Katie O’Malley, Founder of (en)Courage Coaching, is on a mission to create workplaces that do no harm by equipping leaders with the skills to prevent toxicity and foster cultural transformation.

We dive into Katie’s career path from political campaigns and higher education to leadership coaching, and explore her Power of Listening Framework—the AIR Methodology: Attention, Intention, and Recognition. Katie shares how listening well is one of the most powerful tools leaders have to build trust, increase engagement, and demonstrate respect. We also discuss how she uses LEGO Serious Play to unlock team vulnerability and build connection in a playful but profound way.

Good day, dear listeners, Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast. And my guest today is Katie O’Malley, the founder of (en)Courage Coaching. She has helped over 200 leaders and leadership teams prevent toxic workspace experiences and create cultural transformations across the US and the UK. Katie, welcome to the show.

Steve, thank you so much for having me. I’m delighted to be here and really eager for our conversation and to be helpful to your audience.

I’m sure you will be very helpful. You bring a different perspectives than what we had, the previous 300 guests, so definitely very interesting. But let’s start with my favorite question, which is, what is your personal “Why” and what are you doing to manifest it in your practice?

Absolutely. So my personal “Why” goes all the way back to when I was in college studying political science. I have always wanted to make a positive impact in the world, the communities that I’m a part of, the connections and the relationships that I have. And that thread has pulled throughout my entire career, whether it was working on political campaigns and nonprofit organizations or in higher education. And eventually what I realized is I had this kind of itch for small business ownership, entrepreneurship, having the agency and autonomy to work the way that I wanted to work and took that, combined it with my “Why” of really helping folks at the intersection of mental health and work.

It’s where we spend eight, 10, 12 hours of our day. And to think that it doesn’t have an impact on how we move through the world or our overall well-being is bonkers. And so

I spend my days really helping folks to align their strengths, talents, and values with the roles and organizations that they're pursuing.
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Yeah, I mean, it’s a huge thing and a lot of companies don’t realize that they have these employees in the company and if they are happy, they’re going to be much more productive. They are going to project a much better impression of the company to the outside world. They are going to make their customers happier. So it’s really worth investing in improving the mental health and the happiness of the people in the company. That’s a big lever that you’re pulling there. So let’s take this as a good pivot point because we are podcasting on frameworks, as you know, and our listeners know. I’m always on the hunt for a good framework that someone has discovered. What you do definitely is an important topic. You talk about the empathy, you have background in counseling. So you came up with a framework called the Power of Listening Framework, and I would love it for you to explain why it’s important and how does it work with our listeners?

Yeah. So I call it the AIR Methodology. A stands for attention, I stands for intention, R stands for recognition. And this is actually the amalgamation of my training and education as a counselor, where I spent three years learning how to listen for a living. That was the entirety of the program. And one of the most brilliant books that I ever read was one called On Dialogue, and it was written by an astrophysicist, of all folks. His name is Dr. David Bohm, and essentially what he had come up with were the building blocks of dialogue. So how are we actually communicating with one another. And from there, I started to learn the entire listening skill set, which includes so many different practices that folks need to be engaging in to listen well.

But it can be really overwhelming for someone who is not in the field of counseling therapy, helping professionals, coaching, to say, all right, I’m going to spend all of this time, effort and energy learning this skillset that while is important for me as a leader actually is not what I specialize in cause I’m a website developer, I’m a software engineer. I am the chief financial officer of a company. That’s where my expertise lies. And so instead of making the attempt to educate and train folks up on the dozens of skills of listening, I’m really trying to distill them down into three main practices. So

the AIR Methodology, what I say is listening is a function of attention.
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And so when we’re talking about intention and recognition, it’s not just about offering those pieces to the person that you are in conversation with or listening to or in dialogue with, but you’re also applying that methodology to yourself as well. How are you attending to the reaction that’s happening in your heart, your mind, your body? How are you intending to also understand what’s happening with you and recognize you are a human and not a robot? You’re going to have an emotional response, but how are you recognizing that simply by listening to what someone else has to share in their perspective, it doesn’t mean you’re rubber stamping it or agreeing with it. You’re just giving them the space to be seen and heard by you, which as humans, it’s the reason we’re here. It’s the reason that Homo sapiens are here and Neanderthals went by the wayside. We lived in community and supported each other in ways that they did not. And so, listening and attention is a big part of that.

Yeah. Just to add a remark here. So, when I was a Vistage facilitator, Vistage peer group company, and when I was a facilitator there, we had the saying there among these Vistage facilitators that listening is so close to love that you cannot say the difference. It was very interesting that people are hungry for being listened to and it’s very powerful. Sorry, I broke your train of thought. So attention. What about intention?

Yeah. So there’s attention and then intention.

I always say your intention is going to be the same for every conversation or dialogue you enter into.
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Yeah, I love it. That it’s about really being present and understand what the other is trying to convey as opposed to thinking about our own response. For example, a sports game from last night. And this is hard work. Listening is much harder than talking. People think that communication is all about conveying messages, but it’s at least as much, if not more, about receiving messages from the other person.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I was on a podcast, recorded a podcast yesterday, and they’re like, oh my gosh, you have the gift of gab. You’re so good at this. And I said, I might have the gift of gab, but that all stems from being able to really listen to somebody else and ask good questions and keep them talking so that I have something more full and whole to be able to respond to. And it is, it’s so difficult to do. As humans, we communicate at roughly 165 words per minute, which is basically a bicycle with training wheels compared to the speed at which our brain can process information. And it’s one of the main reasons it’s so difficult to focus and not have our minds wander to the sports game from the night before or what it is we have to pick up from the grocery store. But it’s one of the reasons that in that attention piece,

if we're really engaging in the performance of active listening through our nonverbal affects, it can really help to keep us focused and our attention where it needs to be.
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Okay, very interesting. So attention, intention, what about recognition?

Yeah, recognition. Steve, I don’t know about you, but I truly feel the world would be better off if each of us moved through the world trying to recognize the humanness and the humanity of the people that we’re interacting with. And one of the very best ways to be able to do that is confer dignity and respect through your ability to attend to them and also have that intention of just sheer understanding, suspending judgment and assumption. So, this is where we pull in some of the research from David Bohm.

We get on our own way of being able to connect with other humans because we are making assumptions and judgments that we have and have evolved to have.
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I love how you explained the respect recognition. I’ve been struggling with explaining this. One of the core values of my practice and my company is treating everyone with respect. And I kind of struggled. It was a visceral thing that I wanted to have as a core value, but I couldn’t really explain it satisfactorily to other people why it’s important. I mean, it’s obviously important, but I love how you talk about the humanity of the others, the conferring dignity to the other person and the judgment piece, suspending judgment. That is the challenging thing, not to be courteous, but to actually giving people the benefit of the doubt or the benefit of our doubts, our lack of knowledge or being grounded and being self-aware. So, love it. So, attention, intention and recognition. That’s a great framework. Any user manual that you could attach to this? So how do I do AIR?

Yeah. So the user manual for it is actually going to be delivered from a TEDx stage in Boston at the end of next month. So while I love to give it all away, yeah, the best pieces of this, I’m just so excited to share from the red dot on the TEDx stage, but for folks that are really looking to engage in this practice, I think the biggest thing that you can do is just start with the attention focus. Because like I said, listening is a function of attention. If we cannot give our undivided attention to somebody else, it’s going to be really challenging to offer that intention of listening to understand and the recognition of their humanity. If our eyes are wandering, if we’re checking our phones, if we’re being pinged and vibrated away from the person, it makes it really challenging. And so for anyone looking to improve their listening, I encourage you to start with focusing on your attending behaviors. So, things like the non-verbals around making eye contact, leaning in, nodding your head, saying things along the way like, tell me more. That’s so interesting.

These are things that we call minimal encouragers that keep people talking, but also keep you focused because you are bringing your physical self to attention, which then also helps your brain.
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Yeah. It just reminds me that actually a well-known thought leader, I’m not going to say his name, in one of his CD recordings, he made this comment, which is actually the opposite. So it’s about faking attention when you really don’t have the bandwidth. He explained a situation that he’s driving home after an exhausting workshop and his wife is picking him up from the airport. He’s got a much younger wife who’s very chatty and basically he wants to give her the space but he doesn’t have the bandwidth anymore to focus. And he kind of shares this practice that whenever his wife finishes a sentence, he just repeats the last word with a question mark. She keeps on going, she keeps on going. But anyhow, I guess this is a negative example.

No, no. It’s, I mean, what you’re describing there from this thought leader is a practice called verbal tracking. So how can we demonstrate to someone that we’re listening to perform listening without having them feel like they’re being interrogated by us. And so repeating a word or a phrase that caught your attention or you want a little more information on and putting a question mark at the end, that is a great practice, but do it from a place of actual interest, not fake interest. And I would say sometimes we don’t have the bandwidth to listen the way that we want to and offer that respect and dignity because we don’t have the cognitive or emotional or physical capacity in that moment. And in those times, it’s okay to say, I don’t think I have the capacity to give you the attention that you deserve. Can we find a time later today or tomorrow or in the example that you gave, after we get home, have some dinner? I can then really take that time to attend to you in the way that you deserve. That can go a really long way as well.

Okay, that’s good. I’m glad that this is a legit approach. So you say that the upcoming TEDx talk is going to be about that. Is it going to be about the AIR framework?

Yeah, it’s focusing in on the AIR framework. And I actually start with a story from childhood where I get essentially punished, grounded by my mom for not listening to a friend. And she was the first person to help me see that listening is a show of respect, listening is a show of dignity,

listening is the only way that we can really connect with someone and demonstrate that we care.
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You just have to ground them for two weeks.

Two weeks. And I’d never been grounded before, Steve. I was 11 years old, had never been grounded, and I got grounded for not listening or giving the space for my friend, Jenny, to share her stories with me.

What a gift from a parent to do that. Must have been very comfortable for her because as a parent and you ground the child, it just puts more burden on you because then they’re going to be around, you have to keep them engaged, you have to make sure that they don’t break the grounding because then you lose your power to ground them again. That’s huge. That’s huge. Now that you’re explaining this, I just recall that when I was a Vistage facilitator, one of the things we did was we had these so-called coaching sessions where we would meet with the CEOs and spend an hour and a half with them. And what I noticed was that most of the CEOs actually didn’t want to be coached.

They just wanted to be listened to. So they wanted a sympathetic ear, someone who actually understood what they were going through, who had a similar entrepreneurial background. And they didn’t want to be coached, but they really wanted to be heard. And the service we were providing was to listen to them. And it actually was a very tiring process, to be honest with you. It was more tiring than as if we had a conversation because the attention, when you speak, you don’t have to focus your attention because you are essentially stream of consciousness. But the other person thinks then you have to control your thoughts and be present exactly what you’re explaining.

Yeah, there is nothing easy about listening. It takes a great amount of energy and effort. There’s a reason for folks who are in helping professions like coaching and therapy, so much time in that training and education is focused on, on just how to listen, because especially at the top with CEOs, it’s so lonely up there. The things that they’re feeling really challenged by, it’s hard to necessarily share that with the folks in your C-suite because everyone’s kind of experiencing the same thing. And so to be able to find a partner that is really willing to listen, to understand, and not just offer solutions. It’s what we all want as humans, whether we are in the mail room or in the C-suite.

Yeah, it’s easy to be a fixer. It’s harder to be patient and bear the pain of the other person explaining their predicament and be present and share that and empathize with it. It’s much harder. Okay, very great. Well, before we wrap this up, I like to just ask a question because in our pre-interview, you mentioned about the LEGO, that you actually use LEGO not to build castles and houses and playgrounds and other things, but you actually use it to build teams. So how can one use LEGO to build teams?

Yes. So my gosh, I love LEGO Serious Play. It’s another methodology that I leverage in my coaching practice. The LEGO Serious Play as an idea actually came from the folks at LEGO. Back in the 90s, they were really struggling with their bottom line. Kids weren’t interested in LEGO, so parents weren’t buying them. And even though adults now are, this is very much hobby central for so many adults, they didn’t have products that were really engaging them. And they said, what if we took our product to solve the problem of selling our product? And one of the things that they realized throughout this process is that there was very little trust within the LEGO organization. So people weren’t sharing their ideas out of fear of having that idea stolen. They also weren’t sharing ideas out of fear that they would be looked at or admonished for it not being a great idea or a great perspective.

People weren’t feeling valued. And so, LEGO Serious Play has two different tracks to it.

One is about trust building, collaboration and teaming.
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I feel like LEGO is just omnipresent whenever I’m out and about, but from a teaming perspective, it’s really about building trust. So oftentimes when I go in to facilitate a team building session with LEGO, I’ll say, if I asked you right now to turn to your partner and share about your childhood, you would roll your eyes at best and likely walk out of the room at worst, because it’s so vulnerable. But if I say, all right, I want you to build with your LEGO a building that was really meaningful to you in childhood. And then I’m gonna ask you after you finish building it to explain all of the different pieces that you selected to build this building. Suddenly, we’re getting stories about grandma’s special spaghetti sauce. And how important this was to the glue of the family as you were growing up. Stories you would never share necessarily with a colleague or be prompted to share all because you were able to externalize it into a stack of bricks. And suddenly it’s not your experience, but it is this model and

it takes the vulnerability out of the equation for a second to let people start to share things that really establish trust on teams.
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That’s very interesting. So you externalize an emotion through this plastic toy. You can actually talk about it. That’s fascinating. Well, definitely.

Magic.

Yeah, it’s something our listeners can try at home. It’s not too dangerous or in their office.

Nope, nope. They absolutely can.

So if someone would like to learn more about the LEGO Serious Play that you do and also maybe the AIR techniques or anything else, they wanna be at your TEDx talk, they wanna learn where it’s gonna be, where should they go and how can they connect with you?

Yeah, so head over to my website, encouragecoaching.org, but also sharing the most up-to-date information in a pretty dynamic way on different social media platforms. So on LinkedIn, give me a follow, linkedin.com/in/kateomalley/, or on Instagram at @encouragecoachchicago, where you can stay up to date on all of the great stuff coming down the pike.

Fantastic. So definitely, if you like to listen better to your people so that you get them to engage and do more for your company, or just to build better relationships with them, then definitely check out Katie’s website, encouragecoaching.org and hit her up on LinkedIn and Instagram and other places. And if you enjoyed the show, please give us a follow on YouTube. I guess a review on Apple Podcast or wherever you are listening to us. And make sure that you keep on listening because every week, I’m bringing an exciting guest with good ideas that you can apply in your business to you. So, thank you for coming, Katie, and thank you for listening.