ADJUSTED
ADJUSTED
Mastering the Art of Listening: A Conversation with Tim Hast
The art of listening might be the most undervalued skill in our professional toolkit. In this enlightening conversation with executive coach Tim Hast, author of "Powerful Listening, Powerful Influence," we explore why truly hearing others is so challenging yet so essential.
Tim shares his journey from trauma counselor to executive coach, discovering that regardless of industry or position, many leaders receive feedback that they simply don't listen well enough. As host Greg Hamlin reveals his own surprising 360-review feedback about his listening skills, we learn that perceiving ourselves as good listeners and actually making others feel heard are entirely different matters.
Why do we struggle to listen effectively? Tim introduces us to the concept of HALT (Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired) – conditions that severely impair our ability to focus on others. Even more fundamentally, our natural tendency to make everything about ourselves creates a significant barrier. From childhood, we're conditioned to believe the world revolves around us, making genuine listening a conscious choice rather than our default setting.
The heart of the episode revolves around Tim's transformative "R-listening" approach – Active, Reflective, Empathic listening – and his four practical steps anyone can implement immediately: listen patiently, with your body, with your voice, and with your mind. These techniques have the power to revolutionize both professional relationships and personal connections alike.
For workers' compensation professionals dealing daily with individuals experiencing trauma, pain, and frustration, these listening skills aren't just nice-to-have – they're essential for building trust, resolving complex cases, and truly serving claimants. The parallels between effective claims handling and powerful listening are unmistakable.
Whether you're managing a department, working directly with injured workers, or simply trying to improve your relationships, this episode offers practical wisdom that can be implemented today. As Tim reminds us, when we truly listen, we give others the gift of feeling understood – perhaps the most powerful influence we can have.
Season 9 is brought to you by Berkley Industrial Comp. This episode is hosted by Greg Hamlin and guest co-host Matt Yehling, Directory of Claims at Midwest Employers Casualty.
Visit the Berkley Industrial Comp blog for more!
Got questions? Send them to marketing@berkleyindustrial.com
For music inquiries, contact Cameron Runyan at camrunyan9@gmail.com
Hello everybody and welcome to Adjusted. I'm your host, greg Hamlin, coming at you from beautiful Birmingham, Alabama and Berkeley Industrial Comp, and I'm excited to share with you this rebroadcast. This particular episode is one of those fun ones where I actually had a chance to interview somebody that impacted my life. You don't always get that chance or we definitely don't but I had read a book a number of years ago on listening and the power of listening and I was so impressed with it that I've incorporated quite a bit of it into our departmental trainings and what I do personally in my work life and in my home life, and it's made a positive impact. So to have the opportunity to have Tim Host join our episode and share the power of listening with our audience was particularly pertinent to me.
Greg Hamlin:I think there's a lot of excellent content here and I do think it's one of the things that we could do a lot better as an industry in putting emphasis on listening, especially in a very complicated insurance sector. So with that, I remind you to like, follow and share our episodes. We want more people to find their way to the podcast and also encourage you to leave a five-star review on your favorite platform so that we'll be able to help others find their way to this episode, and with that, I'll remind you to do right, think differently and don't forget to care. Enjoy. Hello everybody and welcome to Adjusted. I'm your host, greg Hamlin, coming at you from beautiful Birmingham, alabama, where spring has arrived and the sunshine is out, and with me is my co-host for the day, matt Yelling. Matt, do you want to introduce yourself and say hello to everybody?
Matt Yehling:Hello everyone, this is Matthew Yelling, joining you from St Louis, Missouri, along the banks of the mighty Mississippi. Welcome.
Greg Hamlin:Always glad to have you back, Matt.
Matt Yehling:Thank you.
Greg Hamlin:I am super excited about our guest today. With us today is Tim Haast, and he is an executive coach and author of a book called Powerful Listening, powerful Influence, and I first ran into his book a number of years ago and had always wanted to do an episode with him and I thought, well, if I could figure out how to get hold of him, maybe he'd say yes. And so here he is. So, tim, if you could say hello to everybody and maybe introduce yourself a little better than I did, Well, thank you, greg.
Tim Hast:I'm Tim Hest and I am, as they say, I'm glad to be here. At my age, I'm glad to be anywhere. But welcome to you guys to my neck of the woods, since I'm seeing you from Oklahoma today. That's where we're at it's rainy and turning spring and I've got tomatoes planted and I'm looking forward to about the middle of July when the tomatoes are nice and ripe. So that's where I am today.
Greg Hamlin:You're making me feel guilty. I haven't gotten to my garden yet. It's still got a bunch of grass in it that I need to turn over, so I need to get on that this weekend. Well, tim, I wanted to start a little bit by just understanding how you got into the coaching industry. I know, obviously I've read your book, so I'm just curious what brought you down the path of one deciding to write a book on listening and then maybe how did you end up in the industry you're in? I'm sure when you were a kid you thought to yourself this is what I'm going to do.
Tim Hast:When I grow up I want to be a consultant. Well, I started out, greg. I started out as a counselor, no-transcript and so I started working with first responders and just realized that I really loved helping them. But there's a problem when you're working with trauma. I noticed that, as satisfying as it can be to work with people that are hurting, I found that my own bucket was getting a little too full of trauma. You hear stories over and over and we call it secondary trauma when you're listening to people's stories. So that began to kind of create a change in me and during that time I noticed about a third of my clients were really depressed and about a third of my clients were trauma victims. But about a third of my clients were people that just didn't know what they wanted to be when they grew up and they would be asking me you know, help me kind of figure out my direction. And you know I discovered that I really loved. I loved working with all three of my different sets of clients, but those clients that I was helping them with their career. I just found that I really loved. I loved working with all three of my different sets of clients, but those clients that I was helping them with their career. I just found that I had a really propensity for that and it was a way to not focus quite so much on trauma. So I'm focused on these people that are wanting to be better in their career, and I discovered they have a name for that. Imagine this they call it life coaching and I thought, well, that's pretty smart, that's pretty cool.
Tim Hast:So I begin to make the transition from psychologist or psychotherapist to executive coach. I actually keep my counseling license say that fast, 23 times. I try to keep my license current and up to date. But mainly I coach and I train, and I started enjoying successes as a coach. The more I coach, the more people would say well, come talk to our group, you helped me, so help our group. So I remember the first time I got up and stood in front of a bunch of people and got to talk and I realized this is really fun. I'm one of those really sick people that, instead of being afraid of getting up in front of people and talking, I love it. So that's kind of what has led me to where I am right now. I do executive coaching and I do training and I go in and analyze systems I don't mean operational systems, but people systems and really my vision is I go to the workplace and help people get along and share their toys. So that's where I am and that's what got me here.
Greg Hamlin:That's awesome. Well, I mentioned this as we were starting up, tim that about. I think it's probably been seven or eight years ago. I did a 360 review and for those who don't know what those are, it's really a window into how others perceive you. So you have your boss evaluates you, your peers and your direct reports, and so I managed a very large department at the time of about 60 people. So that was a lot of feedback to receive and it was scrubbed down. And I had done this years before and got quite a bit of positive feedback, but probably not as much constructive feedback as I could have hoped for. And one of the things that really stood out as I went through that was one of the comments was that several different people didn't feel like they were heard, and that was really surprising to me because I always felt like I was a really good communicator and the person leading the 360 probably could have done some things different. But she's like well, what would your wife say if you talked to her about it?
Tim Hast:And I was like I don't know. I'll ask her. She's never said. I'm not a good listener and I asked her and she goes.
Greg Hamlin:She actually was like, well, I think you do a good job. And I was thinking, well, I must be missing something because people are perceiving me this way, or some people are. And so I bought a book on listening hated it felt. Whoever the author was, I don't remember what the book was, but it felt very condescending, so I just couldn't connect. And then I picked your book up and read it and I started doing some of those exercises, some of the things we'll talk about today, and it was like a switch went on and I've really felt like it's impacted my relationships with my kids, my family, my work. So I felt like there was a lot to talk about and really would say like I've got a whole pile of books here, but of all the books I've read, that was one of the most meaningful. So I'm really excited about this topic of listening For you, tim.
Greg Hamlin:why do you feel like listening is important?
Tim Hast:I'm going to answer that I'm going to go around the block the long way around the block to answer that. The answer that I come up with is really tied to my experience working with couples and also working with people that were responding to the bombing. In both of those situations people are hurting and in that moment life really doesn't make a whole lot of sense. We learn from the bombing and also working in other disasters that the most powerful tool for helping people move beyond trauma is to have another human being take the time to really listen listen without giving advice and in doing that, as a therapist, we're trained to listen. But I begin to realize if I can teach my clients to listen to each other, they wouldn't need me so much If I could teach them to really hear each other.
Tim Hast:In that moment, when someone says something to you and the last thing you want to do is listen, the first thing you want to do is smack them upside the head and say stop doing that.
Tim Hast:But if I could catch myself and remind myself they're hurting and they need to be heard. Hurting and heard if I remind myself that suddenly listening takes on a whole new dimension. So the why or the rationale behind the importance of listening is that it should be the number one tool in your toolkit. When I begin to make that transition into coaching people in leadership, people would come to me, like Greg who had just taken a 360. And often the 360 would say he doesn't listen, she doesn't listen, and so the team would be really ticked off with their boss because they would say you know, I tell my boss things and he really does. I'm not just using guys because it is not gender specific, but the complaint was I'm having a problem with my team and after they would take a 360, they would realize the problem really was that the person at the top was not listening. And I realized then and there that if I'm going to help people be better, the first tool in their toolkit has got to be the tool of listening more effectively.
Matt Yehling:So it's kind of like when I take my dog to training, I find out that I'm not really training the dog I'm training the teacher right.
Tim Hast:Yes, that is so true.
Matt Yehling:In your book you actually outline four reasons why people tend to be poor listeners. Maybe, as we launch this podcast, you could walk through those four reasons.
Tim Hast:Well, one of the reasons why people are poor listeners is, first of all and we're going to come back to this later, I'm sure is we make it all about us. The world revolves around us, and if the world revolves around me, why in the world would I want to listen to you, matthew? So that's one reason. Another reason is when we're physically tired, when it's the end of the day and I'm worn out even though I wrote a book on listening, I'm just as human as anybody else and I have to remind myself to abide by my own rules. So reminding myself hey, you know, you might not be a good listener right now or when I've got a lot of stuff going on, when I'm in the office and two or three things are happening at once, or when I'm thinking that I know what the person, where they're going, what they're saying and where they're going. With that, that line of thought and I go in one direction and they go in another direction. I'm adding two more reasons, and we will probably come back to this and talk about this more.
Tim Hast:There's a word, and the word is HALT, and the HALT stands for when I'm hungry, when I'm angry, when I'm lonely and when I'm tired. When one of those four conditions exist, it makes it really hard to listen. When all I can think about is having a big mac, then my ability to listen is severely impaired. If I am ticked off, if I've been driving down the interstate and someone pulls in front of me and throws in the brakes and I'm I'm in a state of anger, then I'm not going to be a very good listener. If I feel disconnected or lonely and I don't mean lonely like, oh, I want to be married, I mean lonely like I haven't been around the people that bring me joy, that encourage me Then I have a propensity to not really want to focus on people.
Tim Hast:Or when I'm simply tired I can't tell you how many times, as a therapist, couples would come in and say, oh, we had this terrible fight the other night and and it was terrible, and we said all kinds of awful things to each other. And they said and then we went to bed and the next day we got up and we thought what were we arguing about last night? And I would look at them and say you were simply tired, you were suffering from HALT, hungry, angry, lonely or tired. So there are many external variants that keep us from listening. But I think the biggest one and we're going to come back to this is that we tend to make the world all about us. In just a little bit, I'm going to give you four things that will help you be a better listener, and we'll revisit those things.
Greg Hamlin:I think that's really powerful. Some of the things you're mentioning there. I think probably that one comment you just said is the hardest to come to terms with, that we actually are thinking about ourselves a lot and that's a hard thing to hear because you think, well, I care about all these people. But one of the things I've learned through my own experience and through some of the exercises was just that hearing somebody and having them feel heard are different things. So I might feel I took in the information. But if you don't feel that I took in the information because you don't feel heard, it doesn't matter. And I can remember I've got six kids, so I'm in the teenager zone.
Greg Hamlin:Yeah, I've got 18 year old 18 out of one right.
Greg Hamlin:And when my 18 year old, when she was about 16, 17, so not that long ago we were having a discussion about kind of where she wanted to go with her life and I was just really trying to use my listening skills and not my dad lecture skills and as she was talking I said so what I'm hearing you say is I feel you feel really frustrated that what I want for you and what you want for yourself are different things. And she goes yes, and when she said that, I was like you know what she feels hurt.
Greg Hamlin:That's the indicator right there. Yeah, and I can't tell you how many times I've had since. I've practiced it.
Tim Hast:I'm not perfect at it, but when you get that response, whether it's that visceral response when they go yes, when you hear the sigh in their voice, you know you connected, you know you hit a home run.
Greg Hamlin:Right, and it's so easy to be thinking about what you want to say next instead of just taking the time to slow down and make sure you understand them and that they feel understood. And I think that's the biggest thing I've had to keep working on is I'm so busy. I've got six kids, I've got this job. I'm going a thousand miles a minute.
Tim Hast:Slowing down is hard. I'm still stuck on you having six kids. It's a crazy world we live in. One to 18, that's amazing. It's a crazy world we live in.
Greg Hamlin:That's amazing, that's a crazy world we live in, but talk to us a little bit more about the difference between hearing and listening. I talked a little bit about my experiences, but maybe some of the things you've seen.
Tim Hast:Sure Well, hearing is the psychological process of attending to the sound in one's environment. I hear frogs, I hear birds, I hear the wind blow, listening and some people might say, well, you're making a distinction. That's really not there. But for me, listening is focused. It's concentrated. It's an approach to understanding the meaning of the message that the person is sending. We think in pictures, not words. I'm taking the picture in my head and I'm converting it to words so that I can beam it across space into your head, where you convert it back to pictures. And until the picture that is in my head is in your head, the transaction has not taken place. So, as a listener, I'm trying to do my best to hear what is that that person is picturing in their head and recreate that picture in my head.
Matt Yehling:Right, and I'm going to shift gears on you a little bit. I know so. In the work comp industry, you know we deal with trauma every day too, and you know I think you know why we brought you on and why we wanted to talk to you.
Matt Yehling:you know about this is like for the industry and for to improve our own careers and the careers of our staff right it's. You know we have to all be better listeners and before we started I talked to you a little bit about you know that we're going through a big innovation push and innovation's important and you know I applauded you because you know reflective listening was one of the key phrases in your book that I picked up on and we are taught how to speak clearly and we're not gonna hear the ums and ahs that I'm saying in this conversation because Jacob's going to edit all that out. But you know we take speech classes. We take those in high school, we take them in college, but there's no listening classes. So why do you think there's more focus on the skill of speaking and no emphasis on listening?
Tim Hast:Well, I think it's real simple. It's a lot sexier to get up in front of people and talk and make it all about me than it is to be quiet and focus on the other person. I really think that we can see the line between the action and the results, the line of connection between I'm going to get up, stand up in front of people and communicate and success. We can see that direct line. It's a lot easier to see that line, but when we take the time to listen, the dividends are not quite so apparent in the moment. Sometimes they are, when you speak to your daughter and when your daughter's speaking to you and you finally hear her and she goes yeah, that is that direct connection between what I'm doing and the dividend, the payoff from that.
Tim Hast:But often we don't see that payoff and I just think that it sounds a lot more exciting to talk about being a better communicator when the truth is and I'm going to preach here but the truth is, if I learn how to listen to Matthew, if I learn how to truly hear you, then I have a wonderful roadmap that teaches me how to communicate more effectively. Because if I know what it takes to make you feel heard. Then I have the roadmap to effective communication as well. That's wonderful.
Matt Yehling:Yeah, in your book you also reference that. You know, even as a psychologist you took one semester of listening right and then even in that class you mentioned that. You know the focus was on how to respond to people.
Tim Hast:It wasn't even like listening to them.
Matt Yehling:So has that changed? Or you know, like, how is that possible?
Tim Hast:You know it seems almost common sense, but you know you're the expert on this, you know so Well, I'm not the expert on why people do what they do that there's still a big mystery to me as well but I simply think that it's just not as glamorous to talk about. I'm going to sit down and be quiet and listen to people, as opposed to I'm going to get up in front of people and communicate and influence the minds of millions. I know that that's a reductionist approach. I think that's kind of big, using really bold lines to describe something that it's a lot more nuanced than that. But I think the bottom line is that we put a lot more emphasis on what comes out of our mouth and what goes in our ears. Ooh, somebody write that down. That was good. I don't know where that came from.
Greg Hamlin:I agree and I you know. I think one of the things that I've learned is that to be a good communicator, if you want to make real, meaningful change, you need trust, and trust only comes from showing respect and understanding, so, whether that's in your family or on your team or whoever you're working with, it's a really important key. When I started doing my own self-reflection, I realized one of my blockers was I'm so busy and I have so many things on my list that I want to go 100 miles an hour, and I've had to learn to slow myself down. When people come in my office, I turn my phone upside down.
Matt Yehling:I lock my computer down. When people come on my office, I turn my phone upside down.
Greg Hamlin:I lock my computer. I slide away from my monitors so that they could see I am fully present for you right now.
Tim Hast:And.
Greg Hamlin:I'm not even going to let those other things distract me, even though I know how busy I am. So that was one of the things I worked on, but I know there are other things that create that make us bad listeners. Tim, what are some of the other things out there that you feel like are blockers that cause us to be bad listeners?
Tim Hast:Well, I want to mention something. One of the things I do is I do personality assessments and I do team assessments so that everybody on the team understands each other and people that are very extroverted and very fast-paced. That's one personality style. All the personality styles are good. There's not a bad one. But because of that nature of being really, really forward-thinking and getting the job done, they're like Larry the Cable Guy. You know, get her done. And it's like let's get this done. And that becomes the enemy of listening, because listening requires that I, for a moment, or for a few moments or for a few minutes, I disable that need to move on to the next thing and simply be present in the moment. That's wonderful. So when I revise the book, I'm going to go a lot more into situational that what your personality style is. There are some things about the way you listen and the way you want to be heard that really impact these different styles as well, but that's for another book.
Greg Hamlin:Well, we've as a company I know we've done exercises in both disc and strength finders. Both of those have been really eye-opening, just to kind of see where your blind spots are and where your superpowers are and really get an idea of. Well, okay, this is where we meet my president, who's now about to retire. He on the disc is opposite of me and one of the things I learned through that is that he likes to have all the information, have time to process it before he makes a decision.
Greg Hamlin:So I would send him an email explain all the details about why I might want to go down a path. And I said and then I would tell him I'd like to meet in three days after you've had time to think about this. And he'd say Greg, you know me so well I really appreciate that I need that. So I think there is something to that. We process information differently.
Tim Hast:We do, we do, and I'm glad you all use the disc because it makes my visual, it makes sense to me. So good, very good.
Greg Hamlin:So what are some of the filters that impact our listening? We talk a little bit about that in your book.
Tim Hast:We talked about, halt when I'm hungry, angry, lonely or tired, sometimes insecurity If I feel like you're attacking me and you might do something that has nothing to do with me. But if I feel attacked, then I begin to leave the prefrontal, the logical part of my brain, and I begin to move down into the part of the brain where fight or flight lives and when I'm down there I get defensive. By the way, when I'm down there, I have the problem-solving capabilities of a four-year-old and, as you who have a one-year-old, you've been through this five times before. When they get to be about four, when they get into conflict, they don't handle it very well and that's where we go. When we get defensive and get insecure, we begin to move down into that part of the brain that is not equipped to listen. It doesn't want to listen, it just wants to go to battle and kill and maim and destroy. So insecurity. Another filter is really I'm going to get in trouble for saying this, but it's more gender specific Men tend to have a lot more of this DNA in their bloodstream than females, in my experience, and it's that need to fix things.
Tim Hast:When my wife comes in from work and I hear that she's had a bad day. I can tell because I can hear it in her voice and I know better. I wrote a book on it and I tell people, don't do this. And I find myself doing it. What is it? I try to fix her. I go oh honey, don't feel that way, it's going to be okay. And I have to remind myself Tim, you idiot, you wrote a book on this, you're supposed to listen and go there with them.
Tim Hast:And then, after they've been heard, say are you just wanting to vent or do you need me to kind of brainstorm with you a solution on this? So, fixing things, and then physical distractions. I came up with a new word spits. Beware of spits. Physical distractions, which are spits, which are shiny, pretty inconsequential things. Because those things that distract me, I am ADD On the disc, I'm a real high I and I think we invented ADD and I get distracted by stuff. So when I meet someone for lunch at Panera Bread or something, I always try to get there early and sit where I'm facing the wall so I won't be distracted by stuff in the background. So those are some of the things that distract us and again, if I'm thinking about a hamburger, I'm really not going to be thinking about you.
Matt Yehling:So when I'm hungry, angry, lonely and tired, so I know we talked about some of these things a little bit already, but what is R-listening? I think that's the acronym you use in the book yes, yes. So we've hit some of the A-R-E already, but what does that mean?
Tim Hast:Well, let me give you something before I tell you that when I wrote the book they say that necessity is the mother of invention and I had executives that were sent to me that had just taken 360s and the 360 said he doesn't listen, she doesn't listen. And I thought I've got to have some kind of system where I can give them something on a postcard, something so simple, that they can walk out of my office and immediately implement it. Because if you get people reams and reams and reams of stuff to do, it's going to sit in a desk drawer and they're not going to learn it, they're not going to do. It's going to sit in a desk drawer and they're not going to learn it, they're not going to do it, they're not going to implement it. So I thought I've got to have some kind of a system to remind them to listen. So I thought, well, are you listening? Okay, r A, that's active listening, and when we engage in deep, powerful listening, it is a very active thing, it's not passive.
Tim Hast:I am moving towards the person, I am trying to picture everything, I'm trying to visualize what they're saying, I'm testing so you're saying, or so you're feeling, or so that really bothered you and they might say no, it didn't bother me, it just made me mad, and so I'm stepping out and taking a risk. So there's the active part. The reflective part is simply in really good listening, we become a mirror. So Greg is talking to his daughter and she says you know, I'm really really upset about this that you know this thing that you're doing. In fact, greg, remind me what it was that she was saying to you.
Greg Hamlin:She said something along the lines of I feel like what you want for my future and what I want for my future are different things.
Tim Hast:You feel like I'm trying to co-opt your future. You feel like I'm trying to tell you what to do. You feel like I'm the boss of you. That is reflective. I'm reflecting not exactly what they're saying, but I'm reflecting the essence of what they're feeling. When a human being has someone else reflect what they're feeling, it connects at a deep level and that's where you get the yeah, somebody's hurt In parentheses they're saying somebody actually hurt me for the first time. So that's the reflective part.
Tim Hast:And the empathic part is where you feel, where you, ooh, you know someone's walking down the street and they fall down and hurt themselves. And when you don't get injured but you see them fall and you go, ooh, that hurts. There was an old commercial, an old Snickers commercial, and it's Betty White. The guy turns into Betty White and there's some old guy that's also in the commercial and they knock him down and he goes, ooh, that hurts. And you know, empathy is feeling a little bit of what someone's feeling. It's going there.
Tim Hast:I will always be a short, bald, white guy. I'll never know what it feels like to be a female or a person of color or someone really tall, because I'm short. I'll never understand those things. But I can try. I can try to put myself in their skin, in their shoes, and ask myself, if I were going through that experience, what would I feel? So that's why listening is hard, because I'm active, I'm engaging in the process, I'm really listening to everything so that I can catch the emotion and reflect it back, and I'm trying to allow myself to feel, imagine what it would feel like to be that person.
Matt Yehling:I've obviously not taken your class, but I can assume that it's going to be like halt.
Greg Hamlin:Yeah, I know Just to finish that story with my daughter. After she said that and we had that discussion, then I slowed down and I said you know what? I think I can understand where you're coming from, because I know my mom wanted certain things for me that I didn't want and that was frustrating, and you know what you. And then we just talked about it for a while. I said you know, you're awesome and you're going to do some things I'm not going to want to do and it's going to be OK because you've got your own path. You're going to have to walk and as we talked through it, I think like it was watching what happened from her junior year to her senior year was so cool because she kind of found her own path and now she's getting ready to go to college at University of Alabama with a full ride and I couldn't be more proud. Yeah, and it's her path. But it takes letting go some and trying to put ourselves in the other person's shoes to understand. Well, what are they?
Tim Hast:feeling when are they at that must have felt really good to be in that moment where, instead of her being an adversary that she was drawing from your connection with her.
Greg Hamlin:Yeah, and it took probably half an hour. The first 20 minutes were a lot of her just being upset, so I think that's the other key when you're listening is sometimes it takes a while to get to that good spot. It doesn't come right away and you have to do a lot of listening.
Tim Hast:That connects with what you do. You're listening to people that are distressed and even if your job is to fix them, you can't get to fixing them until you hear them. I was in Birmingham. There's a place in downtown Birmingham that has the best hamburger in the world. It's a gourmet hamburger place.
Tim Hast:And we're flying home and I'm in the Birmingham airport and I talked to the ticket agent at Delta and I said, hey, I'm doing some research on customer service satisfaction. I said what do you do when customers are really upset? And she said we're trained to listen to them. She said when they're really upset, they don't know what they want and so we just get them to talk and we listen to them and after they calm down, then we say what can I do for you? And she says sometimes they'll stomp off mad. But she said it's amazing how many times if the plane doesn't leave right, then they'll come back a few minutes later and say I'm so sorry for treating you that way and then they'll ask for help. But Delta is training their people to understand that in the moment when the customer's upset, you can't fix them. The one thing that you can do for them is listen to them, and that begins to disarm that, that angst that they're suffering in the moment.
Greg Hamlin:Great points.
Matt Yehling:Yeah, I mean there's a. There's the old nursery rhyme. I don't know if you've heard this one. There was an old owl that lived in an Oak. The more he heard, the less he spoke. The less he spoke, the more he heard. Oh, if man were all like that wise bird.
Tim Hast:That's good. I've heard that, Matt you need to write that down and email me that, because I love that when we do the edit. I want to do a second edition that's a little more scientific and that would be a good addition to the next version scientific and that would be a good addition to the next version.
Greg Hamlin:So we've talked a lot about empathy and the reflecting piece of it and we talked about where empathy fits into that. Why do you think sometimes we forget that last piece of trying to put ourselves in other people's shoes or what keeps us from getting there.
Tim Hast:Sometimes and this is not a planned answer this is just off the cuff of my shirt. Sometimes I think the level of intimacy that it requires to enter into someone else's pain is unbearable in the human experience. Sometimes we just Last night I was worn out, I worked all day and I'm an elder on a session at our church. I went to a session meeting and I got home and I just put on my pajamas and I climbed in bed and I told my wife. I said I suck as a listener tonight.
Greg Hamlin:I said I just don't have it.
Tim Hast:I didn't. I thought I'm doing this podcast tomorrow and I'm supposed to be the epitome of good listening. And here I am. I can't even listen to my wife, but I was just worn out. And how did I get there? I got distracted. What was the question? No, I think you're listening.
Greg Hamlin:No, I think you're spot on on that, on why we forget to have empathy. Sometimes, we just get worn out and-.
Tim Hast:We just get worn out, and so at some point we have to say I'm human and I'm going to do better next time. I'm going to do better next time. Yeah, I'm going to do better next time.
Greg Hamlin:I think you know, one of the things you had in your book was doing a listening exercise where you kind of rate yourself after every conversation. How did I do on these? And I did that for a week while I was reading it, rating myself after different conversations, and that's. I think that helped me see some of the areas where I'm like you know I could have done better. I should have moved away from my monitors or I should have locked my computer. I should have turned my phone over. I didn't take the time, I rushed them out the door because I heard what they said. And then I don't know if, matt, you've ever had this where someone comes into your office and they start talking to you and you got what you needed from them in like the first minute or two, but they're still there and they talk for a really long time and you're thinking about the 900 other things you've got to do.
Greg Hamlin:It's hard to slow down and just be like you know what I need to be present in this moment. Yeah, yeah.
Matt Yehling:Yeah, my technique is I stand up and walk out of the office with them. That's probably not the best. I probably shouldn't tell that on the podcast.
Tim Hast:That's probably not the best. I probably shouldn't tell that on the podcast.
Matt Yehling:You know, tim, what are some of the exercises or techniques you know for us, but for the industry as well, you know, to help be better listeners, to practice listening better, to be to do the R, I guess.
Tim Hast:So what does a politician say?
Tim Hast:He says I'm so glad you asked that question, so I'm so glad you asked that question because my issue with executives remember, I'm an executive coach and I saw this number one deficit that was across the board was the inability to really listen, and I thought I've got to come up with something that they can remember. So I came up with four things and here they are. And I tell people write these down on a card. I've got a little business card, I've got these printed on the card and I tell people carry the card around and every time you have a conversation, remind yourself to do these four things.
Tim Hast:And if I were drawing a little stick figure, I would point at the foot and I would say listen patiently, because when we're impatient we tap our foot. And then I would point another arrow at the little guy's body and I would say listen with your body. And then I would put an arrow at his throat and I would say listen with your voice. And then I would put a final arrow at his head and say listen with your mind. Let's go deep, shall we? Let's talk about the first one listen patiently. All of us suffer from a disorder that happens at birth, when you're a week old and Greg has a lot of experience, but a week old when the baby is a week old and they're hungry.
Tim Hast:What do they do? They?
Greg Hamlin:cry.
Tim Hast:They cry and what happens? You come feed them, you come feed them.
Tim Hast:These giant hands appear out of nowhere and they pick the baby up and come feed them.
Tim Hast:These giant hands appear out of nowhere and they pick the baby up and they feed it. And when a baby's a week old and he or she is poopy, giant hands appear out of nowhere and they clean the little baby up and they wrap it up. And when a baby's a week old and they're sleepy, those giant hands show up. All the baby has to do is cry and these giant hands show up. And when you're a week old, the entire world revolves around you. All you have to do is make noise and all of your deepest needs are met. And the problem is we get to be 18 or 28 or 38 or 58 or 68 and we never get away from the notion that the world revolves around me. Now I asked this question earlier. Why in the world would I ever think about listening to you if the world revolves around me? Now, think about that. And so we tend to make. When someone's talking to me, I tend to be in a hurry. Come on, hurry up and say what you're going to say so I can get on down the road. Or, as I'm listening to you, I'm thinking. Well, I know the answer to that question. If you just shut up, I can tell you and we can get this thing fixed and get on down the road. So we tend to listen impatiently. Listening impatiently is listening and forming a judgment before we've heard the whole story. Listening impatiently is figuring out a rebuttal in our mind. If people could read our mind while they're talking, we would be in a world of hurt. We would be in big trouble because we're all thinking about the golf game or what we're going to do tomorrow, or I'm getting on a plane on Thursday. We're all thinking about something else. So listening patiently is turning the volume down on all that and taking my foot off of the accelerator of life and slowing down and walking down the road of life with that person. It doesn't mean we have to do that for three hours. Sometimes three minutes of patient listening means the world to the other person. So the first thing I tell people to do is listen patiently and when someone begins to talk to you, catch yourself in that moment and say I'm going to let go, I'm going to set my agenda aside, I'm going to go with this person where they need to go.
Tim Hast:The second thing I tell people is listen with your body. You see, in communication theory, when we're really really upset, when we're in fight or flight, only about 7% of our speaking is words. Then 38% of our speaking, or our communication, when we're really upset, is the inflection of the words oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Every one of those ohs is the same word but they mean something completely different. So 38% of the communication is inflection. And then a whopping 55% of our communication when we're really upset, just when we're really upset is our body language. So 7, 38, 55. 7% words, 38% inflection and a whopping 55% is body language. That's how I communicate when I'm really upset.
Tim Hast:Well, I've turned that around and assumed that for us, when I'm trying to listen to a person that's upset, then I need to pay a lot more attention to my body language. So if they're standing, I stand. If they're sitting, I sit. I want to sit at a 45 degree angle so that my shoulders are not squared. I want to drop my hands. If my hands are crossed, I want to cross my hands. If my legs are crossed, I want to cross my legs and lean into the conversation. I want to keep within.
Tim Hast:Before COVID-19, we said four feet, don't get closer than four feet, don't get too much farther away than four feet. There's kind of a magic area, and so I want to be conscious of what my body is saying. The bottom line is we want our body to say two things. When we're listening. The two things we want our body to say is I'm open to what you have to say and you're safe with me. Again, and you're working with customers over the phone, they can't see your body, so that requires that you do the other three a lot more. But even when I'm listening and they can't see my body, right now with you guys, I'm leaning into my microphone Because when I assume a posture of openness, research indicates that I actually hear about 28% more. So I try to. Even when people can't see my body, I still try to hold my arms in an open stance and open my body up, because I'm wanting to communicate two things that you're safe and I'm open to what you have to say.
Tim Hast:The third thing I tell people to do is listen with your voice, and if you've gone to reflective listening or some kind of class on communication, we all know active listening, but the problem is we teach people. I think I'm hearing, so I think you're saying so. It sounds to me like and those are all good, those are good places to start, but I want you to get so good at listening that you say that really bothered you, you're really excited, you're really upset that I or you're not saying I think I hear, because they know you hear. You just make it short and make it sweet to where they don't even realize that you're reflecting Human beings. When you begin to reflect and really hear them, they're not even aware of what you're doing. They're just feeling this sense of someone. They're not even articulating the word someone is hearing me. They're just sensing a freedom and a relief and a satisfaction in the fact that they're heard and they're not even thinking oh, he's hearing me.
Tim Hast:So listening with your voice is something that we tend to make more of it than it really is. When you guys leave this podcast, when you walk out the door and you have a conversation with someone just as soon as you get done from the podcast, remind yourself to listen with your voice. Listening with your voice is listening and restating a little bit of what you hear the person say You're real excited, you're having a good time, you're thinking about that hamburger in Birmingham. It really was a good hamburger. That's kind of the theme today. That's the third time I've said hamburger.
Greg Hamlin:It's like what's up with that? I must be craving a hamburger. No, that's great. And I think the reflective part is really important, and I love what you said about your body, in that we think that while we're on the phone, people can't see us. It won't matter, and it really does. I noticed so before I got into claims. When I was still in college, I was doing non-for-profit fundraising for the university, raising scholarships for students, and I noticed on the days that I was struggling like I was really struggling to connect with people. If I just pushed my chair back and stood up, engaged more with my body, I got better results.
Greg Hamlin:And so there was something about just it turned on some things in my head, I guess, or my, my voice. You could hear that I had more energy, that I was more connected and that I was more engaged. So I really do think there's something to what you say about even if you can't be next to somebody, still how you sit where you are, it matters.
Tim Hast:What a great discovery you just winked out on me. I'm making sure that I still have audio.
Greg Hamlin:We're here, yes.
Tim Hast:Good, good, good, Because it just went max headroom for just a second. So listen patiently with your body, listen with your voice and finally, listen with your mind. And listening with your mind is simply visualizing what the person is telling you. When you told me you had six kids, I pictured them. I could just see them, you know, like the stickers on the back of minivans. You know that has mommy and daddy in the stair step. I saw all six of the kids and it doesn't have to be a and it can be a caricature. In fact, the more colorful and the more outlandish the picture is, the more it will help you remember what the person is saying and the beauty of when I listen with my mind. If I want to listen with my voice, all I have to do is kind of look at the picture that I've created in my mind and just describe the picture and it helps me listen with my voice.
Tim Hast:So I tell people take these four things and every time you anticipate that you're going to have a conversation, if you've written these things down, listen patiently with your body, with your voice and with your mind. If you've written these four things down on a three by five card or the back of a business card, if, when you're approaching that meeting, you're reminding yourself okay, I'm going to meet with Jacob and I'm going to remind myself to listen patiently. I'm not going to make it all about me. I'm going to listen with my body, I'm going to make sure that I'm open, I'm going to do my best to hear what he's saying and reflect back the emotion that he's feeling, and then I'm going to just do my very best to picture what he's saying. That's hard work. You need to know that when you listen, and really listen, when you engage in our listening, active, reflective, empathic listening you're going to be tired at the end of the day because it is hard work, but, folks, the dividends are so great that it's worth all the effort. I got to tell you.
Matt Yehling:That's why I know your meeting last night was effective, Tim, because you came home when you were exhausted.
Greg Hamlin:I think that's a great place to kind of tie things up is just at one. It's something we have to practice all the time and it's not something you arrive at and there are days that you're not going to be your best, but it's just continuing to work at it and when we do that, the results really they're there, Tim, as we wrap things up, if people want to connect with you, either to get your book I know I found it on Amazon, so I assume they can find it there like I did.
Greg Hamlin:Yes, but if they were interested in your executive coaching or some of the trainings you do, whether that's DISC or some of the other types of trainings that you do, how do they find you too?
Tim Hast:The world's easiest email address. I'm at coach at attnet that's C-O-A-C-H at sign A-T-T dot net and I'd love to hear from you. That's excellent.
Greg Hamlin:Excellent. Well, one of the things that we're doing this season because it's really important to me that we put good stuff out in the universe. There's so much negativity, and so one of the commitments that I've made when we did the podcast after we got through the first season is I wanted to end on something that just put some of that good stuff back out there. And I'd like to ask you this final question what's something you're grateful for?
Tim Hast:What am I grateful for? I'm grateful for people who forgive me.
Greg Hamlin:I love that, you know, and I think we all probably could do a better job of forgiving each other of our weak spots.
Matt Yehling:So what a great what a great way to end. Thanks Tim, Thanks Greg. This has been great. We get to do these things and it's a lot of fun. I always learn so much and this one's been really special. I think it speaks to me, you know, in a management position, I think it. Hopefully it speaks to those out there listening to this, adjusters, or wherever you are in the whole workers comp process. You know, I think we can all be better listeners, better communicators. So thank you very much. I mean halt and R. I'm going to remember that I took copious amounts of notes this is great.
Matt Yehling:Thank you very much.
Tim Hast:Well, it's been a pleasure on my part and I try to listen. Well, but I'm an eye on the disc so I like to talk too. So anytime you guys want to do a podcast, give me a call and we'll talk about hamburgers or effective listening or effective speaking or whatever you want to talk about. So thank you for your time.
Greg Hamlin:That sounds fantastic. Thanks again, tim, and I'll just remind all of our listeners our motto to do right, think differently and don't forget to care. And that's it for this week, guys, and we will see you every two weeks as we release on our regular schedule. Thanks again, thank you.