Links:

'Reclaim Time to Read' 2022 reading challenge:  https://www.helenbeedham.com/2022-reading-challenge

Helen's business book: The Future of Time: how 're-working' time can help you boost productivity, diversity and wellbeing

Receive an exclusive advance invitation to join my June programme 'Time for the things that matter' - get on the mailing list here.

Janie on Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janie-van-hool-523621/

The Listening Shift by Janie van Hool

Headspace for mindfulness

Wim Hof Method: https://www.wimhofmethod.com/

Collabor(h)ate by Deb Mashek

Transcript:

Helen: This week, I'm talking with Janie van Hool. Janie is a prominent communication expert, specialising in leadership development programmes and executive coaching. She teaches the art of communication,, presence and impact to professionals in a wide range of organizations from the construction industry to investment banking. Janie has worked as a workshop facilitator and one-to-one coach for more than 20 years, enhancing the communication skills of executives and creating, listening company cultures. She's the acclaimed author of The Listening Shift: transform your organization by listening to your people and helping your people listen to you. It's published by Practical Inspiration Publishing and it's shortlisted for this year's Business Book Awards. It's the ultimate guide to learning how to cut through the noise to be heard and also to listen expertly. The Listening Shift draws on the learning and the experiences Janie has gained as a RADA-trained classical actress, a voice teacher with an MA in Voice Studies and from her research into performance psychology at Edinburgh University, and also from her years volunteering as a listener for Samaritans in the UK.

Welcome to The Business of Being Brilliant Janie!

Janie: Oh, thank you for having me Helen.

Helen: It's a real pleasure. And you and I have known each other for a little while, as we share a publisher and meet on book-related calls from time to time. And I wonder if for the benefit of other people listening, who are just getting to know you for the first time, if you could tell us something about yourself that might surprise people?

Janie: Well, I think this is one of those questions where you always think I've got to come up with something hugely impactful and surprising. One of the things I often enjoy telling people that they wouldn't know about me is that one of my favourite days of work as a professional actress was the day I spent on set all day kissing Robert Downey Jr who was wearing a pink feather and nothing else. And it reminds me of the incredible bond that actors can very quickly create with people. You have to trust, connect, build rapport, understand what it's like to be in their shoes or in his case, not wearing any shoes. I suppose the reason I wanted to share that is that really is at the heart of who I am: just somebody who, no matter the surprisingness of the situation, will be able to really speedily get into a place that is a proper connection rather than holding back. I reveal rather than conceal, I think is the aim.

Helen: That's quite a phenomenal claim to fame!

Janie: Not a bad day out at work, to be honest! Never bettered it.

Helen: And a great illustration of just how adept you are at stepping into different situations and going with the flow.

Janie: It's quite the way to learn that. Yeah. I always admire that skill in performance.

Helen: Quite often we come home from a day's work and we think about what went on that day and what did we make of it? That must've been quite a conversation you had with yourself that evening!

Janie: It was a good conversation I had with myself, but my partner wasn't so interested. He was like, I just don't want to know. And yes, it was, it was a funny day because I remember, I'm sure your listeners are not interested in this at all, but I was breastfeeding at the time. So it was a mix of a day, really, a mother of a brand new baby and doing that.

Helen: Crikey, well, hats off to you because I know when I was at that stage of motherhood, I think I would have fallen through the floor if anything too unexpected had landed on my plate. It was just enough to keep going

Janie: Of course as a freelancer, you have to take what comes when it comes. It's a really interesting challenge, I think for anybody running their own business or working as a freelancer or on zero hours contracts, it does change your attitude to working practices because you have to respond.

Helen: Yes, so let's pick up on that. So obviously I gave a little outline of your fantastic skills and career to date, did that happen in a planned kind of way? Or was it quite organic? Tell us a little bit about how you've developed the expertise around leadership and communication that you have.

Janie: Oh, Helen, in a previous conversation where I was saying to you, how much I loved the beautiful organization and structure and thought in your book, and I suspect that you, excuse me, might be like that as a person.  Whereas I am completely... I wake up in the morning, I have no idea what's going to have happened by the end of the day. And I know that that makes some people just recoil in horror at that. And actually, as I get older, I regret that I'm not more strategic about my life, but actually all of the things that I have done have been very random sort of, 'oh, that looks interesting, I'll have a go at that'.

So in fact, I was very, very committed to a lifelong career as a classical theatre actress. But of course, once I had my children that became very difficult; you can't tour as an actor easily. And then I realized that it wasn't really creative enough for me as a job. So then I, I was at the theatre one evening and I realized that it was possible to work as a voice coach in the theatre through taking a Master's degree in Voice, which I randomly decided to do. And then even more randomly, as I was writing my dissertation, I met a really wonderful woman on a beach in Norfolk who happened to be head of management development for a bank. And she asked me if I'd be willing to do some work with senior directors and MDs at the bank.

And to be honest, Helen, I'd had a couple of lovely beach drinks and I was feeling very alcohol-confident. And I just said, 'yeah, of course, why not?' But a couple of days later when I woke up and thought, 'oh God, I don't know how to get out of this' I ended up doing it and then realized I loved it. And they remained a client of mine for seven or eight years and passed me on to other people. So it's all been really ad hoc, but the joy of that has meant that I've been open to learning all sorts of different approaches to leadership. And I actually think that's quite an advantage because leadership has changed so much; presence and impact has changed so much in the 20 odd years that I've been working. So I think in many ways it's an advantage to be as.... just, I'm just curious. And I think that's been very helpful.

Helen: Yes. And that's something that comes out in your book and that, that your book reminded me of, and I'm just going to wave it here because it's got a beautiful cover. So if you're watching on video there's a little picture of it. If you're listening to I'm going to attempt to describe it. It's a lovely graphic on the front, lovely muted, blues and sea greens. So it's a fantastic book and your point about curiosity, you make that in the book about actually by listening better, we are really reminding ourselves to stay open and be curious about what's going on around us and what we're hearing and what we're seeing. And you had a lovely little tip - that actually I was practising this morning for a couple of minutes over my cup of tea, after a busy start to the day on the school run and stuff - which I think you say to close your eyes and practice listening to what the sounds are that you can hear close to you, and then a little bit further away, and then in the far distance. That just really helps you focus and be very present. So that's been one little tip that I've already been putting into practice that other listeners might enjoy.

Janie: Yeah. It's so easy to be busy in our heads thinking, 'oh, I've got all this to do and I've got that to do'. And, and actually just spend a moment doing that can bring us right into well, the moment. And certainly if you're focused on listening, that's very helpful. But something I would like to say about curiosity that I think is very much relevant to your work Helen on time, is that time pressure is a real killer to curiosity because we just haven't got the time to be curious. We're so busy doing. And actually, the more pressured we are, the more certain we become, the more assertive we can create ourselves to be. And actually curiosity is ... it's the absolute connection. I think it's the absolute key to building relationships, to finding out what your business could or should be doing. We're losing it. I think.

Helen: Yes, I absolutely agree. And organizations that are trying, in many cases, so hard to build more inclusive cultures, to improve the diversity of their workforce and enable people from all sorts of backgrounds and profiles and preferences to get in and, and flourish. But that lack of time for one another because we're so focused on the deadline or the task is a real barrier to a genuinely inclusive culture. Is that something you see leaders really aware of and paying attention to? And is that something you're helping them address through listening and speaking coaching?

Janie: That's certainly my aspiration Helen but I think what is fascinating, I think the will is there. I think people really do want to create that more inclusive culture, create more of a listening environment, but the trouble is all the stuff is so addictive. I mean if you are, and again, I do mention this in the book, but if you are really addicted to solving puzzles rather than unravelling problems inevitably, it's going to shut us down. I'm still seeing so many meetings or hearing about so many conversations that are really a multi-tasking opportunity. And I was in with someone over the weekend, I started to share something quite personally very deep and challenging, and he was responding to a text message. And I don't blame him for that because he's got other things on his mind, but it's interesting how much that's just a feature of our lives.We think we're present, but we can also do something else at the same time. And we actually can't, we are not evolved in that way yet. Maybe that'll come but I just think it's, it's not what we think it is.

Helen: Yes, absolutely. And so thinking back about the way your career's evolved and the different clients you've worked with and the different organizations and situations you've been in, is there anything in particular that at some time or another, you have found quite stretching or difficult that's led you perhaps to develop some new skills or tools in your toolbox, or simply a way of dealing with maybe uncomfortable or challenging situations?

Janie: I mean, as I said to someone recently, now I'm in my mid fifties, as my body goes south, my confidence goes north and that's really lovely. So I've been in many situations where I have really felt like an imposter. I'm a classical theatre actress trying to work with groups of leaders and inspire them to behave differently. It feels like the gap is so enormous. But the beautiful thing of just continually putting myself in that situation over the years, both in the UK and internationally, is that I just have really begun to trust myself. And that feels wonderful actually. One of the things I learned from being a Samaritan is that it's not my job to fix. It's not my job to find the answer to everything. It's my job to create conditions where people can explore their own motivations or find their own answers. So actually the big thing that I've learned, even though I've been really sometimes thinking, well, I remember walking up the steps at the foreign office once is ago, and it's a beautiful grand amazing building. And I was walking up the steps and I was thinking 'what on earth? I mean, how did I get here? What am I doing here?' But actually the great privilege is to realize that everybody's the same really. The Italians say, at the end of the day, all the chess pieces go back in the same box, and I think that really, what I have had the privilege of uncovering is that even the most senior leaders are filled with self-doubt or have good days and bad days, or don't have the answers, or, as I share at the end of my book, some of them are in really dark and difficult places. And actually that has given me great courage to be bold and brave with people because, it's like what I was saying about Robert Downey Jr, you know; truthfully underneath, we all just want to find the connections. So it's given me a lot of courage to trust myself in those environments. I don't have to be perfect.

Helen: That's such welcome advice and reflections, it helps me hearing that and I'm sure, and I hope it helps others hearing that because I think so many of us have had that imposter syndrome feeling or simply it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking, when you're in a meeting or at a work interaction, that you have to deliver in terms of perhaps having the best insight or speaking up at a certain point, and that's what good performance looks like. And that's what doing well in our job looks like, in our role. But actually what you've just been saying about actually being there with other people, not necessarily being the one coming out with the most precise or expert point of view, but actually enabling people to reflect and to listen and to play back what you're hearing.

As a management consultant in my former working years, I felt this pressure to be the expert in the room because after all, someone's paying a lot of money for your time by the hour. So you've got to deliver, and that puts quite a few people off, I know, from going into that kind of industry where you have to be the expert all the time. But I learnt that actually, when the work went at its best, it was when I wasn't trying to be the expert and I was really listening to what was going on and as you say, giving the client time to think things through. And that helps build relationships so much more effectively than trying to over-deliver super early or multitasking, managing very complex bits of work. Really at the end of the day it was about the relationship that made the biggest difference.

Janie: I think that's right and actually when I started, when I first started working with leaders on their presence, which was very much my niche when I first began to work. I realized after a very short period of time, what they were really asking was could everybody be a bit more like the president of the United States! There was all this stuff about, 'oh, they need to stand really tall and speak up and have a booming voice and being incredibly erudite'. And that was, I mean, let's face it supremely difficult for a lot of the women that I worked with. It was 'what a shame they're not a bit more like the US president'. And I, I would ask groups of people: who would you identify as public figures who have presence? And they would always start with Bill Clinton or all that sort of stuff.

And if you asked for a woman, it would be Margaret Thatcher or the Queen. Actually where I think we are now, which is very much aligned with what you're saying and actually why I wrote the book, is I think if you really want to have presence: shut up, listen and connect through listening, serve others, find other people fascinating. And it just somehow is so mutually helpful because it allows everybody to shine and that feels so much more important to me than slamming the door open and 'ta da! I'm here!' You know?

Helen: Yup, absolutely, I think that's so true. I think I've certainly had that experience of being coached by a well-meaning, very supportive senior male colleague around my own presence and how I facilitated workshops; I'm going back a couple of decades by now. And the gist of it was 'do it a bit more like me'.

Janie: Yes!

Helen: And something in me, I couldn't quite put into words, I hadn't put my finger on, but that was the problem. But I said 'but I need to do it my way. I am not six foot three and I'm not built like a rugby player and I don't have a loud, booming voice, so I have to find my way of doing it. And thankfully a new people manager who was in the conversation because they were taking on that managing relationship with me, really got that and said, 'yes, it's about being authentic and doing it your way'. And as you said earlier, actually trusting that the way you do things brings value, because you're the only one that can do it like that.

Janie: Yes and actually the emotional labour of trying to do it the way that someone else does it... I worked with a lovely, I think he's lovely improvisation tutor in the States, and he is really passionate about feedback and he doesn't do it. He says it is not for me to approve or disapprove. It is simply for me to unlock. The principle is to do a lot of what they call side coaching. As you're working, they will say, ' share more, share your voice'. And it's, it's a really beautiful ethos because otherwise I'll sit there and listen to you and then I'll tell you whether you did well or not. And actually, I, I begin to think that is singularly unhelpful.

Helen: That's very interesting to hear. I've been talking to other guests as well on in series one, and we'll be talking a bit more in series two about the whole aspect of performance management and feedback and how it's really ready for a bit of a change. So I think what you're saying though, is very relevant to that.

Janie: And I've worked with quite alot of people and the kind of career progression up to very senior levels in organizations. And it is amazing how leaders are expected to give this rare and insightful feedback that is both helpful and constructive. And they may not have the emotional intelligence to do that or they just may not be that interested in doing that well. They're just giving an opinion and actually an opinion is just singular and subjective. And I think you're right. I would love to see that really shift - over-reliance on the word shift, which is one of my favourites.

Helen: It works, it works brilliantly and talking about shifts ... I have to say it really carefully because it might sound a little bit hard .. (laughter).. Don't know if anyone else has said that! I was just aware of my own phrasing and enunciation there!

Janie: Hence all the puns in my book. Cause I just think, you know what?!

Helen: They're great. And you're not sure what Janie means by the puns in the book, just have a little look at the contents page and you'll quickly click. So for example, Part one is entitled 'This shift matters'. The next is 'Get your shift together'. So, it's beautifully clearly structured and written as indeed you would expect from a communications expert. But I wonder if we might just talk a little bit more specifically about what's in the book and how it might help people listening to this podcast. What's your hope for people that read this book? Why did you write it and what do you hope they might take from it?

Janie: The thing I would really love for people to take from it is the concept of appro aching communications skill in the same way that we might approach going to the gym. It's a life's work. There are days when you feel it and there are days when you don't. You can over flex certain muscles and under flex others. But the number of people that will say to me, oh, yes, I've done a course on or I, I've done presentation skills, I've done negotiation skills, I've done listening.  I appreciate the in organizations again, with very positive intent, there will be a day course here or a two day module there, or, but actually it's recognizing that it is something that really is daily practice.  And like any muscle, it gets a bit flabby if you leave it alone for too long.

And I think we need a bit of a rethink actually about that. That would be my aim from the book, because it's a book in two halves in the sense that one half of it is about really turning up your listening. But the other half is about helping other people listen, because we expect that we just open our mouths and others will find us so fascinating and they'll hang on every word. When in fact we know they absolutely won't. I was amazed to discover in writing the book - perhaps your listeners know this already, it was a surprise to me - but the rate I'm speaking is around 160 words per minute but the rate at which they will be listening or processing what I'm saying is probably four times that. So there are massive gaps for people to wander off and think, 'oh, what shall I have for supper?' Or, 'oh, why is she banging on about that so much?' I think we don't tell ourselves the truth about that.

Helen: I think that's so true and I love how you talk in the book about how you create a listening culture and you give lots of different ways that organizations can try and improve across the organization the ability to listen well and to speak in a way that helps people to listen. And you talk about listening groups and listening audits and strategies instead of leaping to always having an engagement survey, which has to follow with a multi-point action plan. And I loved your idea that actually when you're really listening to people, you're not listening necessarily to diagnose or solve problems, but simply to encourage the sharing of stories and experiences and views. And that might sound quite soft and fluffy to people listening, but it can be work-related stories and client-related stories and team related experiences.

Janie: Well, I think it concerns me greatly that, and I appreciate the intention, but there are a lot of focus groups in businesses and they might be with customers or clients, and they might be with people in the business, but often the questions are framed in such a way that leads to the outcome they seek. It doesn't feel to me like they are a really open inquiry with an intention just to find out and you never know what you're going to find out. And of course, if we listen with a 'I'm going to solve this problem' hat on, the minute we think we've got the answer, we just totally switch off. Which is why you've really got to work at it. I know one of the big, big things that we are taught at Samaritans is you need to try and suspend your own judgment. Because it is very easy when someone starts to articulate a situation and sometimes you just think,' oh my God, it's so obvious what you should do', but of course you can't say that and you have to really work hard to row back and go, well, let me just enquire. Let me just sit with this and see what comes up. I do think we are now living in a kind of argument culture, and that is hugely informed by social media. Polarized debate; 'that person's an idiot'. 'No, you're an idiot'. Where does anyone think they're going to go with that?

Helen: Yes, that's so true that it's become very polarized and that we attach value or we like people or dislike people because of whether they share the same point of view or not, which runs completely counter to trying to build inclusive cultures. That's so interesting.

And as you say in the book, we're not actually taught to listen in schools. We might be told a lot to listen by teachers, but we don't have as a society things in place socially to help us grow up to be good listeners. And so it's no surprise that we get into the workplace and there's a whole range of listening skills and it's often not something that's at the top of an L&D strategy.

For example, if someone's listening, who's in a learning and development role or a head of HR or a business leader, if they're recognizing some of the difficulties that you've talked about, what are some of the ways that they can try and improve their listening culture in the organization? Do they set up a big programme or do they just try and start role modelling a bit better?

Janie: Definitely set up a big programme! I'm right here Helen!

Helen: And Janie can definitely help.

Janie: I think this is the heart of the matter really, because of course, it's such a simple thing, but it's so not easy. I mean, it's a really hard thing to get it right. The advice I often give about listening is I know sounds counter-intuitive and sounds a bit surprising, but actually one of the things I would say straight away is ask better questions. If you're a leader and you want to listen better, give yourself the best possible chance of doing that by asking something that is going to solicit richer information for you to respond to.

For example, I have a real beef with the question, 'how are you?' And I mentioned this in the book. When you say to someone, 'how are you?' what you will get is 'yeah, yeah, I'm good thanks, yeah, not too bad'. And that's not interesting to listen to, and it also doesn't give you anything from which to take further enquiry.If you must ask 'how are you?' make sure you ask, 'how are you really? or 'tell me what's going on for you at the moment'. And that is an intention. It means I really want to find out. It is much easier then to listen to the sort of stuff that you get back.

The second thing I would say is absolutely key is to notice yourself because if I'm about to leap into a meeting, having just had quite a dense, tricky, frustrating meeting beforehand, I'm probably going to be taking that mentally into the next conversation. And that makes my listening pretty dodge, to be honest. So you've either got to repair that, shake it out, literally kind of physically shaking it out or taking five minutes or writing down what are the things that are burning at you that you want to think about later, but really taking the time to notice your listening. And Helen, you and I were talking just before we started recording about the principle of shifts, and shifts for me are so important to think about. Anyone listening to this podcast or thinking about listening is going to say, 'yeah, I must be a better listener'.

It's just too much of a catch-all the decision is when am I going to dial it up? And when am I just going to, okay, I can, I can soften here. I can let myself off the hook a little bit. And when I was at Edinburgh doing some research into performance psychology, and I learned about the principle of periodization. Which is to say, working out what the ebbs and flows are. As a system, we ebb and flow, our bodies ebb and flow, our minds ebb and flow. And so trying to work out what I can dial up and what I can dial down is really important. And one of the examples that my professor used was in playing football.

If a footballer is just running up and down the pitch running up and down the pitch, running up and down the pitch, they're going to be rubbish, to be honest. So part of the teamwork is about who dials up; it's almost like a dance, you know, who dials up when, who takes a little bit of a backseat and relaxes, when? We expect way too much of ourselves. So ask better questions, pay better attention to yourself and notice how effectively you're able to bring yourself into the conversation, I think are two big things for me.

Helen: That's such great advice thank you. And in your book you have some great examples of well-intended questions that might be the classic open questions, but actually carry some inadvertent judgment or expectation of what the answer might be in there and how to ask them better. So they're super practical lists in there. And your point about the shift, actually, we can't be on all of the time for ourselves or for other people. And that's helped me massively to hear you say 'I want to be a better listener' is just too big, a massive a goal. So break it down and start thinking of it this way. That's so helpful, to give ourselves permission to switch off, to have periods where we are not paying attention to others because we simply need some downtime; we need to process what we've just been hearing or being involved in; or we just need to let our minds wander because that's so important for our creativity and sharp thinking. Lots in common that we like to write and explore and talk to people about.

And is there any other resource that you would recommend to people listening that you've found particularly insightful or helpful?

Janie: Well, I, I do think things like the Headspace type apps are very helpful in turning up our mindfulness. I am also a recent convert to ice bath training, the Wim Hof method. So Wim Hoff is a Dutchman who's famously titled The Ice Man and he advocates for ice water immersion, or cold, or, you know, turning the shower cold for two minutes or whatever. Actually his method is really about that calm, breathing out mindset 'I can do this', all that sort of stuff. It means you can very quickly get in charge of your system and that skill is important, both for speaking, but also for listening.

Helen: Yes. And for just generally dealing with stressful situations at work, I imagine being able to focus.

Janie: Yeah, absolutely very quickly and you don't have to be in ice in all your meetings!

Helen: Yes. It doesn't have to be literally that painful! Great advice. And how can listeners connect with you after listening to you on the podcast?

Janie: Well, I would love it. I'd love to hear from anybody. Janievanhool.com, or you can email me at janie@janievanhool.com and I'm on LinkedIn as well.

Helen: Brilliant. Thank you. We'll include a link to the website and your LinkedIn page in the show notes so take a look there if you'd like to connect with Janie. But thank you so much for talking with me today Janie, it's been an absolute pleasure and so interesting and helpful to hear about your expertise and all the brilliant advice and wisdom in your work. Thank you for being my guest.

Janie: Oh, that's lovely, I've loved it. Thank you so much for having me.