Lead With Your Ears- Craig Colby

[00:00:00] Hey guys, Corey Poirier here. Welcome to bLU Talks and I hope you enjoy this video.

[00:00:29] In the year 2000, I got my big break in television. Discovery Channel approached me to produce season two of a series called The Sex Files. The Sex Files was not pornography. It did have a few things in common with pornography. It was a show about the science of sex, so there was a lot of nudity in it. We treated the subject as if it were not taboo. So it had a lot of nudity and as such, season one was the highest rated series in the history of Discovery Channel.

[00:00:59] I was approached to produce season two because the producer of season one was going off on maternity leave. I'm not suggesting any cause and effect there. But being a good producer, I looked at it as an opportunity to raise my payout. So I came to them with a range and they gave me the bottom end of the range, but they would pay me the top end as a bonus if I could beat the numbers for season

[00:01:23] one. So all I had to do to get that bonus was beat the highest rated show in the history of the channel. All right, so game on. I had a small team. We had nine months to produce 13 half hours on one hour special. Not a big team, not a lot of time. That's okay. But a lot of things happened that weren't okay. Halfway through production, the associate producer, my right hand person, the person who knew as much as

[00:01:49] I did, got offered a better job, a full producer job. She had to take it. But I had to find somebody on the spot and get them up to speed right away. Our camera operator was out on a shoot with a truck driver. They were in a parking lot. They backed into a light pole and bent it and fled the scene. Then our cameraman went on a shoot to the United States the next day and he missed a flight on the July 4th weekend. We had to replace him there. That wasn't even close to the worst stuff.

[00:02:14] The worst thing that happened was our show was on at 10 o'clock Eastern time in compliance with CRTC. That was also eight o'clock in Calgary. The single dad put his two girls in front of the television set while he made dinner thinking it was a safe place to go and they saw the rear end show. He wasn't happy. He called the newspaper, he called the CRTC and we got pulled off the air.

[00:02:40] Not good for the numbers. Not good for my big bonus. Not good for my career making moment. A little while later we went back on the air at midnight. Again, not good for numbers, but we were back on the air. So how did we do? Season two of the Sex Files beat season one of the Sex Files numbers by 30%. The season two premiere was the highest rated single Canadian program in the history of the channel and the

[00:03:07] fifth highest rated of any kind. We lost to like dinosaurs and Mount Everest and the Titanic. Yeah, that wasn't the best part. The best part was the team that reported to me and that I had pushed seven days a week through all of this, through all of this hardship. They gave me an official Pittsburgh Steelers jersey, my favorite team, this kind of jersey they wore in the field with my high school number and my

[00:03:30] nickname on it. One of the most thoughtful gifts I've ever received. How did I pull that off? How did I get high performance and have the people I pushed so hard thank me? I led with my ears. How many of you like to hear people complain? I listen to everybody complain. And here's the thing you need to know as a leader. People are going to complain. And if they're not complaining to you, they're complaining about

[00:03:57] you. So the good thing about people complaining to you is shows you're listening, shows you care. It also means you can solve the problems, right? When you solve the problems, everybody's happier. So how did I learn this leading with your ears skill? How did I learn to listen? Was it something I was born with? Actually when I was a little kid, they sat me next to the teacher in Sunday school. I talked so much. And clearly like I still like to talk, right? But it was something that I learned. When I was learning

[00:04:26] to become a television producer, I took journalism courses. Along with journalism comes interview training. I learned how to interview. It's one of the most transferable skills I had. And as I went up in my career in different jobs, I actually started training people how to interview. And one of the things I found when I was preparing this little training seminar for people is that I noticed that there were

[00:04:50] different types of bad listeners. I'm going to run through a few and just raise your hand if any of these seem familiar to you. There's the me turn. This is when you go to talk to somebody about your problem and they turn it around to themselves. Next thing you know, all you're doing is talking about them. That one sound familiar? Yeah. Yeah. There is the pause and play. This is somebody you're talking to and they talk. And then you talk and they're quiet when you talk. But when they start

[00:05:17] talking again, they pick up where they left off as if you'd never said anything. That sound familiar? There's the egg timer. This is someone who can only stay quiet for so long until they have to talk again. That sound familiar? Does any of those sound like they're you? I'm an egg timer. And I didn't realize it was an egg timer until I started becoming aware of it. Now I know, oh, I kind of feel like I should

[00:05:42] talk again. But this is good stuff going on here. I actually have to be quiet. And it's helped me. So, there's a lot of bad listening going on out there. What are the effects of this bad listening? Here's what the research shows. On an interpersonal level, if people aren't listened to, they feel more lonely. In fact, if you go to somebody with a problem and they don't listen to you, you will leave feeling

[00:06:06] lonelier than when you went in. So what about at work? What's the effect at work since this is lead with your ears, right? People aren't listened to at work, they get exhausted. And then they stop doing extra work. And then they stop offering creative ideas. And then they start looking for another job. That's what the research says. So that is not very productive, is it? That's not very good.

[00:06:34] So those are the types of bad listening. So how much bad listening is going on out there? Here's what the research says about that. There was a study of 3,600 people in 30 countries. So a big study with a lot of countries, a lot of different cultures. 96% of people said they were good listeners. How do the listeners feel about that? There was a study of 4,000 people in 11 countries. Again,

[00:06:59] a lot of people, a lot of countries. They went to employees and they went to leaders. And they found that 63% felt like their boss didn't listen to them. And 86% felt like the company didn't listen to them equally and fairly. So there's a disconnect there, right? People think they're good listeners. People feel like they're not being listened to. So are you a good listener? Chances are you're probably

[00:07:25] not. But it's not your fault. I mean, most of us aren't taught to listen. There's no lead with your careers course in high school. And most jobs don't have listening training. Some do. Social workers are great listeners. Lawyers are taught how to listen. Salespeople are taught how to listen. Good actors know how to listen. That's mostly what they're doing is listening to the other person. Journalists, people who are taught interviewing. We're not only taught about active listening,

[00:07:50] we're taught about proactive listening. How to get people to talk to you. My biggest job when I was producing shows is to get people who are not professional talkers to say things that turn into ratings gold. And I was really good at it. But that's something you have to learn. So we've talked a little bit about listening. How about the leadership side, right? The two go together. I'll give you a little bit of my credibility in leadership. I've had training since I was very

[00:08:18] young. I was captain of the high school football and soccer team. I was vice president of the student council. I was sent to an athletic leadership camp. All involved some type of leadership training. At university, I was in charge of a floor. I was a resident assistant. I also took business admittance class that had a certain amount of leadership in it. And as an adult, putting that into practice, I've been a producer, senior producer, executive producer, director of production. I've been a coach in baseball and hockey. I'm in charge of house league at East York baseball. I've had

[00:08:47] a chance to put it all together. And here's what the research shows about leadership at work. Here's what gets people to want to work. It's not money. People don't have enough money. They're demotivated. Once they make enough, that's not the motivator anymore. The research says there's three things in my experience backs this up. The first is people want to be recognized when they've done something well. Right? Does that sound familiar? Second, they want the opportunity to grow. They want to get better

[00:09:14] what they're doing. And third, they want to be heard. You think about that. All three of those require good listening. If you want to see if somebody's did a good job, you have to listen to what they say. You have to listen to what other people have said about them. You have to listen to their performance. To get people to grow, to give people those growth opportunities, you have to know what they want to do. You can give them what you think are opportunities, but if it's not going to help them grow,

[00:09:42] it's just more work for them. And they want to be heard. That one's obvious. You have to listen to them. You have to let them know you have heard them. So how do you learn how to do that? I'm going to tell you in a minute. I'm going to tell you some of the things that I've learned in my experiences. But first, and I'm sorry about this, I got to give you a little communication theory. This is a little classroom stuff. Perfect communication is when you say something to me, then I can repeat it back to you,

[00:10:09] and you say, yeah, that's exactly what I've heard. If I can't do that, then there's been noise in the communication. And noise can be a lot of things. It can be a loud room, actual noise. It can be me being distracted by a personal problem. I can be looking at my phone. Anything that gets in the way is noise. When I was interviewing people, I called those filters. My job was to get rid of as many filters as possible so people would talk engagingly and passionately about things they cared about.

[00:10:37] The first filter I had to remove was nervousness and fear. I had to make them want to talk to me. So let's get into the interviewing and how that can make you a better listener. The first thing you have to do, the best thing you can do, is make someone want to talk to you. If someone wants to talk to you, they'll tell you anything. So how do you do that? The first thing you do is you find common

[00:11:04] ground. You build a little bridge. When I was at Discovery Channel, I talked to people at NASA all the time. A lot of calls were to Johnson Space Center in Houston. And my wife and I had season tickets to the opera, and I knew Houston had a good opera company. So in addition to talking about sports, I'd ask the people in Houston about opera. And I met one NASA official. He and his wife went to the opera all the time. We talked about opera for 20 minutes. That person couldn't wait to talk to me. That person then wanted to talk to me. The second thing you can do to make people want to talk to you

[00:11:33] is doing what you're doing right now. Give people reinforcement, positive reinforcement. When I was interviewing people, I couldn't make any noise because I would ruin the clip that I was trying to get. So it was all non-verbals. It was eye contact. It was smiling. It was nodding. It was leaning forward. It was telling people, yeah, I love what you're saying. Please tell me more. Please tell me more. When you do that, people can't wait to talk to you. The second thing is to ask the right kind of

[00:12:01] questions. You want to ask questions that get people to explain things. You don't want close-ended questions. Close-ended questions are one that end in yes or no. That's the least amount they can say. One syllable. You need explanation. These are the classic journalism W5. Who, what, where, when, why, and how. There's a sixth thing there. Those get people to explain. You got to be careful with why, because it can be confrontational. Why did you eat the last cookie, right? But what and how are

[00:12:28] the ones that do a lot of work? If you ask those questions, people will start to explain. The second type of question you want to ask is a follow-up question. That means when they say something, you ask them about what they just said. There was a Harvard study that looked at people in speed dating. And they found the people that got the most dates out of the speed dates. And the ones that got the most dates were the ones who asked two follow-up questions.

[00:12:54] People who asked follow-up questions were considered more attractive and more appealing. So ask the follow-up questions. It shows your interest. Once you've done that, this is what I call bring it home. What I did when I was interviewing an expert, particularly with science, particularly with things that are complicated, is I would say, let me make sure I understand it. And I would repeat what they've said to me. I did this for two reasons. One, it meant that I could go back to my interview and I had lines that I could write, but it also meant that it had been approved by them.

[00:13:22] What it did on a bigger level, it meant that I understood what they were saying. You do that with someone when you sum it up, you're telling people, yeah, I got it. I got it. And they can confirm that. I also ask people, is there anything I miss? I did that to be complete to make sure I didn't miss anything. But if you're doing that in a personal conversation, it shows people that you want to understand everything. You want to understand everything. And then the last thing I did,

[00:13:48] and this is as a boss, is once people have talked to you about something, you have to follow up. It doesn't mean you have to fix it. You may not be able to, but at least you have to follow it up enough to go back to them and say, look, I can't do it. I can do this. Or here's what I've done. Without doing that, it just looks like lip service. People feel worse off. So those are the three things. Make people want to talk to you. Ask the right questions. Sum it up. And when you've done that,

[00:14:16] here's what the number one response was to interviewing people. The thing people told me all the time is, wow, that was great. They felt great after being interviewed. Think about it. When was the last time you talked to somebody and they gave you their undivided attention and followed up with what you wanted to talk about? Can you even remember? The good thing about interviewing, interviewing

[00:14:40] is a craft. Listening is a skill, but it's something you can practice and learn. I learned. I've taught people. I could teach you. And the best thing about this skill, because the reps make the difference, is it's something you can practice all the time. Every day, you talk to people every day. You can do this at home. You can do this at work. As soon as I'm finished here, you can start doing it. It's something

[00:15:05] you can practice all the time. And the real bonus to all of this isn't just getting great performances out of people, great performances that make you look good. The best thing is what it does for you personally, in your personal life. And I've got a story for you about that. In March of this year, I went up to Thunder Bay, where I grew up, to see my dad. My dad was 92 years old, so my two brothers and I knew we didn't have

[00:15:32] much time left with him. So I went up the week before March break just to spend some time with my dad, the weekend before. And on the Sunday, I went to see him when he was having chest pains. So we took him to the hospital. And they were going to admit him. We spent two days in emergency waiting for him to get admitted. And on Monday, I went back. I was flying out that day. My younger brother was coming up. My older brother, who lived in Thunder Bay, was coming to relieve me. I had this window of time with just my dad and I sitting in this curtain-off area in emergency.

[00:16:05] And we could have talked about sports. We could have looked at our phone. But I knew I just had this moment with my dad. So I asked him, Dad, when were you happiest in life? And he said, oh, I was happiest when I was with you boys. And he told me a story about when we were little, and he was rocking my older brother in the rocking chair. And then I crawled up and said, I want to rock too. He had us both in his lap while he was rocking. I asked Dad, when were you saddest? He said, oh, when you guys were sick.

[00:16:34] My younger brother had seizures. We didn't know why when he was little. It was really difficult for my parents. They had a tough time getting through that. That's when he was saddest. My dad was a fisheries research scientist. So I asked him, who taught you to fish? And he said, his dad taught him to fish in the 1930s. During the Depression, they'd go out into the forest to a creek with their fishing poles and they would augment their food supply. And as an outdoorsman, he also was a hunter too. I said, Dad, who taught you how to hunt?

[00:17:00] And he said, a World War I sniper taught he and his friend how to shoot. And then he and his friend would go to his grandmother's house, his friend's grandmother's house, and pick up their 22s and go into the forest and shoot grouse. And I said, how old were you when you were doing that? He said, oh, between five and nine. Are you crazy? Kids those ages don't always make good decisions. He said, no, no, no, no, no. We were well trained. We knew what we were doing.

[00:17:30] You know, he made it to 92, so clearly he was right about that. And then I asked him, how much time have you spent reflecting on your life? And he just shook his head. But while he was telling me those stories, he had a gleam in his eyes and he was smiling, and he was revisiting his life and he was sharing it with me. It was a really special moment. A few minutes later, my older brother showed up. I got in the airport. I flew back to Toronto.

[00:17:55] Until the next Sunday. And I got a call from my older brother. My dad's heart was at 25% efficiency. He better get up there. When I got there, my dad couldn't really talk anymore. He could mouth some things out. He was lucid. But I got there in the afternoon. My dad passed away shortly before 2am on that Monday, three days short of his 93rd birthday. So that time I had with my dad

[00:18:21] in the emergency room was the last time I had with my father. And I'm so grateful that I took that time to have a moment where he talked about his life and shared it with me. Now how did I know to do that? Interviewing is a craft. Listening is a skill. And I led with my ears.

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