even if we still disagree. I think it is so important to understand that by listening, we are not signalling agreement. Many people in the US, we did a research with more. In common, you know, fear that by listening we signal agreement and double the number of Gen. Z. People feel this, and so we avoid listening to people. We think that it’s not safe. We think that our words will be misconstrued as support for them, and in doing so we just create more division and it’s more of a channel to social cohesion. And that just to return to the point that I was trying to make earlier, which is when we listen in this way, particularly in a work context, people may share more than they were originally intending to. And I think it’s really important as a manager in particular to be aware of the ethical implications of listening in this way. I’ve got a whole chapter in the book. About. This about, you know, being able to say to somebody or wait a minute. You sure you want to share more here or be clear about where the information will be used or whether it’s confidential and just being open and transparent and being aware that the person might have shared something very confidential or very private and treat it with that type of respect. I think that’s super important.
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah. I love the idea that listening doesn’t signal agreement and that you’re not encouraging that belief. And just again like what I’m taking from this conversation is just that space making how to make that space for these different contentious and contentious but. Like you said. Just because somebody has one belief doesn’t mean the whole set of beliefs is one way too. And one of the tips I’ve tried to use I’ve borrowed from practitioners over the years in my space is if I get into one of those kind of conversations and it’s a messier conversation with a, you know, perhaps Bo type of dynamic. Like just to say like I used to think that too. Or here’s something that shifted for me too. But I love how I love that question of getting to the origin of somebody’s belief or thinking process because you it humanizes them, humanizes the context that they’re bringing to that issue rather than that polarization. I tend to think of binary. I disagree or I don’t, because almost always when you get into those next to your conversations, there’s a lot we agree with and still things we disagree with, right? But it’s much more nuanced than this binary, right? Wrong. Agree. Disagree.
Speaker 1
Yeah, you’re completely right. Because we tend to put people in boxes. It’s like we go around an art gallery and we say, yeah, that’s impressionism or that’s modernism, but we’re not really looking at the paintings and allowing us to see the full complexity of personhood, their emotions, their values, their upbringing allows us to connect as a human being. With them, because we are fellow humans and it feels so exciting when you can connect with strangers and you can connect with differences. Across different and the research again evidences that when we do reach out to strangers, even though we think it will be frightening or will be rejected, you know the great majority of time, we feel uplifted by that connection and it feels like, wow, I can connect with this person even though they come from a completely different state. Look so different to me and that can feel really empowering and exciting. Thing I spent a couple of days I was in DC working with the Atlantic Council, and so I went to spend 2 days queuing up with Trump supporters going into the Capital One arena. And I’m not personally a big Trump fan, but I really wanted to listen and understand that, you know, why they felt the way they did. And these were all people who were, like, total. Trump fans, they travelled from Nebraska and Florida and all across the US with scarves and hats and whole a matter of of. Regalia and one of them said to me and we shared the subway ride for half an hour together and she said I could say sense from some of the things that you said that you weren’t a strong Trump supporter. But I did feel you were really curious, and I felt really listened to and heard. And I think the ability to be able to make people who. Have perhaps felt. Disenfranchised and not heard to be heard. Is something personally that we can all do to all sorts of people in society and to do something about combating the loneliness that so many of us feel who don’t even end up talking to a real human being, and instead they, you know, especially, you know, young people sharing their thoughts on on, you know, with an LM rather than a human.
Speaker 2
No, I know there’s the chat bot therapy. It’s like, so interesting to me. But you’re right. I mean, there’s the opportunity to kind of bridge and let someone be heard even in the most contentious situations I had. And that sounds fascinating, by the way. Whole other podcast episode of that work that you did in DC. I had something on a micro level happened in my local community with the school board election and I, you know, kind of put myself out there and said, hey, I’d love to hear about your platform and at the end of the 20 minutes, I got a lot of information, a lot of it. I didn’t agree with, but they felt really heard and validated. And then I said, hey, would you mind if I shared? About my platform and, you know, went on a little bit and then at the end of the conversation, he kind of took a step back. He’s like, you know, I’ve never met Someone Like You. This is very interesting. Right. And I was like, you know, no one changed their minds that day. That wasn’t the goal. But when we saw each other’s humanity, we saw, like we heard the different perspectives. Instead of like, hunkering down and wanting to isolate, like you said, like which there’s everyone.
Speaker 1
Yeah, it sounds so exciting that you let go of trying to change their mind because that’s one of the things that can be so empowering. So often when we listen. We only do it to get their ammunition so that we can, you know, distill our arguments and come up with superior wisdom, why they should believe what we do. And of course, in those situations, they don’t feel heard. We’re more like a debating champion rather than somebody who is curious and wants to connect and understand them more deeply.
Speaker 2
Bravo. Well said. Well, and your work is so important. Thank you for your book. Your gift of teaching and tell our listeners. How can they get a copy of your book and follow your work more.
Speaker 1
Fantastic. Well, they can preorder it on in any bookshop. It’s available in the US. Coming out on June 24. And they can also follow me on LinkedIn or read more about work and other things I’ve published on deep listening on my website, emilykasriel.com.
Speaker 2
Awesome. Thank you for your work. It’s such a. Gift.
Speaker 1
Yeah, such a pleasure to talk to you, Julie. Thank you so very much.