Listen Up: How Leaders Can Embrace Active Listening with Heather Younger

Heather Younger - Best-selling Author, International Keynote Speaker and CEO of Employee Fanatix

Heather R. Younger is an international keynote speaker, best-selling author, and the CEO and Founder of Employee Fanatix, a leading employee engagement, leadership development, and DEI consulting firm, where she is on a mission to help leaders understand the power they possess to ensure people feel valued at work.

Heather is the author of three books including her newest, The Art of Active Listening: How People at Work Feel Heard, Valued, and Understood, that is fast becoming a go-to source for HR professionals and organizational leaders seeking insight into their organization’s dynamics, to become better communicators, and to ensure everyone feels valued, heard, and understood.

She has contributed her expertise in articles and interviews across a wide variety of media outlets including The Chicago Tribune, Fast Company, CNN Business, and Forbes, and is a frequent guest on top leadership and culture podcasts.

Do you know what it feels like to be unheard? Most of us know the frustration of feeling unheard and unvalued at work. And many of us don’t stick around for long.

Active listening is the doorway to increased belonging, loyalty, profitability, innovation, and so much more. In this conversation we explore Active Listening with Heather Younger. 

She shares with us the five key steps in the Active Listening cycle and how we can create organizational cultures of engagement as a result.

Striving to give a voice to the voiceless, Heather is teaching people at work and in life, how to feel heard, valued, and understood while simultaneously decoding the big picture to expose the important signals and insights to communication. It is the difference between thinking we understand what people want and knowing what they want.

“The Art of Active Listening is a delight to read. Heather R Younger’s use of stories and insights from her years of research shows why our current definition of active listening is flawed and why the way Younger re-introduces it is the key ingredient for creating workplaces where customers and employees alike can feel heard, valued and understood. This resource is packed full of practical tips and strategies to take us from “thinking” we are listening to actually listening to one another at work." - Amy C. Edmondson, Harvard Business School professor and bestselling author of The Fearless Organization

“After having been privileged to lead a billion-dollar company for 25 years, I can say, without a doubt, that my leadership team’s desire to listen to our tribe and our customers in the way Heather lays out in this book is crucial to building trust and a positive culture. In this book, The Art of Active Listening, you will find the blueprint to create a Culture of Listening in your workplace that can ensure that those in your care know that you have heard them, and they will respond with more loyalty to your brand.”- Garry Ridge – The Culture Coach – Chairman Emeritus – WD-40 Company 

To learn more about Heather and find her books here:

Heather R. Younger’s website

The Art of Active Listening: How People at Work Feel Heard, Valued, and Understood

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For accessible access, view the podcast with closed captions below and access the full conversation transcript.

Episode Transcript:

Spk0 Alexis Zahner Spk1 Heather R Younger Spk2 Sally Clarke

[00:00:02] spk_0: Do you know what it feels like to be unheard? Most of us know the frustration of feeling unheard and un Vaud at work and many of us don't stick around for long. Welcome to we are human leaders. I'm Alexis Zahner. And together with Sally Clarke today, we're exploring the art of listening with Heather Younger, active listening is the doorway to increased belonging, loyalty, profitability, innovation, and so much more in this conversation, Heather shares with us the five key steps in active listening and how we can create organizational cultures of engagement as a result. Striving to give a voice to the voiceless. Heather is teaching people at work and in life how to feel heard, valued and understood while simultaneously decoding the big picture to expose the important signals and insights to communication. It is the difference between thinking, we understand what people want and knowing what they want. Heather R Younger is an international keynote speaker, best selling author and the CEO and founder of employee fanatic, a leading employee engagement, leadership development and de I consulting firm. But she's on a mission to help leaders understand the power they possess to ensure people feel Valued at work. Heather is the author of three books, including her newest, the Art of active listening. How people at work, feel heard, valued and understood that is fast becoming a go to source for hr professionals and organizational leaders seeking insight into their organization's dynamics to become better communicators and to ensure everyone feels valued, heard and understood. This conversation is absolutely jam packed with wisdom. Now, let's dive in.

[00:01:57] spk_1: Welcome to, we are human leaders, Heather. It's a delight to have you with us today. And we'd love to start by getting to know you a little bit better and understanding your own personal journey that has brought you to doing the incredibly important work that you're doing today. I'd

[00:02:12] spk_2: say the most immediate thing that brought me to do the work I am today was a layoff that took place about seven or eight years ago and it was my first time being laid off. I was working in an organization leading customer experience and it was a company when I first started, there wasn't a tech company. They were just like they printed these products that like people are that organizations that have multiple locations used around the world and they were just like a print product. And when I went in there, I knew there was gonna be a merger and the merger was gonna basically create, take this thing that was this print paper thing and turn it into more tech oriented and but I was gonna be leading the customer experience the whole journey and all the different people. And so I was like, OK, I love this, you know, I knew there was gonna be a merger I anticipated then with the merger, there could be a layoff. So about two years and that's what happened and there were about 200 of us that were laid off and, but right before that happened, the merger was right in the thick of it. And there was all this tension going on. Like you could just sense like if they didn't trust what was happening, leaders weren't telling them what was happening. The communication was super low and to the mistrust went and it just really went way up and I went to the head of R and I said, listen, we need to do something about our engagement, something about our culture that trust is bad. And she said, no, you're right, you should go do something about that. And I was like, wait, what I'm supposed to go do something about that. Wait, I'm leading customer experience. I'm not in hr but it kind of made sense because I already felt like I was being kind of this informal cultural ambassador, really trying to help people whether they were on my team or not, just try to grapple and understand what was happening in the merger. So I created this employee engagement Council, bringing people around the table from these five companies that were merging together, the ones who already came to me expressing concern, but a desire to like do more to make things, you know, be successful. And so we did that and we started to see probably within about six months, things just started to change. There was more connection, less mistrust and we just started to do things that really broke down the walls. So people could see each other as humans, not just as kind of cog in the will of what this culture was gonna be. And we just started to see that trust increase and the connection increase and the cohesion increase. But there was a lot of other things going on outside of that process and, and the merger didn't go well. So then the layoff happened and that's really what put me on the journey of going, OK. Who is it inside of organizations being the voices for both customers and employees about what it is they want and need from those who make the decisions that impact their journey and experience with the company. And that's when I created my company. At that point, it was called a customer fanatics. Now, it's called employee fanatics.

[00:04:28] spk_0: I think it's fascinating that that came about through employees, recognizing an issue, not leadership, recognizing an issue, Heather, and you mentioned that you were sort of this unofficial employee ambassador at the time. Could you share with us? What was it about you? What was it about the employees who were coming together that made you ambassadors? What was it about you that made you different and stand up and want to take that initiative? I think it's interesting that it was led by employees and not leaders this recognition that people needed to come together to support one another through this merger and acquisition period. And I just wanted to explore quickly with you, Heather, you mentioned that you were this unofficial employee ambassador if you will through that process and that there were other employees coming together as well. What was it about you and those employees who came together that you think that apart from other employees or even leadership who didn't step up at that time to sort of drive

[00:05:19] spk_2: that support for each other? Well, I think there's two things going on here. One is, I am not sure they didn't recognize the issues that were happening. I just think they didn't place a priority on trying to get to the bottom of it or fix it at that point, their main pressure was monthly recurring revenue. It was a tech company. They needed to kind of quickly get this product into market and get people to adopt it. And we were at the front of trying to get that and make sure that that happened. So I would say I'm not quite sure they weren secondly, I think the reason why I was in that position or what would differentiate me is I already had shown up as somebody who was super supportive of people, whether they were on my team or reported to me directly or not, people already would come to me and I would just sit and kind of take the time to listen to them. So I showed evidence that they could trust me. I showed evidence that I cared for them pretty early on and consistently. And then the other people, me going to them and me knowing them were acceptive is because when they came to me or when we talk, they were already showing a desire and an openness to change, to be a part sort of making things better. And so I knew I could go to them first to create this council. Thank

[00:06:19] spk_0: you for sharing that. And to me, it just demonstrates how leadership I guess is what, that's where I wanted to go with that leadership necessarily isn't part of that formal structure in an organization. It sounds like you had a group of employees who were really willing to step up, support one another and support that transition for each other. And, and that's a real set of leadership traits. And it's quite fascinating and it's also frustrating to hear that an organization through that period of austerity and change didn't realize that supporting their employees was going to be more important than that or as top a priority as taking something like an important product to market for sure.

[00:06:49] spk_2: I think that there was like, I can remember a couple of pockets of support, a couple of people. But I almost think sometimes like the train is going down the tracks and even if you have other people there, like it just, it's just not going to stop the calamity from taking place, right? Unless you have pure intelligence, emotional intelligence from the top that says pause, the the the monthly recurring revenue is not our priority. We have to make sure that all of our stakeholders are coming on board, that we're meeting the needs of those who are trying to roll this product out to that. We want long term success of this new adaptation and adoption of the product. They just have to have that level of courage to pause, I think.

[00:07:24] spk_0: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:07:25] spk_1: That's the exact word I was gonna use. Heather. It's like courage, isn't it? So the awareness is there, but the courage to actually shift away from those train tracks that everyone's on. And at that time, you know, it can be very challenging and that's the direction that we've agreed that we're going in and it really does take quite a significant sort of shift or pivot. Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing that with us. Absolutely.

[00:07:46] spk_0: Yeah. Now, Heather, we'd love to dive into the work that you're doing now and, and obviously you're an incredible book and we'd like to explore the concept of active listening with you. Can you share with us what is your definition of active listening? Well,

[00:08:00] spk_2: I mean, in my mind, active listening really is the difference between thinking. We understand what someone wants and knowing what they want. And the difference between what we think active listening is now. And how I find in my model has a couple of things embedded in it. One is hyper awareness of what's happening around you and in front of you. So the social awareness aspect of emotional intelligence, it has this idea of listening and then reflection before we take action. So instead of like listening and immediately trying to jumping into this active mode, which really sets us off, we think that we're doing a good thing on behalf of others when we act quickly and if it's an urgent matter, life or death, it's good. But inside my model act of listening, it requires a reflection or pause time after we've leaned in to understand what someone needs from us. And then that final step of closing the loop really is once we've done all the things we've become aware of what's happening, we're leaned in to understand what's happening with people and what they need from us. We've paused and reflected by ourselves with the team and maybe we've taken some form of action, even if it's tiny, we need to go back to those people and let them know that the leaning in that we did that the voices that they used for trying to change their own experiences and that courage that they exhibited by doing so that it had an end effect on us that made us take action and we want to come back to them and let them know what that was or what we're considering or thank them for that. And it doesn't right now when people think of listening, it is the leaning in part that most people think of, they think it's the sitting across from someone and shaking your head and maybe repeating back what we hear, the reflective listening component of it, which is important. I am not minimizing it. What I'm saying is that that's not what listening is holy. We have to have all these other steps in there to make people in the end feel like they, they have been validated, they have been heard, we have seen them and the need that they have,

[00:09:45] spk_1: I think it's beautiful that you articulate that listening is really much more than that. It not just using our ears. Basically, it is a much more almost holistic approach that you set out. And now you mentioned the steps that you've articulated in this cycle of active listening. I was wondering if we can kind of slow down here and zoom in on each of those five steps and how they interrelate.

[00:10:04] spk_2: Yeah. The first step is to recognize the unsaid and that's really kind of, I mean, it's a combination of things. It's enough as a leader to see what's happening in the environment. And in a lot of cases, I think it's obvious, but we are really bogged down by the day to day, we are way overwhelmed and sometimes don't want to or have the time to in our minds, at least pause to do something about what we see but not what we hear. So it's that recognizing on the un the subtle cues, the not so subtle cues of what might be happening across from us or in our environment and then allowing us to move to the next step of saying now that we have this awareness that something is not quite right now. I want to deeper to find out exactly what that thing is. And that's the next step, which is that seeking to understand step. And that really requires that we kind of remove our filter that we lean in for the benefit of the other person that we enter into it into the active leaning in process with the need to meet the other person where they need us to be and serve them in the moment, not just like get our needs served, which happens more often than not. We lean in to reply. We want to, we want to wait to respond instead of really seeking to serve in the moment after we've done kind of that leaning that seeking in a real fertile way, trying to serve the person. We now need to take what we've learned and pause and I call this decoding and the pause is the reflective time. It could be, it could take a day, it could take two hours, it could take two weeks, but it means that we are going to research or going to reflect with the team, we're going to, you know, so that third step is decoding and it really is like pausing and reflecting on what it is we learned in that second step of seeking to understand. And that is because often what happens is we act too quickly and we try to solve something that maybe was the wrong thing to solve. We act too quickly and we end up messing things up worse than they were before based upon the original thing that people came to or we act too quickly before we get the big picture and realize that there are other people, let's say customers, other employees that may have come with similar things and maybe there's other process or another solution that either we can come to or is already being worked on. But we won't be aware if we act too quickly. So that pause, the decoding phase is absolutely critical in the active listening process and it is a been missing. That's where most of us fall short. We want to act super quick after the decoding phase. And we have taken the time to reflect, we've looked at our solutions. We've involved more people. Now we go to the action phase and often I get a lot of people, a lot of leaders saying, well, like number one, this listening thing is gonna take a lot and I can't act on everything and I would say that that's exactly right. I would not act on everything. You need to be strategic about the action that you take and that the action needs to be tied to the size of the problem. It needs to be tied to the impact that the action would actually have. And sometimes you don't need to take any action at all. Sometimes the action that people are looking for is just for the shoulder to like cry on just for them to have your presence there and your undivided attention. It's like all the action they want the compassion there. That's really what compa what action is is the compassionate side of listening. It says I'm going to take an action on behalf of another to solve their pain or their issue. And sometimes it's not to go do something else. It is just to be right there with them with no other distractions around. So action is critical because what it does is it says as we think about earlier, like we use our voices and if we use our voices, we use our voices and nothing happens on the end, then it says to us, well, maybe that thing I'm using isn't all that important and maybe I shouldn't use it that often. Maybe I should use it ever. How valuable or validated? Am I, am I even important? Or am I just a number here? And then that last step after action is called closing loops. That's the fifth step of the psycho active listening. And that step really is meant to dot the I or cross the T on the listening process. And it says the other person that the voice that I use, the input that I gave the time that it's taken for my leader, my, my team member, my customer, whatever it is to reflect actually had it end result. And I know that I'm not guessing that I know that because they came back to me to tell me that they took action based upon my behalf or based upon a conversation, they came back to me to thank me for my feedback and tell me what their next steps were. They came back to me to let them know they couldn't do anything at all about what it is. I said to them, but they came back to me. So I know I have been hurt in the process. I

[00:14:01] spk_1: love that cycle. I hit there. I think it does such an incredible job of really mitigating the po of a misunderstanding or a miscommunication. It's really optimizing our chances of deeply understanding. And I particularly love this close the loop step. I think because, you know, a lot of times we hear also from leaders, I'm working so hard to action what I've heard. And assuming that the person who's given us that feedback knows that we're doing that. But I think sometimes that assumption is false and then that there's that disconnect where a person who has given feedback feels like, well, what was even the point of that and can even become, you know, disengaged or feel unrecognized. Why bother and even start to shift towards some cynicism. So I think that's such a key component of the listening process. This is often

[00:14:44] spk_2: overlooked very much so. And when I talk to audiences, it's usually the close the loop and the decoding phase that are the ones that most people are like, yeah, I don't, I don't do that. Like that's a big problem. I have to get to the bottom of that. And those are two critical phases. Like those kind of break the mold when we think about listening because we think we think we think like, maybe I did notice something wasn't right. And I sat down and I spoke to the person. So maybe I did recognize the answers and then I was seeking to understand. Yeah, and I even repeated back what I heard and I think I did a pretty good job of reflection and all of those things, right? And then I went straight to action. I left my office, I went to talk to my manager. We came up with five solutionss. I have just listened pat me on the back. Ok. But what I would say is that we need to give ourselves credit for doing at least a few of the steps. We can't beat ourselves for not doing all five. Right. Like I did. But here's what I would say that is if we want to really be known as someone who leaves people feeling validated and understood and heard in the process, we add these other two steps in that most of us don't do. And now it rounds it out to a place that we know for sure that the person on the other end feels very valued and understood, not, we aren't guessing it. So we take the assumptions out of all these things and we make things real.

[00:15:43] spk_0: I totally resonate with why people would struggle at the decoding step. And it relates back to something we speak about so often at human leaders. And that is that intention and impact gap Heather, you know, we think, and you mentioned this, we think we're doing what the person needs based on what we've heard. So we feel like it's the right time to take that action, but we've not quite thought about whether or not it's sort of the root challenge that we're really addressing. And I really appreciate this step about pausing, taking what is the necessary time to understand if that's really the challenge we're facing. If it's the challenge in this context and acting accordingly, I think that's such an important step to really addressing what we think we're

[00:16:23] spk_2: hearing. Yeah, it really is. Yeah, I don't do so great at this. And when people ask me like, what's the step I struggle with the most? It is that step, I have an affinity to action. I care deeply for people and I want to show compassion to action on the we have. But when I don't pause like that, when I don't take the tender, like I actually could hurt our relationship, I could do more harm than good. And that is where we mostly fall short.

[00:16:44] spk_0: Absolutely. And I can't help reflect that in my personal and professional life in the past, people who have acted with my best interests at heart, but have got it wrong. You're so right, how damaging that can be or how frustrating or people assuming they know what you need with it without actually being what you need. And, you know, I think so often that, you know, relationships with parents and things like that as well where we love someone deeply. And so we almost overcompensate or really feel like we have that person's best intentions at heart and we get it wrong and we end up frustrating the person or in my experience, you know, it feels sometimes like people can't trust me to make the decision for myself or to carry through the action myself. Or often we think people come to us and say things because we want them to act. But sometimes it's just to be heard, isn't it? And I think that in itself is actually an action. It's just being the energetic support for someone, 13 that it doesn't always require us to do anything more than that.

[00:17:37] spk_2: And I always say, like, ask people like permission but also ask them like, what do they expect? So I sometimes I'll ask at the beginning of the conversation, say, I just wanna know like we're off about, are you looking for a solution for like from me? Are you looking for me to like do something after? And a lot of times they'll say, oh no, I just want to hear me. And at the end though, I'll feel after the conversation has gone on that, maybe they might want me to do something. And so I'll ask again. OK? Oh Well, I know in the beginning you said you just want me to hear you. But now like I'm senses this other thing. I just want to make sure I have to tell you the truth that like any people, my book is called the Artifact of Listening. How people at work, feel, heard, value and understood. And I wish I could say I'm great at this, at home. I have four Children. I'm married and that's why I put it at work because I have to say I'm more of a work in progress at home than I'm at work. I'm not 100% at work, but I'm probably 80% at work and at home I'm probably like, 50%. I mean, I'm sorry? But it's just the way it is. And so I'm, because I'm working so hard to be better and I, I know it can be, you know, if I don't at least try and so I'm trying all the time, but I drop the mark a lot there, right? I do. And it's just, it is what it is. I, I think

[00:18:31] spk_0: that is all of us.

[00:18:32] spk_1: Yeah, I really appreciate your candor there heather it because I think for all of us, it is something I have been, you know, in personal relationships where I have developed that kind of capacity to be able to say when I'm sharing to preface it with right now. I need you to listen or right now, please don't give any advice or feedback. I just need an ear and I think that can be really helpful boundary setting. But yeah, I really resonate with you that it is a journey I did also just want to highlight as well that I think, you know, I resonate a lot with that idea of also being very sort of like sort of a default towards action. I think I'm historically a problem solver. I like to fix things. I like, you know, that's kind of the way that I growing up was that that's how I, you know, support someone or that's my worth in some senses. So it can take quite some courage to also kind of rather than that default mechanism of just, I'm just gonna come straight back, almost like tennis, straight back over the net with an action. I am actually going to hit pause and it might be a bit uncomfortable for me for a while to not have that immediate solution. But I imagine there's also the component of emotional maturity as well to be able to say we're going to take some time. There's going to be a little bit of uncertainty here as we work towards.

[00:19:32] spk_2: I like that last part. I like setting the expect I try to do, I do try to set this. So I'll say to people when you're going to do the decoding and we'll that you'll be back to them to say, OK, I wanna make sure that I handle this feedback with care. And so do you mind if I come back to you within the next 72 hours or the next 24 hours of the next week, whatever that is, whatever, depending on what it is and what you're gonna gonna need to go do, do you mind if I go do that and then I'll be back to you within that time and then I say just make sure you come back within the time frame that you say and sometimes you'll come back and say I need a little bit more time, but that's ok. Just make sure that you're doing that part of serving, right? Serving other means informing them along the way. But I like that idea of like emotional maturity of saying like this is going to be uncomfortable but like I just, I know this pause may drive you bonkers, I promise you we will come back to this. And I like that, that way of thinking. I think we need to do more of that. Yeah, I would

[00:20:17] spk_0: agree with you there, Heather. And I think the bias to action is really challenging in a leadership sense because often we assume the position we're in requires us to act and fix problems or take steps to resolve things quickly. And that can be the challenging piece. And I would love to dive into the act piece of the model a little more if we could please Heather and just flesh it out. So we can sort of understand from that leadership sense why this is so critical and perhaps you might even be able to share with us some of the different ways that act might look for a leader. I

[00:20:49] spk_2: think the first way that act might look is going to be just the leading in. So let's start at the foundational level. Most of us aren't pausing enough and getting rid of all the distractions. Small things around us enough to really be truly hearing someone and like really registering in our heads and in our hearts, what they need from us in the moment. So that is like baseline and it may sound simple, but many of us are not doing just that. So that would be kind of the first action is just the empathetic, reflective, leaning in a whole heart, whole mind in the moment. Secondly, I think the action once informed. So after that decoding phase, the action, it's not the size of the action that counts, it's the impact and the correlation to the outcome that matters. So what is it that they needed from you? So if you were pointed in your seeking phase, you took time to reflect, maybe you went back and just to double check your understanding like another time after you've thought done some research, now you're more pointed in the actions, the action then is when you do it, no matter how small it is now lands in a way that's so much different than if you just did it on a whim. Kind of like you were talking about Alex where it's like, oh my gosh, someone, you felt like someone was your advocate, but their action didn't serve you well. And it was because they didn't take that time to pinpoint. It's like when you talked about earlier, the root and the uh the root of the issue that came out as seeking was happening. What are you going to solve for? And so I think once you get there and you feel like you're solving for the right thing. Well, now the impact is big and it doesn't matter how big the actual actions could be that you all you have to do is go make one phone call that solved an issue. It could be that you did like 5000 things. So here's one thing I would say to do. And I've learned this when I was more in a large, like sales and large account management, but it works for everything. This is kind of a practical tactical thing. But as you are in the difficult coding phase and you're taking, let's say, in some cases, you take 56789 steps, it takes you a week and a half to go do this thing. So maybe leap over a thing that solves the issue for the person that gave you the feedback. So when you go back to them, don't go, oh my gosh, it's done or? Oh my gosh. I found the way and then like that's it. No, I think what you need to do is to show them how much you invested in time for them. You need to go through that step by step process to impart on them how important they are to you and how much you value them. That's how they know they're her guide and understood. It's when you walk through the steps you took on, on their behalf, you show them the, the compassionate actions you took 12345 and it says to them, dang, I guess I am kind of valuable. I guess my voice is kind of important. I guess they think of me as more than just like a number on a spreadsheet somewhere. So it is that in between thing and all the steps in between that we, most of us miss that part. But if we tell them all the things we do, oh my gosh, I went to talk to Sally and Account and then, then she like, put me down this other path and I went over here and I had to do like five pages of this thing. And then I went over here, I did this thing and I did all that and you know what we landed on not only the solution you asked for the thing you needed, but we also found out that you helped us uncover. There's five other things that are wrong with that process. Now we gotta go fix this and fix that and we did that and this is what happened. And so now we can give you your thing and now we can give all these other customers their thing. And it's all because of you. I mean, the person at the other end is like holy smokes. I'm kind of important, but I'm like kind of cool actually, right, when and before they might have gone into the process, voiceless, helpless, hopeless. You just by doing this entire process have transformed how they see themselves and the power that they have in this world pretty powerful. And that's

[00:24:04] spk_1: incredible heather. And I think that communicating that back to the person, not assuming that just because you've done it and you've spent the last week perhaps even focused on that, primarily assuming that they therefore know that that is the case. And I think that's such a critical component to take the time also to allow that person to know how important they are. And I can imagine that that contributes a lot to the sense of that person mattering to you, to the company, to the team. And I'm curious about sort of whether there's research or data or sort of even anecdotal stories that you might have around how important that closing the loop is that going back to the person and explaining what's happened is and maybe what the consequences are when we don't. Yeah,

[00:24:41] spk_2: that's a very good point. I would say that there probably is not hard line research on this. We right now, I'm, we're gonna be launching a study in a week that will be looking more at like the components, the breakdown as we look at the background of hybrid remote since longing and connectedness, senses of isolation, meaningfulness and things like that at work. So we're, we're gonna be diving more just because I think it really is a void right now for us. What I always say it's all anecdotal. It's kind of like it starts out on the personal side. And most all of this is about human emotion. And so I love the fact that we are human is a big part of it, but it is all about human emotion and our sense of worth and meaning and the meaning and the work we get out of the work we do and the people we work with starting as a child and thinking about that baby in the crib and thinking about the desire to be heard at a really young age for people to use our name, for people to repeat what they've heard people to go act on us that baby where the parents come back to that crib. And we're all like, like we've been oh my gosh, like I, I this little thing I'm using whatever this thing is called as a baby is, this is the voice means something to these big people in my life, right? And when they don't come to respond to me, I get mad and I start kicking and I start screaming and at a very young age that desire to have like this cause and effect this like voice heard action taken. And I know that I'm here and I know that this thing is meaningful because people act and respond to it, the closing and loop came for me when I was in the customer experience space, I was working above organizations. So my role was always to be like listening to all customers aggregating all the feedback, responding to it in kind and to be seeing their emotions in the moment. And after the fact and the loyalty that actually was, I think about this, I was working at this organization and it was a blood center. And so everybody who was, there was like either technical, they were medical and I'm just the person who's like the soft side of them, like the customers, the customers, like customer account management, contracting, negotiation and bringing people in to kind of feel like a sense of community, right? And so I would be growling all these like blood bankers who are super technical trained to like understand these things and I would take them through this process and that closing the loop part of like, and here's what we did and here are the five steps we took and I did that for years and years. And then I just moved right into the employee space and started to do that same thing. And I would see the level of validation on their faces and in our relationships and that sense of loyalty kind of going back to what you said earlier about like, how were you differentiated from the other leaders? And it was that sense of like, if you were there for us. You leaned in, but you also came back to let us know what you found. When we came to you to express concern, you would go research on our behalf and you'd come back and tell us what it was. And so that sense of loyalty where people would come back to me, like over and over again and even after I was gone, be like you were like the best manager ever. You were the best. And I think it was for me boiled down to do you show people that you care in very definitive ways and do you 10 like dot the I and cross the T for them based upon what they've told you so that they know you are invested in their success or in their journey inside the organization, they have evidence of it, there's evidence of it and you doing this, that this, that and closing the loop was one of those elements of that. So I decided to codify and formalize that there. And now we're gonna be doing this study that said that breaks down those five components and all of these other kind of cross sectional things that we're looking at to say how important really is that step? Like from a more of a quantitative view of things versus just like the thousands of surveys I've done and hundreds of focus groups I've been in, right? Those are lots of qualitative elements and now we're trying to get a little bit more quant elements to it too. I

[00:28:05] spk_0: appreciate Heather that explanation. And I think what I love so much about it is that often leaders and even organizations don't recognize the power they have to meet an individual's innate human needs. And that is we all have that need from the time we're a child to be seen and to be heard and how something that's seemingly as simple as listening can actually help people feel whether the janitor and organization or whether they're the CEO we all have to feel seen and heard and something as simple as I see you. I hear you and I'm acting on this process, we've been through together. It's just so wildly validating and it's such an incredibly powerful thing that I just think is so regularly overlooked. So thank you so much for helping us to see really clearly how that impacts on an individual

[00:28:51] spk_2: level. Yeah, I appreciate that. I, I think this brings me back to a going to work for another company. And I remember going when I came in, I immediately. So it was a group, it was eclectic, a group of people all in different areas and and an unseen areas. So like those in the mail room, those in the call center, like just different areas around the building that had maybe like 2000 employees, right? But I remember one time they would say to me, you are just so different because it has been months since a manager has come to see us and you put on your calendar this time, you sit outside this time either to drop in and see us or to actually normally see us one on one. And so as we put that time in your calendar, it says to me that I am important and that I am worthwhile or worthy of your time and attention when, before you came, I didn't get that. We didn't get that. And it's significant for someone to say that to you. It really is. And to know that you're delivering that gift to someone who didn't have that before, you

[00:29:38] spk_0: know. Absolutely. And again, it's just that recognition that here's a human being in front of me, that means something and that we all need that and that work and leadership actually have the power to have that level of impact to an individual and it's so powerful. So, thank you, Heather, I'd like to shift just a little bit now into a more macro level sort of outcomes of this process and looking at the workplace culture. And I know you mentioned you're about to launch some studies into this as well. So I'd love to know, you know, what do leaders, teams and organizations stand to gain when active listening is a part of this workplace culture every day.

[00:30:13] spk_2: I always think that it's when we think about all the outcomes and the initiatives, we have this like strategic score at a board level, we might have some pillars that we're aiming for. Let's say, uh you know, customer Centricity, inclusion, fiscal responsibility, we might have esg that we're focusing on with environmental, social and governance types of things or we think we're thinking like above organization, large level outcomes. And what we don't normally do is drill down to what are the drivers or the triggers that get us to those outcomes? We may be thinking again, revenue or a number of customers acquisitions like things like that. We're looking at those types of numbers. But what we aren't doing is we aren't factoring in the emotional side of the work that those people do or the emotional side of customer, like how the customers are buying from you and what they're looking for really? And then are you meeting that need? So we may do a good job of bringing the customer in the door, but are we doing a good job of meeting a need once they're there? And it's that same type of thing with employees, we may bring them in. But are we meeting the need from a like a Maslow I type of level, right? Or that's a basic need of belonging and the need to just, you know, eat it all those things, right? And then then up to those really higher levels of actualization, are we doing those things for both the customers like close customer customer organizations and to our employees. So I think that I see a direct correlation often as I sit in and facilitate hundreds of focus groups and read through thousands of employees survey comments. And before that customer survey comments between their desire to continue to buy their desire to continue to stay their desire to continue to go over and above be more productive, to roll out new products, to be creative and innovative in that space, to feel safe enough to bring forward different things that go to the top line things, those three pillars, those four pillars, those five indicators, those right? And so I think that's the key is we have to do a better job leaders and top of organizations and at the board level and down, we do a better job of connecting those high level things to the things that actually drive the business forward, those human interactions, the desires that are inside there, pointing those doing those connections. And I try to work with, that's what we try to do with employee phonetics is connecting the top line views, the things that they're tracking on their success cards and their metrics to the things that we actually need to get done and how, how they tie together. And most of the things that we need to get done are the human side of things

[00:32:20] spk_1: that's such a beautiful delineation there. Heather of the kind of, you know, we focus on those outcomes and those macro aspects of things. But it really does come down to the granular day to day human interactions that, you know, accumulatively then you know, deliver us the outcome. So I really think that's something a lot of leaders can take away and also organizations can take away is OK, this is potentially active listening is not just a nice thing for, you know, it is a nice thing for us to do to each other and to support our one on one interactions. But it contributes also so directly to culture, which does have really drive these business outcomes. It's win, win,

[00:32:54] spk_2: win. I always say like organizations are legal entities or either that they're legal entities that might have buildings that people walk around in or they could be all virtual, right? But they're, they're legal entities and inside those legal entities are people who have specific job functions that have to go like do certain things in order for certain outcomes to arrive. And your question should be, how do we inspire long term those people to go do the things we need them to do to drive the top level outcomes we need to do. And the same thing would be out externally for customers. This is a very objective linear, logical thinking if we want to bring people customers in and we might do this like really sexy thing that brings them in if we want to expand their wallet share and we want them to wanna stay and like, refer more customers to us. What things do you think you're doing? It's not just delivering on a product, but even if you delivered on the product, that's all you did. Some human is that product. But if you delivered them the product and you gave them the emotional thing that they wanted, whatever those things are. What did you do to get there? You had to learn to lean in to find out what they really wanted from you. Your salespeople did, your sales leaders did. So I think that's what the crux of all this is, is that if we lean in, in a way that gets to the truth of the matter, the stakeholders that we need to serve whatever whoever they might be, then we're going to solve for the problems that are real, not assumed or guessed, which means we're going to reach the end goals of the things we want to get done.

[00:34:11] spk_0: Yeah, it's really solving for that pain point, isn't it understanding the pain that either the customer or the person's in and resolving that to meet their need? Now, I'm

[00:34:19] spk_1: gonna take us all the way back to kind of a very zoomed in micro level. Again, Heather and I know Lex and I could probably ask you a zillion more questions, but this is going to be a last one for now. So imagining a leader who's listening, who's maybe on their way to work right now. Or they're listening to this as they go for a run before a meeting. What is a practical step that they might be able to use immediately to start to listen more actively?

[00:34:43] spk_2: I would say the very first thing is to get your mindset, right? Ask yourself when you're going into interactions, your very nice interaction, your interaction this morning, this afternoon, whoever, where? Right. Ask yourself, am I going in to serve the other or am I going in primarily to get something from the person? Am I going in to achieve a goal or a thing I need or can it be a win-win? I'm achieving, I'm going in to achieve for both. I'm going in for first to make sure I'm there to find out what their truth is. And if my very next interaction goes in with the mindset of getting to the other person's truth first, then I'm going to achieve all the other things I need in the outcome in the end. But I need to first, am I doing that? So I think this kind of examining what it is, my intent is as I go in to interact is the very first and most important step to do before I do. Any other thing that Heather can tell you tactically to do to show that you're listening. So all that reflective stuff we do and all that repeating back we hear is so amazing. It's good stuff. But if we haven't first evaluated why we're going into the interaction and what we intend to like what's our intention in it, then it really doesn't matter any other tactics we do because it's all gonna be, he's either self serving or not. We won't be getting to the truth of their

[00:35:51] spk_0: matter. Well, Heather, thank you and such a critical first step because so often we want to use models and tactics, etcetera still to drive the outcome that we desire. And I think that moment of reflection and resetting our mindset to come in with openness and perhaps even that beginner's mind approach as we call it in mindfulness is so critical to solving and serving the other person. So, thank you so much for being with us today and sharing that we appreciate it so much. Thanks for joining us in this episode of we are human leaders with Heather younger when those at work feel heard they will do whatever it takes to achieve outcomes that serve your relationship and your organization. Active listening is something we believe should be present in every single organization on earth to learn more about active listening and Heather's work. Please find our show notes at www dot We are human leaders dot com and why not become a part of our global community of human leaders too. Join us with a community membership at www dot We are human leaders dot com and don't forget, share your episode, insights with us on linkedin and be part of the conversation. We're grateful for your presence. See you at the next episode.