Exploring The Authenticity Upgrade: Part 3 of 4

“Alex Cullimore: If people want to understand you, they will. If they don't want to understand you, they won't. If you put that intent out there that you will work to understand somebody, you'll find a way to do it, and deep listening is a great way to start.”

[INTRODUCTION]

Alex Cullimore: Welcome to Uncover the Human, where every conversation revolves around enhancing all the connections in our lives.

Cristina Amigoni: Whether that’s with our families, co-workers, or even ourselves.

Alex Cullimore: When we can be our authentic selves, magic happens.

Cristina Amigoni: This is Cristina Amigoni.

Alex Cullimore: And this is Alex Cullimore.

HOSTS: Let's dive in.

Authenticity means freedom.

Authenticity means going with your gut.

Authenticity is bringing 100% of yourself. Not just the parts you think people want to see, but all of you.

Being authentic means that you have integrity to yourself.

It's the way our intuition is whispering something deep-rooted and true.

Authenticity is when you truly know yourself. You remember and connect to who you were before others told you who you should be.

It's transparency, relatability, no frills, no makeup, just being.

[EPISODE]

Alex Cullimore: Welcome back to another special episode of Uncover the Human. We're joined again by Aaron, as we are continuing our book series to help promote our book, The Authenticity Upgrade: Rebooting Leadership for Real Humans. We've talked a little bit about authenticity, the importance of authenticity, some of the self-reflection and values that go into that. Now we're moving on to some of the other portions of the book, which are about relationships, as well as we will talk later about groups and AI.

Aaron Wilson: Good. Well, in the book, you talk about deep listening, listening beyond words. Why is that so hard for us at work?

Cristina Amigoni: We're starting right in the deep end.

Aaron Wilson: Right. Let's hurt ourselves stepping into this one.

Cristina Amigoni: Maybe I should have read the questions before we got started.

Alex Cullimore: Just for the note, Cristina did write these questions.

Cristina Amigoni: I did write them. Yes. But that was yesterday, which right now feels like –

Alex Cullimore: Hold it in brain.

Cristina Amigoni: - a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. Listening. I would say, listening is hard all the time, not just at work. At work specifically, it's hard because it's seen as a waste of time. Somehow, people are walking to the door and to their workplace, or into their work office. There's supposed to be some sort of telepathic knowledge that everybody has and way of communicating. Most of the time, there isn't really the space, or the understanding that listening is something that needs to be worked on and done. It's not just something that automatically happens, or if you skip it, it's okay.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. We often talk about when we bring up things like deep listening in workshops, that we spend a lot of time. There's plenty of classes that people can go to and they're very worthwhile to do things like, public speaking. There's a lot of how to be more eloquent, how to make sure that you can deliver a speech. But there's less focus on listening and it ends up being as important, if not way more important, to actually engage in deep listening. In one of the activities we have, we get them to practice deep listening. Often, people will say, “Well, that actually took way more effort than I was anticipating.” You start to realize like, oh, to actually actively, deeply listen, just takes a good amount of exertion until you're more used to it, then it'll take a little bit less over time.

It does just take practice and awareness and continually reinforcing like, oh, I've got to be back and got to be present, got to really be with this person in what they're saying and what they're not saying that is still being communicated. That ends up being a huge difference maker in making teams that work, making people more cohesive, allowing for some more psychological safety. It's something that we don't do in the workplace, because it does take more effort. We're not generally in the practice. When we get promoted to leadership roles, we tend to just be good at the job we did before we were leaders and not realize that now we are in charge of helping people do the job, not do the job ourselves, and that listening becomes so much more important.

We aren't usually told this. We aren't usually reminded of this. It's just, we find this slowly, but surely through time, unless we were already ready to listen to people. It does take that practice in the modern workforce, of course, there's also just the endless pinging distractions. There's a bunch of things going on while you're talking. There's a bunch of things that you're trying to focus on and trying to get done and trying to accomplish in a meeting. Deep listening sometimes feels like it takes more effort and time than people feel like they have. The trick is that you end up paying for that later if you don't make that time earlier.

Aaron Wilson: Yeah. Well, let's dig into that deep listening a little bit more in terms of the LAVA framework, where LAVA meaning listen, acknowledge, validate, and ask. That LAVA framework comes up a lot in this chapter. How did you land on that and what makes it so powerful?

Cristina Amigoni: Well, Alex gets all the credit for the acronym and calling it LAVA.

Alex Cullimore: Originally when I pitched it, it was not as well received.

Cristina Amigoni: Especially when it was pitched in front of, I don't know, 300 people at a public speaking event. It was like, I guess we're going with it now.

Alex Cullimore: Oh, I forgot. That's how we introduced this.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, yes.

Aaron Wilson: I like that.

Cristina Amigoni: It does come from our coach background. It comes from understanding that if you are in conversation with somebody and you actually want to connect and you want to have understanding and be able to move forward together in whatever you're trying to do, it starts with listening. It doesn't start with speaking. There's all sorts of quotes and memes and things like that. There's a reason why we have two ears and one mouth. It's because we're supposed to be listening more than speaking. That's just one of the many ways of saying this. It starts with listening.

When we think about looking at the human side of pretty much everything, because until AI really takes over, there's going to be some human interaction somewhere every minute, every day, even with ourselves, listening first allows for that curiosity, starting with curiosity, rather than judgment. It also opens up the space to then two people, or more people to be in that space doing something, as opposed to just one person dictating and then turning around and, oh, well, nobody's following, or they're doing their own thing. The listening definitely, it's the first step to create that empathy and to create that connection. Until we become great white sharks that roam the ocean on our own, we may want to create connections with other humans around us.

Alex Cullimore: Was that an option? Do we get to become that? Is that a trajectory wrong?

Cristina Amigoni: Anything is possible.

Alex Cullimore: No, I think that's a great way of putting it, because listening does come up first. If you listen deeply, you're listening both what people are saying and what they're not saying. Understanding their tone, understanding their energy, seeing what they're really reacting to. If you're looking for that, you're not just thinking about what you need to say next. You put yourself into a better curious mindset, like you're saying, Cristina. You're more empathetic. It's more curious and you give them a lot more space to engage with what they want to say. That allows people to have the space to explain themselves.

I actually just read something recently that was some quote around, if people wants to understand you, they will. If they don't want to understand you, they won't. If you put that intent out there that you will work to understand somebody, you'll find a way to do it. Deep listening is a great way to start that and to actually find that understanding, because then you are giving them the space to explain themselves. Then that's when we get into the other parts of the LAVA framework, like acknowledging and validating where you're making sure that it's okay what they're saying and that you understand what they're saying and that it is acknowledged and understood, so that communication is fully taking place. It's not just somebody saying something, but somebody's also understanding that something.

We ended up, we knew that through coaching, listening, acknowledging, and asking open-ended questions was an important way to frame things. We've started to say that LAVA is really that molten core of relationships, because in a way, it lets people get deeper.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. I mean, it's still the most popular piece in all our workshops and trainings, to the point that it's something that people have gotten to understand and practice and immediately want to turn around and experience it and have other people experience it. As a concept, it definitely went beyond our own. We knew it was important when we put it out there, but we didn't realize how much it was going to become part of the fabric of how people start showing up immediately. I mean, how many times do we read something, or hear something, or go to a training, or go to a workshop, we walk out and very little behavior follows that, in the sense of there's not much that's applicable, or that you do want to apply, that you truly desire the wanting to apply right away. LAVA has been that.

I mean, we've had people that go home that evening and start applying it with their families. Then will come back to training the next day and say like, “Oh, my God. This conversation that I've had with my wife for three months and never got anywhere, we finally concluded it. We got great steps.” It's that desire to want to walk out and be like, “I want to try this.” Something shifts when people are on the receiving end of that and when they're experiencing it and realize like, “I now feel seen, I feel heard, and I feel like I've connected more with the other people around me. I want to see if I can create that same experience for others.”

Alex Cullimore: That's one of those weird moments where you feel you've been having conversations your whole life. You've been having dialogue certainly, with people often. Then you suddenly have a different way of doing it. Suddenly, there's a different layer to it. Suddenly, it feels like there's something else that you can try in conversations. It sometimes feels like pulling back a little bit of the layers of, oh, there's a pattern to doing this, instead of just whatever we've learned to do. Some people can end up being very effective communicators. Some people, it's just not what we were taught to do, or not what we had the opportunity to do, or encouraged to do.

Finding something that gives you a little bit of a foothold helps people just kick off that, oh, I can create space. This is actually like, this is a more fun and deep conversation. I enjoy this more than just the perfunctory, hey, how's the weather?

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, you can apply LAVA to the how’s the weather question, too.

Alex Cullimore: But then you get into like, how do you feel about the weather is really where you’re – How's the weather? Then the response, you're like, “Ah, it seems like the rain is not your friend.”

Aaron Wilson: Yeah. Well speaking of moments in your own careers, where listening deeply has changed the outcome, where has listening deeply changed the outcome of a tough conversation?

Cristina Amigoni: I would say, it helps me to focus on the listening deeply when even before I approach a tough conversation. If there's a tough conversation where I know I am nervous, or I have a script. A lot of times, we avoid tough conversations. Or when we were forced to have them, or we get to the point where there's so much avoidance, and then you just have them, you dread them, we dread tough conversations, because there's vulnerability, there's a potential for getting hurt, there's the potential for getting shamed, guilt, all of it. If we go back to something we talked about in, I think one of the first episodes of this part series podcast, is having a tough conversation, if it doesn't go well, you can get excluded by the tribe, which means the sabertoothed tigers are going to kill you. You go down that spiral, which is why it feels easier to avoid them.

The listening piece and really focusing on that helps me take a step back and realize, I can come up with a script all I want, but I actually don't know how the conversation is going to go, because I don't know what's in the other person's head. If I can focus on something I can control, as opposed to all those things in that script that I cannot control is listening. That is the one piece I can control. If I deeply listen, then I can just go where the conversation goes and really show up with curiosity, as opposed to this is the script, this is how it's going to go, this is how I'm going to reply, this is when I'm going to turn around and smack somebody in the face, and then we're going to walk off, and it's all going to be resolved.

It's stepping back and realize like, I have no idea how this is going to go. I can control that, but I can't control how I show up in the listening and in the deep listening and being there and being curious, in removing distractions, and in being open to the vague possibility that I may not actually have all the answers in my head.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. I think that's a great way of putting it. I think it said, it almost puts you in a better frame of mind going into that conversation. Because if you're trying to practice deep listening, then you have to genuinely listen to what the person is giving to you. Not judging it, but listening to it, so you can best understand like, what they happen to be putting out. It can feel frustrating. You can maybe walk into the conversation and feeling there's going to be conflict, or you have all these things you want to say. But if you step into that deep listening space, then it's more about, “Okay, I'm going to try and figure out what they are working to communicate to me.”

Then that, if you can allow yourself that space, helps give them the space, helps you stay in a curious mindset and then you have a different – You can maybe see either where they're coming from, or have some empathy for, okay, maybe they just are reacting more strongly than I thought. To your point, Cristina, there's just a way to deflate the script that you had in your head of how this was going to go.

Cristina Amigoni: It allows for true empathy. It truly allows for understanding, for remembering that this is another human being. For the most part, except for – I'm sure there's some out there. For the most part, more humans don't wake up in the morning and think, “I'm going to make somebody's life really miserable today.” Applying LAVA and starting with the listening, having that control really gives that the possibility of what could be, as opposed to, this is how it's going to go, and here's all my rebuttals, and I'm going to win this. There's no longer winning. The winning becomes the connection. Not, I have to win for my own survival piece.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. That's when that acknowledging and validating comes in, particularly important and remembering that it's okay to validate how somebody's feeling to acknowledge what they have said without endorsing it. You don't have to agree with what they're saying. You just have to acknowledge it, so that they feel they are heard. That can tremendously reduce the number of circles you might run in a conversation, or in an argument. Because then, they're not just trying to be understood. I like that redefinition of winning, Cristina, because it feels like, the victory becomes, are we understood? Or, do we at least understand each other?

Doesn’t mean we agree. It doesn't mean we're going to walk away and we're all on the same page, or we're newly best friends, whatever. It's just, do we understand each other? Can we acknowledge that to each other? Because it's a lot harder to continue to force a conversation, or have a bad conversation, or have a negative outcome when you've entered into that empathetic space and you're willing to hear somebody, again, whether you agree with them, whether you're going to endorse what they're saying, it's just understanding.

Aaron Wilson: Yeah. How can leaders use LAVA, listen, acknowledge, validate, and ask in every day, check-ins, or interactions with their employees without it feeling forced?

Cristina Amigoni: Well, it's interesting, because one of the things that we hear a lot that leaders want is they want their people to feel empowered. That's a big thing. It's like, what do you want for your teams? I want them to feel empowered. I want them to not come to me for every single answers. I want them to not come to me for permission to do things. I want innovation. I want them working together without being told, all of these things. Yet, none of them can actually happen, unless, as a leader, you listen first. If you're the ones that is speaking all the time, and you're the one that it's always providing the answer, and you're the one that's always telling people what to do, guess what's not going to happen? People are not going to feel empowered.

People feel empowered when they feel seen. If you listen and you start understanding the uniqueness and what they can bring to the table, that is going to be different from what you bring to the table. Even if it's the same, it's going to be done differently. That's when people will actually try things on their own. From a leadership perspective, the question really is, do you want people to feel empowered or not? If you don't, great. Admit that that that's the kind of leadership you have. My kind of leadership, not my kind of leadership, but be authentic to your own self. If you're a leadership that wants to dictate, because that's where you find your own worth, then declare that and say, “This is who I am. This is how I'm going to lead. If you don't like it, find somewhere else to go.”

Have the authenticity and the courage to stand in that, as opposed to what so often happens, which is people are important and I want them to feel empowered and all of this, but then there's zero listening. Then you walk into a meeting room and there's only one person talking all the time, and it's the leader. Until they ask questions like, “Questions? No questions? Okay, I assume everybody understood what they're doing.” That's not empowering. But if that's what you want, that's what you get.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. If you want to be the bottleneck and the linchpin and the person who has to make every single decision, then that's fine. LAVA can be a way to release yourself of that and get the answers from the team that is closer to what needs to be answered. If you're looking for how work needs to be done, this is one of the ways to help and talk about pushing decisions to the lowest point of expertise, like whoever's closest to the problem should have the decision-making power over that decision. This is the way to help get into that and help understand what those things are.

To your point, your question, Aaron, of like, how do you step into it without it feeling forced? We've had this question a couple of times, because there's definitely – Cristina's example, there's the people who aren't going to try and lead this way and that's fine. There's the people who do want to lead this way, and there's a lot of people in the middle who are like, “Oh, this seems like a good idea, but it's going to be different than my style that I've done up to this point. Or my team's going to find this weird when I'm suddenly stepping in and asking questions, instead of telling them, here's a status update.” One on ones are a great place to practice this. One thing that we have helps people with is have them understand that you can just tell your team you're trying something new.

You can be very explicit about like, “Hey, learned about this thing. I just want to try out. I'm going to ask more questions. This might feel different than how we've done it, but here's what we're going to explicitly step into and just give a whirl, just to see what it feels like.” It then not only gives you a little piece of credibility of, hey, I'm trying something, just so that people already know, hey, they're trying something new. this is what we're going to – it puts everybody into more of an experimental headspace. It also tells them, hey, I'm working on things I'm trying to improve. Here's an option. Then we're going to see how this feels.

It gives them a little stake in it. It gives them the ability to know that you want to change and you want to do something differently. That gives you a foothold into, okay, this might be a different behavior than what I've done before, but I have a chance to step into it and see how it works for my team.

Cristina Amigoni: Now, the perfect demonstration of me not listening to the question and then going off with my own script. Then Alex answering the question, because he actually heard it.

Aaron Wilson: Well, this is true. What I would – However, I would give you kudos Alex first for segueing us into the value of relationships. Sometimes that relationships don't really thaw in the context of engaging with your teams, even with curiosity and patience. How do you know when to keep trying versus when to walk away?

Alex Cullimore: Oh, yeah. It's a good question. I don't know that I have an easy, definitive answer. If you think about your own experience in going through the workplace, there's probably places where you felt like you had a little bit more trust, or you had a team you enjoyed working with and places where you felt a little less of that. You felt maybe there was – or, I'm sure almost everybody has an example in their head right away of a boss with like, “Ooh, didn't like that person. Didn't like working for them. That was hard.” These are experiences we carry forward. Even if we are in a new space, even if our boss wants to go try LAVA with us and we have a more trusting relationship, we can still feel the weight of the previous relationships.

When you are a leader and you want to try these things, you want to try thawing out relationships, I think is a great term for it. It's not going to happen overnight. Trust is built in the little pieces and the consistency. People will generally move towards it as long as there's a continued enough space, and nobody's going to move at the same pace. Some people will be able to step into that and they're just waiting for that permission. Some people will have already been doing it, whether they had the permission or not. Some people will take a little longer to feel like, “Oh, no. This is safe. I think they actually mean it. I can lower my defenses a little bit.”

I think it's a bit of a gut check of where do you think the intention of the person is? This is another great example of deep listening. Are they trying to do that? Are they resistant? They have some ideas and you'll see them put their toes out a little bit here and there and try something. You have to get back into that curious space of like, do I see what I think is them reaching out? Can I be more explicit about like, “Hey, I I'm hoping to get more information from you. I feel like you haven't spoken up much, or I'd like to know what's going on.” Can you get curious?

If there's a continual resistance, if there's no sign of improvement, then it becomes, well, maybe this person doesn't want to, or maybe this – then it's a question of, how is this affecting the team? How is this affecting our performance? Is this something that we can keep having as a team? Are they helping the team? Are they hurting the team? Are they helping themselves? I think those become the questions you have to evaluate when you don't feel you're making any progress, you don't feel there's a way forward.

Cristina Amigoni: I think, as part of the deep listening, when we talk about that, we talk about how it's not just the words, so it's not volume. You're not counting how many words somebody says. You're not counting how much empty spaces is left, or not left when somebody speaks. Deep listening really takes also listening to the non-verbal pieces of a communication, which 90% is not verbal. Looking at it, facial expressions, understanding body language, understanding even the tone of the words used, the pauses between that are used. When we are in that deep listening mode, we can start picking up things that maybe tell us, hey, this person is not – the thawing is not happening in a group setting. Maybe let's try one on one and see if that changes.

Or maybe let's try a smaller group, or maybe let's go for lunch and change the settings. What are other ways that you can create a relationship with this person that is different from the standard? It's like, it's our staff meeting and it's weekly and they don't speak up, so it's all their fault. There's nothing I can do about it. I'm like, well, there's actually a lot you can do about that. It's really to start observing some of the behaviors. If you're in the office and you notice that they are actually having a conversation, a passionate conversation with somebody else one on one, but then in group meetings, they don't speak, investigate. Is it the group meeting? Is it the people in the meeting? What is it? How can you change the settings, the environment to see what else could be happening?

It also takes time. It goes back to listening in the workplace. It's so bad, because it takes time and people don't take the time. It takes time. I mean, we've been in situations where in especially longer engagements, when we know we have weekly meetings with groups of people that have to start creating relationships and trust with each other and with us, it takes weeks and months of silences and waiting and more silences and more waiting. Then at some point, things start turning around. Sometimes it took two, three months of weekly meetings before some individuals, or even most of the individuals would actually speak up.

Alex Cullimore: When you're in a team situation like that, it's nice to have some people that will care while you're experimenting with those. Because then you know that you can get – and as you get more comfortable with it, you get better and more subconsciously tracking like, okay, so this person is still not coming out. Still not coming out. You can keep making invites. “Hey, haven't heard from you. Hey, let's hear from X, so and so, whatever it is.” These things can help. Just continue to reiterate that you are seeking that you are reaching out from your side of the bridge. Hopefully, the rest of the team helps carry the meeting, so that you have just, okay, we'll get there, or after a while, then maybe it's a more direct conversation of like, “Look, I feel like I'm not getting any participation here.” Maybe it becomes that. I like that idea of experimenting with different situations and scenarios to help people unlock and see what the different blocks may be and help them decide whether this is something they want to step into.

Aaron Wilson: Yeah. Really, getting that to metastasize and something that they want to step into, what are some of the ripple effects that you've seen in organizations when people start adopting these practices?

Cristina Amigoni: Lots more trust and collaboration. It's amazing how, especially when we are around organizations long enough to see the progress, it's amazing how you can have two people, or certain groups that do not talk to each other, unless there's a formal meeting, or there's a formal way that somebody else organized for that conversation and collaboration to happen. Then once they start practicing some of the tools and once they start again, thawing through different settings, that those walls, they get into this new mode of like, “Oh, I just pick up the phone and call them and resolve it, as opposed to wait for the meeting, that the staff meeting in a month with 20 of us in it.”

A lot of those things we've seen then carry forward, like ears carry forward. Having this type of experience in one setting and then carrying forward those relationships and that trust and the de-siloing that happens between departments and teams three, four years later, it's still happening. There's still that trust built, because the relationship and the connection were prioritized in the same way and with the tools.

Alex Cullimore: I think that’s a huge one. That's the one you see on the outside the most. One other interesting corollary that sometimes comes up is that there's actually a really heavy tie over between our relationship with ourselves and our relationship with other people. We have voices at our head that we talk to, essentially. Whether if we like feel it or not, whether feel like we're engaging in some dialogue or not, there's things that we're engaging with. When we do things like practice LAVA and get into deep listening, we get a little better at putting ourselves in that empathetic and curious space, and that can help us with our own relationship to ourselves. That puts us into a better spot of not judging what's coming up for ourselves.

If we can start to practice that acknowledging and validating of you see this is what's coming up, and I think I understand why I might be upset by this, that helps us not move our own shame spirals and meta feelings. As you do that, people all take the temperature down, so you're giving other people space. They tend to then give other people space. As you practice these tools, you're giving yourself space. There's more room for people to feel there's breathing room and that's a lot easier to develop trust when people are not feeling under the gun and not feeling like there is something that is pressuring them inside or out.

Cristina Amigoni: The more trust, more collaboration, more empathy.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah.

Aaron Wilson: Yeah. Definitely. That covers us for all the questions related to this theme of one-on-one relationships, listening and building trust.

Alex Cullimore: Join us next time where we find out what other hard questions Cristina has written down for us.

Cristina Amigoni: That I'm not going to read. It's going to be a whole surprise for me.

Alex Cullimore: Jumping in zero. Let's do this.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Yes. Well, thanks for listening deeply.

Alex Cullimore: Yes. Thank you very much.

[END OF EPISODE]

Alex Cullimore: Thanks so much for listening to Uncover the Human. We Are Siamo, that is the company that sponsors and created this podcast. If you’d like to reach out to us further, reach out with any questions, or to be on the podcast, please reach out to podcast@wearesiamo.com. Or you can find us on Instagram. Our handle is @wearesiamo, S-I-A-M-O. Or you can go to wearesiamo.com and check us out there. I suppose, Cristina, you and I have LinkedIn as well. People could find us anywhere else.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, we do have LinkedIn. Yes. Yeah. We’d like to thank Abbay Robinson for producing our podcast and making sure that they actually reach all of you. And Rachel Sherwood for the wonderful score.

Alex Cullimore: Thank you guys so much for listening. Tune in next time.

Cristina Amigoni: Thank you. 

[END]