On Listening

In this bonus episode, you're guided through the Self-Compassion Break for Shame — the practice Chris Germer shared a glimpse of in Episode 3, now presented here in full, without interruption.

Chris is a clinical psychologist, a lecturer at Harvard Medical School, and co-founder of the Center for Mindful Self-Compassion. Drawing on Kristin Neff's three components of self-compassion — mindfulness, common humanity, and self-kindness — Chris leads you through a guided practice for meeting shame with compassion rather than avoidance or self-attack.

This episode works best as an active practice rather than passive listening — find a quiet moment, and go through it for yourself.

Want more?

• Hear the full conversation with Chris, including my own experience with this exercise in On Listening, Episode 3
• Chris's book: Self-Compassion for Shame: A Step-by-Step Guide to Inner Freedom

Episode 3: What if the anxiety you've fought for decades isn't anxiety at all? Chris Germer, clinical psychologist and co-creator of the Mindful Self-Compassion program, joins Marc to talk about shame, self-compassion, and why learning to listen to ourselves may be the foundation for listening to anyone else.

In this conversation, Chris tells the story of twenty-two years of public speaking anxiety, a meditation teacher's advice to "just love yourself," and the discovery that what he'd been suffering from all along was shame. He describes a psychedelic journey that showed him where that shame began, and a moment in graduate school when his therapist, without saying a word, changed the course of his life. He and Marc explore the difference between empathy and compassion, and a simple breath practice for finding your way back to someone in a difficult conversation. Chris also guides a condensed version of the Self-Compassion Break for Shame, with Marc as the willing volunteer.

Want the full practice? The complete guided Self-Compassion Break for Shame, start to finish, will be available soon as bonus episode 3B.

Chris Germer, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and lecturer on psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. In 2010, he and Kristin Neff co-developed Mindful Self-Compassion, an evidence-based program since taught to more than 250,000 people in over 30 languages. He is the author of The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion and co-author, with Kristin Neff, of The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook, Mindful Self-Compassion for Burnout, and Teaching the Mindful Self-Compassion Program. His new book is Self-Compassion for Shame: A Step-by-Step Guide to Inner Freedom. He helped establish the Center for Mindfulness and Compassion at Cambridge Health Alliance and has a small psychotherapy practice in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Links:

• Chris Germer
• Center for Mindful Self-Compassion
• Book: Self-Compassion for Shame, A Step-by-Step Guide to Inner Freedom

Episode 2: What if the very expertise that makes you valuable is also what gets in the way of the questions that actually matter? Niko Canner, founder of the advisory firm Incandescent, joins Marc to talk about what he calls "the curse of sophistication" — the pull toward performing expertise instead of asking the basic, obvious questions that most need asking.

In this conversation, Niko shares two very different stories of being listened to deeply — one from a college poetry workshop, and one from a junior colleague who challenged him in front of his entire firm — and what each taught him about what it means to be deeply heard. He also reads from his favorite W.H. Auden poem, "Leap Before You Look." He and Marc talk about "dancing with expectations" (rather than just deferring to them), what Dr. V of Aravind Eye Hospital meant by "becoming a more perfect instrument," and where real partnerships between the top and middle of an organization often go missing. The conversation closes with a lovely turn, when Niko takes the question Marc opened with and hands it back to him.

Niko Canner is the founder of Incandescent, which recently acquired Minds at Work, the organization Bob Kegan and Lisa Lahey built around Immunity to Change. Before starting Incandescent, he spent years at McKinsey, co-founded and led Katzenbach Partners, and served on the management committee at Bridgewater Associates. He was named one of Fortune's "new gurus" (2008) and a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader (2011), and co-leads China 2024, a two-decade study of how Chinese business leaders develop. He writes the blog On Human Enterprise.

Links:

• Incandescent
• Minds at Work
• On Human Enterprise (Niko's blog)
  • Frogs & Butterflies: Announcing Incandescent's Acquisition of Minds at Work
  • Six Conversations Every Partnership Firm Should Have
  • Incandescent Turns 10

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Episode 1: What happens to our listening when the world turns complex, uncertain, and anxious — right when we're most tempted to grab for easy answers? For the first full episode of On Listening, Marc sits down with Jennifer Garvey Berger, a leading voice on how adults grow, lead, and make meaning under pressure.

Jennifer is the CEO and founding partner of the global leadership firm Cultivating Leadership, and the author of four books on leadership and complexity for Stanford University Press — including Changing on the Job, now in its second edition. It's a natural fit for a show about listening: much of what she teaches comes down to staying open, holding more than one perspective, and questioning our own certainty long enough to actually hear another person.

Together they unpack Jennifer's distinction between three kinds of listening — listening to win, listening to fix, and listening to learn — and why the first two so often leave people feeling unheard. Along the way: a personal story of being received rather than reassured during a frightening time, listening as a renewable resource that "costs nothing and creates value," listening as perhaps the deepest form of love — and why, given a magic wand, Jennifer would hand that capacity first to the world's politicians.

Mentioned in this episode
• William Ury, "The Power of Listening" (TEDxSanDiego): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saXfavo1OQo
• "It's Not About the Nail" by Jason Headley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4EDhdAHrOg
• Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/89308/thinking-fast-and-slow-by-daniel-kahneman/
• Coaches Rising — "Love as a Business Imperative"
• Coaches Rising — "Emergent Leadership in an Era of Chaos"

More on Jennifer Garvey Berger
• Changing on the Job (2nd ed.): https://www.porchlightbooks.com/products/changing-on-the-job-second-edition-jennifer-garvey-berger-9781503640245
• Cultivating Leadership: https://www.cultivatingleadership.com/

• Cultivating Leadership on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CultivatingLeadership

New here? Follow On Listening wherever you get your podcasts so the next conversation finds you.

Welcome to On Listening — the podcast about how listening changes everything. In this short opener, host Marc Roudebush shares where the show came from: an experiment at the Harvard School of Public Health that asked whether students could be a hidden resource for each other, and what it revealed about the overlooked power of simply being listened to. It's the story behind Convu — "where listening happens" — and the guiding idea of this podcast: that your own capacity to listen may be the most available, most underused treasure you have. You'll also catch a few snippets of the voice of Episode 1 guest Jennifer Garvey Berger.

New here? Follow On Listening wherever you get your podcasts so the next conversation finds you.

Also from Convu — Peer Coaching for Writers & Artists. A 10-week program with facilitator Rosie Sultan for writers and artists who want to trade creative isolation for connection. Fall 2026 runs Tuesdays, Sept 15–Dec 1, 7–8:30pm ET. Register at app.convu.com with the keyword artofconversation → https://www.convu.com/writers-and-artists