Welcome to another transformative episode of Audio Signals Podcast. I am Marco Ciappelli, your host, and today, we are navigating a domain that transcends the boundaries of technology, cybersecurity, and even society: the art of listening.
Guests:
Christine Miles, Founder & CEO at EQuipt [@EQuiptpeople]
On LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/thelisteningguide/
On Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/thelisteningguide
On TikTok | https://instagram.com/thelisteningguide
Sean Martin, Co-Founder at ITSPmagazine [@ITSPmagazine] and Host of Redefining CyberSecurity Podcast [@RedefiningCyber]
On ITSPmagazine | https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/sean-martin
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Host: Marco Ciappelli, Co-Founder at ITSPmagazine [@ITSPmagazine] and Host of Redefining Society Podcast & Audio Signals Podcast
On ITSPmagazine | https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/marco-ciappelli
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Episode Introduction
Welcome to another transformative episode of Audio Signals Podcast. I am Marco Ciappelli, your host, and today, we are navigating a domain that transcends the boundaries of technology, cybersecurity, and even society: the art of listening.
This subject might seem elemental, a given even, but is it? In the cacophony of our modern life, we're drowning in noise and suffocating in information. Yet, how much wisdom do we actually attain? We talk so much about the value of information, the security of it, and the technology that transmits it. But today, let's pause and consider: how much importance do we place on the faculty of listening?
Listening — the act of not just hearing but absorbing — is a subtle craft that unites us all, from Socratic dialogues to global podcasts. The science of silence between sounds. A pause in which understanding blooms. So simple, yet so complex that it profoundly impacts our interactions, from the way we conduct business to the way we nurture relationships. In an age where debates are reduced to 280 characters, where is the room for meaningful dialogue? How can we truly listen if our very minds are cluttered?
Today, we dive deep into this art form with Christine Miles, the author of "What Is It Costing You Not to Listen?" Christine is a luminary in the understanding of how listening impacts our leadership, our sales, our influence, and our very existence. We will confront the question that we so often avoid: what is it costing us when we don’t listen?
Through our conversation, we aim to inspire you to unlearn so you can relearn. To challenge your understanding of what it means to listen. Not just to respond but to understand. I invite you to open your ears and close your preconceptions. This is not just a podcast episode; it’s a call to action.
Christine will guide us through the anatomy of listening, challenging the very paradigms we've accepted as norms. You might realize that the greatest obstacle to effective listening is not external but internal; not in our gadgets, but in our grey matter. In our neuro-wired minds that jump to conclusions, that form judgments before facts, that listen to respond rather than to understand.
So let’s put the proverbial can to our ears, lean back, and invite silence as the third guest in this conversation. The ancient Greeks said that we have two ears and one mouth so that we may listen more and speak less. Let’s honor that wisdom today.
Lean in. Listen. Let's transform.
Now, let's meet Christine Miles. Shall we?
About the book
What Is It Costing You Not To Listen: The Power of Understanding to Connect, Influence, Solve & Sell
Do you want to make a positive change in your life, work, or business? Do you want to improve your marriage, be a better parent, or drive more revenue to your business? Then you’ve found the right book. What Is It Costing You Not to Listen? will encourage you to examine how you are listening. You’ll discover that not only are many of the problems in your life due to not listening effectively, but listening helps to solve most problems. Christine Miles is a longtime expert in educating individuals and organizations on how to listen in ways that transform how they lead, sell, influence, and succeed in every aspect of life. Following the steps of her breakthrough Listening Path™ will provide you with a critical key to your success—understanding. Through Christine’s game-changing approach to listening, you will learn to: - Hear what is said and not said - Identify your listening persona and realize when it is unhelpful - Soothe your subconscious so you can listen differently - Listen with intent to gather others’ stories - Replace interfering direct questions with just six questions - Mini-reflect to speed up the listening process without getting lost - Affirm to create alignment, break down walls, and solve problem In business, listening is good for the bottom line. It creates trust between coworkers so they can solve problems better, get things done, manage conflict, stay engaged, and empower one another. In personal relationships, listening is an act of love that communicates to people they are important to you. Isn’t it time you started listening better? Let Christine show you how.
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Resources
Book: What Is It Costing You Not To Listen: The Power of Understanding to Connect, Influence, Solve & Sell https://www.amazon.com/What-Costing-You-Listen-Understanding/dp/163618149X
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Please note that this transcript was created using AI technology and may contain inaccuracies or deviations from the original audio file. The transcript is provided for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a substitute for the original recording, as errors may exist. At this time, we provide it “as it is,” and we hope it can be helpful for our audience.
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[00:00:00] Sean Martin: Marco.
[00:00:04] Marco Ciappelli: I'm listening.
[00:00:05] Sean Martin: Marco.
[00:00:06] Marco Ciappelli: I'm listening.
[00:00:07] Sean Martin: Can you hear me now?
[00:00:09] Marco Ciappelli: I can hear you. Can I talk?
[00:00:11] Sean Martin: No. Listen.
[00:00:16] Marco Ciappelli: Okay. You know, you know what is interesting? We do podcast and you know, I love radio. I'm going to start talking here. And, uh, a famous, um, anchorman, uh, radio personality, I think back from the sixties, he said, the radio is made of. Two things: sound and silence, and he meant that sometimes you have to just shut up and listen and create those pauses so that people can listen and in between the music.
So why are we talking about this? Because We have a guest, the people that are watching us, they know there is a guest, there is a name there, Christine Miles, and the people listening, now they know, so there is a guest, and to prove that we are not lying, hi Christine, how are you?
[00:01:09] Christine Miles: How are you?
[00:01:10] Sean Martin: You did a great job listening to us mess around.
[00:01:15] Christine Miles: That's my favorite part already.
[00:01:17] Marco Ciappelli: You're a good listener, I can tell already. That's right. So, jokes apart, uh, the book, what is it costing you not to listen? The Power of Understanding to Connect, Influence, Solve and Sell. This could be like, oh, we're talking about product? Mmm, we're talking about you. People and everything connected to it.
So Sean, can you listen? Are you in the mood to listen?
[00:01:48] Sean Martin: I'm totally in the mood to listen. And I, yeah, I already have like a hundred questions in my head. We'll see how many I can get through and, and thoughts because I want, I want other people to listen to because together the conversation we, uh, We get people to think, um, yeah, I mean, just, just the other day to just tell a little story.
I, I was walking down the street and there were kids playing with two cans with the
string. Right. And as we were kind of messing around in, in the intro here, I was picturing these kids where, what are they doing? They're listening really hard in that can. To hear what's coming through from the other side, right? They're tuning out everything else to listen to what's coming through that can.
So that's what I was picturing as we were kind of bantering back and forth here.
[00:02:41] Marco Ciappelli: That's really cool. So, let's put the can to our ears and let's, let's listen and let's start with, uh, Christine introducing yourself, who you are and, uh, why did you wrote this book?
[00:02:56] Christine Miles: Yeah, well, as you said, I am here. I do exist for the, for the audio folks.
Uh, yeah, so I'm Christine Miles. Um, I'm from Hershey, Pennsylvania, for anybody knows, Chocolate Town, USA. I smelled more manure than chocolate growing up because I lived just 10 minutes outside the town, very rural. Wow. And pretty idyllic childhood in most respects. Uh, played a lot of sports, a lot of outside play.
I was the kid holding the can or kicking the can. Remember kick the can? That was one of my favorite things. But, uh, you know, there's one part of the story for me and how I got into the business of listening is that. I was really expected as well as taught to listen as a child. I can remember as early as five, my first conscious or awareness listening moment.
Largely due to my mother who, um, while she was very warm and loving and many wonderful things, she suffered from mental illness stemming from the loss of her mother. Um, from childbirth. So there was a very dichotomous spirit, this beautiful woman who lit up the room and was exuberant and an amazing listener, by the way, but also felt very unseen in a lot of pain.
So my job was really to understand the pain below the surface that we're all faking it to some degree. We all have that story. Hers was pretty profound. Uh, and so, you know, I learned this skill very young and. It became evident as early as high school that I was overachieving in anything I was successful in because I had the ability to understand things that were beyond my years of scope and in a way that most people didn't through listening.
So all my career, my athletic career, my academic career, my professional career, any success I've had, it's been the single thread. As I've worked in businesses for the last three decades, it's also why I've seen Leaders fail, projects fail, businesses fail, marriages fail because people feel they're not listened to and it's death by a thousand cuts.
We don't, it's not a gaping wound. You don't just go in and injure somebody really fast when you don't listen, but it adds up pretty quickly. And, uh, so that's the problem that I set out to solve in, in the business that I developed and the book to really create more awareness so that we can create a movement where.
Listening is regarded really as the most powerful form of communication, and we spend time and resource when educating not only adults, but kids. That's really, that's really what drives me is to, to scale how, how aware people are that this is a need.
[00:05:26] Sean Martin: So I'm going to ask this question to kind of kick things off because I'm going to, I'm going to assume that we have to change the way we think about listening, maybe even our definition of listening. Um, So actually, I'm going to stop my question and I'm going to ask you, what is the definition of listening?
Because maybe that, that's necessary to, to kick this off.
[00:05:51] Christine Miles: Well, I, I love that you're starting there. Most people don't. So thank you. Um, yeah, so there's a couple of things I think we're, because we're told to listen and not taught. We don't really have a paradigm of what it's supposed to look like. So, there's going to be a lot of different answers to that.
And I can kind of bucket it. Uh, the first one is we hear. And that's part of what we do. It's, it's our sensory. We hear words. It's the can. It's the literal words that are coming through the can. That's different than listening. You know, that's the sense of, and the, and you know, unless you have a disability, there's lots of reasons the brain interferes with just hearing the words.
But listening is the skill part. How do you develop the skills to not only hear the words and increase the number of words you hear, but also to understand the meaning? So most, when people think about listening, most of what they know is something called active listening, which is how do you attend to the person that's talking?
I, that's been the gold standard. I think it's very, it's underachieving. Uh, I think that's a low bar is let me show you I'm paying attention to you. And while you'll get more out of the conversation, if you do pay attention, it's really hard to do that because it's what to do, but not how to do it. And the greatest enemy of listening is our brains.
So when our brain is in overdrive, which is most of the time these days, it's really hard to listen in the absence of the skill or even hear for that matter. We don't hear much of what's said anyway.
[00:07:17] Sean Martin: Well, I'm glad you pointed out that, uh, I can barely, if at all, get to that low bar, let alone what we're going to get to here, I'm sure.
No, so thanks for setting that stage. And I'll ask where I was going to go before, which is oftentimes when we, I feel anyway, when we're talking about something. Cerebral like this, where there's a natural process of doing something. And then we have to shift our mind to. Not just let that happen, but do something else along with it.
So we hear, we might, or yeah, we hear, we might understand and listen a little bit, but then to do it in a way that accomplishes something different or better, uh, means you have to think while also hearing and listening in my mind. That's kind of how I. Kind of put this all together. So how, how do we get to a point where, and obviously we're getting into how you do some of this, as we cover in the book.
So, but to set the stage for people listening to this, as you describe what you're going to do, how can we listen to you differently? Now thinking differently while you're while we're listening to really absorb what you're about to tell us
[00:08:37] Christine Miles: well, so The answer is you're not going to and that's okay. So look for the key takeaway, right?
and so whatever that is and it's What you described is what most people are thinking like how do I do this if they actually put conscious thought to it? And it's quite overwhelming You know because we're all failing to some degree most you know some of us are better listeners than others But but because we don't have any education around and when we do it's usually very minor I mean I I have a master's level in psychology, and I'm certified a certificate from a world renowned Facility for Structural or Systems Therapy and I had zero listening classes.
Zero. Ivy League education, all of it. That's not an uncommon scenario. Um, and so, how do we do that? Well, we need to understand that, there's what the enemies are, and then we need to put some tools in place so the brain doesn't have to do the work. We have to relax our brain, not over engage our brain, believe it or not.
And when we have the right tools, that happens. Um, I believe things should be, hard things should be simple, not necessarily easy, because you do have to re, you have to create some neural pathways to make this happen. But it shouldn't be complicated, if you will. So, um, you used the word story earlier. I'm going to tell you a quick story about the cans.
And we know that we learn through stories. We also listen with stories. And, um, Marco, you're in, you know, the Los Angeles area. So, you know, the same thing, right? How are we listening to stories? So, the, the story of, of how you, Come to transformational listening that I developed because I have a pretty simple mind is, you know, if you were backpacking or hiking in the woods, you would not dare for two or three weeks to go in the woods without any supplies or tools in your backpack.
And we go in the conversational woods every day with any with being completely unprepared. So imagine you're on the trail and there's there's six foundational tools that get you. safely from one side of the path to the other and to find the meaning of the insight. And those tools very easily go in your backpack.
And when you allow your brain to relax, which the tools help with, the insight finds you rather than you having to overthink it.
[00:10:54] Sean Martin: Is that the map behind you?
[00:10:56] Christine Miles: It is.
[00:10:56] Sean Martin: Is that the words?
[00:10:57] Marco Ciappelli: It's the listening path. I was looking at that. Let me ask you this. You go to storytelling and all of a sudden I'm listening because I love storytelling.
I think that in order for us to do this job or whatever other job we've done in the past um We need to listen. I can't just have a list of 10 questions that I'm just gonna, when I hear it pauses, I'm just gonna ask you something. Although I know that there are people do that, but I,
[00:11:25] Sean Martin: I just have one that ask one question I asked the same time 10 times
[00:11:29] Marco Ciappelli: But, but the point is what you were saying, you know, you need to, you need to be prepared. But, uh, my, my question is also, uh, these, which is we can all improve at something. Mm-hmm. . Some, it's kind of a natural audit, you can still improve. So there's people that are good at telling story. I mean, I'm reading the biography of Walt Disney right now.
So talking about telling story, but, but you can always improve and listening though. It's never really. Talk much. That's why I was intrigued by having this conversation. They're always teaching how to tell. Mm hmm. Not only how to listen, but is it some people that have something in their personality, growing up with a certain family, certain condition that put them, variables, that put them in a better spot of being better listener.
[00:12:26] Christine Miles: There's no question. A couple things. So one is, is what, what was your upbringing? So part of, I had a mother who listened well. I also had a father who listened very well. I was a businessman and he would say that psychiatry, his own therapy helped him become even a better listener. But, and I see that in my nieces as well.
So I can see the family, like they Do this kind of, quote, naturally, but they've been surrounded by it. The other thing is the level of empathy that you're wired with, right? So, so the idea is, and we hear this all the time, we've got to be empathetic. And the reality is, I don't believe that you go into a conversation and be empathetic.
Listening builds empathy, not the other way around. And the world's expecting us to show up and be, you know, empathic. When some people are saying to me, I, I, my wife's more empathic than me, or my husband's more empathic than me. So that's because again, we have it backwards. So when you are, when you have the right framework and the right tools, story being the.
a big part of that foundation. That really helps the empathy again come to you. It's like, it's like watching a movie you're intrigued by versus trying to be outside of it so far that you're not sure what's going on. It's hard to connect if you, A, don't ask them anything about the emotions or the characters or you don't know the parts of the story to engage to.
It's really hard to retain and it's really hard to care. Just like you're watching a movie.
[00:13:51] Sean Martin: Do you have to care? I guess. That's
[00:13:56] Christine Miles: a great question! Do you have to care?
[00:14:01] Sean Martin: And I know, I mean, Mark was in LA, there's this writer's strike, right? Actors may go on strike and the striking is to get People to listen, right? Um, so the question on the other side of that is, do they care that they're, or don't care enough that they're not listening?
Or, so I guess that's the question.
[00:14:25] Christine Miles: So if I get you, I think you're asking like, how much does, does the caring affect whether you'll listen or not? Right. Okay. So I consider this like, Drug and Alcohol Rehabilitation. Like, sometimes you don't go for yourself to start. Some, you have to, like, you go for another reason.
And that reason might be I want to save my family, I want to save this, my marriage, whatever. But eventually it clicks over into something else. So in, in your example, you don't have to care about the other person, but you want to care about what outcome you want. If you care about the outcome, you'll go in to listen.
Because listening and agreement are not the same thing. Understanding and agreement are not the same thing. So you can go into listen to understand. And I fundamentally don't have to agree with anything you say. Uh, and that's the hard part for people because the argumentative part of ourselves, the right wrong brain goes, I don't listening and being right are the same, and that's not the case.
So we, that's part of what gets decoupled here. What, what, what do I want to accomplish? What am I looking to get done? And that's how negotiations work. That's how, that's how you come to a closer win win. And it's also how you convince people to lose more than they want to give away is, is by understanding.
[00:15:44] Marco Ciappelli: Well, let's go there because I think, I think we've been very, uh, talking from a psychological perspective and, you know, storytelling, human being human, uh, family, culture where we grew up and so forth. But part of your book is actually about selling, influencing. And again, we are all made a story. We're all storyteller, but.
What I'm understanding in your book, the point that you're making is we could probably tell a better story if we were listening to our audience and engaging. So it becomes not a one way communication, but it's a two way communication. that make it better. Am I getting it right?
[00:16:30] Christine Miles: You're absolutely getting it.
And, and, and so listening isn't passive. You, you know, before we started, you said, I talk a lot. I, you should, good listeners do talk a lot. They just know when to talk, right? Versus, so, so let's go to the storytelling thing and I'll weave it back. So, We are wired to learn and listen to stories, and we like to get information that way.
We like to learn that way. But by and large, we are really poor storytellers. We are not, most of us are not natural storytellers. That's also part of how you grow up and how you're habituated in a little bit. So think about it from the listener standpoint. I'm a terrible storyteller and I'm going to tell you a story and you have no idea where you are in that story.
So you have to You have to, you have to movie board the, the, the, the, through listening, you have to put the storyboard together and we're not taught how to do that. So, so I've had a lot of, I fought the world quite a bit from 2010 to about 2019 when everybody wanted me to focus on the storytelling part.
And I said, it's really hard to know what story to tell someone if you haven't listened well and gathered the story first. If you know what story, Was gonna resonate. If you understand, then you know how to shape and tell a better story. It also helps you sort out again, so you make other people a better storyteller when you listen.
Well, that's what you're talking about. I don't use the same 10 questions. I ask the question, see where they are on the story, and then I ask another question. Uh, and that's, that's a much. More sophisticated way to go about it that most people haven't been taught to do, which is why interviewers and journalists like yourselves are the Notoriously better listeners than most, at least in the construct of this environment.
I won't judge you outside of this environment, so to speak.
[00:18:20] Sean Martin: Well, that's a, that's an interesting point. Um, because I think we, we all live different lives at different moments in time, right? Uh, we engage with different people for different reasons, perhaps for different outcomes, right? Family, work, friends, doctors.
And, and each one kind of... Maybe how we, how we listen. And I'm wondering how, how do we, yeah, I don't know if you know how to ask the question, but how do we get to a point where we know the situation we're in? Cause like, like for me, depending on what the situation is, I might see three steps ahead of where I think the person's about to go and I'm already there and.
They may never end up there, right? Right. The story fizzles out or, or they went to a different path, but I'm there and that's what I'm listening for already. As just one example.
[00:19:20] Christine Miles: You're shaping the story a bit, right?
[00:19:22] Sean Martin: Yeah. Yeah. So, and it depends on the situation. If I'm aware of the topic or engaged in a certain way with the person, it changes slightly.
So how do we. Recognize that, or do we need to even, do we need to recognize that? How do we, how do we deal with those situations? I guess it's probably a better way to.
[00:19:40] Christine Miles: Again, I think it's another good point. So, so you mentioned relationships and you mentioned business and businesses are relationships. So, uh, they're the same and different, but you know, we, we, the closer we are to something.
The less curious about it we are. So the long, you know, when we're in a relationship, whether it's children, marriages, whatever, the more we know somebody, the less we tend to listen or ask in many ways, because we're familiar with the person. So we get less curious. The same is true in business, right? The more knowledge and experience we have, the less.
With the more we try to problem solve and rush to a new, a new point where we want them to go rather than where they're starting. So how do you do that? You go back to the story aspect of things and the first tool and what so I'll take you back the the problem is what is it costing you not to listen because you can't solve a problem You don't know you have and most people don't know they have that problem.
Even if somebody said to them You don't listen well. Uh, the solution is the listening path, and that's the path to understanding. And the first tool in that path is what you mentioned, which is behind me, which is the path, the map. If you don't know where you are on the map, you don't, where do you go next, right?
And to use your movie analogy, most people, when they tell a story, start in the middle, not at the beginning. So they confuse the listener right off the bat. Most people start with the problem, the struggle, anything that has, you know, that's the red herring, uh, and because that's what they think it is. And we, we start from that position.
If it's the beginning of a movie, when in fact we're dead in the middle, most of the time. And so when we learn how to know where we are on the map and then our next, you know, one of our next tools helps with that, um, when we get the beginning of the movie. the beginning of the story, and we're on the map at the beginning with the person talking, we help them become a better storyteller.
And then we start guiding them so that we can move them where they need to go to get to the insight.
[00:21:41] Marco Ciappelli: So let's say that you're on that path. And as you say, you need to know where you are. But let's say that you really are at the beginning of telling a brand story. You're building your own brand. May that be your personal brand or The company brand which You know, it's all potentially based on emotion.
You want to tell who you are, why you do something. And you're really, you suck at storytelling. So you call the, you call the pro and you're like, I need to tell a story. This is what we do is dry, you know, let's, let's build a story. So if someone, or even in a, in the everyday. Uh, relationship, everyday life is really not good at talking.
Where does this path begin for them? A few tips on first of all, realizing that maybe you're not a good storyteller at all or, or, or a good listener at all, which I think it goes together. Yeah. So how, how, how you do realize that and what can you do to start improving? your, your situation and your outcome and not losing.
[00:22:52] Christine Miles: Well, when you're, when you're building your own story, you're listening to yourself. That's, that's the ironic part is that you're gathering your own story, which is why I'm, I've been fighting the world and say, we've got to gather before we tell. Cause if I don't know myself, right. I also start, most people start, we, we do help with this.
We're at we're with a customer next week where we're helping 37 leaders build their, why they do what they do story. And what, what. It's a purpose driven thing to engage their employees. So if you, again, you have to know where you are on the path. The good news is when we've already taught them how to listen.
So now they're ready to start listening to themselves because they know the tool. So they'll use the listening tools to build their own story. So, you know this well, when you're telling a story, you need a beginning, middle, and an end. What you'll notice on our path is there's four stops. That's our second tool.
There's a beginning, a struggle, a tipping point, and what we call a new beginning. So, on the brand side of yourself, whether it's your company or yourself, you've got to go back to the beginning. The beginning's about you. Your company, where you started, your purpose, why you do what you do, and whatever struggles you went through, finding that tipping point to, to why you deliver today.
It's, it's inside out though. Once I talk about myself, now I got to talk about my customer. So the new beginning is what's in it for the listener, not for the teller. And that's the part most people miss. I got to first talk about myself and then talk about why I do what I do and how it helps my customer.
What most people do is they scrub out all the emotion. They talk about just what they do and not the meaning of why they do it. And then, then at the end, they leave out what's in it for them, for the, for the, for the end user. And when you do both me and you. Now you're connected on the path, and now I'm more interested in learning more about you, whether it's your company or an individual.
[00:24:52] Sean Martin: We don't need a motion anyway, it's good.
I think, and I'm not going to go down this path, we can maybe at some point if you want to, but just the idea of artificial intelligence, helping to tell our stories, which, as we know, kind of lacks in one of those areas that are important that
you to maybe kind of, I've been all over the place from the. Psychological inward looking perspective, but I want to go to a business where I spend a lot of time in, in, uh, corporate America. And yet you have a stat on your side about meetings and how much money companies waste from meetings. And I've, I've been in, in roles and companies where 90% of the day was meetings and the rest of it was planning for meetings and then, uh, yeah, at some point you, you actually did something to figure out how to.
results. Um, and then other times like Mark when I maybe the other extreme where we feel we need to meet more often and we're so busy that Yeah, maybe don't mean enough and we're probably not listening in a different way and it's costing us as well. So to that point, um, what can you share with, with our listeners that says, here's how you recognize what the right amount is, who the right people are, how you define the, the outcome, successful outcome for it.
Maybe a little story around Around meetings, if you can, because I, I put in a lot of people have that same situation.
[00:26:38] Christine Miles: Well, it's painful, right? It's painful. So it, so you have the multiplier effect when you have meetings, right? Because what now one person's listening, Christine's listening, Sean's listening, Mark is listening, and we're all hearing different things.
And then we're all going off. You have a question. I have a question. And it's not organized, right? It's just, it's just a multitude of, of. Brain like squirrel, uh,
[00:27:01] Sean Martin: even if more than two cans, , .
[00:27:05] Christine Miles: So it's, it's a big deal. And then on the other side, when you don't feel you have enough time. So, so part about, about listening for insight and, and knowing where you are on the map, is that, that you need to be proficient and efficien.
This is both because time matters and you know getting to things quickly. It's a slow down to speed up. The first slow down is you have to listen, learn to listen because you don't just go out on the golf course for the first time after hitting the golf ball one time and expect to get Maybe some do. It doesn't really work that way.
So you have to slow down and build the muscles a little bit. Uh, we figured out how to do that very efficiently as well. But then so that's a slow down and then you have to realize until you practice a little it's going to take a little longer at the beginning, but the more you do it the faster. So I always say Tom Brady can throw a football and so can I.
He's a little better at it, right? He's practiced a little bit more, probably. Although I'm pretty good throwing a ball. Um, so, so, that's the first thing. The other thing is if you don't have a common language, how do you know how to organize? And so one of the things that happens with our customers and clients is that now they know when they're getting off the path and all it takes is one person to reference the tools and they're back on track.
So it's part of how you think about how you communicate and because we're always focused on telling. Talking, knowing we don't lens back. We don't have any common language around that. That really hurts the organization. So sometimes you need to speed up and there's ways to get more efficient with the tools.
And sometimes you need to slow down to make sure you're uncovering the insight. And most of it's around, let's align where we are versus just going off and meeting start. We didn't, we don't know where we left off and we don't know where we're going next. And it's just a lot in the middle that often doesn't really.
[00:29:02] Marco Ciappelli: Okay. So we, we started with the, the personal internal storytelling, right? I love when you said, if you don't know your story, what the hell are you going to say? So if I don't have a goal, if I don't have an objective, why am I telling this story? And who's my audience? Of course. Uh, so I'm kind of going into the, the, the advertising branding part where then you discuss about.
The internal communication. So the, the brand becomes, they know their story, they know how to present themselves. Now we have to represent. That consistency with the way that we think to our product and our service. And so how do you, do we communicate with the audience? And I found it myself in my own experience that many times there is no alignment there, which is kind of like a, it's almost like a schizophrenic story where the company act in a way, but.
We want to project ourself to be completely different and that that's really bad, right? So once you know Yeah, so once you know who you are and now as a company your goal is to sell your product now How how do you connect that? How do you do brand? cohesive And be a unique also Genuine brand because nowadays you can't really lie your way out of it anymore.
[00:30:27] Christine Miles: Well, the audience sees through it the customers see That's what you just described. So you, you said something really interesting that we do talk about a lot and most people don't think about is that you can have the best vision or story. And you can even execute on that well, but it's really alignment where most things fall down.
And alignment is about buy in and, and being clear about really how we're gonna, how we're gonna make that vision come to fruition. And so, so that happens internally in organizations and that's usually what gets it very clogged up when it goes to get to an external nature. And it's largely because, again, we, It's about exchanging perspectives when you're really getting that alignment.
And that dialogue, because it's two way and it's not about all agreement, but it is about making sure there is alignment, that there's a lot of assumptions made. And then things really can fall apart, whether that's assumptions about who your audience is out there and how they're going to interpret it, what really is important versus not important.
Marketing is going to say one thing, product's going to say another, then people know when you're confused and not clear. So the time spent on the alignment piece, that communication piece. It's very, very important and it does solve a lot of the end user problem. It solves that outside perspective once it's internally really well aligned.
[00:31:54] Sean Martin: So what I'm, what I'm hearing, of course, this supports your business, I presume, but, um, I mean, it's one thing to recognize this for yourself and let's say, um, I'm the executive of an organization and. So I really focus on listening and understanding my story and, and defining the outcome and have a nice path to that.
But if I don't have a team that listens well, I'm going to miss out on that, that true alignment. It may sound aligned because I listen, but, but perhaps if I do listen and my team is not trained to be. Good listeners. Then, then perhaps I will recognize that I don't have alignment, but so I guess my point is it can't just be one.
It has to be most or all.
[00:32:49] Christine Miles: Well, let me tell you where that came from for me too. So, so I've always done this work in some aspect of my business from when I started very, very young in my career when I was a therapist and I worked in, then I worked in organizational development work for an employee assistance program for a number of years, and then I started my own executive coaching business.
And, uh, I, what happened is I couldn't scale me, one, that was a problem. And two, I got really tired of having the same conversations over and over again. Because it didn't matter who I was talking to. Most of the problems around the, was around what people misunderstood. And I just help unwind the misunderstandings, uh, with collaboratively a lot.
Um, and so I, I'm like, this is crazy. There's gotta be a better way to intervene. I can, I can continue to make a decent living doing this, but I'm just, I'm band aiding things rather than dealing with the root cause. And the root cause is, and this is for everyone, most of us think we're better listeners than we actually are.
Uh, Harvard Business Review did research on this. It's like driving. If I said, how good are you? Most people are going to think they're better than they actually are. And so, even when we go, and what I can prove, and we can show people is even when they intend to listen well, their questions and their problem solving and all the other inhibitors will take over and they're going to fall down more than they would if they had the skills and the right tools and a simpler process.
So. There's a miss there, and just self avail, and then you're right, it only takes one to miss something really important, and you don't have the alignment. So, creating a common language is really a big part of this. I mean, I can tell you, my own, uh, significant other, as well as my team, will use my own stuff on me, and sometimes when I'm frustrated, I go, Hey, don't you try that with me!
Because I know exactly what they're doing, but it doesn't matter because it feels good. It's like I love it Ask me how I feel ask use the questions that we there's six powerful questions. You don't need 100 You need six by the way You need to know how to tell somebody their own story back to them because that's the most powerful story You can tell someone and we call that the flashlight.
How do you? Summarize how do you become a storyteller to the person that just told you a story? You've you've summarizing and shine a light on what they said and you will have an amazing Connection with that person and it doesn't matter if you agree because you get me Uh is is a different way of feeling so These are the things that excite people.
I, we're developing, uh, we're work, we, we do this with our clients, our corporate clients. We have a game that teaches this through, it's a board game. Imagine the old style, you know, monopoly, so to speak. And I had friends over, we played the game, two people that didn't know each other. And I, you would have thought that I gave them candy all night or something, or something in the candy, because they were just giddy.
Because guess what? They were understood in a way that they're not used to and were given the space to share more about themselves in playing the game. Uh, and it was, it's transformative, not only for the person learning how to listen, but for the one listened to. And that's, what's so fun and exciting to me.
[00:36:16] Sean Martin: Marco, I mean, we we've had, I don't know, how many of the thousands of podcasts have we done, have, have we talked about the disconnect between the, this might be a little off topic for you, Christine, but it connects back, the disconnect between security. Leaders and business leaders on the very point of common language, common terminology, common understanding, common goals.
The inability for understanding how to tell the story and listen to. Things in a way that they connect and get giddy. You want them to be giddy. Instead they, everybody sits there and goes, what the hell do they say? I don't know what that means.
[00:37:00] Marco Ciappelli: Especially because most of this conversation, we're in the realm of cyber security, which has always been really damn boring.
I mean, I need coffee sometimes, but the conversation has been switching a lot. When it wasn't. Technical anymore. And I think we have a lot to do with it in the conversation we had, where like, you guys need to tell stories. Your brand is not just a box with the next update on the software. This is what, what's the problem you solve, what's the emotion that you trig and all of that.
So, but it's beautiful because people now we hear about storytelling. Any conference you go, they bring people from, you know, an athlete. Or a somebody in the movie industry or somebody that is a comedian and is like, what has that to do with cybersecurity? Well, it's going to help to tell this story. So, um, I think, yeah, we're kind of knowing each other a little bit more.
Even when we look at AI and other things that we think that can produce a story for us, but it doesn't. And I'm not going to go there. What I'm going to do, I'm going to close this conversation because otherwise we're going to go forever. I'm going to remind the people that what is it costing you not to listen.
Is the title of the book and uh, talking to our listener. I hope they listen I hope now they can retell this story to other people share it and uh, Definitely, they'll find everything they need to know about your book about your organization and yourself in the note for this podcast So I want to thank you so very much, and I hope we were good listener or good enough Did we pass did we pass the test?
[00:38:55] Christine Miles: You more than passed. You more than passed. I could tell you exactly what you did well if you want, but there's probably not enough time for that. I'll, if you want that deep. I'll
[00:39:04] Sean Martin: go, go with the longer list of where I didn't. We have time for that.
[00:39:11] Marco Ciappelli: Well, we can have people put the comments and guess.
[00:39:15] Sean Martin: Let everybody else judge me and Marco.
That'd be great. Looking forward to that. I'll listen to all that feedback. No, this has been amazing. Thanks for, uh, thanks for enlightening me even more than I thought I would be today. And, uh, yeah, looking forward to reading the book.
[00:39:34] Christine Miles: Thank you very much. I appreciate you having me on. Pleasure.
[00:39:37] Marco Ciappelli: Bye bye.
[00:39:39] Christine Miles: Bye bye.