Listening is Love- Susan Postnikoff

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

[00:00:30] Hi, I'm Susan Postnikoff and I am going to focus my talk today on listening. Because listening is love. When we authentically with true desire to understand and to have compassion for others. In business, we demonstrate respect. In personal lives, we demonstrate love.

[00:00:56] And in both situations, we're providing compassion and understanding. And we're just allowing the person to be where they are, which allows them to be grateful and to help all of us experience gratitude. Harvard, the adult development study done here at Harvard, was the longest study ever

[00:01:22] of happiness and well-being and quality of life. They followed hundreds of people from teenage years through to old age, multiple generations, and they studied various aspects of their lives happiness and how happy and how great their quality of life was. And according to Robert Waldinger,

[00:01:48] who was one of the four study directors over those 85 years, they found that a good life is not necessarily built upon your financial success or your achievements. It's built on the quality of your relationships. And those people who are able to maintain great connection and great relationships,

[00:02:11] experience that great quality of life. They were happier, they were healthier, and they lived longer. So how do we create these meaningful connections? We do so by listening. And when we listen,

[00:02:34] when we set the judgment aside and listen fully and with compassion, we create those greater connections. And we remove the mask that we kind of hide behind that invisible mask where we're projecting who we are and just step into being who we are and being present for other people. All people want to be heard

[00:02:59] and appreciated. Well, the problem is we're all running around. We have our heads full of information. We're bombarded by advertising, by social media. Everybody's coming at us. Family has requests. Work, we have responsibilities. And sometimes our heads are so full that we just have to release.

[00:03:23] And people are going through different things at different times. And so if we, if I can find the space, the ability to be the first to listen, then I can help someone clear space and be able to in turn and listen to me. Question, raise your hands. Who believes that the person most responsible in listening

[00:03:53] or in ensuring that a message is communicated effectively? Is it the speaker's job to get the message correctly? Or is it the listener's job to receive and ensure that they've understood it correctly? Who says the speaker? Raise your hand. Who says it's the listener? Raise your hand. The fact is, it's me. I have to be responsible whether I'm the speaker or the listener. I have to ensure

[00:04:23] that I've been heard and that my message was received correctly. And if I'm listening, I may need to ask some follow-ups and ensure that I received it correctly. Listening is something that we can do for people to help them clear space. So if both of our heads are full and we're each trying to speak, neither person's going to be able to listen. And so if we're the one who listens, we help that other

[00:04:53] person. I want to go to the example of one of my bosses in my early years in medical device sales. He was that guy who was always angry. He was always miserable. On every Friday afternoon at 430, we'd get a fax. Remember fax machines? We'd get a fax and it would tell us how horrible our numbers were. And we would get to sit with that all weekend. And I became very successful in working with him. I

[00:05:22] became one of the top reps in the country, helped me move to the US. And what happened is whenever I needed something, when I needed him to approve a promotion, when I needed him to approve something for one of the hospitals I was selling to, I would go to him and I would first ask, Hey, how are you doing today? What's going on? And I would listen to him vent for 10 or 15 minutes.

[00:05:52] He would spew out all the things that were going on and all of his frustrations. And I would just be present and allow him to release everything he needed to say. And at the end of that conversation, he would say, Hey, what do you need? Why did you, why did you come to me today? And I would make my request. And every time without exception,

[00:06:21] he would say yes to whatever I asked for. Now granted, I was reasonable. I did not make unreasonable requests. I made fair requests that were good for the business. And every time I got a yes because I allowed him to have the space to listen to me and to care about what I had to say. We need to talk about what listening really is. A lot of people think that listening and hearing are the

[00:06:49] same thing. Hearing is a physiological, biological function. Listening is hearing plus interpretation. We all interpret everything we hear through an unlimited set of beliefs and filters. We have developed these beliefs and filters throughout our life from the smallest, tiniest child until here

[00:07:19] today who we have right in front of you. And so when we all listen through different interpretations because of our different beliefs and our different experiences, we often think everyone thinks the way we do. Have you, have you ever been in a conversation where everybody walked away agreeing saying,

[00:07:44] yep, got it, got it. And then three days later, somebody saying, hey, you said you were going to do this. Why is, why isn't it on my desk? Hey, you said that we, we were going to meet at this time. Why are you late? The problem is people interpreted the conversation differently and they didn't clarify necessarily because they were convinced that they were all thinking the same thing. And so they walked away with

[00:08:09] different interpretations of the conversation and now we have a miscommunication event. So my recommendation, especially in the business world, is always to follow up a conversation, even if we think everybody's in agreement, follow up the conversation with a written confirmation of tasks, who they're assigned to, and what the deadlines are. By having this written confirmation, we're going to decrease the communications

[00:08:37] at work. In your family life, again, sometimes you need to check back in. Hey, just want to make sure we're all on the same page. Are we still doing this? And have an openness to consider that they might not have heard things the same way you did. And so when we can all be open to the fact that our interpretation of the events might not have been the same as somebody else's, then when we find out we had a miscommunication

[00:09:03] event, instead of arguing and saying, no, no, you said this, when everybody believes that they remember it the right way. Well, if we can be open to the possibility that we might have just interpreted things differently, then we don't necessarily have to be upset or triggered when miscommunication occurs. The emotional tone scale is one of my favorite tools. When you consider the emotional tone scale,

[00:09:33] most people think that the extremes of emotion are hostile and angry, you know, swearing and yelling versus cheerful and enthusiastic and so happy and easy to be around. The fact is that those emotions are all based on passion and caring. They just come out a little

[00:09:57] differently depending on what the person's going through. The fact is, the upper end of the emotional tone scale is enlightenment and altruism. Think of a monk, some of the calmest, quietest people you've ever met. You're not bouncing up and down cheerful and enthusiastic necessarily. And the bottom of the emotional tone scale is someone who has stopped caring. They've given up. They feel hopeless. They're

[00:10:24] apathetic. So when you come across somebody who appears hostile and you're judging them saying, oh, wow, that person's got bad energy. Think about the fact that they're actually right in the middle, not too far down the scale, not too far down the scale from cheerful and enthusiastic. And if you can allow them to be as

[00:10:48] they are, not judge them, not state, oh, they're toxic, but rather just allow them to be and listen beneath their anger, beneath the apparent toxicity. You can allow them to go through what's going on, to feel the compassion, they will be grateful. They will become loyal. If it's in a business setting, they're going to be some

[00:11:16] of your best customers. People always complain about, oh, this customer is hard to deal with. I'm like, no, give them to me because that's going to be my most loyal customer. They're going to be my biggest buyer ever. I kind of learned this through experience. When I was in my early 20s, I walked into the CIBC Bank in Mississauga, Ontario. And I was angry and I was fearful something had gone on. There was some money

[00:11:40] missing from my account. I was all worried about paying my bills. And I walked up to the bank teller and started venting. And she had this grace and this compassion and this warm smile. She's about 50 years old. She had short blonde hair, just wearing glasses. And she simply ignored my toxicity and my

[00:12:06] anger, listened for the fear that I was coming from and assured me that she was there to help me with whatever had happened and that she would ensure that we found a solution that would work for me. And immediately the anger was gone. Immediately I was hopeful and optimistic. She allowed me to go through that change by simply being and not judging and listening with compassion and understanding.

[00:12:35] About a decade later, I became a trainer and I was hired by an herbal pharmacy to train their retail staff. And when I showed up on the first day and I asked them, what is it you would like to work on? They told me that their greatest concern was all the angry customers. And so we proceeded over the next

[00:12:59] several weeks to work on how they were able to be when they were, regardless of whether they received a happy person, an angry person, whether they were receiving compliments or complaints, we really worked on the skills of not being triggered by someone else's anger or other emotions. And

[00:13:22] interestingly enough, about eight weeks later, there were no more angry customers. But the customers didn't change. They didn't stop showing up angry. They didn't stop showing up with complaints. They showed up exactly as they used to. But the staff were now able to be present for them to listen with compassion and to assure them that they would do whatever they could to help them.

[00:13:48] And with that training, with that, they're coming from that ground of being of no judgment, compassion and understanding and openness to listen. And then they eliminated anybody showing up as an angry customer for themselves. They also did a great service to the company because let me tell you, that did not hurt sales.

[00:14:12] That was great for the company. And so talking again about trading judgment for compassion, when we can take that action where we so sincerely and compassionately listen with true caring for other people. We can take them from pain to optimism. And by setting our judgment aside and listening with respect

[00:14:39] and with love, we bring comfort and we inspire gratitude. And when we share in gratitude, giving or receiving, gratitude rewards us with the experience of joy. Listening improves connections and develops relationships.

[00:15:02] Good connections and healthy relationships are how we improve our lives. And the Harvard Adult Development Study proved that these relationships and connections are what increased quality of life more than anything else.

[00:15:27] I want to give you guys one exercise that I hope you will take away. And it takes a lot of work to become a great listener, although this is quite an enlightened room. I think we have a lot of great listeners in this room and a lot of compassion and love here. It's been a really wonderful experience being here. The takeaway I want to give you is when you are in a social situation or maybe even in a in a personal conversation as well, it can be a one on one conversation.

[00:15:57] It's a lot of fun at a group event. I think we might have a lot of fun practicing this tonight. When somebody makes a statement or shares something, before responding, wait a full five seconds. Then when you respond, you know that they're now ready to receive.

[00:16:23] A lot of times during that five seconds, somebody will start speaking. Somebody will start blurting something out. The person who was speaking will say something just to fill the space because people are uncomfortable with silence. And when you're in a one on one conversation, especially a difficult conversation. That is the time you really need to pull that skill out because by waiting that five seconds,

[00:16:51] you'll give them a chance to release everything they need to release. And they may keep going. It may take a lot longer. However, at the end of it all, they will be so much more able to listen to you and so much more open to hearing what it is you have to say. And so when we listen, we're giving a gift. And when we when we create that space and help somebody experience that release,

[00:17:21] we get to share with them in the joy and the gratitude. And the other thing I wanted to point out in this exercise, when you're listening silently for five seconds, waiting to see if there's anything more that needed to be said. If somebody asks you a direct question. In that moment, it's OK to answer faster. But if it's not a direct question posed directly to you, wait the five seconds and see what happens.

[00:17:51] It can be a really interesting experience, I have to say. And it's one of the best ways to help develop that skill of listening so that we can achieve this compassion, understanding, this type of listening that can help us in our personal lives. It can help us in our professional lives. And gosh, I wish politicians could do this because maybe if they actually listened with complete compassion and understanding, maybe we would also have a much more peaceful world.

[00:18:19] So thank you very much for listening to me today. I'm grateful to all of you.

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