How Listening Creates Space For People To Thrive

"Cristina Amigoni: Leadership is about others, which I think it is about others. It's about serving others and creating that space so that they can grow, they can provide value. They can show up as their best selves."

Alex Cullimore: Welcome back to this episode of Uncover the Human. Today, it's Cristina and I, and we're here to talk about listening, and why listening is important to leadership. We help leaders in all kinds of ways, but really one of the things that we always end up going back to is how much it helps to be a strong listener. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. And I think the format for this is going to be that one of us talks and the other listens the whole time and see how we do.

Alex Cullimore: We're going to see how much people get out of a one-sided monologue for 25 minutes. 

Cristina Amigoni: Maybe that's not what we mean by listening in leadership. 

Alex Cullimore: So, let's unpack this a little bit. Why is listening important? Why is listening important to leadership? 

Cristina Amigoni: Well, why is listening important to leadership? It's a good thing we just published a master class on this, and now I have to go back and remember what we said. And we do this all the time actually. This is one of our most popular topics in our leadership programs and trainings. 

I think listening is important for leadership because, well, first of all, the leader is human. And so the definition of leadership for me at least, it's creating the space where people can provide the most value possible. And listening is a key part of creating that space. Because if we fill that space with all our vomiting of words and opinions, nobody else needs to be in the room. 

I mean, we can have a monologue in front of the mirror if we want to pretend that we have witnesses. But where's the exchange? Leadership is about others, which I think it is about others. It's about serving others and creating that space so that they can grow, they can provide value, they can show up as their best selves and supporting that. Then listening is a key piece of providing them with the opportunity to share what it is that they can bring to the room. 

Alex Cullimore: I think that's exactly right. I think that leadership ends up – if you think about what leaders are tasked with, you have to do things, like grow a team. You have to develop people, which means you have to understand that person and know how to develop them. How are they best going to respond? What are they best suited for? What would they like to grow into? What challenges can they be offered? And how will you know that unless you can listen to what's happening? You can listen to what other people are saying. You can listen to them. You can understand deeply what they're worried about. Try to see through the things that they might feel like they have to put up as a mask and try to get to the person that really is there. That's one. You have to grow people. 

You also have to make tough decisions. You're going to have to make a decision about what direction we're going to go. You're going to take people with you on that decision. How do you know what is the right decision and what problems you're really facing if you can't listen to the problems that are being suggested by customers, the problems that people are seeing internally that need to be resolved so you have better processes? 

If you can't understand those things, or if people aren't willing to share them with you because they don't think you're going to listen, or they don't think it's going to happen, it's going to be a lot harder to lead, which is why we called our master class Listen Better, Lead Better, because it is the underpinning of so many things that you have to do. And like you said, it's about building space, too. 

If you want to build psychological safety, psychological safety being the idea that people can speak up when things are wrong, can admit to mistakes, can also raise issues before they become major issues, can say, "Hey, I don't think this is going to work. And here's what I think might be a better option. Or here's what I don't like about our current trajectory." If they can't bring that up because they don't think they're going to be listened to, then you're going to miss out on a lot of really important data to make good decisions, to have a built team that will actually be able to do the things that need to happen. 

And you're a leader. You're not supposed to do the things. You're supposed to help the people do the things. And how can you achieve this if you can't listen to all the things that you need to hear? 

Cristina Amigoni: As you were talking, I kept thinking of the phrase that it's very misplaced and used. And it's used in a shaming and guilt way. So, it's not used very well. I think it probably has some good intentions sometimes, but I probably wouldn't say that most of the times it does. 

And especially somebody with a title, let's not call them a leader, but somebody with a title says, "Don't bring me problems. Bring me solutions." And what I think about that is if you actually have to say that out loud, you have a major psychological safety problem and a major not listening problem. Because if the space and the psychological safety, and you do your part in listening as a leader, as a person with title, then people will actually come with ideas for solutions automatically without you having to say that. 

Alex Cullimore: I really like that. That's a great litmus test for like – it's like having to say like, "No, I'm the boss here. This is what's going to happen." If you have to say it, people aren't really – if you have to say you're the leader, you're not the leader. People are not following. They are not doing it. And I also am going to just adopt the phrase person of title, which is a great acronym, POT. There's a big pot over there.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. 

Alex Cullimore: A real pothead, if you will. 

Cristina Amigoni: Actually, maybe you can listen more when you're a pothead. 

Alex Cullimore: I mean, you're too slow to speak at that point. But I like that notion, person of title, versus a leader. I think that's going to be – that should be the title for this episode, is person of title versus leader. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. 

Alex Cullimore: You can be as up the ladder as you want. But until you can actually understand, and digest, and create the space and allow people to flourish, it's going to be really hard to be an effective leader. And that is why we continually go back to, and why listening ends up being one of our most popular on-demand things. And what people get the most out of is the listening segments and the lava segment of our course, because it's about having those tools in your pocket so that you can have the ability to have deep conversations. Open up that space. Reduce the anxiety of I always have to have the answer but I'm not sure what the answer is. Go find the answer. It's fine. You can ask people. You can listen. You can hear the problems. 

And if you just have people speaking openly, they'll already have brought you solutions. They'll have brought you things that you can consider. You'll have a better, more fleshed out idea in front of you that you didn't have to go source, or try and Google, or pretend like you're the most cleverest person in the world so that you can do this, so that you were the one who knew it. You have to find the answers out there. And you have to be able to listen to the context of what's happening. And if you can't do those things, it's going to be much harder to make effective decisions. 

Cristina Amigoni: And if you are a person that wants to have all the answers or feels the need to have all the answers, feels the need to fill the void, fill the room with their own voice all the time, ask yourself why. And I'm going to offend a lot of people when I say this, but that's a confidence issue. Just so you know, the confident people can sit in a room and say absolutely nothing for most of the time. But if you feel like you were the one that has to speak all the time to show your knowledge, to show off what it is that you bring, then I don't know, get a coach, get a therapist, figure out where the confidence is coming from. 

Alex Cullimore: I think that's a good way of putting it. It really is like if you feel like you have to have and you feel like you have to be the one to share it, that is a good question. Why is that important? What is the story you're telling in your head that will happen if you don't have the answer? We all have those fears, we have those fears of like, "Oh, I step this way, or I say this thing." And that's when, to quote Bird by Bird, a bony white finger pokes out of the clouds and says, "We told you not to do this."

There is some fears we usually have. There's some kind of thing that is hiding that will give us a very triggering response and something we're afraid of happening. And it's entirely human to have all those fears. But if we don't address them, that leaves us vulnerable to just being the person that ends up accidentally making that mistake multiple times or fighting our way through something that doesn't need to cause this much stress and is causing a lot of stress to us whether we're admitting it or not. And that's a painful way to live. 

And that's actually another great example of listening. Can you listen to yourself honestly? Are you hearing what you're really saying internally? Can you feel the energy of like, "Oh, I want to believe this, or I want to say this, but I don't really feel it." Can you feel that dissonance? Can you find that? And that's a muscle you have to work over and over and over again. But it's a huge part of listening. And that's a huge part of self-awareness. And that's a huge part of leadership. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, I really like that. Can you listen to yourself? Leadership starts from within. And it's, first, can you listen to yourself? It's like what's happening? What's the rumble? What are the demons? What's happening? What's the inner critic saying that is causing the need to not create the space for others? To be a POT instead of a leader? What's happening there? 

And then once you figure that out, then you know it is the leading by example. It's like show up differently. If you're not sure, ask. Again, ask so you can listen. Listen to the response. It's like how can I best create space for everybody to speak up in this meeting? Because I've noticed that everybody speaks up. Make the assumption that people that have an opinion. People always have an opinion. Everybody has an opinion about everything. Because one of the things that's for sure is that like we judge and we have an opinion about every single thing around us all the time. 

Alex Cullimore: Just look on the internet. Go into any comment section. 

Cristina Amigoni: Exactly. If you ask a question, or if you say, "Hey," in a meeting, "anybody have any questions? Or anybody have anything to say?" and nobody says anything, or just the same people speak up, it's not because the rest of the people is brain dead and doesn't have an opinion. It's because the rest of the group doesn't feel safe in this situation. The space has never been created or has not been created with this person in the room to actually say what they think. 

And you don't know what the treasures are. You don't know what problem may be arising because people are not stepping up. Talk about like the Boeing 737. Is it the 737? All of these things are listening issues at the core. It's a listening issue. Somebody didn't listen. Somebody didn't create a POT. Did not create the space for actual listening. 

Alex Cullimore: Are you speaking to a leader, or are you speaking to a pot? And that's the question we should all be asking. 

Cristina Amigoni: And I'm pretty sure the pot – an actual pot will listen because it can't speak back. 

Alex Cullimore: It's such a great image of just sitting in front of a desk and there's just a pot in the chair. Maybe it just ambiently swivels back to the front. It's just a pot. 

Cristina Amigoni: Chief pot officer.

Alex Cullimore: Oh, god. Wow. Yeah, I'm going to be taking that acronym to the bank. This is why we talk about LAVA in our course, because LAVA – and we've talked about this on the podcast before. We've talked about that. This is a huge part of our leadership classes. It's our framework for listen, acknowledge, validate, and ask open-ended questions. And I really like this idea that you could do that to yourself. Or, as I'm going to cheekily phrase it now, practice some self-LAVA.

Cristina Amigoni: Put the pot down. 

Alex Cullimore: Don't be a pot to yourself. Don't be your own pot. 

Cristina Amigoni: Don't be your own pot. Make some pasta in the pot, but don't be your own pot.

Alex Cullimore: This is all good reasons that I think listening is such a crucial skill. And it's one we're just not taught. We're taught to be able to absorb information from teachers and then put it back on tests. And we're taught to be able to present things. We're taught to be able to speak. We're taught to be able to regurgitate and say that these are the things that I know, which I think is part of like, "Oh, I must be the person with the answers the more important I get." 

This is I think the fallacy that we lose out on the opportunity to look at the other side. What if listening was the key to being able to do those things well? And what if that's something that underpins so much? You can reduce conflict. You can reduce your worry with your teams. You can open up some space. You can have the ability to understand enough of the context of what's going on to hopefully make an informed decision and maybe a particularly creative or bold decision that wouldn't have come up in a strategy meeting if you're just locking yourself in a room and saying, "What path do we take forward?" 

Cristina Amigoni: And you talk to a pot about it. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes. Just you and your pot. 

Cristina Amigoni: A room full of pots. And you look at the pots and you're trying to figure out the solution. I'm sure you can buy a good setup on Costco at some point of pots. They do that. 

Alex Cullimore: You can get them in bulk. Got so many pots now. I'm surrounded by pots. 

Cristina Amigoni: We may have to actually create some swag. Pots with our logo on it. And that's the thing, the key of listening. And this is probably out of – I don't know. I think we have like 200 and some 20 podcasts. We probably talked about listening as a key skill for leadership and just humans in general probably like 150 times. And yes, we're talking about it again. And I do find the oxymoron of us talking about listening. 

Alex Cullimore: Could you listen to us, please? 

Cristina Amigoni: Could you listen to us as we telling you that listening is important while we do all the talking? 

Alex Cullimore: It's just a subject of the media. Call us. Dial us in if you want to do the talking, we'll do the listening. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. And that is actually most of the work that we do outside of the podcast is we create space where we're mostly listening. And some of our most successful meetings with clients have been meetings where we get off the phone, and we're like, "I think I said two words in that meeting. I think I said hi, how are you?" Four, five, whatever how many that is. 

Alex Cullimore: Kick off with how are things going. 

Cristina Amigoni: And then for half an hour, everything came out, everything got resolved. Not by us. And then it was like I feel so much better now. 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. And that is because we have practiced enough listening that we do create that space. We have the trust, where, within a half an hour, somebody will be able to open up enough to go unpack their own blocks to be able to listen to themselves by speaking and be able to hear what they need to do. And so many people – I've never really met people who don't have the right skills. There's just so many mental obstacles in the way. And that applies to myself just as much as anybody else. It's not really a skill issue. It's just we get in our own way so much. And listening can be a really powerful tool for helping step around that for yourself, for others. It's so necessary and so hard to really do until you've really practiced it. 

Cristina Amigoni: It is very hard to do. One of my favorite things about listening is how much you learn. You learn so much if you focus on listening and if you focus on LAVA. It's quite incredible. You find these treasures of how the expectations of how humans will react is not the truth. But then you see this whole new side of them. And then you learn even from the context that they bring and the knowledge that they bring. It's truly an enriching skill because you're constantly just learning amazing things. 

For example, I just said to match the conflict and the listening, because that's a theme that we're recording today, after all the spring break and the February sick month with my kids, we're kind of trying to get back into what the hell is happening with your classes and your assignments. Because, unfortunately, as much as I would like to turn the notifications off from the electronic infinite campus that tells me every single time my kids blow their nose in their classroom, it also tells me when assignments are missing or there's something coming up and all of that. 

And so I've been paying a little more attention recently because there have been some missing assignments due to spring break, being sick, the combination, all of this thing. Communication issues for the most part. I'm very lucky. Our kids are very good at keeping track of what they need to do without me being involved. And so I had to have a hard conversation with one of my sons who have kind of let go of a couple of assignments that he's missed in the February sick month and everything else since. 

And that kind of initial problem of wanting to go in as the mother and say it's going to be this, this, and this, and this, and this, and not providing the space for listening was definitely the initial default of I have to lay down the rule. I'm going to do all the speaking. He's going to have to just agree, and we move on. 

And then when I went to pick up my son at school and I was like, what if I actually flip this and do something different? What if I drink my own Kool-Aid? We talk about LAVA for adults. What if I actually use it for my kids? And so I actually started with just asking like, "Hey, I've gotten these notifications. Can you tell me what's going on? What do you know about these assignments that seem to be missing on the electronic?" And I also tell them, I don't fully trust that the technology knows everything. Tell me what's happening with these assignments. What's your version of the story? And it's amazing how that conversation went completely differently than what I had it in my mind. 

Alex Cullimore: That's a great example of it. Yeah, if you just start something with curiosity, look what you're going to find. And if you start something with essentially either a direction or, even worse, an accusation, how's the other person going to respond other than defensively? And then people can be like, "Well, you really acted defensively." Yes, that's pretty understandable. What were you expecting? I'm guessing you built that up in your head, too. And then it's just such an important idea that you can just start with curiosity and you can get so much more out of it. 

And I love the idea that it is just an enriching experience. The more you learn, the more you see how other people are interpreting life, which the way people have approached something is so entirely different that you hadn't even thought this is possible. And sometimes this incredible opening of like, "Oh, wow. There's a totally different way I could be approaching this. And actually, I can let go of all these things if I think of it that way." And there's so much you get to learn about yourself. There's so much you get to learn about other people. There's so much you can just do when you have that listening experience, that listening muscle. And I really love that. And that it usually is a muscle that you can just kind of practice and redo. And we all have to go back and revisit and put ourselves back into that mindset every once in a while. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, we definitely do. And if we think about the fact that listening is the key component to be able to have connections with others, and I'm sure it's an algorithm thing. And I don't know why this morning that's what happened, but the algorithm on my Instagram this morning kept sending me things that I've seen multiple times about the Harvard study that came out a few months ago where the number one predictor of living a healthy life and living longer is human connections. Actually, everything else is much lower. I'm not saying go out and eat junk food. But it is much lower. 

You can actually do all those other things, like eat healthy, exercise, be outside in nature, sleep well, and all these things. But if you lack genuine human deep connections, then you're going to live a less healthy and probably shorter life than the people that prioritize human connections and really good relationships. And those can't happen without listening. 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. And as somebody who struggles to occasionally maintain connections over time, what I'm really hearing is that as long as I get a new friend, I can have another bag of Cheetos. That's what I got for this. 

Cristina Amigoni: It actually does say deep relationships. And good luck with creating a deep relationship after one encounter and not maintaining it. But if you want the bag of Cheetos, I'm sure that your only – 

Alex Cullimore: That's my new carrot. 

Cristina Amigoni: I'm sure you can still have a bag of Cheetos. 

Alex Cullimore: I'm just going to put that bag of Cheetos in front of my face, and then I'll just keep moving towards that. Like a horse drawn to a carrot. 

Cristina Amigoni: You should give the bag of Cheetos to the friend and then they determine whether you're worthy. You're worthy. It's like, okay, you can have one Cheeto for this one time. 

Alex Cullimore: How we turn this from listening into let people judge if you're worthy. That's a real hard swing on that one. 

Cristina Amigoni: And wanting to get the worthiness confirmed by Cheetos. 

Alex Cullimore: You've gone from relationships could help trauma, too. Make sure your relationship includes trauma. 

Cristina Amigoni: It's like the string. Now I have the carrot on the string in front of your head. I have the Cheeto. 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. Yeah. 

Cristina Amigoni: Do you want the Cheeto? Do you want the Cheeto? Okay. Reply to the text message. Here's the Cheeto. 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. Oof. Not liking this. This is going a dark, dark way. 

Cristina Amigoni: Play the next get together. Here's the second Cheeto. 

Alex Cullimore: Oof. That's too long to wait between Cheetos. 

Cristina Amigoni: Like, "Oh, no." You said no, or you didn't show up, or you picked the wrong place. No, sorry. No Cheetos for you for the next month. 

Alex Cullimore: This is convincing me. I'd rather live in a small shack on an island with nobody. So, I'll live a less fulfilling, less healthy life. It'll be fine. 

Cristina Amigoni: A shack made of Cheetos. Because, otherwise, how are you going to get your Cheetos? 

Alex Cullimore: Well, maybe we all have sacrifices to make. And now we've learned a lot about my preference on people just by you listening to this.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Alex would rather live on an island by himself hunting for Cheetos than listen to someone to create a relationship. 

Alex Cullimore: At least I'm consciously aware of the choice I'm making. I've listened internally, and this is the commitment. 

Cristina Amigoni: When you take our master class on listen better and lead better and you have to choose which coach to actually have your coaching session with, choose the other one. Not the Alex one. 

Alex Cullimore: I will have you know, all of my coaching clients have loved my listening. I am a very good listener. 

Cristina Amigoni: You are. You are a very good listener. You're a very good listener. And you're a very good coach. 

Alex Cullimore: But choose wisely. 

Cristina Amigoni: Or bring Cheetos, whichever. 

Alex Cullimore: That is a good point. With all of our master classes, we do have a coaching session, so that you don't have to just listen to us as we talk on a podcast. We will listen to you on a totally different spectrum. So, feel free to join our our master class, Listen Better, Lead Better, available on our website. And we'll put the link in the show notes. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. And happy listening. 

Alex Cullimore: Happy listening. 

Cristina Amigoni: To us and everybody else. 

Alex Cullimore: Thanks so much for listening to Uncover the Human. We are Siamo. That is the company that sponsors and created this podcast. And if you'd like to reach out to us further, or 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. Or you can go to wearesiamo.com and check us out there. Or I suppose, Cristina, you and I have LinkedIn as well. People could find us anywhere. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, we do have LinkedIn. Yes. Yeah. And 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.

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