G'day - I'm Oscar Trimboli, and this is the Apple award-winning podcast, Deep Listening: Impact Beyond Words.

Good listeners focus on what's said and deep listeners notice what's not said.

Each episode is designed to help you learn from hundreds of the world's most diverse workplace listening professionals, including

anthropologists, air traffic controllers, acoustic engineers and actors,

• behavioral scientists and business executives,
• community organizers, conductors, deaf and blind leaders,
• foreign language interpreters and body language experts,
• judges, journalists,
• market researchers, medical professionals, memory champions, military leaders, movie makers and musicians.
• You'll learn from neurotypical and neurodiverse listeners, as well as neuroscientists and negotiators, palliative care nurses and suicide counsellors.

Whether you're in pairs, teams, groups or listening across systems, whether you're face to face, on the phone or via video conference, you'll learn the art and science of listening and understand the importance of the neuroscience and these three critical numbers:

125, 400 and 900.

You'll also learn three is half of eight, zero is half of eight, and four is half of eight when you listen across the five levels of listening, conscious of the four most common barriers that get in your way.

Each episode will provide you with practical, pragmatic and actionable techniques to reduce the number of meetings you attend and shorten the meetings you participate in.

The Deep Listening Podcast is the most comprehensive resource for workplace listeners. Along with the deep listening ambassadors, we're on a quest to create a hundred million deep listeners in the workplace one conversation at a time.

The Ultimate Guide for Listening on a Video Conference, Host Edition

This episode is the last of three in a series about how to listen as host during a video conference. If you haven't had a chance to listen to the overview, Episode 101, it outlines three things:

1. sequence before, during and after the meeting.

2. the role. Are you the host or the participant? And

3. the meeting size, intimate, interactive or broadcast.

In episode 101, we dived deeply into sequence, how to think about before, during and after the video conference.

In part two, episode 102, we explore your role as the host as well as a participant.

Like all the episodes, you can revisit them based on their episode number.

This one would be www.oscartrimboli.com/podcast/103

And the first episode in this series would be 101, and the second, 102.

If you haven't done so already, I strongly recommend you listen to these episodes in sequence starting at 101, 102 and then this one, 103.

You can listen to 101 at www.oscartrimboli.com/podcast/101

In this episode, the final in the series, we explore listening and hosting tips based on meeting size.

There are three meeting sizes.

1. The first one, the intimate meeting, you, maybe one or two others. It might be a catch up meeting with a peer. It might be a meeting with your manager. It might even be a job interview. A quick reminder, intimate meetings refer to the number of participants in the meeting, not the content being discussed.

2. Meeting size number two, interactive.

You as the host are part of the Zoom meeting, which has between three and 15 people. Typically, it's a regular meeting. It's a team meeting. It's a work in progress meeting. It could be a group meeting. It could be an executive or an ex-co meeting. It could be a board meeting. It could be a kickoff meeting. These meetings have a deliberate purpose, agenda and one or many hosts and one or many agenda items.

3. Meeting three, this is the broadcast meeting. These meetings typically involve over 20 people, and some people say the opportunity for engagement is limited.

In the 105 pages of The Ultimate Guide to Listening in a Video Conference, www.oscartrimboli.com/videoconference the primary navigational orientation is by meeting size.

The first question you need to ask yourself is what type of meeting, and then you can use the navigation inside the document to move you around really quickly.

If you visit oscartrimboli.com/videoconference, there's a 17-page preview guide.

In the preview guide, this outlines the welcome, the introduction, who is this guide for and who is it not for?

There's an explanation about how to use the guide, including the three key pages of navigational guidance. These are organized by the meeting size.

Each meeting, intimate, interactive or broadcast, is organized into a three by three grid.

Across the top from left to right, the context of the meeting, these three boxes, independent of the meeting, represent the host perspective, the participants' perspective and the meeting's outcome.

From left to right, it goes host, participant, outcome.

From top to bottom, it represents before, during and after the meeting.

In each of these nine boxes, there's a hyperlink which will take you directly to the explanation of each term with actions, questions, techniques and tips to make you a great listening host.

For the broadcast meeting, these boxes focus the host as follows:

Before, ask three questions of the group to understand their current mindset. During, acknowledge the themes in response to your initial three questions. After, announce what was heard during the broadcast and when you communicate the actions accordingly.

Before we jump into the guide, let's listen to Hugh Forrest, who serves as the chief programming officer for South by Southwest, held annually in Austin, Texas.

This event brings together more than 70,000 industry creatives from across the United States and around the world. And I have to say I'm very excited that in 2023, South by Southwest comes to my hometown of Sydney and looking forward to catching up with Hugh.

Next, Hugh will explain how South by Southwest prepare for thousands of broadcast presentations.

Hugh Forrest: We spend what I'd like to say is an inordinate amount of time reading through user feedback from the previous year. There are many good reasons for doing that. You learn about the event from a completely different perspective than you had as an organizer. There are often things that you learned that were great that you had no knowledge of. There are often things that you learned that didn't go so well that you had no knowledge of, and that just reading this feedback gives you a much better perspective and much fuller perspective and much more nuanced perspective of what was good and what needs improvement.

That process of reading feedback, of digesting feedback, of trying to understand feedback, of listening to what your users and what your community is saying can be mentally, emotionally, spiritually exhausting. It's often not easy reading sharp criticisms of what you've done, particularly if you think you've done something incredibly great, but I think you try to have a generally positive attitude here and understand it's all part of the learning process and helps you get better and throughout the most harsh criticisms and throughout the highest praise and the whatever objective truth is somewhere in the middle, but again, helps you do that by reading this feedback.

So we'll spend six weeks reading feedback, trying to analyze that feedback, try to put that into some general themes and even more specific themes. And then by about late May, early June, we're beginning to plan for the next year. And one of the big pieces in terms of planning for the next year is this South by Southwest Panel Picker interface that we've been using for approximately a decade. This is an interface where anyone in the community, which basically means that anyone with a web connection can enter a speaking proposal. It allows us to listen to what the community wants to get new ideas and new speakers into the event. We'll get somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,000 total ideas, speaking proposals for South by Southwest, of which hopefully about a thousand of those will be accepted to the event. The other 4,000 are also, again, very, very useful in terms of trying to discern what our community wants to hear, what our community wants to learn about that our community is much more focused on learning the latest technologies.

This Panel Picker system is ultimately a way for us to communicate with our audience, for us to learn from our audience, for us to listen to our audience, and I think it's one of the many things that has helped us continue to improve present event.

Oscar Trimboli: Whether you're preparing for 70, 700, 7,000 or 70,000 as Hugh has just explained, when it comes to the broadcast format, the majority of effort is actually in the preparation.

Let's jump to the guide now and understand how to prepare to listen before you commence the process of putting the content together for the broadcast meeting.

If you were to click on the link for the host in the guide right now before the broadcast meeting, this is what you'd read.

Before the meeting, many techniques available during intimate and interactive meetings are available in the broadcast meeting as well in the broadcast meeting.

Especially the ability to ask participants questions before the broadcast, during the registration process.

These questions signal that you want to listen. You want to make the session interactive. You want to signal to the audience that you want them to be part of the presentation.

Whatever you collect before the meeting, please make sure you summarize and integrate the themes from registration into the content of your broadcast.

This is where your effort will be.

It will be in collection, categorization, summarization and ultimately, presentation back to the group.

Be conscious that your questions in advance will influence and impact you, the participants, the group and the outcome.

For the broadcast meeting, balance your questions and responses between open questions and questions that force the participants to rate or rank a value that you can deconstruct later on for the audience.

In the guide, we provide a link on how to customize your meeting or webinar registration. If you are doing this via a Zoom meeting, the setting can be found via meeting, new meeting, and you want to check registration required. Make sure that check box is checked to on. When you do, make sure you hit save because it's a two-step process.

Then scroll down to the very end of that webpage and you will see a section called registration. You will have a new selection field called registration options.

Here, select edit. Then you'll be offered questions in a range of mandatory fields like first name, last name, country, city, etc., and you'll be asked questions and comments. That's right at the bottom. Make sure you check that on and set it as a required field. Now, make sure you hit safe again. It's really critical to hit save.

These custom questions, you can tailor them for the audience as part of the registration process, and now when they register for the event, they will be offered a mandatory question to complete.

Remember, you don't need to use Zoom tools to collect this information, yet it creates a strong incentive for the audience if they answer the questions as part of the registration process.

It's just simply a better experience for them as well.

In the guide, we also provide a link to the full information about how to set up these questions as part of the registration process if you're using a Zoom webinar.

Next, consider what and how you'll ask for information.

If you're requesting a response as a comment to this question,

how clear is our strategy?

This will allow people to type in a few words, a few sentences to describe this.

This creates nuance.

This creates texture.

This creates really useful verbatims that emerge from the patterns of user responses.

Now, that's a very different level of engagement and care if you ask participants the identical question, yet they can only choose from one of these five, so the question might be,

our strategy is clear, and then the options you may offer them, strongly agree, disagree, neither disagree or agree, agree or strongly agree. Those five options will fit nicely into a chart, a pie graph.

They will provide very clear numeric insights for the room. What it lacks then is the richness of the insights from the verbatim.

Now, if we use the first question alone just with comments, this will require more effort on your part in preparation.

The second, it'll take you about 30 seconds to graph that information.

Now, neither is right or wrong and what I recommend that where possible, use both approaches to collect some numeric information and some information that's open comments as well.

No matter how you choose to listen and ask questions in advance of the broadcast, please make sure you summarize them into themes and ideally into your response in your action plan in the first third of your broadcast.

Now, an assumption many people make is that you need to present the broadcast live.

Yet, if you use these techniques, you can prerecord the broadcast as well.

There is no reason that you can't think about given the outcome of this meeting, should my content be prerecorded or should it be presented live?

I don't think a lot of leaders think about the trade off in live versus prerecorded. When is either appropriate is an important question to ask.

Now, back to the questions. Balance your questions between open and defined responses.

Here are five examples.

1. What is one question you'd like to ask the presenter about the topic?
2. What is one barrier to achieving the outcome?
3. What is one resource you must have to achieve the outcome?
4. Which one of our competitors can we learn the most from and why?
5. And finally, what is one thing our customers are consistently asking us for that we aren't providing?

Now, the focus on one is designed to prioritize the responses from the audience.

In question four, which one of our competitors can we learn the most from and why?

This question allows not only the competitor to be named, a value, but why allows us to get more nuanced. So make sure you balance them and use your judgement about whether you're using prioritization questions or open ended questions.

Next, you want to think about the participant's perspective.

Depending on the audience size, I recommend you create subsets of perspectives from the audience's responses to your questions, rather than treating every result exactly the same.

If the audience is more than 30 people, you should be breaking down the presentation into multiple groups.

It might be by age or tenure or location or profession, maybe by department or seniority.

Collecting this information in big, big groups, hundreds and hundreds of people will allow you to prerecord broadcasts that are tailored specifically to audience subsets.

Now, not all organizations will have the ability to create registrations like that, but when we've used this, it's been really potent form of listening for the broadcast.

For live audiences, it means you'll be tailoring parts of the presentation as well.

Examples of this could include tailoring your communication based on the departments in an organization setting.

It might sound like this.

"This is what we heard from finance and this is what we'll do as a result for finance employees. We heard something slightly different from engineering. They need us to be doing this, and it'll take us a little bit longer, possibly the next three months."

Another context could be based on the tenure of the employees, how long they've been working for your organization.

Your content could sound like,

"We notice employees with a tenure beyond a decade have these three key issues, whereas employees that have been with the organization for only two years have these immediate priorities."

Providing these insights based on the group information collected creates a perspective not just for you as the presenter, it creates perspective for everybody in the audience to realize that their perspective is not unique, and other areas, groups or departments have slightly different requirements.

This also sets them up for success in helping them achieve their outcomes as well because they are listening not only for their departments but also the needs of other departments, other projects, other tenure groups.

This unifies the perspective of each person and integrates them across the organization.

The final context could be if you are presenting to a completely unknown audience, you might need to find content and context criteria to integrate it in.

Examples of how I've used this,

"although customer care team spent more time talking with the customers than executives, executives spend more time talking about the importance of customers."

Another approach I used in a presentation was

"although finance spends time discussing cost control, they are the highest paid employees in the organization. "

The contrast of both of these creates deep engagement, and in both cases, it set the chat on fire.

Finally, thinking about the outcome. Think about your themes, your groups and cohorts defined by playing back participant issues and ensure that these themes are amplified in the first third of the broadcast, and sprinkle this content throughout the middle and final third of your presentation, and this will maintain the audience's engagement.

I just want to share some of my perspective when I define this checklist with the organizations I speak to, to broadcast with.

We go through a checklist typically a week to two weeks out. This is typically administrative setup.

• Who is the host?
• What is the introduction?
• How will the handovers work?
• Is there a moderator?
• These kinds of questions.

One thing that consistently surprises me though is my request to have closed captions activated before the meeting commences.

Not everybody in the audience's first language will be the language I'm speaking in.

Activating live transcription or closed caption is a simple way to assist people where the broadcast language is not their first language.

If people get distracted during the broadcast, they can quickly return to the discussion by catching up through closed captions because it's typically delayed between three and seven seconds.

Please keep in mind that the participants can activate or deactivate the closed captioning themselves, but they can only do that if it's turned on in the administrative settings of Zoom.

This covers off the first part, the before part of a broadcast section from the guide.

There are seven pages dedicated to the broadcast meeting. We have just covered off the first three pages, the before section of the guide as it relates to the broadcast meeting.

Whether you're a beginner, intermediate or a Zoom master host, the 105-page Ultimate Guide to Listening in a Zoom Conference has many more tips and techniques for you.

The difference between hearing and listening is action.

If you would like to access the guide, visit www.oscartrimboli.com/videoconference.

There you'll be able to see the preview of the guide, 17 pages or the 105-page guide.

I'm Oscar Trimboli, and along with the Deep Listening Ambassador community, we're on a quest to create 100 million deep listeners in the workplace one conversation at a time.

And you've given us the greatest gift of all today. You've listened to us.

Thanks for listening.

The Ultimate Guide for Listening on a Video Conference – Host Edition Part II of III

G'day, I'm Oscar Trimboli and this is the Apple award winning podcast, Deep Listening, Impact Beyond Words.

Good listeners focus on what's said and deep listeners notice what's not said.

Each episode is designed to help you learn from hundreds of the world's most diverse workplace listening professionals, including anthropologists, air traffic controllers, acoustic engineers and actors, behavioral scientists and business executives, community organizers, conductors, deaf and blind leaders, foreign language interpreters and body language experts, judges, journalists, market researchers, medical professionals, memory champions, military leaders, movie makers, and musicians.

You'll learn from neurotypical and neuro diverse listeners as well as neuroscientists and negotiators, palliative care nurses and suicide counsellors.

Whether you're in pairs, teams, groups, or listening across systems, whether you're face to face, on the phone, or via video conference, you'll learn the art and science of listening and understand the importance of the neuroscience

and these three critical numbers.

125,

400

and 900.

You'll also learn three is half of eight, zero is half of eight, and four is half of eight, when you listen across the five levels of listening, conscious of the foremost common barriers that get in your way.

Each episode will provide you with practical, pragmatic, and actionable techniques to reduce the number of meetings you attend and shorten the meetings you participate in.

The Deep Listening Podcast is the most comprehensive resource for workplace listeners.

Along with the Deep Listening Ambassadors, we're on a quest to create 100 million deep listeners in the workplace, one conversation at a time.

How to listen on a video conference, a host perspective.

This episode is part of three in a series about how to listen in the context of a video conference.

If you haven't had a chance to listen to the overview episode, episode 101, which outlines three distinct ways to approach a meeting through

• sequence before, during, and after the video conference.
• The second, your role, host or participant,
• and the third is the size of the meeting, intimate, interactive, and broadcast.

During episode 101, we did a deep dive into sequence. We explored before, during, and after the video conference. If you'd like to learn more, visit www.OscarTrimboli.com/podcast/101.

The difference between hearing and listening is action, and the difference between reading and impact is action too.

It was great to hear the impact the guide has already made for others. Let's listen to three people who took the time to send me a message to explain the impact of the ultimate guide on how to listen to a video conference.

Lena: Kia ora, Oscar, this is Lena from New Zealand. I wanted to thank you for a great suggestion I heard in the latest podcast on the Ultimate Guide to Hide My Own Video.

I started doing it and I'm definitely tired and exhausted after a day spent catching up with various people.

This was so life changing for me that I started sharing this step with others. Thank you.

Jeff: Hi, Oscar. This is Jeff from St. Paul, Minnesota.

I wanted to share with you what's changed in my approach to listening after reading and implementing the tips you provided in the Ultimate Guide to Listening in a Video Conference.

First, you highlight that in a video conference, an attendee can only listen continuously for 12 seconds. That particular stat surprised me and it led me to think more about how you've actually modelled this particular change throughout meetings of the Deep Listening Ambassador community to keep us engaged. You changed which camera's showing you, you changed all video to all slides. You asked questions which can be looking for vocal responses, but sometimes you ask us to reply to your questions simply in chat.

Which actually reminds me of my second application from the book. When a group meeting grows in size, consider seeking feedback during the meeting via chat.

I seriously don't think many people consider this very often. It can help prevent collisions of multiple people trying to answer at the same time while it also gives the speaker a chance to highlight and ask more questions based on an interesting response from the audience. It gets people involved who might find it easier to type their thoughts rather than vocalising them. It also gives the host a chance to reinforce responses to important material from the meeting.

And thirdly, I think about the speed at which most of us want to absorb and make changes that improve the impact of our listening in meetings that we host. The amount of time you recommend rolling out these changes from the book, it surprised me as well.

I know there are small things we can do and probably should do in the very next meeting we perform, but I also think that some people are looking for an overnight change in becoming a better host. Encouraging them to take more time and make these bigger changes is going to seem counterintuitive, but it's probably good advice when making longer term changes.

Some subtle updates can help us not shock our audience.

Natasha: Hello, Oscar. It's Natasha from San Antonio, Texas. I wanted to share the impact of implementing some of the tips and techniques from The Ultimate Guide to Listening in a Video Conference.

Some of the things I have been implementing are around preparation for when I facilitate workshops. I have a little sticky note on the side of my computer screen that says participants, and then under that it says, thinking, feeling, doing, and I've been making sure the agenda and objectives are all clear in advance.

I've noticed that I get a lot more interaction throughout the session and my introverted teammates have reached out and said they really appreciate it. I've been making sure I can see as many participants as possible at once, and this has allowed me to see when people do the little unmute to speak, but then someone else jumps in before that person has started, so then I can circle back to them so they feel seen and heard.

Overall, I've noticed three main things since I've brought this awareness and listening to my sessions.

First, more interaction in the actual sessions. I think people feel empowered before and during and then they feel seen during, so they are speaking a lot more, which is great for a lot of reasons. We have so many great minds and when they share more, we get more ideas and more insights.

Second, more people are staying after to continue the conversation with me and with each other. This has been really great and has helped our teammates connect across business units.

Finally, more folks reach out in appreciation. While it's nice to be appreciated, the bigger thing here is that people are finding a deeper value in those sessions.

Oscar Trimboli : Three great distinct perspectives from members of our Deep Listening Ambassador community. Thank you for sharing them, Lena, Jeff and Natasha. If you'd like to access the guide, visit ww.oscartrimboli.com/videoconference

Today we're going to discuss the difference between listening as the host and as a participant.

The Ultimate Guide to Listening in a Video Conference is the Host Edition, and it is designed to provide for the perspective of the host. And while there are many host specific tips and techniques, as Lena pointed out, a tip as simple as hide my own video that she mentioned are just as useful when you are in the role of a participant.

Today, my recommendation for you as a host is, I'm going to outline a number of host and participant specific techniques. Please just pick one tip or one technique and apply it and practise it for at least 10 meetings until you try the next one.

To ensure you do that, I've provided the tips in sequence with the most basic to the most advanced all the way throughout our conversation today.

When you are successful at implementing these tips and techniques, you want to build a muscle that's sustainable in the way you develop these techniques. You want to be subtle about them too. You don't want to create a disjointed experience if you are used to working with the same group of people. The size of these changes are very small, and my wish for you is that your audience doesn't notice how small it is as they're coming along on the journey with you.

These techniques are specific to help you as the host to listen, and equally to help the participants listen to each other. A good meeting host will get the active speaker to be listened to, but a great meeting host will have everybody listening to each other.

As Jeff mentioned in his reflection, when he was part of the Deep Listening Ambassador Community, he didn't even realize I was using some of these techniques until he read about them in the guide.

We'll categorize today's tips into three distinct ways.

• The first one is if you are new to hosting a Zoom meeting, if you are new to a role as a host in a Zoom meeting versus a participant,
• The next is, look, you're a regular host of meetings. Maybe it's team meetings and you want to take your host listening orientation to the next level.
• The third way is, if you spend the majority of your time as the host rather than a participant. If you'd consider yourself an advanced user of Zoom, that is, 80% of your meetings are as host rather than participant, then we'll provide tips specifically for you as well.
• Let's start by thinking about Zoom meetings if you are not an experienced host. These three tips I would recommend, choose the first one and work your way up. Make sure that you think about building these techniques and I provided the simplest one first and then build on top of that.

If your role has recently adjusted to being a Zoom host, I would recommend just practizing this technique in smaller meetings, in the intimate meeting with one or two other participants.

First, before the meeting, check with the other participant or participants what they want to achieve from the meeting. You can do that with an email, a phone call, a text message, a Slack message or WhatsApp message.

Next, at the beginning of the meeting, if they've responded, just confirm and say, look, when I ask you what the purpose of the meeting is, just ask them if it's changed. Because sometimes between the time we schedule a meeting and the time we have the meeting, we want to be listening for different things.

Now, I can hear a lot of people saying, yeah, Oscar, but what if people don't respond to my message?

What if they don't reply?

That's okay. In the very first part of the meeting, I would be very specific and say, the first 5% of the meeting.

Ask this question, what would make this a great meeting?

Don't ask, what would make this a great meeting for you? Because that gives an invitation of people to be really, really selfish and they don't answer the opposite question.

The opposite question is really simple.

What would make it a great meeting for you as the host?

So when they tell you what will make it a great meeting for them, use that as a compass setting for the meeting. Then every 25% of the meeting, you can check in with them to make sure that you are on track to the purpose of the great meeting for them.

This is both a process and a setting for you and for the other person. It shows you listened before the meeting started, at the beginning of the meeting, and all the way throughout, to the purpose of the meeting, not just for you but for them as well.

Although this might sound really simple to do, it will require you to develop an orientation about the what and the how of the meeting, the content as well as the process.

This will move your attention away from yourself and them towards a third position. The third position, that's the announced outcome of the meeting.

What would make this a great meeting?

Keep practising this during intimate meetings, at least for 10 meetings, until it feels like it's second nature for you and for the perspective of your attention.

By the way, if you are a participant in a meeting rather than the host, and if your host isn't clear about the purpose of the meeting or the process about decision making or prioritization in the meeting, take a moment yourself as a participant in the first 5% of the allocated time and ask the host,

What would make this a great meeting?

This will get them to pause and you, without the formal title of the host, can ensure every 25% of the meeting that it stays on track.

By the way, our deep listening research, it highlights that when a host or a participant asks this question, what will make this a great meeting, only 28% of participants ask the host the same question.

So about a third of participants will ask the host the exact opposite question.

The other part of the research that's important is when you are asked this question, either before the meeting or at the beginning of the meeting, and you check every 25% of the meeting, respondents said, meetings are completed in less than the originally scheduled time. Isn't that a wonderful thing to get some time back in your day?

Next, if you're slightly more experienced as a meeting host, possibly you are someone who regularly hosts a team meeting, a project meeting, a work in progress meeting, some kind of interactive meeting where there's three to 20 people present, move your orientation from, how do I get the participants to listen to the active speaker to how do I get the participants to listen to each other?

As Jeff mentioned earlier on, humans have very short attention spans and they get distracted very easily. On a video conference, you can listen continuously for 12 seconds.

And equally, participants can maintain continuous attention on a topic, on a context, for between eight and 10 minutes.

If you're discussing a topic, you can hold someone's attention in that range eight to 10 minutes. As the host, how can you change the context or the format of the meeting every 10 minutes?

And this is something Jeff mentioned earlier on in his feedback that he noticed that I did that during the Deep Listening Ambassador community meeting.

This has got to do with more than having multiple speakers presenting. This has got more to do than just changing the active speaker. It's got to do with moving the mindset of the participants from listening to the active speaker to listen to each other.

Here are the three tips I'd recommend for you to help to change the perspective, the attention of the participants, to ensure that they're not only listening to the speaker, but they're also listening to other participants.

• Number one, use the reaction buttons in Zoom.
• Number two, use the chat.
• And number three, look at the polls.

A lot of people say they lose body language and other nonverbal signals, which makes listening harder. One way around this is to ask for nonverbal feedback via the reaction buttons. It helps you to listen to the energy while the rest of the group can notice the energy of their fellow participants as well.

The reaction buttons, there's a vast range of them. There's not only thumbs up and thumbs down and various other signals. There's a range of emoticons that people can use there. Don't underestimate the power of that to communicate the level and energy of the group.

Next, let's talk about the chat. Use the chat to discuss what and how when you're having a discussion.

Questions you might like to pose include,

• who else do we need to consider?
• where would you like to focus the remaining time?
• wow should we decide?

Whenever you're asking these questions, keep them as short as possible. Less than eight words makes the question neutral. And that's not to say that a neutral question is good or bad. It may be appropriate in the situation. I see a lot of time working with my clients, they have convoluted questions that not only confuses the audience, it requires clarification.

Non-biased questions, typically less than eight words.

You can also use chat to explore metaphorical or emotional ideas. You could ask people,

• what colour does this feel like?
• what drink does this feel like?
• what food does it feel like?
• what book does it feel like?
• what movie is it like?

They can describe abstract topics that you've just covered off where the group isn't clear on an outcome because the idea's evolving.

Simply asking, what colour is it now, compared to what colour is it at the end of an agenda item, you might notice that the colour changes or it remains the same.

It doesn't matter. It's just a signal to nonverbal feedback.

Whether you use chat or reactions, this requires limited to little preparation for you as a host.

Poll slides, they require a little bit more planning or a little bit more effort to create. When you use poll slides, use that when making decisions or creating priority.

Some example questions that can help focus the participant is,

• what's your number one priority?
• how should we allocate these resources?
• which group requires the most support?

Again, in terms of building and sustaining this listening orientation, focus first on increasing your consistency and effectiveness with reaction buttons, then move up to chat, and then finally, you can explore the polls.

At this intermediate level, all the techniques are helping you as the host to listen, and all these tips are transparent for each participant.

They'll be able to notice not only you as the host and how you are listening, but they'll be able to listen to where the rest of the group is, where the other participants are in the workshop, in the meeting, or the video conference.

This last group of techniques is for experienced Zoom hosts.

Are you hosting more than 80% of the meetings that you attend? Then I'd call you an advanced Zoom host.

These techniques are designed to listen to the audience before a broadcast meeting. It will help you adjust content accordingly, and it will help you to display to the audience that you've listened to them.

Whenever you are speaking to an audience of 50 or more people in broadcast mode, you can use these powerful techniques to change the listening dynamic for you and the participants.

A lot of my clients are surprised how much listening you can do beforehand. That has a massive impact on the engagement during a broadcast meeting.

If you are doing a broadcast meeting, I would recommend utilizing the registration features, either in Zoom meetings or Zoom webinars.

Each product allows you to pose questions for the participants on registration.

These questions could include,

• what's one thing you'd like to improve?
• what's one thing you'd like to ask the presenter?
• what's one thing you would like to learn?

All these questions are deliberately designed to be open ended.

Equally, they're designed to be easily collected, collated, sorted, and displayed to the audience in an anonymous way in the first 10% of the broadcast.

It shows to the audience you heard and you listened to them. Displaying the anonymized results increases audience engagement at the start of a presentation as they search for self-interest.

They're looking for their responses in your presentation.

Equally, it not only helps them selfishly to find themselves in the content, it also helps them understand where the rest of the audience is.

Break down these responses into easy to digest components. It may be basic, intermediate, advanced. It may be before, during, and after. It may be small, medium, large. It may be inexperienced, experienced, and master.

When you break down the responses and provide signposts while you answer them throughout the presentation, it automatically signals to the group, ah, they're listening to me.

When you answer the questions throughout your presentation, make sure your signpost that you are answering some of the really common questions the group asked during registration processes.

This technique creates a completely different level of engagement and experience for the audience.

It makes it memorable.

Meeting hosts are often shocked how much engagement this simple technique drives when you present their own content back to them.

There you have it. Whether you're a beginner, intermediate, or advanced, the 105 page Ultimate Guide to Listening in a Zoom Conference is full of techniques like this for you.

Whether you're a host or a participant, as Lena mentioned earlier on, you'll get enormous value out of the guide. To find out more information, visit www.oscartrimboli.com/videoconference.

I'm Oscar Trimboli and along with the Deep Listening Ambassador community, we're on a quest to create 100 million deep listeners in the world, one conversation at a time.

And you've given us the greatest gift of all.

You've listened to us.

Thanks for listening.

The Ultimate Guide for Listening on a Video Conference – Host Edition

Being a Meeting Host is a unique responsibility. You are expected to create an environment where every participant is engaged and contributing throughout the Video Conference.

As the Host, you are accountable for maximizing the impact of participants, the agenda, and the meeting outcome while juggling with limited connectivity, fragmented attention spans, and participants who might be holding back what they think because of the meeting format.

If your video meetings are

• disjointed
• disengaged
• full of debate, with limited decisions and action
• repetitive
• run over time

Over 100 pages, the guide provides specific tips and techniques

The Ultimate Guide to Listening in a Video Conference is a comprehensive outline for three meeting formats

• 2 to 3 people – intimate meetings
• 3 to 10 people – interactive meetings
• 20 + people – broadcast meetings
• before, during and after the meeting

Topics include

1. The science of listening and video conferencing including the 5 elements of video fatigue.
2. The opportunity created by video conferencing
3. The Five Levels of Listening in a video environment
4. How to effectively navigate the three dimensions of video conference listening – the host, participants and the outcome
5. Techniques to reset the attention of the participants including proven tips and techniques for maintaining the energy, and decision making capacity of the participants.

https://www.oscartrimboli.com/product/the-ultimate-guide-to-listening-in-a-video-conference/?EP101

David, it was great to speak to you on the phone and I hope that my referral to Joey helps you progress your question around the auditory processing issues that you encounter and how that shows up really differently in one-on-one conversations and how shows up in group discussions for you when you move from tuned-in to really fuzzy auditory processing in groups

When auditory processing issues are present, make the implicit explicit.

Communicate about what effective communication means for you.

One of my past managers, Tony, role modeled this well.

He had an issue with his left ear and he would explain his hearing difficulty to every group meeting he would participate in when he knew somebody new was in the meeting.

I discussed this with Tony on a long-haul flight across the Pacific, and he didn't enjoy repeating it, but he said to me, "It's better than creating the impression that you're ignoring people."

And I've seen this myself working with an executive team and people were saying that the leader in the room, "She's ignoring us Oscar. She's always looking down at the ground when we're speaking."

In that moment, I invited the leader to explain, she said to the group,

"I concentrate much better on what you're saying when I'm not visually distracted, I'm not ignoring you, I'm focusing all my efforts on making sure I'm hearing everything that you're saying."

It was a breakthrough moment that happens if you communicate about how you communicate.

How can we encourage people to listen instead of concentrating on their comeback?

Listening is a simultaneous equation and we give great listening that becomes an example for others to learn and improve from.

Rane, I promise you a full deconstruction of how I'd approach a conversation where everybody's busy, reloading their arguments rather than, listening.

It makes listening really light and easy to sustain.

And my listening batteries, aren't drained by the intensity of juggling multiple layers in the conversation yesterday.

Marc asked Oscar, "I've got questions about the questions and Marc asked, would you share the questions?"

I'm delighted to share, these are the questions, and we'll be sharing all these questions with everyone, that's the purpose of this listening challenge to share these questions with everybody out there. So thanks for your engagement there.

Please keep the comments and the questions coming..

Today's listening question, this question comes from Kerrie.

She asks Oscar;

"What I struggle with in my listening is listening to the whole problem or the whole conversation, because you know, all I'm thinking about is how do I solve it?

I think this is a problem.

I don't help the speaker solve their own problems and this creates extra effort for me.

Typically, I jump in and give an answer, which Kerrie says exactly doesn't help me or them. "

Kerrie, here's my invitation for you

1. Ask this question at the beginning of the conversation. This will take the weight off your superhero-solving capacity.

Or

They might not want a solution. They might just want to thinking partner. They might just want to express an idea.

Extroverts love to think by speaking, we don't give them the opportunity to do that. Allow them to express their thinking verbally, rather than jumping in to try and fix the issue.

When you agree the outcome of the conversation, you can use that as a navigational setting, like a compass setting and that'll help you progress and check-in.

And ask yourself this question, Kerrie, given that compass setting, rather than solving the problem, ask yourself this question,

When you get that really bursting to solve, just PAUSE and ask yourself "thinking about the purpose we agreed at the beginning is this aligned?"

2. This is often skipped and ignored step. Do so at your peril!

At the start of the conversation ask them,

You might be shocked they may have come up with many more alternatives that you haven't considered because you're hearing it for the first time. Now your role here is to help them expose all the thinking that I've done and you may help them to consider how do I prioritize this approach, or maybe between the two of you or in a group you can combine elements of different parts of the solution or something may simply emerge through the process of having a conversation.

3. You need to orientate your problem solving compass.

Is what you're about to propose transactional or transformational, and which serves the agreed purpose of the conversation?

If you come back and always check in with, is this serving the agreed purpose of the conversation, then you'll make great progress

Your problem-solving passion won't go away, but you will bring different approaches that they possibly haven't considered.

I'm curious if you've taken the www.listeningquiz.com Kerrie?

If you like, Kerrie have got a question about listening in the workplace, just email [email protected] that's [email protected]

Thanks for listening.

G'day, It's Oscar Trimboli

I've set myself a little challenge and I was wondering if you might be able to assist.

Over the time I've been working with people around their listening, whether it's the deep listening quiz, the 90 day challenge, our webinars, our workshops, people who've bought the book or the playing cards or people who are interacting with our deep listening online masterclass for managers - questions, keep coming up about listening.

I've realized that by writing down all these questions over time, I'm well over a thousand questions.

Now don't worry., they fall into themes and I've set myself a challenge to answer these questions between now and the end of the year.

I'll be posting regularly here with my reply, to the questions that people are asking.

These questions come in the context of one on one conversations, , around group conversations, how to have effective listening face to faces. , as well as how to do it on video conferencing.

There's also a number of questions that come about, not just which levels are people listening at.

How do you listen through the context of different cultures?

How do you listen through the context of conflict?

How do you listen through the lens of complexity?

How do you listen to it through the lens of collaboration?

When people say to me, Oscar, , this listening is, very specialized.

I've come to realize this impacts people across many professions, whether that's sales, whether that's technology, whether that's human resources, whether that's manufacturing, whether that's engineering, whether that's leading an organization.

Listening has a pretty big impact on all of those.

So here's how you can help with this challenge. If you've got a question about listening.

Just put it in an email [email protected] that's [email protected] and.

I might even come back and clarify that with you, but I will definitely answer it.

How to listen in meetings for actions. This question comes from Sophie and she says, Oscar, what I struggle with the most when it comes to listening is turning what I hear into appropriate actions.

Well, thanks Sophie.

Three things for you to consider is

1 who takes the notes in the meeting.

2., how do you define what was actually agreed?

3, what would be different, if the agreed action was actually taken

Now Sophie,, I sense you might be asking the question in the context of a group meeting,

in a group meeting, gained the agreement from the host. if you're not the host at the very beginning of the meeting. Who's taking the notes.

If you are the host, then explain to the group how actions will be captured during the meeting.

It's really critical for this process to be exposed right at the beginning of the conversation.

Now, by the way, Sophie, if you're in a discussion with just one other person, just agree with them as part of the dialog, who's going to take that action.

Now in a group meeting, the second element of actions is to confirm what was actually agreed.

This is the biggest misstep I see people taking. And as a result, it's a common area where when you come back, on the follow up for this meeting, a lot of people are confused because they delivered what they thought they heard rather than what the group agreed to.

So when it comes to agreeing to the action, when it's delegated to the person responsible in the meeting.

And by the way, you can only delegate to the person in the meeting.

You can't delegate an action to someone outside the meeting.

You can delegate it to somebody else or explain it to the person outside the meeting, but again, a critical thing when it comes to group actions is you can only delegate it to the person who was listening to the context.

Now you need to ask the person that's delegated to, to verbally confirm what they're agreeing to not by saying yes or no, I agree to that, but to confirm what they actually heard and to confirm the specific action they're going to take now, when this happens, it surfaces any misunderstanding really, really quickly.

It does so in the moment, rather than after the fact when it's way too late and there's wasted effort on everybody's part.,

Finally, we're appropriate ask what would be different as a result of taking this action, particularly in a group meeting, this helps people to understand the value of what they've decided and helps the group to prioritize its important.

So Sophie, thanks for the question, and a quick reminder, remember who is taking the action in a group meeting ensure during the meeting, what is agreed is verbalized, and then finally, what will be different as a result of taking this action?

If you are like Sophie and got a question about workplace listening, just put it in an email [email protected] that's [email protected] .

I'm Oscar Trimboli and along with the Deep Listening Ambassadors, we're on a quest to create a hundred million deep listeners in the world.

And you've given us the greatest gift of all.

You've listened to us.

Thanks for listening.

Today is going to be a little different - some adjustments.

In Episode 100 - you'll get to deconstruct how I listen to the guests. I've interviewed over the past 100 episodes.

If time allows after the interview has formally concluded, I have a simple and consistent habit where I ask the guests, just one question -

What did you notice about my listening?

Now, this is a Level Four listening technique.

It's designed as a way for me to make incremental improvements in each conversation.

When I hear what people notice in the way I listen, I am making some very simple notes in my mind, that's a very important listening signal, make sure I continue to do it the next time.

Occasionally people will highlight things that surprise me. They highlight things that wow, I didn't realize that was a listening signal for the person speaking.

It's critical to understand that when you listen deeply, gently, thoroughly, carefully, you will change the way the speaker communicates.

Not just what they say, not just what they think, but also what they make of the conversation, what it means for them.

What can you expect today?

You'll hear reflections of 11 people and their perspectives on how I was listening to them. You'll notice some very, very consistent themes. And yet you'll notice some subtle variations as well.

You'll hear from six females, five males from deaf and blind people you'll hear from people whose first language is English and you'll hear from people whose home language isn't English.

You'll hear from authors, musicians, professors, former military leaders, researchers, psychotherapists, and a range of many others. As you listen to them, deconstruct my listening, please keep these points in mind. This is just the way I listen. My listening context is very specific.

Listening is situational. It's relational and contextual.

The way I listen during an interview is with a listening orientation for the audience, for you. There are many questions I would love to ask the people that I interview yet, they're only appropriate for me. They're not going to help you and I play with this duality while I'm listening.

How do I stay in the moment long enough - not to listen, but to listen on behalf of you.

In chapter one of the upcoming book - how to listen and at the end of every chapter in the book, we have a series of three invitations, they're practices that we invite the reader or the audiobook listener to explore, we invite them to explore something to practice because we recommend that you read the book one chapter per week while practicing a technique during that week.

So at the end of chapter one, we pose these three invitations and.

1. Who's the best listener, you know, and what's one thing they do well?
2. When was the last time somebody fully and deeply listened to you? and what did they do well during that conversation?
3. When you think about that conversation where you were deeply listen to, how did you think speak and feel differently as a result?

I'm delighted to be engaging with a range of the Deep Listening Ambassador community as they provide Advanced Reader Copy feedback on this and Bailey was kind enough to send me a photo of the exercise that I just mentioned from chapter one of the book where she very thoughtfully, thoroughly and deeply considered those three invitations, and came to some interesting insights, all of her own.

It gives me a lot of joy to be celebrating episode 100 with you and I want to thank you

Listen for free

www.oscartrimboli.com/nextbook

I am delighted to introduce Christopher Mills, a psychotherapist, a family consultant, a supervisor, and a trainer. Christopher began his work alongside family lawyers, helping them to develop skills to help them collaborate across divorce teams.

In 2009, he made "Deadlock to dialogue". It was a film, an unrehearsed role-play combining the skills of mediation and psychotherapy when working with separating couples. His interest in mediation around childcare disputes led him to write "The complete guide to divorced parenting", a strong advocate of the need for lawyers to receive more support in their work with family trauma.

He became the UK's first professional to offer specific regular supervision for family lawyers and QCs.

About six months ago, I was lucky enough to work with this community in Australia as well. And they bear a huge burden when they act on behalf of their clients in these cases. Deep listening podcast listeners have asked if I could do an episode on how to listen in conflict through the lens of relationships.

Are you listening to the content or the context?

Are you discussing the system and process or details?