Book Review: “How to Listen” by Oscar Trimboli

“SILENT and LISTEN share identical letters”

The book “How to Listen” by Oscar Trimboli provides ample ammunition to practice listening. The book is divided into five levels of listening each of which require foundation from the previous levels –

1. yourself (get ready to listen, give and pay attention)
2. content (hear, see and sense)
3. context (explore the backstory and notice how it is said)
4. unsaid (focus on what is unsaid) and 
5. meaning (listen to their meaning)

Following are the key takeaways from the book

1. Listening is a skill, a strategy, and a practice—a way to balance how you communicate. It’s the willingness to have your mind changed!
2. The shared characteristics of world-class listeners are curiosity, flexibility, and openness
3. The more senior you are in an organisation, the more your listening matters
4. Talking speed is ~125 words per minute, listening 400 and thinking 900. There are important ratios to keep in mind wrt how humans process information while talking, listening and thinking
5. Listening starts before the conversation commences
6. Listening is very difficult because you use working memory when you listen to a conversation. Working memory can actually only perform one task at a time
7. Aimless and arbitrary questions waste the speaker’s time and diminish the relationship
8. In order to be ready for listening, tuning is important
   1. Tuning is a skill, a practice, and a strategy. Tuning is a sign of discipline, self-respect, and mutual respect
   2. If the conversation matters and has consequences, commit to tuning and preparing before each conversation
   3. Before each conversation, create, integrate, and practice a ritual that will help you tune your listening, just like the orchestra
9. You have to minimize both internal and external distractions in order to be ready for listening. Distractions are inevitable
   1. Internal distractions are inevitable. Rather than reacting, create a reset strategy to return your attention to the present. It could be as simple as a leaf, a pen, or the color of the speaker’s eyes
   2. Noticing your breath before you start is essential; it is important that you notice your breath during the conversation. Use your breath to reset your focus when you are distracted
   3. When you notice becoming distracted, adjust the location of your attention
   4. If you’re dialing into a virtual call, join the meeting a few minutes early and resist the impulse to send just a few more emails; instead, reflect on your purpose in that meeting
10. When you start to listen with your entire body, the conversation becomes lighter, simpler, and relaxed for you and the speaker
    1. In one-on-one discussions, listening for similarities in an unproductive way shows up most when you are listening with sympathy rather than with empathy
    2. Sympathy is I feel bad for you. Empathy is I feel with you
11. The deeper you breather, deeper you listen
    1. A conscious focus on your breath can act as a handbrake for a needy ego. Neuroscientist Romie Mushtaq recommends three minutes of controlled breathing before a conversation and a group meeting
    2. Noticing and adjusting the position of your attention during a discussion is a crucial foundation stone to increasing your listening capacity
    3. Strongest recommendation for successful listening is aligning to eye level. To make an emotional connection, the ideal amount of eye contact is between 60 percent and 70 percent
12. When listening for difference, make the implicit explicit by announcing your point of view as early as possible in the conversation
13. When bringing consensus to a group, listening for similarities is essential
14. Giving attention is most appropriate in emerging or evolving or emergency situations. It comes from a very different place than paying attention
    1. It is an act of curiosity, generosity, and possibilities
    2. When you give your complete attention, you notice what they say and what they haven’t said
    3. Being attentive happens when you bring openness and curiosity. Although it might feel slower at the beginning, the impact is delayed and magnified
    4. Continuously giving attention has its downsides, it’s draining 
15. When you bring your complete attention to the conversation, the most remarkable thing happens for you. When the speaker experiences what your attention brings to the discussion, they notice it, mention it, and ultimately mirror it when they listen to you
    1. Take a longer and deeper breath when your attention strays for an extended period
    2. When your attention strays, reset your focus by checking the color of the speaker’s eyes
16. When listening to the speaker’s content, there are three discrete and integrated elements: hear, see, and sense
    1. Approach each component in sequence—hear, see, and sense
    2. Hear: the audio content that your ears, body, and mind capture
    3. See: their facial expression and body language
    4. Sense: the emotion present during the discussion
17. When people speak, they typically communicate in two distinct ways—stories or statistics, big picture or details, ideas or tasks
18. Mismatched preferences between the speaker’s preferred style and yours will accelerate how quickly you drift away
19. Paraphrasing is the process of reflecting to the speaker what was said and heard. It is an opportunity to increase shared comprehension
    1. When done well, effective paraphrasing confirms what was said, heard, and understood for the speaker and the listener
    2. When done poorly, paraphrasing sounds meaningless and hollow. “Yeah,” “Yes,” “Right,” “Of course
    3. Paraphrasing is reflection, not interpretation. When paraphrasing with your interpretation, the speaker may feel corrected, judged, or misunderstood
20. When it comes to noticing facial expressions, your role as a listener is to be present enough to see any disconnect between their face, their posture, their breathing, and what they say
    1. Your role is to notice substantial changes in the emotions rather than focusing intently on every emotion
    2. Avoid labeling the emotions of the speaker. This can be hazardous to the discussion and to the relationship
21. When the story’s content is close or personal, speakers tend to start the conversation from their opening scene rather than from the opening scene. This is not a good practice
22. Here are three questions to help you explore the backstory of projects:
    1. Have you undertaken similar projects in the past?
    2. Who was involved in them?
    3. What can we learn from their success or otherwise?
23. Our brain is not a knowledge machine. It’s a best-guess machine. It’s the same with our listening capacity. When we’re decoding language, we’re doing our best guess at what the decoding of it might be
24. When listening to the word patterns, you gain insight into how the speaker uses vocabulary to make sense of their world
25. Language has form and structure, and the key influencing factors are how people use adjectives and pronouns to describe their ideas. People use adjectives and pronouns in unique patterns
    1. Adjectives are “road signs” that can tell you which direction the person is coming from, or which direction the person is attempting to go in. “By listening to those adjectives repeatedly, you get a sense of their worldview
    2. Pronouns are useful shortcuts to understanding the speaker’s orientation
    3. Rather than analyzing every adjective and pronoun continuously, make it easier for yourself and just notice if they change the use of pronouns
    4. Explanations as absolutes are a clear signal about underlying assumptions that the speaker is making. Absolute terms include always, never, all, none, every, strictly, true, false, unique…
       1. Reflecting on their underlying assumption by repeating their absolute phrasing back to them will often be enough for the speaker to pause, reflect, and expand
26. Listening for their unsaid is the most potent form of listening. Their first utterance is surface level—it’s top of mind
    1. Treat silence like a complete word: listen to the beginning, middle, and end of their pause
    2. Using silence deliberately, intentionally, and purposefully will allow the speaker to collect all of their thoughts with coherence and clarity
    3. ​​Listening to their breathing offers an early warning sign about what is coming rather than what has just been said
    4. It’s a huge missed opportunity to hear what is unexpressed, unsaid, and then take no action
    5. During a discussion with one other person, pause longer than usual before speaking
27. There are many simple, thoughtful, and straightforward phrases everyone can use to communicate complex, challenging, and confronting information. Such as:
    1. Let me pause
    2. What sense does that make to you?
    3. What does that have you thinking?
28. When you are listening for what the speaker says, focus on the essence and work with them to confirm the core of their meaning in fewer words
29. Your listening will progress in every discussion and meeting—it only takes a moment of conscious awareness and presence. When you bring a mindset of being open to having your mind changed, the seeds of listening will flourish

One has to practice listening actively with buddies at the workplace or at home, and for a long period of time to be effective in listening. As the author keeps iterating throughout the book – listening is a contact sport! It’s recommended to read this book in weeks, perhaps one chapter a week – then reflect and practice

The book can be ordered from Amazon from here!