In a world where everyone seems to be talking but few are truly listening, what if there was a way to transform your relationships through the simple yet profound act of deep listening? Former BBC executive and journalist Emily Kasriel brings us an intimate look at her research-backed, field-tested method for creating genuine connection, even with those who hold opposing views.
This conversation explores the eight essential elements of deep listening that can help you move beyond surface-level exchanges to create meaningful dialogue. You’ll learn practical techniques for staying present, holding space for difficult conversations, and reflecting in ways that help others feel truly heard and understood.
Whether you’re looking to strengthen family bonds, navigate workplace dynamics, or bridge seemingly impossible divides, this episode offers concrete tools to enhance every interaction in your life. Learn why silence can be more powerful than words, how to recognize when your own “shadows” are blocking connection, and what happens in your brain when you finally feel deeply heard.
We explore fascinating research about how digital devices impact our ability to listen, why walking side-by-side often leads to better conversations than sitting face-to-face, and the surprising power of strategic pauses in negotiations. Emily shares touching personal stories about using deep listening to connect with her aging mother and create profound moments with strangers.
This episode pairs beautifully with Emily’s new book, Deep Listening: Transform Your Relationships with Family, Friends, and Foes, and offers essential wisdom for anyone seeking to create more meaningful connections in our increasingly disconnected world.
You can find Emily at: Website | LinkedIn | Episode Transcript
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Episode Transcript:
Jonathan Fields: [00:00:00] So what if I told you the simple act of having your phone in your pocket, even turned off, is preventing you from connecting with the people you love most. And that’s just the beginning of what’s getting in the way of real human connection. We’re living in a moment where everyone seems to be shouting to be heard, yet genuine listening has become almost extinct, and the cost fractured relationships, deepening divides and a profound sense of disconnection, isolation, loneliness, even when we’re surrounded by people. My guest today is Emily Kasriel, an award winning journalist and former BBC executive who spent over two decades exploring the art and science of deep listening. As a senior visiting research fellow at King’s College Policy Institute in London and previous visiting fellow at Oxford, Emily has developed a fascinating approach to listening that’s being used everywhere from corporate boardrooms to conflict zones to just personal communications. Her new book, Deep Listening, offers a powerful framework for creating genuine connection even across our deepest divides. And what we explore in this conversation will change how you think about pretty much every interaction in your life. Emily shares the surprising research about why having a phone nearby, even when it’s turned off, fundamentally alters the quality of your attention. We talk about things like why walking side by side often leads to better conversations than sitting face to face, or how strategic silence can transform negotiations. And she reveals touching stories about using deep listening to create just profound connections with everyone, from family members to perfect strangers. So excited to share this conversation with you. I’m Jonathan Fields and this is Good Life Project.
Jonathan Fields: [00:01:45] We’re having this conversation at a moment in time where it feels like for so many of us, we are surrounded by noise, by speed, by distraction. It feels like, you know, everywhere you turn, People tend to be on blast mode. Nobody is really pausing and listening and paying attention. And even when you do, I’ve had so many conversations with people where they feel like it’s just this superficial thing. Nobody really goes deep and opens up to what’s really going on. How did we get here?
Emily Kasriel: [00:02:16] I think you’re so right, Jonathan. I think that so often when we listen, we are performing the act of listening. We’re pre-loading our verbal gun with ammunition, ready to fire, with our own ideas, with our own questions. We interrupt. And as somebody who used to be a serial interrupter and I’m still am an interrupter, my kids will say, mom, you’re supposed to be a great listener, for goodness sake. You know, we often are doing that because of all the pressures that we feel on time, on being efficient at work, on delivering outcomes, and on providing solutions. And actually, the research evidence is that men often are likely to come up more likely to come up with solutions when they listen. Often solutions which don’t really take into account what the speaker has shared than women. And we also, I think, you know, we’re motivated often by really good intentions. Like we think our role is to help other people with the solution, or we feel that our role is to cheer someone up. So when our kid comes back from school and says, you know, mum, I had a horrible time and the teacher was always picking on me. We say, oh, I’m sure that wasn’t quite right, I’m sure. Perhaps that was just the way you felt, but maybe the teacher was had a really busy day or she was also picking on other kids you just didn’t hear. And of course, our kid just doesn’t feel heard. They feel dismissed. And they go, oh, and they leave. Not quite knowing, not quite making sense of what’s happened, but not feeling heard. Whereas I think it’s, you know, there’s so much that we can do differently.
Jonathan Fields: [00:03:59] I mean, if we unpack that a little bit, you know, the pace of life, I think for sure is contributing to things. And as you say, a lot of times, you know, the lack of deep listening. It’s not a like malicious intent type of thing. It’s not we’re not trying to cause harm or we’re not trying to annoy somebody or show them that we’re better. It’s just life is happening really quickly around us, or they come to us and we think, well, my role is to get them to a solution. So let me get just enough where I think I have the solution and then jump in and provide it so it’s not ill intent, right? But at the same time, I often wonder and I wonder if you’ve seen this in your work and in the research. Has the state of listening changed? Sort of like over the last generation or so. And it feels to me, even in my lifetime, things are different, and I often wonder what the role of things like technology, media, social media, political life does, like how it plays into that.
Emily Kasriel: [00:04:56] We did do research actually with more in common NGO and YouGov in the US. And we asked people, do you feel that people aren’t listening because they’re distracted by their phone? And 2 in 3 people said yes. And we found that people who were always online are much more likely to feel that no one ever listens to them. So I think that digital distractions inevitably play a role, and it’s because of that pressure. And of course, all the money and resources which go into our phone keeping us distracted, keep at these apps enticing us. So, I mean, I feel personally the more pressured, the more tired I am, the more lightly I go to my phone. It knows how to entice me. You know it knows what are my soft spots. Rather than be in the moment and being present, whether that’s being present with my own feelings or being present to the people around me.
Jonathan Fields: [00:05:52] I mean, when you think about the phone also in particular, and I’ve seen research in the past on this where even having a phone on a table turned down changes the quality of your attention, or having a phone in your pocket changes the quality of attention. So a lot of us think, well, like we’re doing the right thing here. You know, we’re putting it away. We’re putting it in our pocket rather than entirely leaving it out of the room. But it’s almost like it just consumes a little bit of our cognitive bandwidth, just knowing that it’s there, and it kind of keeps us from entirely tuning into who’s in front of us. Does that make sense?
Emily Kasriel: [00:06:24] Yeah, it makes total sense. And I certainly know that for myself, if I liberate myself and decide not to take my phone when I go out for a walk, for example, I’m able to feel a sense of freedom, even though I feel enticed to check it when I come back. And I also do have an elderly mother that I want to keep in check of. And a lot of people have kids or other urgent things. That is the reason why they say to themselves and justify why they need their phone. But I also know that when the phone is there, even I can see it now. And I’ve actually turned it off on this call because I didn’t want anybody to phone interrupt. It had such a pervasive drag. And I think, you know, in a bit about the eight steps of deep listening, and one of them is about being present. And I think external distractions, digital devices, are such an impediment to being present. But I do think that by practicing presence in the moments when we don’t need it can allow us to be present in the moments that really matter, like the moments when we’re listening to someone.
Jonathan Fields: [00:07:28] I remember seeing Research by Arthur Aron a while back that was actually popularized in a famous New York Times modern love piece, and he’s the researcher who developed what became known as the 36 questions, where he would take perfect strangers, sit them in a lab for 45 minutes, and have them ask progressively deeper questions of each other. And there was nothing else to do. And it’s interesting because when you create these artificial environments like that, it seems like people are able to tune in. But the minute you take them out of that environment, my curiosity is always what happens. Like once we. It’s fascinating to be able to to create this in a vacuum, but we don’t live in a vacuum like we live in the real world.
Emily Kasriel: [00:08:09] Yeah, you’re quite right. We do live in the wild, but I have found from people that I’ve worked with on deep listening. So that’s people all around the world. It’s from boardrooms. I’ve worked with Pearson’s. I just did a podcast with McKinsey because a lot of interest about using deep listening in the workplace. I’ve also worked with the British Council in Latvia and Lithuania, just after the Russian full scale invasion of Ukraine, where the societies are really divided, people have a lot of worries on their mind and a lot of antagonism between people who think differently to them, because it feels as if their very survival is at stake. And yet, even in those contexts, Context, people were able to learn to listen in a deep way and then engage profoundly across difference with people who believe differently to them. And in fact, I did a big project with a thousand people in 100 countries with the BBC and the British Council. We recruited people in a really diverse bunch of people. In fact, the biggest countries represented were New Zealand, Malaysia, UK and Iran. A mate of mine runs a BBC Persian service, so she was able to recruit a lot of people on telegram, which is the social media app people use there.
Emily Kasriel: [00:09:24] And um, what was really exciting is that even in that real world environment, it wasn’t in a studio, it was virtual that people were able to learn, and it was over six hours, over three weeks to practice deep listening, to learn about deep listening. And actually, I thought, I’m not doing something at this scale without getting proof to see if it actually works. So we reached out to the Journal of Applied Social Psychology. And they set up a control group. And then we compared the people having the conversation in a control group with people having these conversations about subjects they disagreed the most vehemently with each other, with the real conversations after this training. And we found that people felt safer to express themselves and genuinely understood. They felt more connected with their partners, even despite the fact they were discussing these very divisive topics, including, for example, is social media good or bad for humanity? And this was the really exciting finding. They became more open to re-examine their own attitudes. So that when people really learn and practice deep listening, they start to think more deeply about what they themselves believe.
Jonathan Fields: [00:10:41] And I do want to dive into the details of deep listening, because I think it’s a fascinating modality. But before we get there, though. I mean, part of what you’re sharing here also is, you know, one of the challenges to deep listening is polarized points of view. And certainly, like we live in a world right now where people are vehemently opposed, you know, in the context of what they believe. And they’re really dug in. And, you know, so one of my curiosities, you know, what is what is the harm caused by the loss of the ability to really listen? And in the context of deep polarization, sometimes that harm actually rises to the level of life and death.
Emily Kasriel: [00:11:19] Yeah. I think it’s incredibly frightening what’s happened with polarization, although I should say that often in the media, we see people who are representative of organizations and they have the most strong views, and there are a lot of people in the middle, the exhausted majority, who don’t feel so strongly, and yet we don’t hear their voices. But we do know that people inside Side. Families inside communities all over the US and in many other countries are really grappling with a with polarization. And it feels to people almost as if they listen to people who think on the other side, they will be contaminated with these ideas. They will be letting their side down as if it is immoral to let the light of attention and actually listen to these views. They find very hard, so much easier on 1 to 1 than on social media or in text, where ideas just get reduced. And, you know, in my mind it’s all about recognizing the humanity behind the person. So if people are religious, they might draw upon the idea of recognizing God’s face in every other person, or just recognizing the essential humanity which they connect, which connects people even with very different beliefs. And the process of deep listening allows you to have that much more profound conversation, which allows you to connect in a far more profound way and reveal that humanity. Martin Buber, who was a Jewish theologian, he distinguished between I it encounters which are the ones we most often have when we treat the other person as an object or somebody to extract value from. Or we go through the motions of listening, and I thou encounters where something almost magical happens beyond each of you as individuals. It’s like being in a joint state of flow. And you are. Some people talk about like your soul engages with their soul. Something happens which is beyond surface level, and you are both changed through that encounter.
Jonathan Fields: [00:13:30] Yeah, I think we all know when we have those experiences, and I would imagine also that so many of us would, if you asked, when was the last time you had a conversation like that, a moment like that, an interaction like that? They would probably have to search for a bit to point to an experience, and we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. I want to follow up on something that you mentioned in this. It’s this relationship between polarization and listening and what popped into my mind as you’re describing. This is so, so many of us are polarized, in part because they’re a set of beliefs that we buy into, but also in part because we belong to a community of people. And the communal set of beliefs is X. And for us to have good standing in that community, we need to either truly believe X also, or at least signal that we believe x. So if you have one group that believes X and another group that believes Y, and those x and y are like polar opposites in terms of like the way that they world view a, you know, an issue at the moment. I wonder also how much that desire to almost primal need to belong to the group that you’re in, and adopt their beliefs and publicly signal that you adopt their beliefs is a mechanism. I wonder how much that influences our willingness and ability to then listen to the other side, because it’s almost like if I even entertain the other point of view, I risk being outcast from the community to which I seek to belong. I wonder if you’ve seen that come up in some way in the research you’ve done.
Emily Kasriel: [00:15:07] Yeah, absolutely. It does. And Jay Van Bavel at New York University has done work in this space in particular. And this is absolutely true. You know, we’re primed to have an in-group and an outgroup because of course, it feels so great to belong. We all want to belong, and therefore we’re willing to sacrifice some nuances in order to feel that we are part of something. And that makes the other the outcast. And what we do is then we paint on the face of the enemy all the uncomfortable shadows inside ourselves that we don’t want to accept. In fact, often when we really have trouble speaking to an individual and we think they’re really horrific or evil or selfish or all of the attributes are often ones that we actually hold about ourselves but don’t want to accept. And I think doing that work on yourself, really figuring out what’s going on can be so helpful, so that we stop painting the enemy with everything that we hold most abhorrent. I also think understanding complexity and nuance, because so much of what we think about the other is misconstrued. There’s been research more in common amongst Republicans and Democrats, and their perceptions of the other are often way off, way off reality. Whether it is that Republicans think that Democrats like to eat abortions for breakfast, and many Democrats have a lot of hesitations and and concerns around abortions or, you know, a similar factor on the other way around.
Emily Kasriel: [00:16:39] You know, we’re all subject to perils of perception. We’re all subject to ideas of the other side, which tend not to really reflect the complexity. So allowing complexity and being brave enough and having the courage to have more of those encounters with people who think differently can allow us to realize, wait a moment. She’s a Democrat, but she doesn’t believe what I thought or Democrats believe. But it takes not only having the encounter, but being in a space of deep listening. When we’re having that encounter that can really enable us to have it a more meaningfully and to broaden our perception of the other side. And one really great question to ask somebody who thinks differently is what in your life experience has led you to believe what you do? Because once we give them the opportunity to dig deep and to reflect back something of their own peculiarity of their life. We’re able to connect at a human to human level, which then stops the fabrication of ideologies and labels, which obfuscates and hides that possibility of a real person to person connection, which can be so beautiful.
Jonathan Fields: [00:17:58] That framing is so interesting, right? Because I think a lot of people really are curious about the answer to that. But oftentimes it comes out as something like, how could you possibly believe that? Which is an attack? But what they’re really saying is like, well, tell me, tell me, what in your life has led you to this place where you actually you believe this thing that I think if we can come with genuine curiosity, it’s just the language that we use to phrase these questions is so important.
Emily Kasriel: [00:18:25] Yeah, I have got in my book, actually, I have a list of questions which are kind of good to ask, particularly when you disagree and links to more. So I think thinking about the words you use can be really important. But I think even more than the words, it’s your, you know, what’s going on for you. What what’s in your heart. Because I think the words are an expression in the person’s sense is what’s in your heart when you’re having that encounter.
Jonathan Fields: [00:18:48] Yeah. And this notion also that you shared of allowing space for complexity. We love to distill people who are in a conversation with, especially if they believe or see things differently than us. We love to distill them down into a caricature, you know, like what is the most base version of that person? Because it’s easier to other a caricature, you know, and it’s easier to sort of define the difference between and rather than saying, maybe they’re human being like us as you’re inviting and maybe like me, they’re really complicated, too, you know, like, I don’t see the world the same way. I don’t see an issue the same way today, maybe six months from now. And, you know, like things are domain specific. Oftentimes, you know, we’re complex. And especially when you take things to social media, you know, like that’s where nuance goes to die. That’s where complexity goes to die. It’s really a binary medium, and that’s where so many of us feel like we’re searching for answers or to be seen or to be heard. And it’s just it’s not a place where you really can ever get to a level that good things happen.
Emily Kasriel: [00:19:50] I so agree with you, Jonathan, because we have many different identities. You know, we might be a parent, we’re a boss, but we’re also a colleague. We’re maybe a member of a church. We are. There’s so many different identities. We’re a volunteer. We don’t have one identity yet. We often put one label on the other person. And you mentioned, which was so beautiful, the fact that we evolve. And Carl Rogers, the psychologist who I’ve drawn on very heavily in my work to about, wrote about the fact that we’re all in the process of becoming. So even your partner is not the same person as last year, last week, or even last night. And yet, so often when we talk to those, especially those we’re most intimate with, we assume that they are and therefore we don’t really open our hearts to understand their new ideas and what they’re wrestling with today. And that really stops relationships from being profound and authentic.
Jonathan Fields: [00:20:46] Yeah. It’s like we often step into every new conversation expecting to talk to the person that we knew the day before, the year before, never allowing space for evolution and assuming that there is no shift, there’s no change, there’s no growth. What if we gave ourselves the grace to say, like, I don’t know where this person is today? Let me just ask. Let me come into it with a place of curiosity. So you used the phrase deep listening a number of times now. I want to explore that. Tell me broadly what we’re talking about when we talk about deep listening. And then let’s walk through the model that you’ve developed.
Emily Kasriel: [00:21:18] In a way, I think to really sum it up is it’s about the whole of you listening to the whole of them. So if I talk that through in just a little bit more detail with these eight steps, and in my book there’s a chapter for each step. So this is just a brief outline, but the first one is about creating the space. It’s about creating the best environment. So at the most important, it’s about a space which the speaker will feel psychologically safe. So for example, in an open plan office or in front of another sibling, not the best place to find out why your kid is getting bad grades from his homework, or why your colleague is being late for work yet again. You know, being in a space which feels protected, safe, not, you know, not hurt. Often, going for a walk can be great to get out of the confines of the office or the home. Somebody was telling me with their kid that they, you know, went to the child’s bedroom, or even somebody else told me they climbed under the bed to find out why their daughter was refusing to go back to school, because their daughter just went under the bed and refused to come out, and it was their safe space. So think about what is safe for the other person. But walking in nature can be even more profound. Teenagers great in the car, side by side, without a kind of compulsion to talk because of the noisy traffic can work really, really well.
Jonathan Fields: [00:22:40] In any given context. Is there a question that we can ask ourselves to sort of prompt ourselves to figure out, like, what is the safe space in this context? Or like, how do we actually think about doing this? Because I think so many of us have heard, you know, create psychological safety either in work environments or family environments or therapy. But a lot of us really have no idea what that means. And like the how side of it is, is a confusing place.
Emily Kasriel: [00:23:04] That’s a very good question. There I was, I just interrupted you again, trying to think about what you were going to say. As I said, I do that plenty. At least I’m aware now that I’m doing it, which is the first step. But, um, we can ask ourselves, will this space be the best space to create a great listening environment? And it doesn’t just mean psychological safety. It also means, for example, blue white Right overhead light, like in a hospital or a school that puts people on edge. Far better to have softer light with a longer wavelength, more pink yellow on the sides, because we prefer because of the sun to have a more dissolved sort of lighting from the side or an up lighter can make people feel more comfortable. But it’s also how can people feel really cherished for a difficult conversation. So I spent time with Japanese tea ceremony practitioners, and they will find the most beautiful ceramic vase or glass to give somebody some tea, and they will then rotate it. So the most beautiful picture is facing the person, their guest, and they’ll get a bamboo leaf from the balcony or garden and place it on top of the water in order that the person feels cherished. Maybe it’s their favorite Adele track, which you know, makes them feel comfortable so you can have a think about what is it from their perspective that makes them feel at home and more likely to be comfortable and even cherished? And step two is listening to yourself first.
Emily Kasriel: [00:24:30] We were talking earlier about situations where we paint the things that we find most uncomfortable in ourselves onto the person we disagree with, and that we have whole families of shadows. So I was talking to a colleague of mine, and he was he chairs a English regional energy company. He’s chair of the board. One of his colleagues is an accountant. And yet he said, I’m never really able to tap into his expertise, and I need it because I don’t really know about finance. I need his help. But I find he’s always arrogant and I can’t get on, and I don’t want to know what’s going on. And when he was describing it to me, I just sort of held the space. And then he suddenly realized that that individual, his accountant on the board, reminded him of his bullying older brother, and his parents didn’t really want much to do with the kids at that stage. Their eldest had already left the house. His older brother would sit in the kitchen and have loads of experiments with Bunsen burners and all sorts of great equipment. Was not interested in his baby brother. So this guy felt in talking to his accountant that he was eight yet again. And in fact, in my book, I illustrated the book for those who are seeing it on video.
Emily Kasriel: [00:25:45] Here’s a picture of all these shadows that, you know, somebody’s trying to listen, and all these shadows are causing chaos inside us and being aware and taking the time to acknowledge these shadows, if only to ourself as well as our agenda. You know, we can ask ourselves what’s really going on here, what’s most important in this conversation? Perhaps it’s the relationship rather than my desire to win. And until we ask ourselves those questions, we’re not really in a space to listen to ourselves. And I would say that if you’ve experienced trauma, you know, listening to yourself can be quite dangerous work and you might need the help of a specialist in order to be in a safe place. But even if you haven’t, you might want to think about a safe anchor. Something that makes you feel really good, like a pet or a beautiful place in nature, or someone who really loves you to be able to, in your mind, go back to again. If these shadows come up in the middle of the conversation, for example, and you can say to the shadow, you know, whoa, I know you want to you want to say something, but I think I can handle it. Can we talk about this later? You can say to yourself, and then you’re able to return back to the person speaking.
Jonathan Fields: [00:26:59] No, that makes so much sense. You know that question that you just shared? Like, what’s really going on here, I think can be so powerful because it assumes that there is a subtext happening. And oftentimes the assumption that we’re making is assumptions about other people who they are, why they’re doing their motivations, their secret agendas, all these different things. We have no idea, you know, but we overlay our history, our trauma, like our patterns, our relationship with past people who have in some way slightly mapped with the same way that this person is showing up and we assume all the same stuff. So that that question of what’s really going on here. I love that because I feel like it helps us look at our assumptions, look at our inner dialogue, look at our emotional triggers, and bring them in and say, okay, am I responding to the person in front of me? Or am I responding to all of these hidden things, the shadows as you describe within me? Do you find that even just realizing that just immediately makes a difference, allows you to step in and listen differently?
Emily Kasriel: [00:28:01] Yeah, I absolutely think that awareness gives you more choices. But I would say coming to terms with our own stuff, it’s a work of a lifetime.
Jonathan Fields: [00:28:11] Therapy may help for sure.
Emily Kasriel: [00:28:12] Yeah, exactly. You know, but I mean, sometimes, you know, if we’re not too traumatized by something, I think just go out for a walk somewhere, ideally where nobody can hear and let that shadow have its voice say, I’m feeling you’re really angry, and you’re frightened of this person who’s here to mend your boiler. You know what’s going on here. And give that shadow a voice and listen to what the shadow has to say. Because once the shadow is able to articulate, we no longer feel we need to keep it in our basement. To use the terminology of Dick Schwartz. Dick Schwartz, who’s done lots of brilliant work on these shadows, and our families of shadows, they no longer we feel that we have these firefighters who need to keep all these shadows in the basement. We can acknowledge them and even begin to accept them and even acknowledge a positive part that they play in our life, trying to protect us, because that’s often the role that they do play. And if we can begin to do this work, and sometimes even those very difficult conversations can be like torches to illuminate what’s going on in our own souls, in our own psyches. And so that we can begin that process of coming to terms and even, you know, certainly beginning to acknowledge and even accepting those parts of ourselves so that we can be more open to the other. And as you said earlier, we’re not just projecting all our own stuff onto the other person.
Jonathan Fields: [00:29:32] Yeah, and you just used the phrase so we can be more open to the other, and it’s almost like a yes. And it’s like, yes, that’s a great benefit of this. And at the same time, this also really allows us to reconnect with who we are and give ourselves a sense of grace along the way. So it’s like you get these double benefits here. Yeah. Talk to me about the third element we talked about create safety. Listening to yourself. Where do we go from here?
Emily Kasriel: [00:29:55] You’re quite right. And the listening to yourself is such an important part of deep listening. And it is the ability to connect, but also to connect with yourself and who you are. And I think that’s so important. So step three is being being present. So when I train people, whether in conflict zones or boardrooms, I actually do a meditation which is a bit radical in certain boardrooms and certain situations, but it’s a time for me to get back and to focus on my breathing and to get back to being present, even just this very second of talking about it. I can feel I’m calmer and you might notice a difference in my voice, and it’s enabling us to both being aware of those external distractions like our phone we were talking about earlier, but also the internal distractions about I really need to win on this situation and to convince the other person that I’m right, and we need to go on holiday to place and not play sport, or we need to make this deal with this client regardless of some of the risks or whatever it is, you know, and allows you to figure out what’s going on, having that space. And so when I was coaching people at the BBC, indeed now and I coach people and I do executive coaching, I always try and put some time aside in my diary to return to being present before I do the listening, because being present, you know, I don’t know if you’ve ever been on a zoom or teams call Jonathan and as you are speaking, you’ve actually got your phone underneath. Off camera and you’re checking your emails.
Jonathan Fields: [00:31:26] Of course, I’ve never done that. Of course I’ve heard other people do. I mean, who hasn’t done that right?
Emily Kasriel: [00:31:33] Exactly. And the person knows it. Yeah. Even if they can’t see the camera, they know that you’re not really there. And it’s so important to be present as we feel it. And I spent time with First Nation Canadians because they’ve evolved a way of being present, really beautiful over tens of thousands of years. And this idea of being present with whatever is to unfold. And one of them talked about it with me is that when they’re listening, they’re not just listening by themselves. All their ancestors are listening with them. And not just their ancestors, but their future progeny. And not only that, but also the soil and the grass and the sky, and they’re all listening together. And that helps that expansiveness of listening, I think is a really beautiful image to keep in mind and helps me keep in mind, rather than that kind of very tight focus of just you and the other person through a small tunnel of communication. And so step four is about being curious, and it’s a kind of gateway, because it’s that assumption that we don’t already know what the person is thinking or is going to say that allows us to break free of script and start to have an authentic conversation. And then when we are curious, the person can tell us, let’s say a new neighbor will tell us about their daughter who’s training to be a nurse, and then suddenly we have more empathy for them and their daughter. You know, we understand more what’s going on in their life, and we can connect with them with empathy and then also with respect. And this is regardless of whether or not you agree with what they’re talking about, as well as being aware of our own judgments, because that’s so important.
Jonathan Fields: [00:33:16] How can we? And this ties in a little bit earlier to what we were talking about, which is so often we show up assuming we know where another person stands, what they’re going to say, what their point of view is going to be in a conversation. And we get pretty dug in, not only in our own position, but in thinking that we know what the other person is going to say and what their willingness to be in a conversation with is. And also, we show up with an agenda like my agenda in this conversation is not to get curious. That’s not my job. My job is to win. My job is to persuade the other person to my point of view, and I have a really deeply held point of view. This is like a bone deep point of view. I think so often we show up to a conversation, we’re like, I don’t really have an interest in getting curious because my job is to somehow get them to see the world that I see it when you’re that dug in, and I think a lot of folks are these days, what can we do to shift from that to, oh, I’m genuinely not just. Oh, I’ve been told to be curious. So let me ask a question or two so I can check that box. But how can I switch from that to being stepping into a conversation, being genuinely curious?
Emily Kasriel: [00:34:26] I think that for me, when I feel adamantly that I’m right 100% and the other person is 150% in the wrong, and I have done this at times I feel like my survival rests on me winning and convincing. The other person that, to me, I’ve learned, is a signal. There’s some of my stuff going on. I’m not at nothing actually to do with the other person. It’s something that they represent in my own psyche. So warning sign to me that actually I need to do some of that self-reflection. When I feel that adamant about something, it’s rarely because people are complex. There’s no you know, there isn’t a black and white. I think that being present and acknowledging to ourself that agenda can be really, really helpful in allowing it to let go even a little bit. And then I think if you listen to the other person looking out for something that might surprise you. For example, these little devices that help shift you from storing up your ammunition, ready to prove yourself. And then the other thing that I think can be really useful. Let’s say you’re having an argument with your spouse, is knowing that if the person feels deeply listened to the research, there’s a lot of evidence around this. They’re much more likely to be in a space to listen to you. It’s almost kind of crazy because let’s say if you really do want to go on holiday on X and not not to Y, it’s much more useful to really listen to your partner why they want to go to location Y and really reflect back, and we’ll get to that in a minute. The very true reasons why they believe that Y is a far greater destination, that your speaker will be more likely to be become more open minded and understand that there’s different perspectives and will be more likely to listen to you about why X is better. And in fact, you then might both be open minded and decide it. Actually, you don’t want to go on holiday at all.
Jonathan Fields: [00:36:40] And it speaks to this notion of maybe even if you kind of have this hidden agenda, but you know, it actually, the way to quote, persuade them to your point of view is to actually really pay attention and to be present and to listen and to to as we’re about to explore, reflect and clarify. That actually may be the best way to do it. But then along the way, if you’re really doing that, you may end up being like, oh, actually, I kind of see their point of view and I think maybe I even agree with it, you know? So it’s like, yeah, I love the way that kind of use it in a bit of a subversive way that actually opens your heart at the same time and your mind. And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. So take me into the further elements here.
Emily Kasriel: [00:37:26] Step five is about the gaze. So really hard to do on a zoom call or Riverside podcast studio thing we’re doing now. So I’m both trying to look at your body language. I’ve shrunk your photo really small, so it’s directly below the camera. Not ideal in person, so much easier. But you don’t want to be face to face. And that’s why we all get so exhausted from all those zoom calls in lockdown. You know, if you’re face to face, usually either want to kiss or fight and doesn’t make you feel really at ease. Actually 60 degrees I spent some time with researchers who were working in. This is a good angle between the two of you, so you can see the other person’s eyes and body language, but you’re not face to face. The gaze is so important, but it’s not a kind of I don’t know if you know the French philosopher Michel Foucault who talked about the gaze of prison officers, the way that they looked at prisoners to such a degree that the prisoners became self imprisoned by their own minds. It’s a warm hearted, empathetic, open gaze which allows the person to then go on all sorts of journeys, knowing you’re there, waiting, looking at them with warmth for them to return from their journey. And I found that experience as a coach to be very, very effective. And because you’ve held them in that warm hearted gaze, their journey will be so much richer because they know that you’re accompanying them. Not necessarily with the thought, but you are in a broader, wider sense. And that’s so impactful.
Jonathan Fields: [00:38:51] Yeah, I love that. Before we get to step six, quick curiosity around the gaze. So I live in Boulder, Colorado, and one of the jokes here when people come to town is that nobody goes for coffee. Everyone goes for a hike. And it’s actually pretty true. So I’m out hiking with new friends, with old friends, sometimes business meetings, and we’re just kind of walking side by side. So we’re not gazing at each other. It’s actually, if anything, we’re shoulder to shoulder looking ahead or looking at nature or something like that. So in the context of gaze, and I found oftentimes this type of conversation is much more open, much more fluid, much more curiosity driven, much more vulnerable at times, even though there’s no version of direct gaze except for occasionally glancing over as you’re chatting. Do you have a sense for what’s going on there?
Emily Kasriel: [00:39:37] I think that walking can be fantastic, because there’s also research that if you walk at a certain pace, not too slow, not too quickly, it kind of matches your heart rate and you get in sync with each other beautifully, and you can have a real companionable silence where you don’t always feel you need to talk, and you’re both making a journey, a physical journey together through nature. And as a coach, I would often go for walks with clients, and they would sometimes refer back to parts of the conversation and what we saw at various points, and it’s even more effective if you want to talk about the future, or a bigger horizon or more people’s perspective, to go somewhere a bit higher where you can look down because we’ve evolved to feel safer. We’ve also good enough to have a bit of water flowing water because again, that makes us feel, you know, we need to have water near us. So all of those things make I’m not surprised that you’re walking into conversations and you’re right, you’re not looking at each other. But in fact, when you want to know what the person is thinking and feeling beyond the words tone of voice is far more important than facial expression. Because facial expression, you might be feeling really happy, but that’s because you’re about to eat a gorgeous chocolate donut just resting on your table.
Emily Kasriel: [00:40:54] Not because of anything I’ve said. Or you might be looking stressed, and that’s because you’re worried you’ve forgotten something important, not because of something I’ve said. So facial expression not very reliable gestures. Not so reliable unless you speak a foreign language and we don’t speak the same language. Or you say, I climbed over a river and it was that high, and you point your hand up high. You know, so tone of voice is far more effective. Of course, the content of the words are the most important thing. And I write about the research around that when you’re trying to understand what somebody says. So moving on to step six, which is about holding the silence. And many people fear this, especially in America. I was training some Hollywood executives and they said, you know, we don’t have silence. We’re far too busy. We need to come up with quick and witty retorts to show that we’re in business and silence. When I train people, they say that they feel really uncomfortable, and in fact, it’s often the listener who feels uncomfortable. The speaker feels as long as it’s a warm, empathetic silence, that they have more time to unpack and think through.
Emily Kasriel: [00:41:58] Because ideally, you want your speaker not just to give you the same rehearsed soundbites they’ve told to everybody Ruby before you want them to be. Thinking new thoughts in your presence. And silence gives you the space to establish trust and the speaker’s mind to evolve into new domains and new possibilities, which is so exciting. And research came out in 21 called Silence is Golden, and found that even in negotiations, the parties who were told to keep 20s of silence, none of them did 20s. The average longest was 17.5. We always exaggerate the seconds. We think we’re being silent. Anyway, both parties were far more likely to come up with win win scenarios, creative ways where both sides benefited than zero sum. If you win, I lose. So there’s many different types of silence. I pictures of the nine different types of silence. Quoting a poet, Paul Goodman. But if we can have a warm, empathetic, companionable silence that is very, very powerful. Feels weird at first, but I invite listeners to the podcast to try just a few seconds sprinkling them. You might want to tell your speaker you’re experimenting with silence or just use them. See what happens, because often you find that you’ll learn all sorts of things that you didn’t expect.
Jonathan Fields: [00:43:20] It’s interesting you share that one of the tools of the sort of classic interview tools, and I learned this many years ago is to just, you know, very deliberately bring a pulse to conversation, because that’s often when especially, I think, a Western mindset, people feel really uncomfortable with that space and they feel a need to fill that space. Sometimes they’ll feel actually, you know, well, well, this is actually a beautiful invitation for me to go further. The person is not jumping in. They’re not trying to solve me or fix me. Like I actually get to be seen to be heard. And that’s so rare. But other times people show up with prepared like they know exactly what they’re going to say, how they’re going to say it. They’ve done it a thousand times. And when you bring a pause to the conversation, they feel the urge to fill that space. But they’ve already shared the planned part of it. And that’s often where the really juicy part of a conversation begins. You know, where somebody actually starts to go off script. They’re not sound biting anymore. And it’s a really powerful thing, but it’s rarely ever done. And I think most people actually and again, depending on the context, like you shared, some people will feel like this is this moment of grace I get to open. I get to unfold more how beautiful it is. This, like other people feel just profound discomfort and the need to speak. But even in that, oftentimes it leads the conversation to a place that wasn’t planned, which is where oftentimes the best stuff happens.
Emily Kasriel: [00:44:50] It is the best stuff. But let me go to step seven because this is very, very relevant. So step seven is about reflecting back and it’s reflecting back. Not you might have been on an active listening course and you say, yeah, yeah, I get you. And you paraphrase what you’ve just heard or the last word they’ve said that is not reflecting back of deep listening. Step seven is really using the whole of you to intuit what you think is really going on for the other person, also, including their emotions, whether they’ve not expressed them in words and also what’s unsaid. So, for example, if you’ve had that silence and you feel that the person is feeling really uncomfortable, it’s being authentic and saying to them, I gave you a pause there to enable you to think more thoughts. But I’m having a sense that you’re feeling uncomfortable. Is it true it’s about labeling the noise in the room? I was once doing a demonstration of deep listening to a room full of journalists in Perugia at a big journalist festival, and I asked somebody to step up and volunteer and nobody would volunteer. So I said, who would like to see a real person volunteer rather than somebody on my panel? The guy put his hand up. I said, all right, you you come to the front of the room. He was super reluctant and when I was asking him a question about his name, he kept saying, so tell me about your name.
Emily Kasriel: [00:46:08] But because I wasn’t able to be present, I continued persevering. When I reflected back, which I do in the book on that conversation, I write that if I had been really present, I would have said, I’m sensing that you’re pretty uncomfortable because I forced you to do this in a room full of journalists. Is that right? And suddenly we’re having a real, authentic conversation rather than just being on script, as you referred to earlier. And step seven really allows us to go deeper. And that leads us to step eight. I talk about in the book, Theodore Reich, who was one of the first pupils of Sigmund Freud in Vienna. And then he went to practice as a psychoanalyst in New York. And he talked about the third ear. And I like to think of the third ear as being really close to your heart. So you’re not just using the aural sounds in your ears, you’re using all of you to intuit what’s going on for the other person. Your third ear to capture what they’ve said, what they haven’t said. The noise in the room. If you’re feeling uncomfortable, if they feel they’re feeling uncomfortable, as long as it’s in the service of them and their understanding of themselves and your understanding of them, as well as their motivations and their values, that’s also in step eight.
Jonathan Fields: [00:47:24] I mean, the model makes so much sense. And at the same time, I wonder if there’s a sort of like a meta piece of this that we’ve touched into to a certain extent, but it’s these the skill of awareness to be able to drop into any one of the eight elements of this model, the deep listening model. There’s a certain amount of not just self-awareness, but awareness, ambient awareness that we need to be able to harness to actually implement this model. And I wonder if you see in working with so many people that this skill can sometimes be in shorthand these days, and in some way hinder people’s ability to drop into the model.
Emily Kasriel: [00:48:07] I think that we all have the capacity to get better, and in fact, the research demonstrates if we believe we can get better, we’re more likely to get better. And I think that’s the same with awareness. I know how much I’ve developed and I’ve seen as a coach how much other people can change and develop, and it’s about starting small. And in the book I include a reflection sheet in order to reflect on your own practice, even if you only intend to introduce bit parts of deep listening in a conversation, that in itself is a beginning. If you then go skew whiff and it’s just about practicing and reflecting on your own, what happened in a conversation allows you to become more aware, to fine tune these things. And I would say it’s best to start listening, to practice deep listening. It’s certainly not for every conversation. If I were to ask you if you wanted a cup of tea and you were to go home and waited for 22nd silence, I’d probably throw the tea in your face or something. These are the conversations when you think differently, when it really matters, when you feel there’s a relationship you need to to mend. But beginning and practicing with somebody who you have a great relationship with.
Emily Kasriel: [00:49:18] Let me just tell you a story with my mother, who has got some dementia, and she’s in her 90s, and I went to see her a couple of months ago, and I said, how are you doing? And she said, I’m not so good. And normally I would try and cheer her up because that’s my job. I, you know, she’s got a carer 24 over seven, but I visit her a few times a week. I say, oh, I’m sure it’s not so bad. And look at this lovely, beautiful flowers I bought you. Or the sort of usual response, but I thought, no, let me try this deep listening with her. And I said, you know, so you’re not feeling good today? And she said, no, I feel like I’m an object just being blown by the wind. And I’ve landed here and I have no control over that. And that makes me, you know, I don’t like that. And so I reflected back her loss of agency and what she felt, and she said, yeah, I feel I have no control and it will make me very sad if I end up here. She is in the home where we she brought us up as children and she returned to the UK.
Emily Kasriel: [00:50:20] I brought her back so I could take better care of her, um, some ten years ago. And we continued to stay in that difficult space. Difficult for her and difficult for me. And only after being in that space for 5 or 10 minutes and me having the courage to be there, I then said, you know, do you see those Chagall prints? You know, do you remember my father bought them because he loved Chagall. And do you see those candles, those old candles on the bookshelf? You know, me and my sisters made them. And you were such a lovely mother. And then she said to me. Yeah, and I was a really good daughter in law to my awful parents in law. She hadn’t mentioned them for five. Years, you know. But because I was able to be with her in that space, she. Suddenly was able to access different memories, a different part of herself. And when we talked about those, you know, how much she loved us and how grateful I am, you know, she it was a different mother that I had left than the one who I had entered the room with.
Jonathan Fields: [00:51:15] That’s such a beautiful example of this at work in a practical, everyday way. It doesn’t have to be big, polarizing conversations. It doesn’t, you know, there’s probably so many daily interactions or conversations where we just sit down with somebody and just, you know, the act of giving someone your undivided attention, of being deeply present for them, of being all these things curious, you know, creating a safe environment for them. I feel like it’s so rare that when somebody experiences it, it lands as a gift. And there doesn’t necessarily need to be a resolution beyond that, like the experience itself of being seen and heard and held in that way is so powerful, it’s almost like an end to itself. Does that land?
Emily Kasriel: [00:52:00] Yeah, completely. And let me tell you another little story. I was in a pharmacy just recently picking up some drugs for my daughter, and there was a lady sitting waiting for her own drugs on a plastic chair. Nhs, part of the UK Public Health Service pharmacy. And they asked me what the date of my birth was. My daughter. So I said it’s the 3rd of July 21 and the farmer said, are you sure? And I thought, no, wait a minute. 3rd of July 2001. That’s pretty stupid. And the lady sitting on the chair said, how could you not know the birth date of your own daughter? That’s pretty silly. And I said, yeah, you’re quite right. She wouldn’t be pleased with that at all. And we had a laugh. And then she told me about her grandmother, who was in her mid 90s, and she said, yeah, I’m proud of my grandmother. Getting to that age. And I sensed in her something was going on and I said, you say you’re proud. But at the same time, I sense that, you know, there’s something else that’s going on. And she said, yes, I am proud, but I think that I’m going to die before my grandmother. And we talked some more, and she told me about her condition. And then she started crying. And then she apologized for crying. And then she said, thank you for listening. And I left and went back home. And she went back home where she lives. And it was that sort of momentary encounter. And so often in life, people don’t have the opportunity to talk to anybody. And if we can just be alive to those occasional encounters, they only take minutes or even less sometimes, but they can allow people to feel truly heard. And I think that’s so impactful.
Jonathan Fields: [00:53:48] Yeah. So agree with that. I think especially in the moment, we’re in in the world, in culture, in just personal interpersonal relationships and dynamics. It’s a beautiful thing when that unfolds, and we need more of it for sure. It feels a good place for us to come full circle as well in our conversation. So in this container of Good Life Project., if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up.
Emily Kasriel: [00:54:13] To be open to deepening the connections with people who you care about the most, but also to people who are strangers, who you are encountering for the first time, and enable those connections to enrich the both of you and increase your mutual understanding, particularly when you think differently.
Jonathan Fields: [00:54:40] Hmm. Thank you. Hey, if you love this episode, safe bet, you’ll also love the conversation we had with Krista Tippett about the art of deep conversation and the human spirit. You can find a link to that episode in the show notes. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers Lindsey Fox and me, Jonathan Fields. Editing help by, Alejandro Ramirez, and Troy Young. Kristoffer Carter crafted our theme music, and of course, if you haven’t already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app or on YouTube too. If you found this conversation interesting or valuable and inspiring, chances are you did because you’re still listening here. Do me a personal favor, a seven-second favor, and share it with just one person. I mean, if you want to share it with more, that’s awesome too. But just one person even then, invite them to talk with you about what you’ve both discovered to reconnect and explore ideas that really matter, because that’s how we all come alive together. Until next time, I’m Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.