656: How to Understand People Better, with Heather Younger

Dave Stachowiak [00:00:00]:
When you know how to listen, people will share more. We can’t resolve every concern, but we can ensure others are heard. In this episode, how to shift from listening for what we want to hear towards listening for what we need to learn. This is Coaching for Leaders episode 656. Production Credit: Produced by Innovate Coaching, maximizing human potential.

Dave Stachowiak [00:00:30]:
Greetings to you from Orange County, California. This is Coaching for Leaders, and I’m your host, Dave Stachowiak. Leaders aren’t born, they’re made. And this weekly show helps you discover leadership wisdom through insightful conversations. One of the biggest reasons we have conversations in our work is to be able to understand others better. It is a core competency of leadership to be able to to do what today’s guest calls seek first to understand, echoing that wisdom from Stephen Covey all those years ago in the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I’m so glad today to really help us all to explore a bit more on how we can understand others better through our effective listening skills.

Dave Stachowiak [00:01:15]:
I’m so pleased to introduce to you Heather Younger. She is an experienced international keynote speaker, best selling author, CEO, and founder of employee fanatics. Known as the employee whisperer, Heather harnesses humor, warmth, and an instant relatability to engage and uplift audiences and inspire them to action. She’s a certified diversity professional, certified in emotional and social intelligence and disc, and is also the author of 3 books. Her previous best selling book, The Art of Caring Leadership: How Leading with Heart Uplifts Teams and Organizations, was praised for offering powerful insights for developing authentic, thoughtful, and purposeful leaders and change makers. She’s now the author of The Art of Active Listening: How People At Work Feel Heard, Valued, and Understood. Heather, what a pleasure to get to talk to you today.

Heather Younger [00:02:06]:
Thanks for having me. I’m excited.

Dave Stachowiak [00:02:08]:
Oh, me too. I so enjoyed the book. Like you, I was a fan of, and still am, of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I know Stephen Covey is one of your mentors. What what fun to get into this and to think about how we can do better at understanding. And this quote just grabbed my attention in your writing.

Dave Stachowiak [00:02:29]:
You say, “once you’re aware there’s an issue that can only be fixed by better listening, then you’re much more willing to master the art of active listening.” When did that realization first happen for you?

Heather Younger [00:02:42]:
I think the biggest reason why I say that, I don’t know if it was like one particular time, but I’m thinking this is like a theory of motivation, what motivates people, And often it’s like a pain or a pleasure Andrew if we want an outcome Andrew we’re trying to figure out what we need to do to get the outcome. So that particular statement was really a realization of this is the thing I want that will be a good or a positive thing and once I realize how it benefits me and or the people in front of me, I can become more centered in Coaching, this is the thing that I want. So I can make a choice about it, but I have to know what that thing is to give me the outcomes I want before I actually really want it Andrew I’m prepared to go do the work for it.

Dave Stachowiak [00:03:21]:
Yeah. Indeed. There’s so much of what I think about in your invitations on helping us to listen better is about choice. It’s about mindset and how we approach this. And our tendency a lot of time, especially in a leadership role, is on a daily basis. We get a piece of some information and the tendency is to want to jump in and decide or to fix something. Right? And and there’s a time and a place for that, but I Dave the point you make that when you know how to listen, people will tell you. Like, people will tell you more than if you just jump in and do that deciding and fixing.

Heather Younger [00:03:59]:
Yeah. Absolutely. Well, I think the key is if you know how to listen, you’re giving them evidence that you are seeking or you are trying to listen to them. You’re trying to understand their truth. And when you provide that evidence, now they’re like: Okay, well since they’re really wanting to know, I’m going to give it all to them.

Dave Stachowiak [00:04:18]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Heather Younger [00:04:19]:
Often that doesn’t happen that way and it’s like we’re half listening and people can tell either our pauses, our eyes, the nonverbal cues that are happening, whatever it might be. Someone said I was speaking at an event a week and a half ago and after I had done my first round of this particular keynote, somebody came up to me and said, what happens when someone tells you they do wanna know your truth, they do wanna understand you, but then when you sit down with them to tell your truth, you can tell they’re actually not even listening? And she’s like, it’s so frustrating and how do I ensure that when I spend that time with someone, which is my time a gift to them, that they actually are in fact listening. And so I just kind of went into that. But it was it’s just interesting how we can say we want someone’s truth, but what evidence of listening are we getting them?

Dave Stachowiak [00:04:58]:
Yeah. Well, that’s actually a situation I think a lot of us do find ourselves in. What did you say to her? Like, when you run into that, how do you handle that?

Heather Younger [00:05:08]:
Well, in this particular one, this was a a person for, as a woman of color as part of a marginalized group. It was based upon my keynote on belonging. And she was saying she said that. This person said they wanna know my truth. They wanna know my backstory. They wanna know my lived experience. I set the time with them and then they really weren’t paying attention. What do I do? And I just said, one of the things you could do to signal to them that you are for, for them to be prepared to listen and that you are in fact gonna tell them truth is to separate, like, separate out the time.

Heather Younger [00:05:34]:
Like, maybe even make it in a place that’s a total quiet space where the distractions aren’t around. Sometimes they’re just like offices that don’t have windows or wherever it might be where you’re minimizing distractions. So you have to be super intentional about the space that you have the conversation in and even the ground rules by which to have the conversation. So being very clear about that to start, so that the person knows it’s a gift they’re about to be given, that you expect their presence in that moment, and that the space is actually conducive to having that type of conversation.

Dave Stachowiak [00:06:03]:
I don’t think I’ve thought much about venue when thinking about a conversation like that. Like, what a great thing to be thinking about. And also to get beyond some of the traditional things we tend to think of when we get advice on listening. I mean, one of the things you point out is the tendency for a lot of us to do reflective listening, but for it to be transactional where people will say, well, what I hear you saying is and they kind of repeat back to you what you’ve said and summarized it, which is not a horrible thing, but it’s not really what we’re talking about here of really getting into deep listening. And I’m wondering when you are helping someone to get past that kind of just transactional, like, okay. Here’s what I heard. What’s a nudge that gets people to be a little bit more reflective?

Heather Younger [00:06:55]:
I always tell people that instead of parroting what people say, they should paraphrase what people say and they should paraphrase what they see too. So my nudge to people is not just to reflect on what you saw or heard, but also to reflect on what you saw and take that in aggregate. And so that when you then continue your conversation with them in a connective way, then they really do feel like you’ve been following along and that you’re not just, again, trying to do this robotic thing that we were taught to do so many years ago with active listening, which is to parrot. The reflective part was really parroting. This is what I heard you said. This is what I heard you said. Oh, and then you said this and then you said this. And that is not helpful because the person on the other end doesn’t feel heard in that.

Heather Younger [00:07:39]:
They’re like, what are they doing? Are they trying to fill out a formula sheet that says like, here’s the things I said to them. It doesn’t feel helpful. So the nudge for me is just always be hyper vigilant and paying attention to the the verbal and nonverbal. I think the other thing I do with people is, I want them to understand people’s- the why it’s important to listen to someone, that it’s, as I even see example of that woman who said she was prepared to tell the person her story and then the person didn’t listen, is for people to understand that when someone sits across from you and is prepared to tell you whatever it is, tell you a story, give you a complaint, give you a feedback, they are they are giving that to you as if it’s like the it’s like they’re giving you their voice as we think about our innate desire to be heard as babies in the crib, there’s like we’re giving them this thing that’s the most powerful thing that we can control and influence. It’s our voices. It’s our mindset. It’s the things that are going on inside of us. No one else can really have true control over that.

Heather Younger [00:08:38]:
And so when you know that and you hold that in your hand like it is the most generous gift in that it’s fragile, then you realize it’s an invitation on the other end for you to be with the person in that moment. When you think of it that way, you realize the importance of actually be having your full presence with the person. We don’t take I don’t think we spend enough time thinking about why listening is so critically important to the person on the other end.

Dave Stachowiak [00:09:04]:
Yeah. And what a gift it really is when we’re able to show up in that way. And you made a distinction a moment ago, which I I’d love to circle back to, which was the what someone what we’re hearing from someone and kind of repeating it back, which we’ve all seen that happen. And what you see from the other person, could you tell me more about the see part and, like, what does that look like or sound like if if someone’s doing that well?

Heather Younger [00:09:29]:
Yeah. So one of the things I talk about in the cycle of active listening is this idea of seeking. And when we are seeking someone else’s truth, it’s almost like we’re trying to get to, let’s just say, I’m going to say an example of a waterfall. We go on a vacation and we’re going for this like the one thing we cannot leave that country, that state, that city without seeing is this thing. And let’s just use the example of a waterfall. We are going on this journey and we are looking for it says the sign says go this way in order to get to that waterfall . And sometimes we go through the sign and we go, oh shoot, that’s not the right way and I can tell it’s not the right way because look at the topography here for look at this or look at that. So we were kind of investigative as we were looking for where this waterfall is, which is a thing we have to get to before we leave our vacation. And that’s what I like to think of as the person on the other end as we’re seeking, is that we are listening with our ears, we are listening kind of with our hearts, like we have to be so present that we’re sensing what’s happening with the person there in our presence and then we have to watch for the signs they’re giving us, because they’re not just telling us with their words, they’re showing us with their body and we have to be hyper aware of all those things.

Heather Younger [00:10:38]:
So looking for example, how someone, if they’re coming over excited or anxious for a sense of helplessness or sadness or joy, whatever those emotions are as they tell us the thing. When we then kind of do the reflective thing, we also summarize what we see in them too, not just what we hear in them. And also maybe what we feel about it. And that’s when people start to feel truly connected to us and really see that we understand and get them. And that’s what we really want. All of us really want people to get us.

Dave Stachowiak [00:11:11]:
Yeah. We wanna be seen. Right? What a what a beautiful way to to think about that. There’s a distinction that you make in this part of the book on seeking to understand that to listen not for what you wanna hear, but what you want to learn. What’s significant about that distinction?

Heather Younger [00:11:31]:
Well, I think in most cases, I mean, let’s just be all honest here. Most of us are listening to respond, we’re listening, we’re fake listening, we’re pretend listening, we’re listening to get our side in, we’re listening to win, we’re listening to whatever. It’s always something that so we’re going in it to get something versus going in it to give something. We’re going in to gain versus to give or to serve. That’s just who we are as humans. So it does require a high level of intentionality to break the cycle, to say, how can I serve the person in the moment? How can I serve what, give them what they need to be present? How can I step out of my shoes and into their shoes to understand what is happening to them and what they might need from me, my organization, my team, my whatever that is in the moment? And so I think that’s the biggest distinction is that we’re normally spending a lot of time fake listening, pretend listening, listening to respond. And I’m saying let’s break that cycle by going and serve the person, understanding why we’re there, understanding the innate need for the person on the other end to have their voice be heard, and that we can be the deliverer of that gift to that person that day. It’s a power we possess that’s very positive and we just have to choose to use it in the way that serves them.

Dave Stachowiak [00:12:40]:
And like so often we’re called to do that as leaders and yet it’s hard like it’s it’s hard to step into that place because like so many of us have the pressures of numbers and metrics and objectives and all the things. And it’s really easy. I know. I fall into this trap of wanting to, like, get to the outcome to show up and to fix or to solve. And have you found something that works for you, Heather, just to, like, be able to not eliminate those things? And by any means, they’re all really important, but to be able to set that aside just for a few moments and to, like, connect first.

Heather Younger [00:13:20]:
I think the number one thing that we need to do as leaders is to be okay with not being ready to be present. So if we aren’t ready to be present quite yet, then we just need to let the person be vulnerable enough to say that. So to say to the person, for example, someone comes to me and they’re like, I have to talk to you about this thing. This thing happened, blah, blah, blah. May stop us from doing x, y, z. And we, as the leader, just came from a meeting, came from something else, and we are completely distracted. Our head is tied around the thing that just happened with fear and our own anxieties, our own baggage, our own insecurities. In the moment we can’t parse that experience out from the thing that this person wants to talk to us about.

Heather Younger [00:13:57]:
So what we might say is: Oh my gosh Shelly, this is What you’re going through right now sounds like a lot. I just came from this meeting and my head is, to be honest, spinning, so I’m not gonna be able to be in a position to give you my full presence. Do you mind if I just take about 30 minutes? Or do you mind if I come back to you by the end of the day? Do you mind? So whatever that is for you, but letting them know and then making sure you own what you just told them you’re going to do. So come back to them in 30 minutes, come back to them. And take the time that you need to center yourself. Maybe it’s going out for a quick walk, maybe it’s doing a meditation, maybe it’s doing a prayer, maybe it’s smelling a flower, whatever that thing is, that kind of allows you to center, process through what you just had and then kind of disconnect from the thing that happened before that at least momentarily so that you can then give that person your presence. So now I’m going back to Shelly, thank you so much Shelly for just giving me that time. I really needed it.

Heather Younger [00:14:49]:
And now let me meet you back where you were just at. You were telling me about x, y, z. Let’s go, let’s talk a little bit more about that. And now Shelly has, there’s 2 things that we’ve just given Shelly. We’ve given her permission to do the same thing with her team or with her family or with someone who needs her in the moment. So we’ve modeled that behavior. We’ve also shown her that we respect her, that she’s more important than she thought because we set aside that time to clear our mind so that we could be fully present with Shelly.

Dave Stachowiak [00:15:15]:
And of course, ending up having a much better conversation Andrew your earlier point, as you do that consistently, people are going to tell you more because they know that you’re willing to and making the investment of time to really take that conversation seriously to set aside the time to really be present. And as a result, you’ll hear more than you will if you’re just kind of transactionally responding in the moment to everything that comes up.

Heather Younger [00:15:40]:
Yep. They’ll tell you everything you need to know to get the outcomes you’re looking for, but you gotta listen. Yeah. And you can’t listen when you’ve got 25 other things just like swarming around your head. You gotta separate it. And the only way to do that is really to take the time. I don’t know, because it’s like multitasking thinking. It’s like the thinking is multitasking.

Heather Younger [00:15:55]:
It’s like I’m going to put this in this box, this box, this box and I’m gonna see if I can like keep it together all at once. And it’s really not possible. We are gonna have to find a way to say, how do I separate the thing that just happened and the emotions I’m feeling from then the person. Because I’m gonna be putting all of that onto the other person too, which is not fair. You gotta go into it as objective as you can. We’re all human, but we need to try to become more objective in the moment and the only way to do that is to kind of work through the emotions of the previous thing that just happened. And to kind of remove some of the subjectivity in that and or put it over here for a second, for a little bit longer, and say, okay, now I’m more centered. I can be more present.

Heather Younger [00:16:29]:
I don’t have to be thinking that other thing through. Could even be that we journal for ourselves. One of the things you could do is just go back to your office and kind of journal all the things that are happening, the things that are to dos that are related to the previous thing you just came from or all the things that are swirling. Maybe put some deadlines on those things so that you feel like you’ve kind of wrapped that in a temporary bow, so now you can go into this other conversation with a clear clear mind and heart.

Dave Stachowiak [00:16:53]:
I was thinking about the word multitasking you said a moment ago that. You talk in the book about making that transition yourself particularly during the pandemic that you did a lot of multitasking while listening and you said especially at home Sounds like one thing was just, like, stopping and, like, taking the time for when you’re really ready to listen. Is there anything else you found that just, like, work to help you make that shift during that time to, like, set aside that tendency? I think a lot of us have to multitask.

Heather Younger [00:17:24]:
I definitely think putting down my computer screen because I have Slack, email, all the social media stuff. Taking my phone and instead of having a hard service upside down, I found like some place further away from me that was also kind of a cushiony service so that I wouldn’t hear the buzzing as much as I was trying to talk to the person. Some people do airplane mode and then they kind of can minimize some of the notifications coming through as they’re having the conversations. We have to be so hyper intentional now. There’s just so much technology. And as it helps us, it hurts us when it comes to human interaction often. So we have to say, how am I gonna I need to set that aside so I can be here for the human. I was just on a podcast, my own podcast, earlier with someone and she said something amazing.

Heather Younger [00:18:04]:
She said, A lot of times we’re doing a lot of human doing and not doing a lot of human being. And so in order to be a human being and do the human being stuff that we need to do as leaders, we’ve got to take the tactical things that keep pinging on our computers and our phones away for the moment. Just for 5 minutes, for 10 minutes. The other thing I would say is that it’s not the quantity of time we spend with people, it’s the quality of the time we spend with people. So if you’re someone who has 10 direct reports and you have 50 projects on the list and there’s just so many things going on, you don’t have to give every person 30 minutes every day for even once a week if you can’t. You can give them the 5 minutes that is their 5 minutes and it’s nobody else’s 5 minutes. Nobody else’s.

Dave Stachowiak [00:18:44]:
Yeah. Huge. And lines up with we had Jim Harter on the show not too long ago from gallop and some of the gallop research coming out now is really interesting on that point exactly like a lot of times we think about particularly in one on ones with employees that more time is better and it turns out like no surprise quality of time is actually way better than quantity of time and smaller interactions in some cases result in better results and you highlight, by the way, someone who was known to be really good at this Mary Kay Ash in the book who, like, really- you may have only had a few moments with her, but she was really good at being able to, like, that to be quality a quality interaction.

Heather Younger [00:19:25]:
Mhmm. Oh, yeah. She was amazing. The the so the story on that was just her ability to I worked with Mary Kay Cosmetic Center in the company for four and a half years Andrew we would have these big conferences with thousands of women and when Mary Kay was present, the people would come over to her and there would just be this line wrapped around the corner, you know, it would probably be for like hours Andrew instead of her worrying about getting to the end of the line, she focused on the person just right in front of her and then after that person left, it was the person after that. But you could try to get her eyes to move to you. You know how people have this tendency, you’re in line for something and you’re kind of you’re moving your head around and you’re trying to like go around the person to see if their eyes will go on to you because you’re important and I’m here too. Yeah. And what what and what she she just never she would not move her eyes off of the person in front of her.

Dave Stachowiak [00:20:10]:
Yeah. It’s it’s great. What a great example of being so present with people. Right?

Heather Younger [00:20:14]:
Absolutely. Yeah. So much so.

Dave Stachowiak [00:20:16]:
Yeah. You highlighted in your writing a fear that I think a a lot of us have, and I haven’t thought about in a while, Heather, and it was a fear that I had early on in my career. And this is the quote, “People are afraid of the direction in which someone’s response might take the conversation.” And I thought about that, and I thought I used to have a lot of fear about that. Like, that someone would say something in a conversation, an interaction with an employee for a customer or a senior leader, and I wouldn’t know where to go next. And somewhere along the way, that fear has almost entirely vanished. And, in fact, I find the opposite.

Dave Stachowiak [00:20:59]:
Now more fun is, like, finding where conversations go that I wasn’t expecting. Right? And I’m trying to think what worked for me other than just iterations over the years of getting there. But I hadn’t really thought about that. But that is a fear that a lot of us start off with, especially in our careers. And I’m wondering, how do we get beyond that? For those of us who have gotten maybe past that, what worked and what have you seen worked? I don’t know if there’s anything you’ve seen that’s helped with that.

Heather Younger [00:21:28]:
Well, I mean, I think it’s we have to kind of this is this kind of sociology in me. My thing is, on the tail end, why is there fear? So there might be for, it’s like this whole idea of just fear of the unknown. If I find out something that that I’m not prepared for, am I prepared to do anything about it? And maybe I have so much on my plate, I don’t have time to be dealing with things I’m not prepared to deal with. Andrew so if I don’t know it, they taught us early in law school, don’t ask a question you don’t know the answer to. And I 100% disagree with that, so you and I are aligned with that.

Dave Stachowiak [00:21:59]:
Yeah.

Heather Younger [00:22:00]:
Because maybe in the law when you have somebody on stand, right? But in real human to human contact and relationship building, I actually going to go into this as a blank slate. And if we think of ourselves as blank slates when people come to us, when we go to other people, then we’re waiting to be filled with knowledge. We’re like receptacles. We’re waiting to be filled with their knowledge, with something new that we don’t know. If we go into that interaction where we’re thinking we do know something, again that whole I know something, I’m waiting to tell you what my truth is. I’m willing to tell you my end, but if I go in and I’m saying I’m a blank slate, it helps me be ready to be filled with something new, with maybe something I don’t know. So a lot of it is just built around the sphere concept, the unknown when we don’t know it, are we prepared to do something about it? Which is why that cycle that I talk about has action embedded in it is there because most people do tell us things because they want us to do things, but oftentimes they don’t want us to do things. And so, going into it not assuming that we have to take any other action after that, knowing that it could be possible, understanding that the person may need us to do that and a willingness to say like, okay I may have to take an action.

Heather Younger [00:23:11]:
So some people just don’t even wanna ask. Like some organizations don’t do surveys, customer or employee, because they have no intent to ask. So they will not ask you because they know they’re gonna have to do something and they don’t wanna do anything. So if we have an interaction with our team members, we could sense that maybe they’re going through something and it could be like mental health oriented. It could be all kinds of things. And we do not wanna lean in. We don’t wanna lean in because we may not be prepared to handle the outcome of that conversation. And why not? Why not? And these are the questions we have to ask ourselves, really.

Dave Stachowiak [00:23:43]:
Yeah. Yeah. Huge. And as you were saying that I was thinking especially early in my career, it was I think, you alluded to something a moment ago, which you point out in the book, which is that, yes, of course, we as in our role as leaders, we’re listening in order to make things better. Right? And to solve problems, but it’s not always. And in fact, maybe not even often like that we need to immediately solve a problem that the bigger issue often is just people being heard. And I ran into this early in my career where, especially in customer situations, if I had a hint something was kind of off or there was a concern, I found myself shying away from it because I was worried, like, okay. I’m gonna open up this huge can of worms, and we’re not gonna know how solve the problem and yada yada, all the things I made up in my mind.

Dave Stachowiak [00:24:38]:
And the reality was most of the time, it wasn’t really about that. It was more about someone just wanting to feel heard. And I missed opportunities for that early in my career. And once I realized that, it helped me to do a better job of being present. And I think I hear that invitation from you of show up to really be present with someone like you’ve been saying all along in this conversation to be in that moment to help them to feel heard. And if you start with that intention, even if you don’t take any action, what a great starting point to then figure out the what’s next.

Heather Younger [00:25:14]:
Mhmm. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I think they I always like to think of for those who are listening, if you can think of this idea of someone who lodges a complaint, someone who says they have something to tell you, someone who, you know, you’re just, you’re leaning into need something. It’s an invitation by them to you to give them a gift that costs $0 that could have the impact to save their lives, their marriage, their relationship, their community. It could be anything. This thing is this goes outside of work.

Heather Younger [00:25:42]:
Of course, I’m more a workplace focused person, but I’ve learned ove the time since the book came out and just the years over the work I’ve been coaching, it’s listening work with employees and leaders that this invitation is one that we make sure that we don’t lose this invitation. Like we put it in a place that’s for safe keeping. And we realize that that invitation means that we have to be open to receiving what they say. It mayjust be they might need that we just need to be sitting with them and doing nothing afterward. But the invitation is an invitation. And you know, you usually like have to RSVP and you have to accept or you have to decline, right? You have to tell mommy people are coming when you think of invitation. And so we have to say like, are we prepared? And if we’re not, I already gave you some more to say like, I’m not prepared right now to receive this invitation, which means I have to come back later or you’d have to decline all the way around and say, I’m just not prepared period and someone else has to handle this. Or I’m not prepared this exact moment, but I wanna come back to you later to figure out, you know, how I want to handle this and how I can be there for you.

Heather Younger [00:26:44]:
But people are everyday, all day, after reading thousands of surveys, sitting with these people in the keynotes afterward. I mean, every type of interaction, people are waiting for their voices to be taken seriously. People are waiting for you to see them. And it’s just impactful to think about how much power each of us individually, whether we have a title or not, possess to accept the invitation.

Dave Stachowiak [00:27:11]:
One of the other invitations you make is to get out of your normal listening zone get beyond just the people that are in your immediate circle or that you share cultural or social norms with and this advice that you write “if you find yourself hesitating to ask for input from a certain individual Ask yourself why.” What a great invitation that is.

Heather Younger [00:27:33]:
Yeah. That’s that does part of that requires us to look deeper at maybe biases that exist inside of Plus. And we all have them, so like if I were to ask you to raise your hand if you had a bias, every single one of us listening and me and you always have biases. Yeah. So it’s okay. So let’s let’s just put that aside because we all have them. But it is kind of saying, like, let’s let’s go deeper and think about why we feel certain ways around different people and why we would don’t include different people around our table. There’s affinity bias.

Heather Younger [00:28:00]:
There’s this this thing that we want to have people around us that share like very similar lived experiences. And it takes courage to say I’m going to invite people in who have different lived experiences that might actually shine lights on us inside the group that make us feel uncomfortable. But it’s through that discomfort that we have the growth that we need as an organization, as a team, as a leader. And so I definitely think that you bring up that very good point, that invitation to say, Let’s expand Andrew circle, listen to more people. We’ll get more innovation that way, we’ll get less errors that way, Andrew we’ll get to the end goal or the outcomes we’re looking for when we’re more inclusive that way. And I think inclusion has much more to do with voice than anything else. So I talk about inclusion as much more broad because what I realized foundationally is that no matter what, people want their voices to be heard. So you can do you can talk diversity all day where you bring the numbers in and representation matters, but it’s that whole idea that if I’m there, no matter what I look like, what my lived experience is, is my voice heard? Am I valued for who I am? The position I’m in? The role I play? The outcomes that I deliver? Am I valued for that? That has so much to do with who I am and my opinion, and the word I use, and the descriptors, all that stuff when I’m sitting in a group.

Heather Younger [00:29:18]:
Right? Otherwise, I’m there with no voice. But if you’re paying attention to the verbal, nonverbal, when I am at the table, and you value it and you invite it, it says, I belong here. But when you don’t, it says, you’re just like, you’re just something on a counter that represents this thing, but I actually don’t wanna hear you. And I don’t wanna know the value and the input you have to this project or process. So, yeah, it’s pretty impactful.

Dave Stachowiak [00:29:45]:
You made that invitation for us earlier, not just to listen for what you wanna hear, but, of course, what do you wanna learn? And I think leaders are learning all the time. Right? We’re growing. We’re changing our minds sometimes. The book’s been out for a bit. You are regularly talking to people, working with clients, doing speaking, interacting with people on these ideas all the time. And I’m curious as you reflect on the last year or so, not only finishing the book, but also getting it out in the world. What’s something you’ve changed your mind on during that time?

Heather Younger [00:30:18]:
One of the things I already put out there, which was you don’t always have to be ready to listen. And giving people the words and the tools to be okay with not being ready to listen and what do you do next and how can you become ready to listen. So tha’s the one thing. Because I think embedded in my book now is that we should always be ready to listen. But we aren’t always going to be ready to listen. And so, figuring in this human nature side of things, I didn’t do enough of it. And I I noticed that a lot about my writing and just the work I do. I Dave assumptions underneath the surface a lot that people know or know the words to say and I lean on my team a lot to say, tell me what I’ve missed.

Heather Younger [00:30:58]:
Because I know I’ve gone like too broad Andrew need to come down super tactical and that whole permission not to always be ready is something that I wish I would have embedded and I will, like in future editions of this book, make sure I include that. I think the other thing is, as we think of listening, overarchingly, I think I wasn’t clear enough that there’s a cycle in there. And while it’s a cycle that’s circular, there are lots of going back and forth within this within the cycle within one within one conversation. And so being clear about how while it’s circular, it’s not linear. That we’ll skip around, we’ll go back and forth like a little pinball machine in between the things. Because again, it’s the human thing and human is not linear. We are so complex. So you know, there’s that.

Heather Younger [00:31:49]:
I think there are a few of those things in there. We’re like, oh yeah, I really should have embedded more of that in there. And you can only go so many directions. You just have to have multiple visions and you have to embed more new and better research in there. And that’s what we’ll continue to do.

Dave Stachowiak [00:32:02]:
Yeah. And we’re so complex. Back to that human being you talked about earlier. Right? It like it’s nice to have a model, but at the same time, like, also know that, like, moving between those, that circular action and knowing each interaction is unique. So key.

Heather Younger [00:32:15]:
Mhmm. Yep.

Dave Stachowiak [00:32:16]:
Heather Younger is the author of The Art of Active Listening: How People At Work Feel Heard, Valued, and Understood. Heather, thank you so much for your time and for your work.

Heather Younger [00:32:26]:
Thank you. Thanks so much for having me and just highlighting this work to the world. I appreciate you.

Dave Stachowiak [00:32:37]:
If this conversation was helpful, 3 related episodes I’d recommend. One of them is episode 344, the way to have conversations that matter. Celeste Headlee was my guest on that episode. We talked about the importance of diving deep into conversations that are more significant than sometimes just the daily transactional things that we all have. Of course, those are part of our lives and work too. Leadership calls us to have conversations that really do get into depth to really get to the key pieces of information the bigger picture and the why behind the conversation as a whole. Episode 344, an invitations on how to do that from an expert who’s so good at helping us to get better.

Dave Stachowiak [00:33:18]:
Also recommended another listening expert, Oscar Trimboli, episode 500. 4 habits that derail listening. Many of you are fans of Oscar’s work as am I. He’s been with us here on the show several times over the years. Oscar really looked in that conversation with me at for typical obstacles that we run into as leaders that tend to derail us. 1 or more of them will likely resonate with you, and chances are 1 or more of those is getting in the way of you listening better. Episode 500 illuminates where those are and more importantly, how we can take the step forward to do just a bit better.

Dave Stachowiak [00:33:58]:
And then, of course, I’d recommend the more recent conversation conversation rather with Scott Shigeoka. How to help others be seen and heard. That’s episode 654. Just a few episodes ago, Scott and I talked about the importance of curiosity and not just utilizing curiosity to get information. Yes. One piece. But also utilizing curiosity to make connections so important in our efforts to understand people better as Heather echoed today. That’s episode 654. All of those episodes, you can find, of course, on the coachingforleaders.com website. I’m inviting you today if you haven’t already to go going the website and set up your free membership at coachingforleaders.com.

Dave Stachowiak [00:34:41]:
When you do, it’s gonna give you access to the entire library of episodes that I’ve aired since 2011. But more importantly, the ability to search by topic. So if you are looking for advice and a model or a framework on having conversation better as today’s, episode was about. There’s an entire section of the website dedicated to a topic area around conversation. All the episodes we’ve heard on that over the years. Personal leadership is one of those as well. An entire section dedicated to that, coaching skills, an entire section dedicated to that, and dozens of other topics. If you’re looking for something right now, I’d encourage you to start there rather than just jumping in to listen to a episode by episode number or by date.

Dave Stachowiak [00:35:25]:
I think it’s most useful if you can decide what do you need right now and utilize the website in order to help you to surface what’s most important for you today. A great way to start is to go over to the free membership at coachingforleaders.com. Set that up. You can search by topic. In addition, you’ll get access to the entire suite of benefits inside of the free membership, all the audio courses on my personal library, tons of other resources in there. And if you’ve been utilizing the free membership for a while, I’d invite you to consider also Coaching for Leaders. Plus, it’s gonna help you to discover more insight, more details that’ll help you to move forward and to get more insight that will support your leadership development. And speaking of conversation, one of the conversations that I have with some of our academy and pro members every month is a conversation with an expert who’s come on the show previously.

Dave Stachowiak [00:36:16]:
Although it’s not a conversation with me asking the questions, it’s our members asking questions to the expert directly. We record the video of that every single month. It is one of the benefits you receive as part of Coaching for Leaders Plus, receiving the recording of that each month so you can see us interact with the expert in real time and to ask the questions that come directly from our members who are leaders in organizations, who are asking how to utilize the resources, the framework from the experts practically in their daily work. We most recently had Vanessa Patrick with us on how to handle pushback from difficult askers. We heard that episode a while back. Vanessa joined us for a really detailed and helpful conversation on how do we actually do that in practice? How do we do a better job of saying no? Such a challenge for so many of us. One of the many conversations that are inside of Coaching for Leaders Plus and the benefits of Coaching for Leaders Plus give you that each month, but also the entire back catalog for years now of those expert chats. You can find out more by going over to coachingforleaders.plus.

Dave Stachowiak [00:37:18]:
Coaching for leaders is edited by Andrew Kroeger. Production support is provided by Sierra Priest. Next Monday, I’m glad to welcome David Burkus back to the show, such an expert on teams and Leaders, and he’s gonna be helping us to discover how to support team performance through better clarity. Join me for that conversation with David. Hope you have a great week, and I’ll see you back on Monday.