Coaching for Leaders

Oscar Trimboli: Deep Listening

Oscar is a mentor, coach, speaker, and author. He was a director at Microsoft for over a decade and headed up the MS Office division in Australia. Today, he works with leadership teams and their organizations on the importance of clarity to create change, how to embrace the digital economy, and the role values play in the achievement of your purpose. He is the author of Deep Listening: Impact Beyond Words*.

Key Points

Listen beyond the words that are said and try to determine what the speaker is really trying to say.

The more senior you are, the more listening you’ll do.

Ask the speaker: “Tell me more” or “What else are you thinking?” or “How long have you been thinking about that?”

To be a great listener, you have to create a space where you’re available to listen.

For every hour you listen, you need to spend another hour in action.

Leaders often are not great at hearing all the opinions in the room.

Bonus Audio

Three tips to becoming a better listener

Resources Mentioned

The 5 Myths of Listening

Deep Listening: Impact Beyond Words* by Oscar Trimboli

Book Notes

Download my highlights from Deep Listening in PDF format (free membership required).

Related Episodes

How to Be a Non-Conformist, with Adam Grant (episode 238)

How to Increase Your Conversational Intelligence, with Judith Glaser (episode 271)

How to Become the Person You Want to Be, with James Clear (episode 376)

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Bonni Stachowiak: Teaching in Higher Ed

Bonni Stachowiak is Dave’s life partner and best friend, business professor, past executive leader, and the host of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast.

Listener Questions

Brad asked about supporting a team member who’s being taken advantage of by someone else in the organization.

Mark is wondering about how to help an existing team move on to being a high-performing team.

Ashish asked about how to determine more in the interviewing process.

Craig wanted perspective on how to be more visible.

Resources Mentioned

The Empowered Manager* by Peter Block

Essentialism* by Greg Mckeown

Related Episodes

How to Deal with Opponents and Adversaries, with Peter Block (episode 328)

The Path to Start Leading Your Team, with John Piñeiro (episode 349)

Develop Leaders Before You Leave, with David Marquet (episode 405)

How to Work With an Executive Recruiter, with Becky deSouza (episode 406)

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Becky deSouza: Conexus Talent Acquisition Solutions

Becky is a partner with Conexus Talent Acquisition Solutions and has dedicated her career of 20+ years to developing effective solutions for Talent Development and Recruiting. Becky spent 11 years running DreamWorks Animation’s Corporate Recruiting team. Today she leads the human resources recruiting practice with Conexus.

Key Points

Recruiting firms can be regional, industry-specific, or functional.

Look to your network for leads, but be careful when networking with your colleagues.

Work to fully engage with your recruiter.

Be honest with your recruiter, even if you aren’t totally ready to commit.

Always keep your LinkedIn profile updated since it can serve as a type of resume.

Make sure your web and social presence is consistent with the expectations of your desired job.

Check your privacy settings on social media.

Resources Mentioned

Becky deSouza on LinkedIn

Related Episodes

How to Figure Out Your Career, with Scott Anthony Barlow (episode 259)

How to Write a Killer LinkedIn Profile, with Brenda Bernstein (episode 285)

How to Get the Ideal Team Player, with Patrick Lencioni (episode 301)

How to Find Your Calling, with Ken Coleman (episode 352)

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David Marquet: Turn the Ship Around!

David Marquet is the former commander of the U.S.S. Santa Fe, a nuclear-powered attack submarine. Under David’s command, the ship had an impressive turnaround, achieving the highest retention and operational standings in the Navy. David is the author of the bestseller Turn the Ship Around: A True Story of Turning Followers Into Leaders, a book USA Today called one of the 12 best business books of all time.

Key Points

Accomplishment is the production, leadership is building production capacity in your team.

Understanding the purpose of the organization is the key to unlocking empowerment.

You’ll suffer the consequences of your behavior if you couple the behavior with the outcome.

Resources Mentioned

Turn the Ship Around: A True Story of Turning Followers Into Leaders* by David Marquet

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People* by Stephen R. Covey

Book Notes

Download my highlights from Turn the Ship Around! in PDF format (free membership required).

Related Episodes

Start With Why, with Simon Sinek (episode 223)

Turn Followers Into Leaders, with David Marquet (episode 241)

How to Build Psychological Safety, with Amy Edmondson (episode 404)

Retrieval Practice, with Pooja Agarwal (episode 421)

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Amy Edmondson: The Fearless Organization

Amy Edmondson is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School. She has been recognized by the Thinkers50 global ranking of management thinkers for many years and was honored with their Talent Award in 2017. Amy is the author of several, highly regarded books on teaming and psychological safety, including her newest book, The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation and Growth*.

Key Points

Psychological safety varies a lot even inside of an organization.

More effective teams may appear to make more mistakes, but it’s likely those teams are just more comfortable reporting mistakes.

Instead of calling it an error, call it an accident. And rather than calling it an investigation, call it a study.

It’s fine to say, “I don’t know” when appropriate because it signals to others that it is okay to admit when they don’t know something.

If somebody shares a problem, say thank you and then ask how you can help.

Leaders should be concerned if they’re not hearing bad news.

Resources Mentioned

The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation and Growth* by Amy Edmondson

Amy Edmondson faculty page

Book Notes

Download my highlights from The Fearless Organization in PDF format (free membership required).

Related Episodes

Find Courage to Speak When It Matters Most, with Allan McDonald (episode 229)

Turn Followers Into Leaders, with David Marquet (episode 241)

The Path of Humble Leadership, with Edgar Schein (episode 363)

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Gretchen Rubin: Outer Order, Inner Calm

Gretchen Rubin explores happiness and good habits and is the author of several books, including the block-buster New York Times bestsellers, Better Than Before*, The Happiness Project*, Happier at Home*, and The Four Tendencies*. She is the author also of the new book Outer Order, Inner Calm: Declutter and Organize to Make More Room for Happiness*.

Key Points

When people have control over their stuff, they feel more in control of their lives.

If you need a physical reset, do 10 jumping jacks.

Your physical needs will override your emotional needs.

Resources Mentioned

Internal Time* by Till Roenneberg

Book Notes

Download my highlights from Outer Order, Inner Calm in PDF format (free membership required).

Related Episodes

How to Make Deep Work Happen, with Cal Newport (episode 233)

The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, with Daniel Pink (episode 332)

How to Reclaim Conversation, with Cal Newport (episode 400)

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Bonni Stachowiak: Teaching in Higher Ed

Bonni Stachowiak is the host of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, a professor of business and management at Vanguard University, and my life partner. Prior to her academic career, Bonni was a human resources consultant and executive officer for a publicly traded company. She joins me monthly to respond to listener questions.

Listener Questions

Peter asked about how to support a team member going through a difficult situation.

Mike wondered what strategies he could use to avoid being a micro-manager.

Roger asked about advice on next steps after an executive role didn’t work out.

Ali asked for input on assessments for executive presence.

Thomas wanted input on how to better design surveys.

Resources Mentioned

Hope for the Flowers* by Trina Paulus

Double Loop Learning

The Look & Sound of Leadership podcast by Tom Henschel

Related Episodes

How to Delegate Work Effectively (episode 117)

The Way to Lead After a Workplace Loss, with Andrew Stenhouse (episode 142)

Get ROI From Professional Associations, with John Corcoran (episode 209)

How to Move From Victim to Victor, with John Sanei (episode 366)

Get Smart About Assessments, with Ken Nowack (episode 371)

Unconscious Mistakes Women Make, with Lois Frankel (episode 386)

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Sheila Miller-Nelson: Midian

Sheila Miller-Nelson is owner of Midian Consulting. She’s dedicated to helping people learn how to truly connect to create better relationships and enhance leadership. She’s a former trainer with Dale Carnegie and her experience in communication and leadership coaching spans more than 25 years.

Key Points

We will often learn a lesson but because it seems trivial, we don’t remember it for the next time.

The way you practice determines how you perform.

Write down what you want to be known for and then share that with others.

The ability to humble yourself and admit when you’ve missed the mark will give you compassion for others when they fail.

Resources Mentioned

Midian Consulting

Related Episodes

How to Become a Champion, with Jeff Spencer (episode 186)

Leverage StrengthsFinder for Your Team, with Lisa Cummings (episode 293)

The Truth and Lies of Performance Management, with Michael Bungay Stanier (episode 361)

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Cal Newport: Digital Minimalism

Cal Newport is a computer science professor at Georgetown University who studies the theory of distributed systems. In addition to his academic work, he writes about the intersection of technology and culture. He’s the author of six books including Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World and Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World.

Key Points

The human brain is very sophisticated in how it navigates social dynamics using voice and visual cues. Digital interactions bypass the brain’s ability to see these cues.

Social media interactions might make you think you’re being social, but you can still lonely because your brain doesn’t count these interactions the same as person-to-person interactions.

Digital interactions are not bad, but they can crowd out more important real-world interactions.

Make sure tech is serving the things that are important in your life, rather than just using it as an escape from your life.

Small steps tend not to work when transitioning to digital minimalism. A better way is to take a 30-day break from consuming digital content and then rebuild your digital life from scratch.

Resources Mentioned

Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World* by Cal Newport

Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age* by Sherry Turkle

Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other* by Sherry Turkle

Book Notes

Download my highlights from Digital Minimalism in PDF format (free membership required).

Related Episodes

How to Make Deep Work Happen, with Cal Newport (episode 233)

The Power of Solitude, with Mike Erwin (episode 308)

Have Conversations That Matter, with Celeste Headlee (episode 344)

How to Create Meaningful Gatherings, with Priya Parker (episode 395)

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Applications are open through Friday, March 15th, to the Coaching for Leaders Academy. This is the fifth of five lessons on how to create meaningful movement on a leadership skill, using the same, 90-day framework used within our Academy community. Discover more and apply now.

The five-step framework to help you create movement in your leadership development that I’ve been detailing in these lessons is one of the tools we use to help leaders move forward in the Academy. If you missed any of the first four steps, here’s a quick recap:

Step 1: Determine Your Identity

That’s where you decide who you’re becoming. Taking on an identity is often more useful and sustainable than just setting a goal. The identity I’ve been taking on in these lessons is this one:

I communicate concisely in meetings.

Step 2: Take Daily Action

This is the step where you determine what action you can take in 5-10 minutes a day that will be the leading indicator that eventually gets you to this identity. In my case, I said for the daily action:

Once a day, I time myself speaking out loud a message I’m delivering later.

It’s key that the action is something you can integrate in your daily schedule so that you build momentum and also take on this new identity in an authentic way.

Step 3: Keep Yourself Motivated

This is where you determine in advance the indicators of success. That will help you stay motivated when you begin to see them. The indicators I picked for being concise were:

I’m noticing details that can be left out.

My practice sessions are shorter.

I'm getting asked for the details I left out.

Step 4: Calibrate With Stakeholders

This is where you get consistent, fast feedback from stakeholders, so that you can either verify you’re on track with changing behavior or that you can adjust your path forward, if need be. The action I planned to take was asking this question after a briefing:

I’m working on being more concise. What’s one thing you’d suggest I do in the next briefing that might help?

So, that brings us finally to step 5, which is to generate a quick win.

One of the top experts on change, John Kotter, long ago established that one of the best things you can do when leading organization change is to help generate quick wins. It turns out that this also works really well when we’re trying to change our own behavior.

As I mentioned in a few of the prior lessons, the hardest part of building a new leadership skill is often getting started — and the first few steps. Once you do take a few steps, and have a couple of wins, that will keep you going.

Back in 2011 when I started this podcast, nobody was listening to it. I could see on our media statistics that we were getting few downloads here and there, but mostly it was just a hobby for myself at the time.

Then one Saturday morning, about four months into airing the show every week, I was checking my email and there was a kind note from someone in the UK who had been listening to the show and said it had been helpful to him.

Even though it was just a short note, I still remember it and it was a great motivator at the time to keep going. When more emails came in future months, they helped keep me going too.

A quick win can go a long way.

You can do a lot better than I did. I waited for the quick win from someone else, but you can generate a quick win for yourself.

Step 5 is all about doing that. Thinking in advance about what quick win you can generate for yourself that’s going to encourage you to keep going.

This doesn’t need to be something big. In fact, it’s better if it’s something small that you can clear quickly. The idea here is that,