Listening
We are losing our listening.
Listening is the skill every other communication skill rests on, and almost nobody is taught it. Worse, almost everybody believes they're already good at it, which is the one belief that makes improvement impossible.
This is the talk that shows an audience what their listening is actually doing, and hands them the means to change it.
The talk
Julian opens with the uncomfortable evidence. Only one employee in 12 rates their leader a very good listener, which means that in most organisations the great majority of leaders are confident about something the people around them don't experience at all. That gap isn't a soft problem. Disengagement costs the world economy $8.8 trillion a year, and miscommunication costs American workers over a day a week, around $1.2 trillion. Put together, poor listening is one of the largest unexamined costs in business.
From there the talk becomes practical. Listening is not hearing: it's the meaning we make from sound, and it runs through filters we never chose. Julian shows the filters, then the four ways we listen and the cost of using the wrong one in a meeting. He gives the audience listening positions they can move between on purpose, and a three-minute daily practice that rebuilds attention in a world designed to fracture it.
It ends where the money is: what happens to an organisation when its people start to feel heard.
What the audience leave with
- Why most people overestimate their own listening, and how to find out the truth
- The filters that decide what you hear before you hear it
- The four ways we listen, and when each one is right
- Listening positions, and how to change them deliberately
- A three-minute daily practice that rebuilds attention
- What being genuinely heard does to engagement, loyalty and innovation
Who it suits
- Leadership conferences and executive offsites
- Whole-company events where one idea has to reach everybody
- Human resources, learning and development, and internal communications audiences
- Sales and customer-facing teams, whose work is all listening
- Healthcare, education and any sector where being heard is the service
What organisers say
“The highest-rated speech we have ever had in 25 events over 18 years.”
“He had the audience absolutely engaged from start to finish... I can't recommend you as a speaker enough.”